‘Mad Men’ returns for final, twisted 2-part season

Don Draper, the elegant drunk whose decline we have been watching now for six seasons on “Mad Men,” lost almost everything last time we saw him.

After a wrenching monologue in the middle of a Hershey’s pitch meeting in which he alienated clients by describing his whorehouse childhood, he was shown the door — with pay — but no return date. Then his wife walked out on him.

Elisabeth Moss and Jon Hamm star in “Mad Men.”Frank Ockenfels/AMC

Sounds like an end-of-days scenario, but here we are again. “Mad Men” returns for its final season, with a twist. Fans of the Matthew Weiner series will only be able to watch the first seven of 14 episodes. In a revenue- and ratings-driven maneuver, executives at AMC have decided to make this final season “event television” in the hope of raising the numbers to the crescendo enjoyed by the network’s finale of “Breaking Bad” when “Mad Men” really ends, in 2015.

By then, the cast, which is currently in production on those final seven episodes, will have been finished with the show for months. Elisabeth Moss, who plays the clever but beleaguered Peggy Olson, proposes that the cast stay together, as do the contestants of “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” even after they lose, until the bitter end.

“They should put all of us in a house from July to next April and we can film that as a reality show and air it on AMC,” she says. “I’m super excited about it. ‘Mad House’ is the obvious choice for a title.”

Like many of the characters on “Mad Men,” success in the working world has brought little satisfaction to Peggy. She has endured bad relationships with any number of cads, most recently with an agency colleague, family man Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm). When he left her at the end of last season to work in California, she was spitting-mad. When we see her in the first episode, she is shocked to see a bad penny roll back her way.

“She really gets herself into these situations,” Moss says.

What Peggy has had to put up with merely scratches the topsoil of the ditch of depravity that Megan Draper (Jessica Paré) has fallen into. Don (Jon Hamm) was thrown into jail after a bender. Don had another extramarital affair, with downstairs neighbor Sylvia Rosen (Linda Cardellini). And then after quitting her job on a New York soap because Don said they were going to get a fresh start in California, he reneged on the deal, leaving her disgusted — and unemployed.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper.Frank Ockenfels/AMC
“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner chats with Jessica Paré on set.AP/AMC

“She felt like all this love and trust that she’s put in him is not a two-way street,” says Paré. “So the last thing she says is, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be here.’ And she walks out. She feels so duped. It’s such a terrible position to be in.”

Megan is not the kind of woman to wait for a man like Don, though. As the photos for the new season indicate, air travel figures prominently in the new season, as does the rising importance of California in American history. Megan finds her new life out there. This time, it’s up to Don to try to fit into it.

“The interesting thing is that Megan is sort of this new kind of feminist,” Paré says. She didn’t see impediments to having her marriage and career, but for men before and still it’s not so obvious. She’s like, ‘OK. I’m going do this. I don’t see how this is going to be a problem.’ Very difficult for Don to swallow.”

Many female fans of the show found the Don of last season too dark, and they lost a lot of faith in the character when he cheated on his second wife. Does he have the inner resources to fix his life?

Doesn’t sound like it. “He can’t be happy,” Paré says. “He tries to quit drinking and do right by his family, but he’s self-sabotaging. That’s what the show’s been about this whole time.”

If the show wasn’t so good, it wouldn’t be so hard to say goodbye.

 - Jessica Paré
“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner has said that Season 7 is about consequences and Don has many to face: What kind of life can he have when the world is moving on without him? As he was leaving Sterling, Cooper and Partners last season, his successor, Lou Avery (Allan Havey), was on the way up in the elevator. It was an icy moment many a fallen bigwig has had to face in American corporate culture. What lies beyond that is under wraps — only one episode, the season premiere, has been given to reporters and critics, with strict instructions not to divulge returning characters or surprising cameos or plot developments — but fans may feel cheated. After all their devotion they’re only getting half a season.

“They’re building demand, but limiting supply,” says Brad Adgate, senior vice president and director of research at Horizon Media. “This was a show that helped make AMC a must-buy in the advertising community. Running seven episodes serves their purposes. AMC saw what ‘Breaking Bad’ did — 10.3 million viewers for the finale. They would like to replicate that. But ‘Breaking Bad’ got younger viewers as it went on and the show got better and better. We’ll see what the last years of ‘Mad Men’ bring.”

John Slattery and Jon Hamm star in “Mad Men.”Frank Ockenfels/AMC

Filming the last episodes has brought a sense of melancholy to the cast. Paré can still remember where she was before she got the “Mad Men” job: She was “dead broke” and “couch surfing.” And now that the end is in sight, that’s “where her mind goes” again.

“If the show wasn’t so good, it wouldn’t be so hard to say goodbye,” she says. “It’s really scary for all of us. When I auditioned, they said [I’d get] three episodes. I thought I’d get five, if I’m lucky. Four seasons later, I feel fortunate. It’s going to be hard to find something that’s the same.”

“I started on the show when I was 23, I’ll be almost 32 when we’re done; that’s a long time,” Moss says. “It’s going to be very strange. When we had 14 [episodes] left, I said, ‘Let’s not get sad about it.’ We’re all feeling the weight of it. Every episode you get is going to be one less episode.”

But Moss is determined to be in the last one. “If Matt tries to kill me off, I’ll refuse to leave,” she says. “I’ll do a sit-in in the office, refuse to get out of the shot.”