In extremis “ the place beyond the breaking point, the ultimate unhappy destination “ is not the part of the psyche anyone wants to visit. But in Season One’s Long Weekend, Roger has no choice. He has to go.
Roger doesn’t expect it, not at the end of another day of playtime. He’s drunk his usual weight in those clear liquors he favors, asked Joanie to join him for the Labor Day weekend, suffered an icy rejection, trawled Casting for her replacement, ridden one of the twins around for a while, stared into her “translucent” skin …
And now? The fun abruptly over, Roger finds himself staring into something very different.
He doesn’t like what he sees. We get a hint of this when a bedridden Roger asks Don about “energy”.
“Human energy,” he tries: he means the soul. Don, who happened to be on the other side of the office door when Roger’s heart seized up, is clearly the wrong guy to ask. “What do you want to hear,” Don says, unhappy with this territory himself.
Roger’s afraid of dying, sure. His fear leads him to cling to his love for Mona and Margaret. But he’s also angry: at his own weak heart, at having been told to do certain things, for years — drink the milk, eat the butter. Now that he’s done them, he learns too late that they were all the wrong things.
Joan, Carol, Betty and Don all experience unhappy discoveries in this episode “ but Don, by virtue of his proximity to Roger, is the other casualty of that bad night. Roger’s swing close to death sends Don to his own extreme, and to Rachel Menken’s door.
“This is it,” he tells her. “This is all there is. And I feel like it’s slipping through my fingers like a handful of sand.”
It’s a hell of a pitch. It’s Don at his best — and worst. Which may end up being closer to the same thing than I ever considered, when I first started watching this show.
In extremis, we can lose what we believe, more fully embrace it, or go off the rails. I think I know what Roger believes at the end of Long Weekend, whether it stays with him or not. But what Don believes is both simpler and much darker than I realized, two years ago. “The universe is indifferent”: he really believes that.
What won’t a person who believes such a thing do?
14 Responses to “Long Weekend: In Extremis”
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Great post!
And I wonder how much of his belief that the universe is indifference has been reinforced by his past actions. I think as a boy he definitely did not believe the universe was indifferent, otherwise he wouldn't have been so ashamed of his mother's profession, "ain't you heard?". After accidentally killing a man, stealing his identity, and deserting the army (three things that by all accounts the universe should frown upon), and achieving nothing but success, however, it makes perfect sense that Don would begin to believe in the universe's indifference.
And it probably makes him feel all the more alone.
One of the things I thought about, writing this, was a scene in the movie "Match Point" (2005).
The young murderer, a true sociopath, faces the ghosts of his victims — in a dream? — and has to explain himself to them.
"It would be fitting if I were apprehended, and punished," he says. "At least there would be some small sign of justice – some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning."
He is crying as he says this: an excellent literary-sociopath move. And perhaps he does feel something for these people, former people, who to him finally became more obstacle than human. And thus had to be … removed.
I am not saying that Don Draper is a sociopath. I'm not a shrink: I don't know these terms well enough to diagnose. But what I do see in him is a character who does not seem to expect consequences … or who does recognize them, when he does, almost from a borrowed point of view.
Rachel's. Sal's. His late father's. It's as though Don is forever standing in someone else's shoes.
As I've been re-viewing all Season 1 and 2 episodes in anticipation of the March release of the Season 3, Long Weekend is the one episode that I could not bring myself to watch again. I found it so bleak–and even cringe-worthy. Maybe I should tough it out, Anne B.; your comments are thought-provoking.
Great post!
I really enjoyed this episode and I think that Don's breaking point was not Roger's heart attack but Betty's reaction to it. He called her from the hospital in a moment that he really needed her and really needed her empathy and she responded by selfishly complaining about Gloria, again. She didn't hear him and he felt it and then the next shot is Pete asking "is he dead" and watching from a hospital TV the negative ads the Kennedy campaign began to run. It really was a bad day.
You're an amazing writer.
Seems like he won't kill. That's something, right?
Thoughtful post, Annie B., thank you. When Don said the universe is indifferent I wondered if he said that because he read a book on Existentialism and believed what the philosophy teaches or if he said it just to mock Midge's friends who may have told him they were Existentialists.
At the same time I thought of F. Scott Fitzgerald 's quote, "In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning, day after day." I don't know if Don believes the universe is indifferent but I do think that in his soul it's always three o'clock in the morning. Either thought would leave him drowning in a sea of despair.
The first belief could turn him into a man who would do anything since nothing really matters but the second belief would turn into a man like Fitzgerald who was brilliant and creative but in the end drank himself to death at the age forty-four. (I know Fitzgerald really died of a heart attack but I am sure his alcoholism got him to that point much quicker.)
Watching the way Don drinks, grimly, makes me think he is on the Fitzgerald path of life.
Anne is right. I don't think the "universe is indifferent" line was capricious in any way. I think it's Don's defining philosophy.
To believe the universe is indifferent is to believe we make our own path in the world, and that our lives are not predetermined and that we make our own future. Most importantly, it means we are not judged. There is no man in the sky looking at us distainfully.
For a dirt poor kid born to a prostitute and raised in the Depression, not being judged is the key.
However fear of judgment – and shame – is sometimes what mankind needs to stay on the right path. The absence of that fear can lead, as it often does with Don, to destructive and selfish actions. Consequences are not taken into account when he says the universe is indifferent. A philosphical blind spot, you might say.
Another wonderful, thoughtful, brilliant post, Anne.
When Don says “The universe is indifferent†I think he's talking about his parental abandonment and neglect. And when I see him with his succession of dark-haired affairs, there is often something child-like about him, as if he were looking for . . . what — shelter, protection, refuge? He is hiding out from his own life with a gentle protector.
I'm curious. And I'm working on a theory (or two) about what makes MM compelling for people like us.
“The universe is indifferentâ€
Do you believe that statement is incorrect or wrong? Do you believe Don is wrong or maladjusted for believing a thing like that?
Anne, your closing question and comment above seem to imply that belief in an indifferent universe directly results in amorality and unethical behavior and anarchy/nihilism. Don assumed another person's name to create an opportunity and he doesn't respect monogamy as much as the ruling society would like him to, but he's no sociopath, not close.
And that was an excellent rhetorical move yourself, referencing a sociopathic character then asserting that You were not saying Don was a sociopath.
Do you truly believe there is nothing Don won't do?
“The universe is indifferentâ€: he really believes that.
Nice analysis. And yes, he does really believe this. It's what makes his tragic hero role so compelling. You know he's going to do terrible things, and you want to save him. Or at least I do… lol
I don't believe he's a sociopath. I think it's pretty clear that his view of the world was greatly — entirely, really — colored by his childhood. Who would feel that much mattered after that kind of heartbreak?
The flashback scenes in this series always slay me. Probably because I have had my own fair share of family tragedy and so I can relate quite a bit. But it's pretty easy to understand Don's view of the world as well as his motivations once you've seen those. And we've only seen a few of them. I'm hoping we'll get even more answers in the next season.
@#2, Anne B: I *loved* MatchPoint. First of all, I heart J R Meyers. Magnetic on screen and a very fine, if untrained, actor. But I thought that script was fantastic. I was surprised to see something like that come out of Woody Allen. It was like a suspense flick written with Annie Hall-type dialogue. I thought the casting of ScarJo next to Jonny was pretty righteous as well.
@ #9, LOM: it's not right or wrong, it's true or untrue to the person that says, reads or hears it. It's very true for Don, obviously. I have felt it to be true personally, at times. I have felt it to be untrue on other occasions. It's a question for me, really. It's something I wonder about. Am I living my destiny? Or is it all up to me? Or is it up to the influences — random or otherwise — around me? Not sure if this was an open-to-all question, btw, but there you have my $.02.
I'm no psychologist, but I have definitely known some sociopaths in my life, and the one thing that puts these people (sociopaths, not psychologists) on a different plane is a complete inability to sympathize with those they've hurt. Don's pain at losing Adam is real – he feels culpable. His regret over the failure of his marriage – and the pain he's caused Betty – is real.
Insensitive and a questionable moral code, sure. But not sociopathic.
Of course Rachel, it was open-to-all and you wrote something that helped define my view a bit, thanks.
I realized I don't see Don as a tragic hero; I see him more as a classic protagonist. There's no great archetypical struggle of Good vs. Evil in MM, externally in NY; nor internally, psychologically, within the characters. Some of the characters may perceive the normal conflict of each of their individual inner narratives as that type of struggle, especially Don, due more to his job as a storyteller, but the gravity and importance of that conflict is totally decided by them, not Fate, nor karma, nor supernatural forces of Absolute Right and Wrong, Good or Evil, as is commonly depicted in our popular dramatic art forms. Life happens and Don makes the best of it for him mostly. Life happens and Peggy makes the best of it, etc.
This clears up my feelings too about the Villainous Duck. A friend, all autumn, each week speculated on what revenge Duck was plotting to inflict on Don. I didn't entirely get it. Sure it felt like Duck should have been working some nefarious master plan to avenge his dishonor and humiliation at the hands of the Slippery Draper but I didn't feel it. Maybe Duck was just a guy trying to improve his own working environment and enjoy his go-rounding a bit more. Now I see he wasn't a villain, just an antagonist, a character to stir the protagonists up, grist for their mills.
Mad Men grabs me with the non-DRAMATIC drama. I'm not saying you shouldn't perceive the Drape as a classic tragic hero but I think he will constantly and ultimately disappoint you as that type of hero.
OT–This is where Breaking Bad is losing me I fear.
I do think that Don Draper won't kill, Roberta. Yet I believe that Dick Whitman did, if only by accident … and indirectly … and more than once. He walked away: not just from the act, but from the man who did that. And no one cares. He does. No one else seems to.
So here is where I begin to lose the thread.
Sociopaths, as I understand the term, are those who need to either select targets of victimization, to relieve something inside themselves; or need to remove their own culpability for their actions by shifting it onto others. Other people in their world are simply less real than they are.
I do not see Don Draper in those terms … at least, not yet. This is Iago territory. The true villain is like the true hero: a beautifully written work, but inviolable, in a way.
He's "pure", if you like.
I see Don more along the lines of what White T Jim B, Coop, Rachel and less of me — fine responses all, my friends! — are getting at. He's an opportunist. He's a seeker, sometimes a hero in his own mind, and more than occasionally he is disappointed in himself. To the point of — not just pain: paralysis.
When Rachel Menken calls Don out and then dismisses him, it's like watching a mother tell her son she doesn't love him. He is frozen, emotionally, physically. He can't respond; he can't move.
This isn't the only time Don reacts in this way, to women.
"I was surprised you ever loved me": a classic Don Draper remark, if ever there was one.
These are not the words and actions of a sociopath. I see them more as the reactions of a person who's had a lot of exposure to the kinds of human lows and highs (fire, death, hubris, financial windfall, loss, love, and especially abandonment) few other people in his current circle have seen.
Don's seen the extremes. He remembers them all. He lives inside the lie, but he does not forget the truth.
That's … I don't even know what that is.
“The universe is indifferentâ€
Don knows this to be true. The direct experience of his overwhelming success flies in the face of morality. And our shared experience validates the obvious, “The universe is indifferentâ€.
Courage is defined by acceptance of the struggle to improve life for those who follow. We improve the world in the ways we are able, to leave something better, safer and more secure for the weakest.
In 1961 President Kennedy made the case eloquently:
“Now the trumpet summons us again–not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need–not as a call to battle, though embattled we are– but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"–a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.â€