Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | 7 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Beyond The Veil
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 1-2 | Aired on 04.07.2013
If I start now, I'll never stop, so let me just let Don talk about Hawaiian legend stating that the soul can enter and leave the body, but it usually departs from a leeward point - into the waves. I mean, there are SO MANY things wrong here that I can hardly blame the Sheraton guys for taking a few moments to categorize their thoughts, but the older dude finally gets to the point, if diplomatically: "What happened to him?" Don proudly tells them that he got off the plane, shed his skin, and "jumped off." I can't contain myself here: "Jumping off" evokes suicide! The tie looks like a hangman's noose! Disappearing footprints are like Death In Art 101! I'm so bent out that I can't even bother with the fact that "jumping-off point" needs to be hyphenated as a compound modifier.
Still trying to wade into (forgive me) the problem, the younger guy, who by the way is British, says the art feels cinematic to him, "but mostly I see James Mason at the end of that movie walking into the sea." Don claims not to know what he's talking about, and I can't really decide if it's less credible that Don, who you'll remember used to be obsessive about keeping up with pop culture, never saw the 1954 version of A Star Is Born, or if he honestly doesn't get how the artwork is evocative of the fate of that character. As I may have alluded to, I think Don's sudden obsession with death manages to be both a retread story-wise and kind of unearned - he cares about a doorman? - but that's not my biggest problem with this scene: It's Don's steadfast refusal to Get It. I like my Don Draper smart, not an obtuse idiot, and he's acting slower to grasp what's going on than he did with Megan and the fucking orange sherbet. If the point is that Don has over time gotten terrible at his job, we've been there too, to be honest. I respect the craft that goes into this program something fierce, but I've seen this trap on many shows that have lasted this long: You can never assume that the audience is so invested in your characters that they'll care about them no matter what story you tell. In this case, the death obsession, beyond being clankily depicted, doesn't break any new ground and doesn't make any clear connection to the zeitgeist (not that the connection doesn't exist, but the show has excelled at making such connections explicit in the past), so what's the point? And obviously, it's early in the season and the plan doesn't have to be fully revealed at this point, but this was a two-hour offering that, as my great friend Sars mentioned on Twitter, "felt more like a parade than an episode."
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