heyzeus wrote:thrill wrote:
This season has really hammered home the idea of getting everything you think you want and still being unhappy. How indiscriminate desire pushes people and then leaves them empty when they get what they want. It's leading to an unsatisfying ending for a lot of people, but for people who just appreciate that subtlety and realness of it, it's been great.
Exactly. I think the point of the show is to demonstrate just how privileged these boorish, womanizing, egotistical white dudes totally got away with it for years and years without ever facing repercussions. Then, inevitably, the corrections come in the form of social upheaval. And we see that the "American Dream" was a box of selfish id-food that, once used up, left its vessel empty and alone.
It's really been a pleasure to re-watch the old episodes leading up to this final season and really bask in the entire world of the show.
If you go back and watch season one, Don Draper truly was the American Dream. He created this fabrication of a human being and built the life he wanted. The show and crescendo was when he imploded in the pitch to Hersheys but if you look back at the arc of the show and the Draper character, he's had many opportunities to chuck everything he's unhappy about and start over but every time, he opts to fall into the same traps of ego and vanity. The truth is that none of the escape plans that we're presented to him would've made him happy because he's probably incapable of being happy.
The show has been so brilliant at capturing the crazy wealth building of the US in that era. Highest quality of life jump for a large population in human history and with so much to go around, you would have thought that the people participating would have realized the opportunities they were being given. It's something I've talked to my grandpa about. When he got back from Korea, you could knock on the door of any business and get a job. If you were a white male, the only things in the way of you going full Draper and just letting your appetites and ego rule you were self-imposed. My grandpa went from the farm to big time executive. But for most people, it was just a lot of standing on the side lines watching a bunch of entitled asswipes get rich. So you have the alternate histories of how we've been told to understand that era. I'm rambling, but anyway, the show is really great.
I've also really enjoyed the humbling of Don Draper being forced to confront how hollow most of his success has been and how he pissed away everything of substance that wasn't hollow. It's been an interesting fan experience because over the years that show has forced you to confront your own feelings about the character. At the beginning, we worshiped Don because he was a killer business genius who got any woman he wanted but eventually we've, like you said, been shown just how boorish he is time and time again, which was obvious from the start, but we still fell for it.
