Over the course of Mad Men's seven seasons, we've spent time with many versions of Don Draper: the ad man, the husband, the father, the adulterer, the alcoholic. We've seen him at his charismatic, buttoned-down best and his drunken, bedraggled worst. But — with the exception of a brief flashback to the Korean War in Mad Men's first season — we've never spent time with Don Draper the veteran.
This week's "The Milk and Honey Route" tackles this dark chapter in Don's life as he takes an extended pit stop in Oklahoma during his impromptu, Kerouac-style trip through the heartland. When his car breaks down in a small Oklahoma town, Don spends a week enjoying overpriced whiskey and paperback novels in a cheap little inn — until the owner's hospitality suddenly and unjustly runs out.
"The Milk and Honey Route" derives its title from a 1931 book subtitled "a handbook for hobos." It's an apt point of reference for Don's aimless wandering, and a callback to season one's "The Hobo Code," in which a traveling hobo (Paul Schulze) inspired the young Don — then a poor farm boy called Dick Whitman — to look beyond the drabness of his life and imagine something more.
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Like the hobo from his childhood, Don quickly makes himself useful to his hosts, fixing a typewriter and a Coke machine. He makes a good enough impression that the innkeeper invites him to spend the night at the veterans' Legion, slugging back drinks and swapping stories about their time in the war. When Don settles in at the Legion, he gradually (and uncharacteristically) opens up to his fellow veterans, sharing the origin story that turned him from Dick Whitman into Don Draper. It's one of those rare defining moments in a person's life (and the single moment that set Don's life, and by extension the entire series, into motion). And Don's history, like Don himself, is equal parts destruction and creation; as one person died, another took the chance to remake himself anew.
But Don's decision to confide in his fellow veterans is both poorly chosen and poorly timed. Asleep in his hotel room later that night, he's awoken by the men, who accuse him of stealing money raised to support one of their fellow veterans. "Do you really think I need your spare change?" Don sneers as they beat him with a phone book.
Though the veterans are short-sighted and reactionary enough to blame Don for the lost money, Don is smart enough to identify the real culprit: Andy, the money-grubbing schemer who works at the hotel. But while Andy gets Don in trouble, he also turns out to be a kindred spirit: an unformed, aspirational dreamer who's willing to be a con man if it will propel him into the life he truly desires. Don — playing the role that the hobo once played for him — offers hard-won advice: "If you keep [the money], you'll have to become somebody else, and that's not what you think it is. You think this town is bad now, wait 'til you can never come back." As a parting gift, he gives Andy his Cadillac, sowing the seeds for the possible rise of another proto-Don.
But where does that leave the Don we have? He still doesn't seem to have any particular destination in mind, but he's shedding the skin of his New York life in real time. As the episode begins, Don wears his customary suit and tie, immaculately dressed even as he drives alone across America. By the end of the episode, he's not just dressing more casually — he's giving away the car that represents yet another connection to the place he left behind. Alone, in the middle of nowhere, with a single bag, no means of travel, and no one who knows where he is, Don is truly off the grid.
Of course, Don's vision quest also comes at great cost for the people who actually care about him. As the episode begins, Don checks in with Sally at school, and they share a casual conversation about field hockey and her upcoming study abroad trip. But "The Milk and Honey Road" quickly drops an unexpected bombshell: Betty has terminal lung cancer, and a year to live if she's lucky. Now, at the time when Sally could actually use her father — or any father — Don is a phantom and Henry is a shambling wreck.
Mad Men has sometimes drawn criticism for spending so much time on Betty as she became increasingly peripheral to the rest of the story, but "The Milk and Honey Route" draws on the character's long history to make her cancer diagnosis feel like a gut punch. Every decision she makes is in line with what we've seen Betty evolve into over these seven seasons: her refusal to consider treatment; her obsession with making sure she looks beautiful at her own funeral; her stoicism in the face of news that would drive almost anyone else into a panic; and, above all, her cold appraisal of what each of her family members can handle.
That means, unfortunately, that the true burden of Betty's illness falls to Sally — the one character who she trusts to keep it together, even as Henry falls apart. ("It's okay for you to cry, honey," Henry says as he breaks the news to Sally, before instantly breaking down himself. "Jesus, what am I gonna do?")
In the face of such emotional trauma, Betty's aloofness offers a useful sort of pragmatism. "I don't want you to think I'm a quitter," she tells Sally. "I've fought for plenty in my life. And that's how I know when it's over. It's not a weakness." In the end, this is Sally's story, and Betty is the only one who's smart enough to get it. "Sally, I always worried about you because you marched to the beat of your own drum," she writes at the end of a letter she intended to be read posthumously. "But now I know that's good, because your life will be an adventure."
As unhappy a fate as Mad Men has rolled out for Betty, Pete Campbell also winds up on a totally new life path by the end of "The Milk and Honey Route." The vehicle for this change is none other than Duck Phillips (Mark Moses), Don Draper's former professional adversary, who sets Pete up with a plum new job working for Learjet in Wichita, Kansas.
It's the kind of upheaval that makes a person take stock of their life, and Pete takes the excuse to re-propose to his ex-wife Trudy (Alison Brie.) "I want to start over, and I know I can," says Pete. "I'm not so dumb anymore." Trudy, who has so reliably called Pete out on his failings, is eventually swayed by his enthusiasm, and they take their first tentative steps toward reuniting their family again.
It might seem like a happy ending for Pete — but anyone who has been paying attention knows that none of Pete's high-minded ideas about rebooting his life are even a little realistic. ("I've never loved anyone else. Never," he says. Even his impassioned speech is a lie.) Mad Men has argued over and over again that people don't really change, and Pete — the kind of person who can grumble about the logistical hassle of a million-dollar payday — is doomed to unhappiness because dissatisfaction is his default perspective. As soon as the excitement of his new situation wears off, he'll slide right back into unhappiness again.
With just one hour left, how will Mad Men end? "I'm jealous of your ability to be sentimental about the past," says Trudy, in the midst of a speech that doubles as meta-commentary on everything Mad Men has accomplished. "I'm not able to do that. I remember things as they were."
Wherever Mad Men is going, it's clear that sentimentality is the last thing on series creator Matt Weiner's mind. Going into this half season, I don't think anyone would have predicted that the penultimate episode wouldn't feature Peggy, Joan, or Roger, or that Don would be entirely disconnected from every other recognizable character in the series.
Next week's episode of Mad Men is an aberration brought on by AMC's decision to split the final season over two years; where every other season of Mad Men consists of 13 episodes, this one contains 14. The preview for next week's series finale didn't even include any of the customary, inscrutable snapshots of the episode, omitting even the vaguest of hints about how the series might end. For Don Draper, and for Mad Men, it's a wide open path.
Read more Mad Men recaps:
* Mad Men recap: Trouble in Shangri-La
* Mad Men recap: The end of an era
* Mad Men recap: 'The Forecast'
* Mad Men recap: 'New Business' feels like old news
* Mad Men season premiere recap: Is that all there is?
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