Who cares?

The virtues of mad men
Bert gets it right

So it finally happens. Someone gets the goods on Don Draper. But none of that matters in the end because the whole thing turns out to be a  MacGuffin. The whole thing here being Don Draper's secret identity.

First, what is a MacGuffin? It's a plot element that serves to drive the plot but turns out to be insignificant in the end. Everyone, especially the audience, worries about the MacGuffin but, when it is finally exposed, the story actually turns on something else. And that is what happens here (and in season three). We all worry about what will happen when Don's identity is exposed to his boss or wife but the resolution in both cases turns to revolve around something else.

Don put's like this to Pete Campbell, "I thought about what you said. And then I thought about you and what a  deep lack of character you have."

He could just as easily have said the same thing to Betty at the end of Season 3. He does, in fact, say that in different (and even harsher) words.

What actually happens?
As usual, that is the question that matters. Pete Campbell gets hold of a box of mementos that Adam Whitman sends to Don before committing suicide in the previous episode. He gets the box because he has gone into Don's office after hours. He takes home a piece of mail that isn't his and knowingly opens it (which is probably an indictable offence). Then he takes the trouble to use and old school contact to get further information he has no right to have. Finally, he attempts to blackmail Don into giving him a better job with this information.

How does Don react? At first he runs. He goes to Rachel and tries to convince her to run away with him. Rachel tells him, "You don't want to run away with me, you just want to run away." Then she calls him a coward (keep this mind for the final episode BTW).

This stings Don enough that he goes back to office to face the situation. Now this is where it gets interesting. Don could lose everything. The easiest thing to do is to give in and make Pete Campbell head of accounts services.

What changes is his mind is a fascinating scene with Peggy. We learned earlier that someone broke into all the lockers in the lunch room and Peggy is missing three dollars (that's roughly twenty in current purchasing power). She has complained to building security and two black men—Sonny the elevator operator and janitor we saw with Peggy and Pete in the elevator in an earlier episode—get fired. Peggy is in Don's office crying about this when he gets back from his visit with Rachel.

Again, Peggy shows real character development here. Sobbing she may be but she stands up to Don and insists on telling him what happened. And note that Peggy cares about real people. Paul Kinsey and Pete Campbell will later show an awareness of racial issues that is based entirely on abstractions. When Pete is inconvenienced in a very minor way by having his elevator trip slowed down by an actual black person in that earlier episode, he is an intolerant jerk.

Anyway, Peggy explaining the situation to Don says the following magic words:

I don't understand. I try to do my job. I follow the rules. And people hate me. Innocent people get hurt and other people—people who are not good—get to walk around doing whatever they want. It's not fair.

Is there a better description of what Pete Campbell is trying to pull off?

Don sets off, presumably on his way to Bert Cooper's office but decides to drop in on Pete on the way. He tells Pete about his complete lack of character and up they go. And Pete—as he and Betty alwyas do in situations like this—turns into a child. His sense of entitlement is amazing.

As he runs after Don and tries to talk him out of not promoting him, Pete says, "So you would rather blow yourself up than make me head of accounts?"  The answer is yes. As it should be.

In the office, Don tells Bert he is going to hire Duck Phillips and waits to see what will happen. At this point there is a sense in which it doesn't matter and it is worth dwelling on that a moment. As with any Jane Austen novel, it is the demonstration of character development that matters and not the happy ending. Even had Don been fired, he has already won here.

In any case, Bert approaches him and says, "Who cares?"

Even if this were true, who cares. This country was built and run by men with worse stories than whatever you've imagined here.

Is this true? We could have a long argument about it but I think he is right. And I think the man Bertram Cooper has in mind when he says this is Alexander Hamilton. 

In any case, what makes dropping the MacGuffin work so well is that everything Bert Cooper does is perfectly consistent with his character up until now. As he says to Pete:

The Japanese have a saying, a man is whatever room he is in. Right now Donald Draper is in this room. I assure you, there is more profit in forgetting this. I'd put your energy into bringing in accounts.

Subversion watch
All this  is played out against the background of the Kennedy-Nixon election. An election that was—as Bert himself accurately points out earlier in this episode—characterized by massive fraud by the Democrats. Every one of the three first seasons ends with episodes played against big events. In all three cases, the show undermines the traditional boomer understanding of what happened during these events and what they signified.

Here, Kennedy's win is compared to what the vile Pete Campbell tried to pull off.

Is this all an accident, or is Matt Weiner having a lot of fun being slyly subversive?

The Patriarch subtext
Matt Weiner has whole lot of trouble to set up a parallel between Don Draper and Jewish Patriarchs from the old testament. In the end, Rachel refuses to go settle in the promised land of California with Don. So who is he going to lead into the promised land? And does he get to enter this land himself or does he merely lead them to the edge of the promised land like Moses.

Up until this episode, the presence of   Rachel (whom he seems to have intended to marry last episode) suggested that Don was going to be like Jacob/Israel.

If you are joining me here, this series starts here.

The next post in the series is here.