Mad Men Recap: "The Milk and Honey Route"

The penultimate episode brought Mad Men where most expected it, to Big 12 country. “The Milk and Honey Route” came from a 1930 book about hobos. Each character, in his or her own way, has been a traveller in search of milk and honey.

Don has walked off to look for America, sort of. He quit McCann. He left New York. He calls his children once a week. He’s casting off Don Draper’s trappings, but he remains trapped. Fate strands him in Oklahoma (or a flat, agricultural looking part of California), when the Cadillac breaks down. He’s left scoping out brunettes at the pool and catching up on the New York Times bestseller list from 1969.

The Oklahomans do not know Don, but they do know he has money. The hotel kid, Andy, extorts extra money from him while buying liquor. The hotel owner invites him to an American Legion meeting, which turns out to be an American Legion fundraiser. His $20 isn’t enough. He’s obliged to donate $40 (about $240 in today’s money).

Don, as we see in the opening dream scene, still fears he will be found out for desertion. His identity is a core of lies compounded with dishonesty and deception. He can’t fix his problems because he has no basis to diagnose them.

The Veterans do not discover his secret – Roy from The Office served in Korea at a different time – but they sense his hesitancy. They suspect him, when the fundraiser money gets stolen. They beat him. They hold his car hostage until he gives the money back. Don is not the con man they are looking for, though, as he is well aware, he is very much a con man.

Andy was the thief. Don urges his obvious younger self, with bad grammar and “shitty con man instincts,” not to make a life altering decision he’ll regret. Don returns the money, gives Andy a lift to the bus stop and trades places with him, gifting him the Cadillac. We see him visibly relieved as another vestige of “Don Draper” disappears.

Mad Men flirted with and thwarted another obvious, plausible Don’s ending. The true one remains a mystery. Your move, Weiner.

Betty falls while climbing the stairs at school. Her rib injury and getting checked into the hospital as “Mrs. Robinson” aren’t the worst of it. She has “aggressive, very advanced” lung cancer. Invasive treatment could buy her 9-12 months. She opts, over pleading from Henry and Sally, to let herself go. She has spent her whole life fighting.

Betty’s battle has been finding agency as a woman (a domestic parallel to professional Joan and Peggy). She began the series with her shrink reporting to Don. She’s about to end it with doctors reporting the bad news to Henry. Betty’s beauty and its effect on men was once the one power she wielded. Now, it is the manner of her death. Her death instructions to Sally are simple, though they reveal she understood Sally far better than Sally thought.

Betty never came off quite right. She and Don should be subtle, complex anchor roles. Don’s felt that way. Betty felt cold and flat, far less compelling than Joan, Peggy, Sally or even Trudy with limited screen time. Maybe that was January Jones’ much maligned acting. Perhaps, she was a victim of the writing. Writers gifted John Slattery devastating one-liners and an LSD trip. Jones got a dark house and a fat season. Whatever the source, we can’t read a main character being that awkward and off-putting as intentional. The show’s biggest victim shouldn’t come across as less sympathetic than its greatest villain.

Pete receives a “supernatural” intervention, in the form of Duck Phillips. It’s not clear whether Duck is on a bender or posing as though he’s on one, but he comes through with the perfect job offer for him at Learjet. He keeps his money. He gets the eff out of McCann. It offers him an opportunity to reunite with Trudy and his daughter who are “entitled to something new,” even if something new is in Wichita.

For 10 years, Pete has been trying to become a man. He emulated Don, feebly. Conversing with his brother, he realizes he’s been subconsciously emulating his father, “always looking for something better, looking for something else.” Pete has the professional status he’s sought. He’s rich, though watching TV in a sad hotel room alone is still lonely, even if you’re doing so at the Carlyle.

So, happily ever after, then? How is the Wichita bagel scene?