Don Draper, Dick Whitman, Peggy, Sally, Joan, Coke, Mad Men and Us

Don on pay phone2The farewell to Mad Men, at least on Monday’s morning news programs, was all about “the Coke commercial” (indeed a brilliant, brilliant presence in the episode) the 60’s, advertising, capitalism and a Don Draper not at all like the man he described to Peggy in this phone call:

“I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am…. I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name. and made nothing of it.”

or his physical transformation – messy hair, plaid shirt and jeans – that returned him, at least briefly, to the “Dick Whitman” he once was.  Even his expressions were those of a country boy with a squint.

Joan faye peggy2
Joan, Peggy and Faye in the elevator in especially poignant episode about the women of Mad Men

Preoccupation  with “the commercial” overrode discussion of how important Mad Men has been to women: not only those who were teenagers as Don ascended and for whom so many scenes brought back memories of the scandalous neighborhood “divorcee,” of the Women’s Clubs and Garden Clubs and all the other “activities” suburban mothers created —  but also for those who came after, for whom some of what they saw of women’s lives was just a relic but way too much was way too familiar.

Don Draper’s journey, from brothel to executive suite to Esalen, is very much that of America through the 60’s and beyond.   It was a traumatic, scary, strange and exhilarating time, and whether you were there or you arrived later, it’s clear that Don’s misery and confusion mirrored what many of us, and, even more so, our parents felt every day.

Oh, and that Coke commercial? It was so perfect I laughed out loud as it appeared: all that we had hoped for and dreamed of, laid out in an air-brushed, multicultural, Benetton panorama.  I don’t think we knew then how far we would be today – maybe forever – from that dream, but watching it now, it seems quaint how sentimental we were, even in our days of rage.  Just like Don.

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Cynthia Samuels

Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families. For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million. She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings. She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World. A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.

3 thoughts on “Don Draper, Dick Whitman, Peggy, Sally, Joan, Coke, Mad Men and Us”

  1. Oh no — I missed this show. I tried to watch an episode because my brother’s friend was on it, but I could never get into it. I know people loved it, but I never got past the single episode.

  2. I heard about the final episode on NPR this morning, and listened even though it had spoilers. We don’t watch a lot of TV, and we were given the first season DVDs as a present once, but it just didn’t stick with us enough to watch it all. I love watching vicariously through other people’s lenses though, and your thoughts on the final episode are so interesting — a lot of transition, a lot of finding who you really are. Maybe I should give it another shot.

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