The driving value in "Mad Men" was always self-hate. Now, in the series' last season that meme is hammered.
Don Draper is back at the firm but is too full of self-loathing to really learn from his professional time-out. He agrees to the new terms and conditions of employment but we sense he will have to self-destruct by reverting to his own ways.
His former wife Betty doesn't have the positive sense of self to find her identity as a mother in a world in which that role is expanding to going to work too. Instead she castigates herself for being a bad mother. A woman who understands the establishment, Betty could easily get a part-time job being an administrative assistant for a politico or psychiatrist.
Megan, despite her myriad gifts from the universe, doesn't have self-acceptance. Now we know she will inevitably screw up on the west coast. Like mostly everyone else in the loop, she has to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Roger mirrors Don's self-loathing. He is incapable of forgiving himself for his past mistakes. Therefore, everything in his present is doomed.
Peggy will likely never be able to embrace her Catholic, ethic, working-class Brooklyn background and her outsized ambition. A sign of that is her chasing after all the wrong men.
Can Don's daughter Sally grow up whole? Or will self-hate fragment her too? Currently, she's Don's best shot at any measure of redemption. But can she hold it together, surrounded by so much adult inner corruption?
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