#the strategy

Every Episode of Mad Men The Strategy — Season 7, Episode 6 dir. Phil Abraham

For those jumping into my anons with that bravery approach (notice my irony), keep reading or, if you wish, keep interpreting:

There’s nothing such as drama…

Everyone is wondering where the f*cking drama is.

This is embarrassing… the next step would be an article about how Anne cant take it anymore and she stepped up for his kid.

Such as when she went to watch DWD & tagged O… It is so poorly done

And the article came:

Also I cried over frickin burger chef because Peggy is pitching the exact type of connection we currently can’t have thanks to Coronavirus + PEGGY AND DON FINALLY UNITED HAS ME UP IN MY FEELS

Re-watching the first part of Mad Men’s seventh season I was reminded why I love that run of episodes so much and how they are very underrated. In particular the final two episodes of 7A The Strategy and Waterloo, taken together feel like the crowning achievement of the whole show. The Strategy is Mad Men’s magnum opus on family, ending on that image of Don, Pete and Peggy by way of Nighthawks. Waterloo continues this idea family-like bonds but is not as easily seen through the spectrum of one concept, as reflected through its brilliant and subversive final moments.

Ghosts, phantoms and shadows of the past roam the halls of SCDP. Don spends most of 7A in the former office of Lane Pryce (who gets a name drop in this episode as well) and his death still haunts Don. Yet to label this the ghost of Bert, singing to Don in that final scene, would be inaccurate. In fact to label it anything would be inaccurate.

Impenetrable is a word I rarely use when I am talking about TV shows (unless I’m referencing the dialogue on Deadwood) but while Mad Men is at times very happy to highlight its subtext it was capable of producing moments like this which are as wonderful as they are confounding.

Bert’s message seems a simple one but contextualized in Don’s journey it is in fact quite opaque, which is fitting as Bert was always Mad Men’s most enigmatic character. At the end of season 6 Don ruined everything, his role at the agency, his relationship with his daughter and his relationship with Peggy. From the moment Don shows Sally his old home the story has been about him re-building those bridges.

By the end of Waterloo Don has reconciled with Peggy, he is back on speaking terms with Sally and he has got his real job with SCDP back. As Roger and co announce Sterling Cooper’s fate to its employees Don walks down to the first floor and is like a boxer who has been on the ropes only to come through and win and then he hears Bert’s voice.

As a viewer I intuitively know that this scene is great and makes sense within the visual and literary language of the show.  Yet as I have already alluded to the scene is far from self-explanatory and its part of the reason I love it. Back in season 1 Bert told Don that he believed they were alike in that they were both ultimately driven by self-interest.

Bert said that with an assurance that being totally driven by self-interest was a good thing, but the last time we see him alive he is watching the moon landings, like everyone else, but unlike everyone else he is not with family or friends but rather his maid. Being guided by these capitalistic notions may serve you in business but not in life.

While I’m always reluctant to analyse lyrics in terms of how they relate to what they are the soundtrack of (or at the very least I’m skeptical of movies/shows that use songs that’s words match a little too perfectly with the action) but in light of all of this, in light of the little we knew about Bert, “The Best Things In Life Are Free” seems a particularly striking message. Maybe in death Bert is able to recognize what he didn’t in life and maybe this is his way of telling Don that the whole guided by self-interest notion is not good, is ultimately not worthwhile.

Maybe Don has earned back his place at work but at the expense of his marriage to Megan, who breaks up with him here telling Don that he doesn’t owe her anything. Maybe Bert’s message is designed to undercut the triumph Don feels he has achieved by making his way back to the top of SCDP. In fact the episode that Waterloo most resembles is the season 3 finale caper Shut The Door and Have a Seat in which Don saved the agency but not his first marriage. History repeats itself and once again the balance between Don’s work and home tends far more toward the former.

“The moon belongs to everyone” not only relates to the what is on the minds of all Americans but also alludes to ideas of ownership. On a show so often about white-male-privilege this is a message of equality but maybe more than that it is about how the ways in which everyone in the world is connected. As the show approaches its final bow, the subject of human connection comes more into focus and on some level Don is being told that he does not have to be the perennial outsider.

Robert Morse performs with all the gusto you would expect from an actor known for musicals and the scene is as off-beat and engaging as it is delightful. Bert retreats back into his office as the door closes (one more layer of mystique to the sequence) and the music abruptly stops, shifting into the sounds of type-writers. Don sits down absorbing whatever he had just experienced as we all are.