My MAD MEN season review

SPOILER ALERT, but Jesus, watch the damn show already.  Enough people are talking about it.

Can Don Draper find happiness now that he plans to marry his Laura Petrie with bad teeth? Well, first of all, no one is ever really going to be happy because without conflict you’re left with TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL.  But I do feel Don at least has a shot now.  As do some  of the other always-in-crisis characters.  Season four wrapped up Sunday night and for my money it was the best year since the first.

Not that the last two weren’t good but I got a little tired of Don just trying to be comfortable in his own skin. By the time he was hanging out in Palm Springs with the Andy Warhol kibbutz I was screaming, “Figure it out already!”

But this year we really got to watch Don grapple with substantial obstacles – losing his touch, striking out with trollops, becoming Nick Cage in LEAVING LOST VEGAS or Lindsay Lohan in real life.

We saw him trying to live alone and it wasn’t pretty. He rented an apartment in Ratzo Rizzo’s building. For gratification he resorted to hookers and even Focus Group moderators.

His relationship with his children became even more strained, although it’s understandable that he didn’t really know his son, Bobby since six different actors have played him. And he was really conflicted. On the one hand he loved them. On the other he’d pay Jeffrey Dahmer to babysit if the alternative was spending ten minutes alone with them.

And Don was still the good parent considering Betty was their mother. Once a layered sympathetic character, she has now morphed into Joan Crawford. And Henry, the guy who married her after Don – if there were a land of the schmucks he would be their king. Watch, by episode two next season he’s going to be throwing himself in front of a moving train.

Betty is extraordinarily beautiful and yet whenever she comes on the screen I go "Shit!  Her!"  Even my libido hates her.

So what might happen in season five?

Sally will one day kidnap Patty Hearst. Third time will be a charm for Creepy Glenn as he will finally sleep with a Draper – Bobby.

Joan will have Roger’s baby and try to convince her husband, Greg that it’s really his. As my daughter Annie says, “He’ll figure something’s up when the baby comes out and has white hair”.

I expect the episode next season with the SCDP family picnic where the partners can meet all the children who think other men are their fathers.

SCDP will prosper.  Don's anti-smoking ad in the NY Times will result in a $50,000,000 account from Nicorette.    The ad proves so successful that Roger takes a similar one out that's anti-Japanese and the agency will be out of business in a month. 

Poor Peggy is facing the career’s woman existential question: devote your life to your profession or start hanging out more with a Lesbian? The show where she and Don spent a night together was maybe the single greatest episode of the series. Both deserve Emmys... and Clios.

Pete and Trudy will live happily ever after unless she decides to go back to college.

Poor jilted Dr. Faye will tell her friends that’s what happens when you date a shaygets.

Harry will eventually move out to the coast and become the Director of Comedy Development for ABC and then get fired when he exposes himself to Patty Duke at an affiliates convention.

But getting back to Don and his new bride, Megan – I like their chances. She’s good with children (although it doesn’t take much to improve upon Himmler). She’s smart, she’s sweet – her only real conflict will be what name to use? Her maiden name, Draper, or Whitman?  Seriously though, let's see how it goes when she's an equal and not subservient to Don.  

Still, I’m rooting for them – mostly for Sally, whoever is Bobby this week, and baby Gene. Don and everyone else can screw up their own lives. They’re grown ups. But MAD MEN is a drama. MAD KIDS is a tragedy.

Thanks to Matt Weiner and everybody associated with the show for giving us a sensational year.

What did you guys think of this year?