The one character Mad Men can do without

Mad Men, now at the middle of the beginning of its end , has encountered a personnel problem. It has too many characters to keep track of. Most of the above the line players from season one are still around. But they’ve been supplemented with so many spouses, rivals, and new hires that the stories we’ve followed from the beginning often have to take a back seat.

The show has looked closer at once-minor figures like Margaret Sterling, and fleshed out more recently introduced ones like Dawn Chambers. In episode 3, the appearance of Betty’s old gossip buddy Francine was a signal that any lost character is liable to reemerge as a sign of the times (if Matthew Weiner is taking requests, I’d love to see a vindicated Dr. Faye Miller, or an out-and-proud Sal Romano). Back at the office, things are going well for Peggy and Joan (professionally, at least) but they are so lost amidst the window dressing of catty secretaries, smirking creative and irascible executives that it feels like we’re not getting the whole story. Things have gotten so crowded in New York that Mad Men has had to relocate some of its principal characters to the West Coast. Pete, Megan, and Ted languish in sunshine, now painfully aware that what may have seemed like an opportunity was actually an exile.

I don’t mind the size of Mad Men’s cast. I like that its world has expanded and I am genuinely interested to see what happens/happened to all of these well-written folks. In fact, there’s not a single character I’d be happy to see go.

Oh wait, yes there is.

At the end of season 6, SC&P sent Don Draper on a mandatory paid leave. He was supposed to take it as an opportunity to walk out with dignity, face his demons, and seek employment elsewhere. And yet by episode three they had taken him back, albeit with some ground rules. Sterling invited him back in an impulsive, memo-less way, and the partners capitulated for mostly financial reasons. But it wasn’t all numbers. There was perhaps a sense that while SC&P had been chugging along smoothly in his absence, some of the magic was gone. I assume the viewer is supposed to feel the same way about Don Draper. That despite his many faults, Mad Men isn’t Mad enough without him. That’s what they’re selling me, but I’m just not buying it anymore. I think it’s time for the man in the foreground of the opening credits to finally stub out his cigarette, get off the couch, and stop obstructing the view.

Don Draper has been a great lead. And Jon Hamm is doing his best acting yet in showing what a sad bastard his character has become. It’s just that the show has gone in a new direction, and I don’t see why he has to go with it. It’s not personal, it’s Darwinian. Don has failed to adapt. In Season 1, his biggest problem was that he was not really Don Draper. Now, he is too much Don Draper. He has fossilized into the persona he created for himself.

We should have seen this coming. As his favorite drink reminds us, he’s always been old fashioned. He’s dismissive of young people’s ideas. His second marriage began to crumble when he realized that Megan was not content to be the subservient, stay-at-home wife that Betty was. His drinking and smoking is viewed as a sign of weakness in a somewhat more health-conscious society. And he’s terribly nostalgic. In season 1, when Paul Kinsey pitches him a campaign featuring an astronaut, he rejects it, suggesting he try a cowboy instead. In Season 3, Conrad Hilton asks for the moon, and Don gives him a hamburger. Now it’s 1969, there’s about to be a man on the moon, and Don is not ready for what the world has already become.

I’m not saying that Don needs to be killed off, as many have predicted he will be. Just redistributed. He’s the new Duck Phillips. A once-promising alpha male with a badly tarnished reputation that some bargain-hunting rival agency will happily scoop up. Let him go out with a whimper, it’s all he can muster at this point.

I guess these are harsh words for such an iconic leading man. And as Don plods towards a comeback in his signature two steps forward and one step back style, he’s clearly not going anywhere. Nevertheless, the show stands on its own without him, which is unusual. There’s a reason why Walter White’s death – foretold in the pilot of Breaking Bad – did not come to fruition until the final moments of the series finale. Because no matter how despicable Walter became, he was still the show’s center of gravity. Everything going on around him was still going on around him. Don Draper, as the credit sequence suggests, has fallen, and is now just a casual observer.

Part of the reason for this difference is that Walter White was never replaced. Jesse Pinkman was always a foil as much as a protegee (he lacked Walter’s self-control, where Walter lacked his morality). But Don really has been replaced. And I’m not talking about Lou. Peggy – excelling at work, unhappy at home – is the new face of the ad man’s dilemma. The fact that she is not a man at all is the most powerful indication we have that the Madison Avenue this show introduced us to is no more.

I want a more complete picture of the industry’s new terrain, with Peggy Olson up front and center as its lonesome pioneer. The agency is modernizing and diversifying. America is entering a new decade and a new way of life. That – not the meandering redemption of Don Draper – is the real story now.