More Mad Men

The more I find myself doing the ol' "stand around and wait for something awful to happen to Don Draper" thing like everybody else, the more annoyed I am. I don't think anything is ever gonna happen to him; so far I don't really see him as having to pay for his "sins," certainly not in any way he particularly cares about. Hell, a coupla years ago Pete Campbell found out about his stolen identity, tried to blackmail Don and then presented the info to the president of the company and was met with a resounding "who cares?" I mean, we're talking about a guy who disappeared to California for two weeks without telling anybody, and when he got back he was reprimanded by...being told he had just made half a million dollars. Meanwhile Betty obviously is about to find out about him not being the "real" Don Draper; other than her usual moping around what the hell is she gonna do? Divorce him? She KNOWS he's been a coozehound for years and she's stuck with him, and now she's gonna decide to be a single mother in the early '60s over this? Doubt it. And even if she does, what does he care? He's Don Draper, dammit!!!

I know we like our tv shows to be wrapped up nicely with a bow with the ol' "oh, he'll get his!!" and in the end leave Don broke and alone, living in a ditch somewhere, but more and more Don is looking like the little boy in Mark Twain's The Story of the Bad Little Boy.

And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalist wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.

So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.

The opposite, of course, of The Story of the Good Little Boy.

Also, people are still bitching that nothing seemed to happen to Tony Soprano at the end of The Sopranos.  And guess what show Mad Men creator Mathew Weiner worked on before Mad Men, including it's next-to-last episode? So I think it might occur to Weiner to cackle with glee at all of us wringing our hands, waiting for a fall that will likely never come. Comeuppance doesn't always come. Sometimes, that's life. Hell, it's in the news every day.

ALSO:

Did Pete Campell die? I mean, wtf - at the beginning we had this young buck who looked like the type to undercut his own grandmother to find the most eggs on Easter Sunday; so much so that he was willing to try to blackmail Draper. Seriously, if two years ago you were told that one day he would hafta split the accounts with Ken Cosgrove, wouldn't you assume he would lend Cosgrove a blanket with smallpox? But no, all we get now is him going "Damn you, Cosgrove!!" a lá Seinfeld/Newman, (only not even to Cosgrove himself) and then disappearing for another week. Wtf? The Castration of Pete Campbell is another sign of "oh, let's just not worry about the other characters, let's just follow Don around while Betty mopes and crap." Grrrr.