HANNIBAL Ep. 8: "Fromage"

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In which the way I am isn’t compatible with…

…the way I am.

“Sorbet” and “Fromage” form a musical duet of sorts, the former reveling in operatic excess, the latter offering a finely tuned examination of the way that musicality is intertwined in our lives.  As Hannibal so eloquently puts it “Every life is a piece of music.  Like music, we are finite events, unique arrangements.  Sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant.”  That philosophy plays out in all aspects of this episode, as the power of music profoundly affects the main characters’ lives.  But ironically, even as almost everyone seeks some kind of greater connection and fulfillment with another person, their attempts at dueting only end with a collection of lost individuals soloing away into the darkness.

More than almost any other episode of Hannibal so far, the psychiatrist/patient dynamic is at the forefront of “Fromage.”  Franklin once again seeks companionship in Hannibal, going so far as to tell him about his diagnosis of Tobias’s latent psychopathy (which he envisions to be a point of connection with his doctor), but Lecter still maintains their distant professional relationship.  Besides, he finds the intestine harvesting Tobias a much more interesting subject, especially when he realizes that his theatrical murder of Baltimore Symphony trombonist Douglas Wilson is meant as a serenade from one psychopathic murderer to another.  Aside from the slight homoerotic undercurrents between Hannibal and Will, this is the first time that the show has dealt with latent homosexuality in such a manner.  It’s implied that Franklin and Tobias are more than (ahem) friends (Hannibal notes to his patient “You’re not a psychopath, although you might be attracted to them”, a bone dry bit of double-edged humor), and the attachment that both men project onto Hannibal is obviously more than platonic.  Mads Mikkelsen’s slightly effete, pansexual demeanor in the role provides ample space on which to project such affections, so for them to finally skew in this direction is only logical. 

But these aren’t the only characters who, inadvertently or not, play out the psychiatric relationship in “Fromage.”  For the second episode in a row, Hannibal seeks the same connection with Bedelia that Franklin seeks with him, even as she keeps him at a remove (for now.)  For the first time, he explicitly states his desire to make Will his friend, and the end of the episode hints at a greater bond between them.  As usual, the tightrope that Bryan Fuller has these characters walk is what drives the narrative tension of the show.  Hannibal is simultaneously a twisted psychopath manipulating Will, and a lonely emotional vacuum in desperate need of his friendship.  And despite his aversion to human connection and increasing leeriness of Lecter’s intentions, Will still finds solace in his labyrinthine mind and status as a fellow outsider at play in the fields of the insiders. 

Hannibal isn’t the primary source of solace in this episode for Will, although that psychiatrist’s dynamic still dictates the rules of relational engagement.  After hints and intimations throughout the first seven installments, he finally makes a move on Alana after she comes to check on him (and his increasingly damaged psyche.)  There’s a natural sweetness between these two characters, a duo that has long placed the solitary nature of their careers over any aspirations of romance.  Will’s subsequent confession of their kiss to Hannibal (“I wanted to kiss her since I met her.  She’s very kissable”) is such a light and goofy moment for a man already deep in the throes of a breakdown (and a reminder that Hugh Dancy is very suave and charming.)  Alana constantly refers to how she thinks too much to date anyone, mirroring Will’s early season declaration that his empathic powers are the product of “an active imagination.”  But in this moment, it’s Will who implores her to stop thinking so much, ultimately to no avail.  Her training as a psychiatrist trumps the seemingly genuine affection she has for him, forcing her to leave him alone, a self-created hole in his chimney the dark abyss left to beckon to him.   

The universal longing for human connection is obviously at the heart of these character arcs, but there also seems to be an implied questioning of the fundamental divide between logic and emotion.  In each pairing, the person playing the role of the psychiatrist/sounding board usually has some justifiable reason to keep their counterpart at an emotional remove.  And yet, the emotional and psychological consequences of such distancing can’t be ignored.  In one of her sessions with Hannibal, Bedelia posits that “Every person has an intrinsic responsibility for their own life.”  But this ignores the responsibility that we have for each other, something that these characters’ logical decisions abdicate (although you could argue that Hannibal’s rejection of Franklin makes sense on a lot of levels; he does snap his neck at episode’s end.)  Once again, Fuller presents a complex portrait of this subject, one without many easy answers.  After all, the most empathic character on the show (Will) is also the one headed for a nervous breakdown. 

And even in this cavalcade of disconnected characters, there’s at least one shining example of a deeper connection between two people.  Although one of them is a dead man.  As Will enters the mind of Douglas Wilson’s murderer, playing his cello corpse on the Symphony stage, the sole, applauding member of his audience is none other than Garret Jacob Hobbs.  The grand arc of Will’s psychological disintegration has followed a gradual path, but it’s in this episode that we see the major cracks forming.  When Hannibal asks him what he sees behind the closed eyes of his visions, Will’s POV invokes the image of Hobbs in the dream audience.  His answer (“I see myself”) encapsulates the tortured duality that’s ripping him apart, even as he tells Jack earlier in the episode that he’s starting to distance himself from the emotional grind of his hyper-empathy.  During Wilson’s autopsy, he’s clearly in character when he offers a guttural “I had to open you up to get a decent sound”, the realization of which shakes him to his core.  And his auditory hallucinations now reach a fever pitch, as he constantly hears the sounds of animals in some sort of pain or suffering.

It’s appropriate that what Will hears is such a tipping point for his strife, as music plays such a major role in this show (and specifically in this episode.)  I’ve previously lauded Brian Reitzell’s phenomenal scoring, but he really outdoes himself in this episode, using extended string passages as both commentary on the main plot and unnerving white noise.  The skittering percussion and ambient drones of Will’s visions are always unsettling, but here Reitzell adds dissonant, chime-based percussive sounds that lend a sense of relentless forward momentum to his mindset.  As Hannibal notes when he visits Tobias’s home “(You) can’t impose traditional composition on an instrument that’s inherently freeform.” 

He’s literally referring to his Theremin, and figuratively to Tobias and himself.  But this quote also applies to Will’s non-traditional crime-solving methods (and general philosophy), and to the show’s general stylistic approach, a freeform excursion within the traditional confines of network television.  The universal connection that music provides is often most powerful when it strives for moments of ecstasy and transcendence, and Hannibal reflects this power in its avant-garde flights of excessive fancy, which ask the viewer to give themselves up to the uneasy pleasures of a nightmare landscape.

And now for the leftovers:

*In a great example of Chekhov’s Gun, Hannibal kills Tobias with the black stag statuette that has so often accompanied him in the frame during his office scenes.  If there’s was any doubt about the source of Will’s stag visions, well…

*Also of note in the office scenes is the forboding lighting.  Up to this point, the majority of those scenes have been set at night, when the rich, warm colors of the set can really pop out.  But as the show’s tone further darkens in this episode, there are more daytime office scenes, the almost chiaroscuro lighting creating a harsh, striking visual scheme across the characters’ faces.

*”I didn’t poison you Tobias.  I wouldn’t do that to the food.” (Hannibal, once again bringing the funny via his own twisted ethics.)

HANNIBAL Ep. 7: "Sorbet"

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In which you are wearing a very well-tailored person suit.

The beauty of Hannibal Lecter as a character, the allure of his anti-heroic charisma, is founded in a deep sense of theatricality.  It’s no surprise that his status as a pop culture icon didn’t occur until Anthony Hopkins brought an arch-melodramatic flair to the role (even though he famously only has 16 minutes of screen time in The Silence of the Lambs, not that much more than Brian Cox had in his more reserved take on Lecter in Manhunter.)  Despite the continuing influence of the naturalistic school of serious acting, there’s always enjoyment to be had in watching a performance that’s larger than life, especially when it flowers in the confines of a verite world (note the legion of Lecter-esque anti-heroes that has proliferated in film and television since 1991.)  And in a universal sense, there’s an undeniable pleasure we derive from watching a master performer at work; it’s the old codependent dynamic between a magician and their audience, the art of the con taken to quasi-theatrical heights.

As I’ve mentioned before, Mads Mikkelsen’s take on Hannibal is a fascinating hybrid of the icy sociopathy of Cox and the refined, cultured theatricality of Hopkins.  He’s often an emotional cypher, and yet the control of his physicality he shows is almost like that of a mime, graceful and dancerly, imbuing even the most subtle of gestures and reactions with diamond bullet power.  As a result, the rare instances of brutality he displays early in the show’s run take on a shattering force, like a leopard pouncing on its prey.

Following the plot-heavy machinations of “Entrée”, “Sorbet” (true to its name) offers a narrative palate cleanser before the final descent into madness that awaits in the final stretch of episodes.  And in true Hannibal fashion, it’s an interlude that is the most overtly operatic one so far, a trenchant analysis of the performative impulse and all of its complications.

The production design of Will’s lecture hall at Quantico has always been tailored toward the theatrical nature of his lectures (and of the historically theatrical nature of teaching), so it’s appropriate that “Sorbet” opens on his class discussion of the Chesapeake Ripper’s history.  Will is such an odd case when it comes to the pedagogical model; his wildly anti-social tendencies run counter to the traditional model of the charismatic professor, and yet in his lecture scenes he’s a consistently compelling figure, the darkness within him creating an electric stage presence.  As he notes that “there is a distinctive brutality” in the Ripper’s crimes, the camera focuses on his POV of Jack, one half of the father figure duo which has so brutalized his psyche in the first half of the season.  When the camera cuts back to Will, the image of Miriam Lass immediately pops up on the screen behind him.  Now it’s Jack’s POV of these two proteges, one seemingly dead, one seemingly doomed, both playing a role whose tragic nature seems utterly circumscribed in its fabric.  The point is driven home with blunt force at the end of the episode, when he envisions Will’s corpse rising from the morgue table, his missing left arm forever fusing him with Miriam.

The scene that follows (at the slyly titled Concert for Hunger Relief), fully immerses the viewer in Hannibal’s classical opera leanings, so much so that the camera begins in the featured singer’s throat.  After all, the performance of our lives may be convincing, but behind it all we’re still all just a collection of slimy interior organs and muscles joining together to portray humanity.  Hannibal never forgets this, as he ultimately reduces his victims to their base nature: pieces that are meant to be absorbed into the remaining players.  But still, the collaborative efforts of these dancing bags of flesh aren’t without their moments of transcendence, as the camera shows when it gradually pulls back from the singer, up into the audience, and then spirals into Hannibal’s right ear.  The effect is an invocation of the hypnotic, seductive nature of music, but also a reminder of the spiritual vortex that lies at the heart of this man.

Hannibal’s performative nature is referred to several times throughout this episode.  When she asks him why he hasn’t cooked for her and her friends for so long, Mrs. Komeda notes “Have you seen him cook?  It’s an entire performance”, to which Hannibal replies “You cannot force a feast.  A feast must present itself” and that he’ll resume his parties “when inspiration strikes” (the classic, romantic motivator for the artistic mind.)  Will diagnoses the Chesapeake Ripper as being a performer at heart, whose graphic dissections serve as public shamings of his victims, while hiding “the true nature of his crimes.”  During their later therapy session, Franklin and Hannibal debate his ability to be a friend, Hannibal insisting that the only role he can play is that of doctor.  They also discuss Franklin’s dream of befriending Michael Jackson, a pop icon who seemed to only be comfortable in his skin when performing.

This reference to the deceased King of Pop is one of the funniest moments of “Sorbet”, and yet it’s also one of the most instructive, especially as it pertains to the introduction of Bedelia Du Maurier, Hannibal’s retired colleague and personal psychiatrist.  For after six episodes of watching the good doctor masterfully manipulate all those around him in a grand, amoral experiment, this is the first time that the audience sees the lost soul within him.  Franklin may seem pathetic when he begs Hannibal to be his friend, but he plays that same role when he desires Bedelia’s friendship.  She’s the first character in the show to see straight through his performance, telling him “I have conversations with a version of you” and nailing his inhumanity with the famous quote that leads off this essay.  The way that Hannibal claims to have friends isn’t too far removed from his usual reserved delivery, but it carries with it a deep sadness…or, more accurately, his yearning to feel sadness at his state, a feeling that he can only portray.  Later in the episode, after his second session with Franklin (who mentions that “being alone always comes with a hurting, a dull ache”), he opens his office door for the first time to an empty waiting room (Will has forgotten his appointment.)  Again, the subtleties of Mikkelsen’s performance stand out; the slight look of disappointment on his face, proof of his inherent loneliness, is devastating. 

The casting of Gillian Anderson as Bedelia is a stroke of genius.  In many ways, she’ll always be Dana Scully, the hard pragmatist trying to rein in Fox Mulder’s eccentric instincts on The X-Files.  But she also brings that same sense of cool, analytical rigor to her role in Hannibal as well, her elegant, almost porcelain beauty a complement to her ability to underplay the part.  Over two seasons, she’ll prove to be one of the most complex characters on the show, oscillating between a slot on Hannibal’s kill list to playing the role of his accomplice and romantic confidante.  But more on her as this season progresses…

Hannibal might be the main performative force in this episode, but Will matches him in the depth of performance, with an outward intensity all his own.  For what is Hugh Dancy’s version of the tortured FBI profiler but the ultimate example of a method actor lost in the part, the logical endgame of the De Niro, Pacino, Day-Lewis era of total immersion in another personality (which I guess makes Jack the bad stage parent?)  Hannibal might have the finely tailored person suit, but Will can hardly maintain his, even though he has the vibrant inner humanity that Lecter so desires.  But even that’s in peril, as Will continues to fear the performance that will finally overtake his soul, once and for all (which, this episode once again implies in his nightmare vision, is that of homicidal father to Abigail Hobbs.)

The climactic moments of “Sorbet” initially seem to be a bit off kilter, as the hunt for the organ harvester’s kill truck plays as this episode’s requisite killer of the week being shoehorned into the plot.  But these final measures are a further reinforcement of the dominant theme of performance.  Hannibal saves the unnamed ambulance victim’s life by playing his old role of surgeon, and it’s here that his true nature finally begins to dawn on Will, the coalescing of the Chesapeake Ripper profile he’s been forming all episode long with the reality of the man in front of him (who has also used several of his murders to perform as the organ harvester, in an attempt to throw suspicion off of his deeds.)  When he declines to stay for dinner, Hannibal sees through his performance as well.  In the end, our favorite cannibal is left entirely in his element, hosting the long-requested dinner party, serving pilfered human flesh back to his friends, reveling in the role of the bon vivant.  His introductory words to the guests are perfectly synched with the beats of the Vivaldi piece on the soundtrack, and in the moment it seems like he’s utterly fulfilled.  But as “Sorbet” has shown, there’s a great chasm of longing that lies beneath the veneer of this perfect performance, a work of theatrical exactitude that is also a cage. 

Leftovers ahoy! :

*Hannibal may ultimately find romance with Bedelia, but it’s in this episode that his seduction of Alana begins to accelerate, even as he uses her to glean information about Jack’s motivations.  Their relationship will form one of the key dramatic barriers to Will during Season 2.

*Though classical and operatic works feature prominently in this episode, Brian Reitzell’s score is still a work of dark beauty.  In particular, the throbbing ambient soundscapes that he composes for Will’s sessions with Hannibal form a low level hum of dread and paranoia.

*”Who the hell gets a spleen transplant?” (Jimmy Price)

*”Surgery was performed, and then unperformed.” (Beverly)

*Mark down another Bryan Fuller homage to The Shining, as the hotel room organ harvesting crime scene is a direct nod to Kubrick’s film (the layout and design of the bathroom, the seating position of the victim in the tub, the diagonal framing of the bathroom door in the distance.)            

MAD MEN Ep. 90: "Lost Horizon"

In which it may not have sunk in, but your status has changed.

“When I want something, I get it.  And I wanted you for ten years. You’re my white whale, Don.”  -Jim Hobart

And so, all that glitters…well, you know how it goes.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Valhalla of McCann-Erickson that Jim Hobart promises the five SC&P partners at the conclusion of “Time and Date” turns out to be as soulless as they expected (well, at least for some of them.)  Indeed, “Lost Horizon”, with its psychological landscape of white whales, Shangri-La’s and open roads, posits that the existential longing for that mythical goal in any life might always be consumed by futility.  It’s Don and Rachel’s conversation about utopia from Season 1 all over again: the good place and the place that cannot be.  And yet, this episode also suggests that sometimes that inherent futility is the whole point, and a source of fulfillment in and of itself.

The title of this episode refers, of course, to the famed book and films of the same name, in which one prosperous man, on the verge of even further greatness, finds himself detoured into that mythical valley of eternal youth that is Shangri-La.  The question that much of the plot poses is where is the Shangri-La for each of these characters?  And how do they deal with the very real possibility that their dreams are forever disappeared over that horizon?  The result is one of the truly great episodes of the show’s run, an elegy for all that they (and we) have known for these past six plus seasons.

Mad Men has always been a master class in production design, the meticulous detail of its sets, props, the whole invented world of the past a character unto itself.  Such attention to minutiae has always given the locations a completely immersive feel.  So it should come as no surprise that the harsh reality of the McCann-Erickson transition lies in the contrasting sets that open this episode.  The old SC&P digs may be a shambles of leftover boxes and empty spaces, but its bright color palette and the glow of natural light from its copious bay windows still make it a warm and welcoming environment.  In stark contrast, the definitely ‘70s décor of the McCann offices, all brown and grey enclosed hallways and box offices, is like a casket…or a mausoleum.  It’s the death of ‘60s pop optimism at the hands of a grimmer new decade.

And it’s exactly the sausage factory that Don though it would be so long ago, back when Jim Hobart’s siren call first reached his ears.  There’s a hint of optimism in one of his first meetings with Jim and Ferg Donnelly, as he’s once again presented the world at his feet and lauded as the great catch of McCann’s dreams.  The camera even plays along with this seemingly fresh start, dollying in on Don when he finally utters those magic words “I’m Don Draper, from McCann-Erickson.” 

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”

But it only takes his first big meeting with the Miller diet beer account for reality to slap him upside the head.  In the leadup to the SC&P dissolution, Don was able to play sage realist to Pete and Joan’s disappointment, coolly suggesting the inherent rough changes of the business.  Once he’s in the Miller meeting, that manufactured sand froid finally collapses, as he sees how this new setup is just as crushing as he thought it would be.

Following the trend of these final episodes, the Miller meeting is once again a callback to the show’s past and the characters’ past glories.  In this case, we’re all the way back to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, the pilot episode.  Instead of being the focus of attention, Don is just one of many creative directors at the meeting, all attentively absorbing the words of Bill Phillips from Conley Research.  Phillips’s analysis, a pitch focused on the average Midwest husband demographic, makes explicit reference to convincing said man to abandon loyalty to “his brand of beer.”  It’s a direct line back to the first scene of Mad Men, in which Sam the bartender tells Don that he smokes Old Gold cigarettes out of loyalty and habit.  Don was the one researching those motivations then, and he was able to laugh off Greta Guttman’s intimations of the Freudian death wish’s role in smoking’s appeal.  But that was ten years ago, when creativity drove the business.  In the end, the Duck Phillipses and Jim Cutlers of the world were right: advertising has become a data-driven game.  And now it’s Don in a subservient role to the alpha male status of numbers king Bill Phillips (the POV shot of Don’s befuddled gaze at the uniform note-taking of the other meeting attendees really hammers things home.)

The only person hit harder by this transition to the McCann afterlife has been Joan.  The old Sterling Cooper days might’ve featured rampant sexism and misogyny, but there was always a sense of frat house frivolity about the proceedings.  And she was the queen bee of manipulating those male hijinks to her advantage.  The way that McCann execs of all stripes treat Joan is much more crass and darkly manipulative.  Ferg Donnelly seems to provide her a respite from Dennis’s dismissive sexism, but even he only wants to sleep with her in the end. 

Christina Hendricks’s run as Joan has always been one laced with intrigue and sadness.  Already in her early 30’s at the show’s genesis point, she’s never been young enough to take full advantage of the freedoms that the encroaching women’s rights movement begins to provide.  The limited power that she originally possesses over the secretary’s pool turns out to be a self-perpetuating trap when she strives to transcend mere eye candy status.  Her partner status at SC&P, the grand achievement of her professional life, only comes when she agrees to sleep with Jaguar’s Herb Rennet.  Now, at the dawn of a new decade, stripped of her partner status, she’s back to just being the house sex bomb.  When she confronts Jim Hobart about the rampant sexual harassment she’s faced, invoking Betty Freidan and the ACLU, it seems like the moment of sweet retaliation against male oppression for which she’s always been yearning.  But she ultimately heeds Roger’s advice to take the fifty cents on the dollar that Hobart offers her as severance, while also ignoring beau Richard’s offer to send “a guy” to talk to the McCann boys.  Whether this is Joan abandoning any hope of reaching her own personal Shangri-La, or merely choosing the relative comfort of Richard’s benevolence over never-ending career conflict is still a matter of conjecture.

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

And speaking of Roger Sterling, the clown prince of the SC&P empire, the man who saved it all by selling its soul, the guy who, in Peggy’s words, was supposed to protect them all.  One of the saddest parts of the Mad Men’s demise is the impending absence of John Slattery’s brilliant portrayal of this magnificently flawed, epically hilarious, totally charming character.  Crass and opportunistic as he may be, there’s always been a passionate (albeit damaged) heart beating within Roger.  Look back to his pained, almost helpless love for Joan in Season 1 high mark “Babylon”.  Or to the sudden call to maturity that saves Don’s existence and prolongs the company’s life in the first half of this season.  Roger may be an accounts man out of time, lost in the generational shuffle, but his artist’s soul has always made him more human than a Jim Cutler or a Jim Hobart.

Which makes his extended scenes with Peggy in “Lost Horizon” so touching, and funny, and beautiful.  They’re two characters who’ve never shared that much screen time together, and it’s easy to remember her as the timid secretary of Don’s whom Roger condescended to back in 1960.  But now they’re both the last survivors of the SC&P crew, manning a ghost ship of an office while she waits for her new McCann spot and he clears out the final detritus of his vanquished existence.  Their semi-drunken conversation (fuelled by Vermouth, the last resort for the election night party in Season 1’s “Nixon vs. Kennedy”!) is a pure bit of Mad Men character development.  She correctly accuses him of selling out the company, yet doesn’t entirely resent him for being who he is.  He acknowledges the real loss he’s finally feeling, now that the house his father built with Bert Cooper is no more, and yet his pragmatism about the cold realities of the business won’t allow him to despair.  Many shows, especially this late in the run, might try to turn this into a grand emotional climax.  But that’s nothing that Matt Weiner has ever been interested in pursuing, and it’s that commitment to the fuzziness of human behavior that makes a scene like this so satisfying.  (Although there is one obvious result of it: Peggy’s entrance into the McCann offices the next day, sunglasses on, smoking a cigarette, lugging Bert Cooper’s old painting of a woman being violated by an octopus, heeding Roger’s subtle advice that she need not just be non-threatening to men to succeed.)

The final scene of Roger and Peggy’s time in the SC&P office is brief, but it’s a gorgeous, haunting moment, easily one of my all-time favorites in the show’s history.  Playing the organ that was left over from “Time and Date’s” child actor auditions, Roger tickles the ivories to the tune of “Hi Lilli Hi Lo” (the elegiac standard about lost love) while Peggy rollerskates in a circle around him.  There are so many beautiful things contained in this image.  The soft, evening-bound lighting that renders it as almost a faded memory.  The goofy, yet touching incongruity of the whole thing.  The way it encapsulates the shaggy playfulness that could happen at Sterling Cooper, a sense of camaraderie completely absent from the frigid McCann machine.  There’s even a hint of “The Phantom of the Opera” about the whole thing, with Roger as the slightly mournful spirit haunting the room (Peggy first realizes he’s still there when she hears the distant, ghostly organ tones.)    

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”

This timeless dream moment crossfades into Don in his Cadillac, chasing after another one of his many white whales in an endlessly repeating pursuit of Shangri-La.  Once it was called Betty, then Rachel, then Suzanne, then Megan…and now Diana.  But they’ve all been in service to his ceaseless sense of wanderlust, which is once again stoked during the Miller meeting when he looks off to see a plane ascending in the distance.  Which is not to completely discount the genuine nature of his feelings.  There’s a nice moment he shares with Betty in this episode, where she gently rebuffs his well-practiced shoulder massage/stab at connection (while studying Freud!), and it reminds the viewer that the long-gone Draper marriage was based on more than just opportunism and money.  Don’s line as he leaves the house (“Knock ‘em dead Birdie”) is genuinely moving, as he reaches a moment where he can come to terms with what they once had, and what they can still be to each other. 

The quantifiable reality of some of Don’s journey is still up for debate; after all, his vision of Bert Cooper in his car (and in the final scene of “Waterloo”) shows that Don isn’t above projecting his inner turmoil.  Classic narrative structure would dictate that his realization of the true emptiness of the McCann experience should lead him finally dropping the straightjacket of his corporate life and pursuing his dream.  But we’ve seen this before in his nomadic visits to California, and the resulting minor changes in his life.  And at every turn, Diana has proven to be more elusive and unreachable than before; her ex-husband refers to her as “a tornado”, someone that only Jesus can save, and she herself is last seen pushing Don out of her life.

Maybe this is why Don’s pursuit has taken on such a deeper meaning for him.  Maybe he’s finally broken his pattern and is chasing a woman who seems to be just as a damaged as him, and who has left a similar wake of destruction.  Or maybe Don Draper is just someone for whom the goal will never truly be known, for whom the quest is all that’s there.  It’s notable that, in conversation with his vision of Bert, he compares his travels to On the Road, that totemic icon of the rewards and perils of the flight toward meaning.  The myth of Jack Kerouac’s vision is that it was only a call to life, while in reality, he was never afraid to offer up pointed critique when appropriate.  Nowhere is this more evident than in his portrayal of Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassidy in real world parlance) who is both the ideal of masculinity and deeply flawed drifter.  There’s a whole lot of Dean in Don, his nagging desire to just go a perfect complement to the suave charisma he can’t help but generate.  In the end of On the Road, Dean is last seen as a somewhat battered shell of his former self, still chasing his indefinable dream toward who knows what.  As he picks up a hitchhiker at the conclusion of “Lost Horizon” (David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, that classic ballad of exploration both interior and exterior playing on his car radio), Don is still adrift on the road, far away from the life he’s built for himself, in pursuit of a person, a ghost, an ideal, a………………………       

“What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.”