The Immortal Don Draper

Don Draper didn’t die. What has not been born cannot die. Om. He rests in a space between heaven and earth and like the great akash fills perfectly whatever mould the writers and authors of his fate assign. When karmic consistency is abandoned fiction becomes factitious and falsity and mere confabulation rules.

Was Don renewed? Did he hit rock bottom in any true sense or was he always ‘a word from our sponsor’?

Mad Men: Season 5

The cliche is that if Shakespeare was alive today he’d be making movies. They’re the big thing, auteur author, watching, all-seeing eye in the pyramid. No, that must be altered; Shakey has taken birth as Matthew Weiner and the long running series of seasons is the new Globe. He says, Matthew does, that if he hasn’t written at least 80% of the script that his name is off it. In tv terms that makes Oates’s supererogation seem a trite pet of passive aggression.

Somehow I managed to miss all season 5 of Mad Men. Now that I’ve seen it I’m enlightened about the mystery of how Joan became a partner. That’s how naive I am, a simple gasoon. Don’s fatal interview with Pryce was a creative master stroke and illustrates I think how character can get away from the writer. When a great blackguard becomes righteous with a minor would be one, irony’s icy glitter dazzles. ‘Take it out of the Lucky Strike account’. Peter Campbell’s wife is an example of how excessive sweetness can be poisonous. There always has to be a truth teller in a story and Harry’s mother is it. Campbell’s train companion, ‘good luck with that’, is perhaps Weiner as Reubens in his studio factory adding little touches.

There are no second acts in American lives someone said. I know who said it but that sounds more literary. However there are seventh seasons and seven seals each with a ball on its nose. How will Don die? Will there be the stroke that felleth or the tip that admonisheth? He has begun to ‘share’, not a good sign.