Jake

The End of Mad Men: The Milk and Honey Route

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Killer line of the episode: Betty talking to Henry: "Why was I ever doing it?"

 

ughhhhhh

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In my perfect world, this podcast would have been 45~ minutes of just Betty talk, since her plot is what resonated with me the most.

 

Giving any other character life-threatening cancer so close to the end would have felt like a cliche, but with Betty it feels so expected. I know realize there was no way that this character was making it out of this show alive. Betty is the receiver of all the ills of this world and those ills have metastasized to kill her (This is both symbolically true and factually true; I bet the only reason Betty smoked was so she could stay skinny to fit the standard of what a woman from her background should look like).

 

It seems so unfair that the character with the least agency and freedom has the roughest ending, but like Sally said, we love the tragedy of it all. How insulting that Betty's doctor doesn't even tell her the news of her cancer; he shares it with Henry with Betty off to the side. She's never been allowed to be more than a pretty doll passed between the men in her life (her father, Don, Henry, Gene, her sons) and is denied respect right up to the end. Choosing to not receive treatment and accept her fate is the first completely independent choice Betty has made on this show. It's almost relieving to see her finally take action, even if that action will lead to her death. What a great way to send off such a complicated character (I agree with what was said on the cast; Betty is wonderful and the hatred she receives from much of the Mad Men viewing audience is completely unwarranted).

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So many good things these past couple of episodes. Good being relative, of course. I really have nothing to add right now. I'm still digesting eight years of plot lines.

 

I wonder if it's possible to re-watch every episode before next weeks' finale…?

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To be honest, I thought I hated Betty until the fire and smoke from their divorce cleared, and then it became apparent that what I hated was Don and who Betty became around Don. I feel like that's different from the people who hate Betty from Mad Men and Skyler from Breaking Bad for being the disapproving wives of TV's wish-fulfillment protagonists, but maybe it's not.

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Let's play everybody's favourite game! Guess the official episode description, assuming you arrive here before you've listened.

"Henry receives some bad news, Pete is offered a job, Don confesses, Sally visits"

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My girlfriend and I high fived when they started singing "Over There". It became an in joke between us ever since it was the end credits song in the episode where Grandpa Gene died (I don't know why its a joke aside from the song being very hokey). It makes me wonder how many times a end credits song has ended up in an episode of Mad Men.

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My girlfriend and I high fived when they started singing "Over There". It became an in joke between us ever since it was the end credits song in the episode where Grandpa Gene died (I don't know why its a joke aside from the song being very hokey). It makes me wonder how many times a end credits song has ended up in an episode of Mad Men.

"Over There" has been a punchline song for me since...well, probably 1990.

 

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In my perfect world, this podcast would have been 45~ minutes of just Betty talk, since her plot is what resonated with me the most.

Listening to the cast, I realized that Pete's plot mattered so little to me that I'd already mentally slotted it in an earlier episode. Everything with the Betty plot was just on point, with amazing writing and performances from everyone.

When Henry goes to get Sally, that one scene develops the characters so much. You see Sally grow up in an instant, and you see Henry realize his desperation and helplessness. He's always been a character chasing power and control (obviously, he's a politician), and through the rest of the episode you see him trying to figure this out and pull strings and get everyone he knows to try and fix this for him. And then he goes to his stepdaughter and just realizes he's powerless over this horrible thing in his life. Sally's development is more poignant because we've been with her longer, but his is just as notable.

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Don't really know the significance but there seemed to be a lot of stuff about planes this week and the end song was performed by a man who died in a plane crash.

Loved the way the Betty stuff was handled after getting over the intial 'a cancer story line right at the end!?" shock. And her letter being read as she struggled to climb the stairs again killed me. So so glad that P Diddly seems to have got his happy ending.

Can you imagine if that's the last we see of Don? I'm hoping for a finale entirely devoted to a Peggy and Joan plot to burn down McCaan

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While this entire season has been about the recalling or repeating the past, this episode really piled a lot of that stuff on. This isn't the first time that Don has been in a sort of purgatorial twilight existence by the pool (season 2's The Jet Set), or the first time he's been grifted by teenagers and beaten in a cheap motel (season 3's Seven Twenty Three). This isn't even the first time he's had a blonde ex-wife with whom he has a surprisingly healthy relationship dying of cancer.

 

I'm interested to see if Pete's "happy" end is actually anything of the sort. I wouldn't trust Duck as far as I could throw him, so the entire time I was expecting that deal to come crashing down as an elaborate scam. Not to mention there are all kinds of reasons that Pete could screw up his fresh start (albeit a couple of reasons he won't).

 

There's some clear groundwork being laid that Don may be going to commit suicide. I suspect he's heading to California, where he'll say good bye to Anna Draper (whose engagement ring was pointedly returned to him by Meredith). I suspect he's going to say goodbye to Don Draper as well, possibly as a re-enactment of the ambiguously suicidal-themed Hawaii pitch, to enact yet another reference from the past.

 

Personally, I don't think he's going to commit suicide, just as Don didn't see why people thought the pitch was suicidal. I think that the veterans provided Dick Whitman with an absolution for his original sin, and for all the identities that Don has tried on over the years, he's never really worn Dick Whitman. So, I suspect that we'll see will be not suicide, but a rebirth. Maybe if Don is able to acknowledge his own true self (as Pete seems to have done), and act in accordance with that, his existential dilemma will be over.

 

That seems a little too tidy for Mad Men, but assuming that we've seen the last of Peggy or Pete, they both got relatively tidy "endings" as well.

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Man the shot of Betty in the doctor's office really was incredible. I was really really down after watching this one.

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One of the shots of Betty in the doctor's office reminded me of shots of her from one of the earlier seasons in a doctor's office, probably when she was pregnant with Gene. (Looks like it was S2E13, Meditations in an Emergency).

 

I doubt it's an intentional reference though. The only reason I really remember it was the deer painting.

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Cracking episode - really can't wait for the end. If Mad Men's shown me anything, it's that I have no idea what's going to happen.

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So this popped into my head during my commute home tonight. I hope Don ends up in California and runs into Joan and her man in LA or something and we get to see her happy and fulfilled and successful.

I'm not saying we will, but it would be nice. I pretty much just want to see Joan doing well because it would make me happy to know she's alright.

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I'm not saying we will, but it would be nice. I pretty much just want to see Joan doing well because it would make me happy to know she's alright.

 

Been thinking a lot about Joan as well. Megan, Peggy, Sally, and Betty aren't in happy conditions, but they were all shown as ready to move forward through those circumstances. Joan was last seen being beaten and betrayed. That really broke my heart because of all those women, it feels like she has fought just as hard for what she wants, if not harder. What a cruel way for her story to end if the last we hear of her is Pete mentioning that she got bought out.

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Let's play everybody's favourite game! Guess the official episode description, assuming you arrive here before you've listened.

"Henry receives some bad news, Pete is offered a job, Don confesses, Sally visits"

 

Okay, having seen the episode finally... "Don gives to charity. Duck returns with an offer. Betty writes a letter."

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As far as I can tell, the usual "Next Time on Mad Men" slot was filled with an AMC title card just telling me to watch the finale. I'm bummed that we missed out on one final installment of non-sequitur reaction shots theater.

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I wondered if Don's American Legion buddies were as accepting of Don's confession as those on the cast believed.  I thought that perhaps the pregnant pause left after Don described killing his CO was a sign that the rest of the group felt the behavior Don had confessed to went well beyond the "everyone did something they regret" spirit of the earlier conversations.  Even the seemingly accepting comments may have been an attempt to move past the awkwardness until they could separately say "sure, maybe we killed some especially pathetic Nazis, but we never killed an American soldier!"  In my mind, this explained how quickly the crew jumped to blame Don when the money went missing: they'd just decided Don was a person who had committed a truly terrible crime, and almost immediately thereafter found out there was a criminal in their midst, and thus it was easy to conclude it was Don.

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How did everyone read the WWII vet's story about the Germans. I assumed he ate them but other reactions I've read online make it sound like he only killed the Germans.

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I wondered if Don's American Legion buddies were as accepting of Don's confession as those on the cast believed.  I thought that perhaps the pregnant pause left after Don described killing his CO was a sign that the rest of the group felt the behavior Don had confessed to went well beyond the "everyone did something they regret" spirit of the earlier conversations.  Even the seemingly accepting comments may have been an attempt to move past the awkwardness until they could separately say "sure, maybe we killed some especially pathetic Nazis, but we never killed an American soldier!"  In my mind, this explained how quickly the crew jumped to blame Don when the money went missing: they'd just decided Don was a person who had committed a truly terrible crime, and almost immediately thereafter found out there was a criminal in their midst, and thus it was easy to conclude it was Don.

 

Don didn't actually admit to anything terrible. Despite his initially poor phrasing ("I killed my CO"), this wasn't a fragging situation. Don's story clearly labels it as an accident.

 

It's possible that if Don had described what he had _actually_ done, they might have taken umbrage. But I don't think there's anything suggesting that happened in this case.

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How did everyone read the WWII vet's story about the Germans. I assumed he ate them but other reactions I've read online make it sound like he only killed the Germans.

 

I couldn't hear what he said, and I also assumed the story was about cannibalism.

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How did everyone read the WWII vet's story about the Germans. I assumed he ate them but other reactions I've read online make it sound like he only killed the Germans.

 

I was almost certain that the story was headed towards cannibalism, but I'm pretty sure that they just (just!) made the Germans dig their own graves and then killed ("bounced") them, the implication being that they did so because they didn't have enough food to keep themselves and their prisoners alive. It's a confusing way for that character to have told the story, and maybe the confusion is intentional, in that we're supposed to feel like there are holes in his supposedly "tell-all" account, but I don't think there's anything in the actual dialogue to support his cannibalism, besides the opening lines about extreme hunger.

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How did everyone read the WWII vet's story about the Germans. I assumed he ate them but other reactions I've read online make it sound like he only killed the Germans.

 

I assumed that it was about cannibalism as well because one of the first details he gives is that they were starving and how he later describes one of the soldiers as 'skin and bones' or something like that. Maybe the story was supposed to be veiled though? 

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