Mad Men Season 7B Premiere Review: Is That All There Is?

Mad Men S07E08: "Severance"

Matthew Weiner and AMC have billed the second half of Mad Men's seventh final season as "The End of an Era," but the Season 7B premiere, "Severance" made it clear that the era in question may already have passed. Richard Nixon's Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, a follow-up to his announcement regarding the removal of 150,000 troops from Vietnam, aired on April 30, 1970—which means the 1960s have been over for Don and the others for several months now. For a TV series so defined by its setting, Mad Men's offscreen transition from the '60s to the '70s is surprising... and yet not surprising at all.

Peggy Lee's 1969 hit "Is That All There Is?" provided the framework for "Severance," an episode that left me feeling a bit uncomfortable due to its high level of cynicism combined with its poetic execution. But hey, some of the best literature is meant to make us squirm. However, it's difficult to define exactly where "Severance" stepped away from the undercurrent of optimism that seemed to pervade Mad Men's previous seasons. In the past, even when Don was at his worst—which was often—other characters still showed plenty of uplifting promise; we certainly can't discount Peggy's evolution from shy secretary to mad-woman powerhouse, or Bert Cooper's constant glee at the progress of man, be it in the form of elevators or moon landings.

But now Bert Cooper is dead, and despite her incredible journey, Peggy is no more content than her booze-soaked peers. Sure, she's got one helluva story, but in the end, all she has is a job. Her sacrifices are catching up to her as the residual positivity of the '60s dries up. She told Joan that they "can't have it both ways," meaning they can't be both professional women and feminine women. Joan and Peggy have been pitted against one another since the beginning of the series as dichotomous examples of working women's choices in the early 1960s (and excluding those made by Betty, who, having married her way out of the workforce before Mad Men debuted, served to explore a different set of issues).

Peggy vs. Joan reads like a contemporary iteration of Ginger vs. MaryAnn except no one wins, no one is happy. Joan is a bombshell who dresses like Ad Executive Barbie, while Peggy casts herself as a no-nonsense career woman and dresses the part in muted colors and high necklines. They're both capable in their field, and they both encounter different, but no less frustrating, resistance from the people they must work with. Joan is leered at. Peggy is ignored. And after Peggy pointed out that they can't have it both ways, she went one step further, telling Joan that she's filthy rich and doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do. It's just that, unknown to Peggy, Joan had to do one thing she absolutely didn't want to do—sleep with the Jaguar executive—to achieve her wealth and status.

And still, all anyone cares about are her boobs.

With his divorce from Megan underway, Don Draper is a free man, and Mad Men played on what we assumed that freedom would mean for him with the premiere's opening scene. He was either going to bang the new girl or it was an audition—or both. And while Don didn't take that particular lady home, we did see him engage in his usual philandering, though unlike previous women in previous episodes, his conquests were largely nameless, mentioned in passing by an operator at a messaging service or seen briefly during a bedroom fling. Diana the waitress (Elizabeth Reaser) may come to mean something, but she also may not. Maybe Don was merely going through the motions with her as well.

Peggy Lee's song describes a narrator who's completely unimpressed with anything life has to offer. Her house burns down? Whatever. That's it? She finds her great love? Great, fine, okay. Don's lost everything and gotten it back. He's had several "great loves" throughout Mad Men's run. Just like Peggy, Don has a great story, but where has it actually gotten him in the end? What's in store for his big finale? More of the same. The extraordinary begins to feel less so when it becomes routine.

The one bit of hope that remained in "Severance" rested with Ken Cosgrove, who I've long suspected and still kind of do suspect of being our "inside man." The guy was fired almost immediately following his father-in-law's retirement from Dow Chemical... and just one day after his wife implored him to ditch Sterling Cooper & Partners to pursue the writing career he'd always wanted. It was an odd, quaint, "God works in mysterious ways"-type coincidence, but it wasn't terribly noteworthy—and yet for Cosgrove, it was the stuff of legend. Everything is fascinating to the guy, even the mundane. Pete insisted that their lives and their field were boring, but Cosgrove knew better. He knew his experience mattered. He knew that everything about it mattered.

And then he took a job at Dow as soon as he could, because it was easy. It was safe and secure. And while returning to the office is somewhat of a step back for Cosgrove, in contrast to his experience working for Sterling Cooper's various incarnations, making life tough for the agency as Dow's head of advertising may give him the freedom to continue writing. In his mind, Cosgrove has always been a writer, so when he lost his job it was more of an inconvenience than a world-shattering tragedy (it also probably helped that, thanks to his in-laws, he and his wife were pretty well-off even without employment). Contrast this to when Don was on the outs: The man couldn't function. He couldn't fathom any other life. Even when he didn't particularly care about the job, it was still his everything. Everything Don Draper stand for is rooted in a certain image and career. There is no alternative.

The death of Rachel Menken Katz (Maggie Siff) shook this image to its core. Don has been struggling with change—social change, professional change, and personal change—for several seasons now. There's no going back "to the good old days," and Rachel's death brings with it the sort of finality that will, I think, be plaguing Don and the others as Mad Men comes to a close.

The series' detractors of the series have long argued that it idealizes a period in American history that is routinely held up as an example of the "best time everrrrrrr" even though it was just as flawed as many other eras in its own unique way. The '60s drew on change to fuel their legendary optimism, but for Don, change has always been a threat. He's a relic who simply couldn't exist in another time or place. His best years are behind him, and as more and more people who shared in his experiences during the decade move on and even die, the realization that his heydey is over becomes more and more difficult to accept. The grand adventure is about to conclude, and without the benefit of the hindsight we have as viewers, nitpicking over every detail and drawing on even minor historical events as some kind of huge symbol of something doesn't really matter. It's just another day at the office.

NOTES

– Sideburns for everyone! And mustaches for Roger and Ted!

– Diana was reading John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, which is basically Mad Men but for the first third of the 20th century. I'm starting to think it was the overwhelming self-awareness of this episode that made it so uncomfortable.

– L'eggs are totally crap pantyhose. I can't believe they're still making 'em 50 years later.

– What did you think of Peggy's date with Mathis's brother Stevie? Being called "fearless" obviously had an impact on her.

– "Maybe you dreamt about her all the time. When someone dies, you just want to make sense out of it, but you can't."

– "You missed your flight." YOU AIN'T SPECIAL, DON DRAPER. No but really, just more of Don realizing his time is coming to an end and all the crazy and seemingly huge things he did over the course of his life didn't really matter and time is going to keep on moving and he's just going to be a story. They all are.