> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Fug the Show: Mad Men, "The Milk and Honey Route" - URL: https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/fug-the-show-mad-men-the-milk-and-honey-route/ - Published: 2015-05-12T17:00:09.000Z - Updated: 2015-05-12T17:24:01.000Z - Author: Jessica - Tags: #wp, #wp-gallery, #slideshow, #Import 2026-10-07 07:41 ## Yes, We KNOW You Are Into On The Road ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2015/05/img_0012.jpg) I shall start with Don, because his storyline gave me the fewest FEELINGS. I felt the following, "oh, this is interesting;" "Oh, are we still doing this?" "WHY ARE YOU STILL THERE?" "I don't care about these people," and "OH. Okay." I kind of get where they're going with this -- I think -- but I don't really know if I like it. ANYWAY. Don's gone full walkabout and is just...driving around America, having nightmares that the cops will finally catch up for him and punish him for his various sins (namely stealing someone else's identity). Does McCann even know what the deal is here? HAS ANYONE TOLD MEREDITH??? ## Sally's Pants ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0018.jpg) He IS, at least, in contact with his family. Sally is deliciously eye-roll-y about his travels, but the really important thing here is that I have a pair of pants VERY similar to these (I call them my Mary Tyler Moore pants) and I got them from LL Bean Signature two Christmases ago. RECOMMENDED. ## Motels Are Bad News ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0026.jpg) Okay. So Don's beautiful Cadillac breaks down and strands him in the Middle of Nowhere Kansas, where he gets embroiled in the middle of a poorly-executed con by the kid who's working as the cleaning service at this motel. What the kid -- let's call him Don Jr -- doesn't realize is that you can't bullshit a bullshitter, and Don totally has his number. After getting Don Jr's con pinned on him -- the kid steals $500 from a fundraiser for a dude who burned down his own kitchen -- Don basically sets things to rights, corrects the kid's grammar AND his poor conning skills, then gives him the Caddy (now fixed) and closes out this episode sitting alone on the side of the road to await his fate. PAYING IT FORWARD TO JUVENILE DELINQUENTS: THE DON DRAPER STORY. ## THE END ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0069.jpg) See? (This was also the end of the episode -- the final shot, to the tune of Buddy Holly singing "Everyday" -- but not the end of MY FEELINGS). Oh, right. There was also an interminable sequence at the American Legion Hall where everyone gets drunk and talks about the shit they did during the war, and Don admits that he killed his CO. He does NOT then note that he assumed his identity and has been Living a Lie for lo these many years. I feel rather as if I'm giving Ol' Drapes the short shrift here, and I don't mean to, but the truth is that his plotline had several beats to it that were Meaningful and Symbolic but might also have been Superfluous when I wanted to get back to EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENING WITH BETTY. (For example, does Don need to both fix a broken typewriter AND discuss fixing a broken Coke machine AND have a broken TV? Do we truly need to hang out with Random Dudes At the American Legion for multiple scenes? Don't get me wrong: I thought this episode was excellent. But the Don parts drifted toward Pokey and Bloated, and as much as I think Jon Hamm is killing it, and the isolation is intentional, I don't know if I need to get THIS DEEP into the Darkest Moments of Nowhere Kansas's Wartime Experiences.) ## Self-Restraint ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0032.jpg) In other Don news, we all need to give him a round of applause for not banging this brunette with the book by the pool. He is LEARNING AND GROWING. ## Pete and Tammy ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0015.jpg) Over to The Campbells. Pete is VERY sweet with Tammy, and let's just get this all out of the way: I may have clapped with glee when he and Trudy got back together. These two are made for each other! And sure, maybe part of what prompted him to return to her was the fact that his Wastrel Brother is such a Sad Clown, but I think Pete has secretly wanted to get back together with Trudy basically since they broke up and I am on board for these two. ## Tennis Whites ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0017.jpg) I am also on board for these awesome early 70s tennis outfits. As you know, I prefer sports with good outfits to any other kind of sports for myself. ## Duck ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0022.jpg) But while I found a lot of Pete's storyline totally interesting and worthwhile -- Vincent Kartheiser was great this week - allow me to note that I DON'T really care about Duck. I mean, I was glad to see him back in that I always enjoy a return visit from an old cast member, and using him to get Pete out of McCann was as good an idea as any, and I liked Pete calling him an "old wino," but I felt like we spent A LOT OF TIME with Pete going on business meetings with people we've never really seen before for the penultimate episode of this show. ANYWAY: yada yada yada, Pete gets a sweet sweet deal to leave McCann and move to Wichita to work for Lear Jet, bringing them mega-rich corporate clients rather than actors. He and Tammy and Trudy are moving to Kansas. And if they all die in a plane crash next week, I'm going to be pissed. ## House Dresses ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0040.jpg) I continue to be at home for Trudy's housedress, which I believe we've seen before. I'll happily go eat pies at the Campbells if we get to do it in our housedresses. ## REUNITED ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0057.jpg) And I love, and always traditionally do love, her actual nightgown. I am delighted by this reunion. NO ONE ON THIS SHOW gets to be happy and I will take what I can get for as long as I can have it. I JUST asked these two to make out AND THEN THEY DID. What else can I magick into being? ## BETTY ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0021.jpg) Speaking of happy, get ready to have FEELINGS that are very much not that. So. Betty. Betty is at school when she collapses (despite seemingly having had no symptoms of anything at all until now) and at least she looks great when it happens. There is also a rather melancholy bit where we can't tell if the kids talking to her are hot for her, or just think she's a nice old lady. (We later learn they called her "Mrs Robinson," so I guess the answer is BOTH. At least let Betty keep her hotness, you guys.) ## beeettyyyyy ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0028.jpg) In fact, she looks great basically this entire time. I do appreciate that Weiner and Co haven't tried to age up JanJo's or Hamm's faces, particularly. Anyway, it's bad news, you guys. Aggressive lung cancer, stage four. Betty's got maybe nine months to live. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY. And it was at this point in the episode that I got very frustrated with the Don plot, because the entire time he was shooting the shit with these yahoos at the Foreign Legion, who we don't know and will never see again, I am thinking, "DON YOU HAVE TO COME HOME BETTY IS DYING." Obviously, there's a lot you can say about this story choice -- Don is a solitary creature/we all die alone/happiness is fleeting/the worst can happen when you're just innocently minding your own business telling a youthful con artist he better learn how to conjugate a verb, etc, and I suspect some of that frustration was intentional. But it was also difficult. ## BETTYYYYY ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0036.jpg) Henry doesn't take the news well, in the sense that Henry is in major denial that Betty isn't going to make it, which is also very natural of him. He wants to see specialists and get to work and fight fight fight. "What do you think would happen if Nelson Rockefeller got this?" he asks. "HE WOULD DIE," Betty yells back at him. (In actual fact, Nelson Rockefeller died whilst banging a woman fifty years his junior, and I am very sorry Betty doesn't get to go out in the arms of a hot pool boy in 2014.) Betty has decided that she's not going to get treatment -- the doctor told her (well, Henry, but she was in the room) that it would only be palliative, and she's more worried about what she's going to tell the kids. This is SO UPSETTING. I don't want Betty to die! ## ARGH ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0043.jpg) And it was heart-breaking when Henry came and told Sally the news and she just immediately put her hands over her ears. I am a person who cries at basically everything, but *Mad Men* has never made me cry before -- there is something about it that often feels like it's operating at a bit of a remove -- but I did cry at this. Henry wants Sally to talk Betty into getting treatment (which would prolong her life maybe a year). I think poor Henry is feeling pretty desperate. ## ARRRRGH ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0045.jpg) Betty is NOT PLEASED with him for doing this. You two better make up before the end! (I've actually always liked Henry. He's nice to Betty, he's nice to the kids, and he's a way better choice for her than Don ever was. It helps that he is not living a decades-long lie about his true identity, I suppose.) ## AAAAARRRRRGH ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0052.jpg) GOD POOR SALLY. She's the only kid that knows and this is such a huge burden on her. DON, YOU NEED TO CALL HOME! Betty eventually comes to Sally and gives her a letter, to be opened upon her death, with instructions, because Betty doesn't think Henry will be able to handle it. Which is probably true. Poor Henry. "Henry doesn't know you won't get treatment because you love the tragedy," Sally snaps, and Betty is very nice about it, really. Sally then says that she just wants to see Betty through treatment, but Betty won't let Sally watch her die. "I don't want you to think I'm a quitter," she tells her. "I've fought for plenty in my life. And that's how I know when it's over. It's not a weakness. It's been a gift to me. To know when to move on." (I also cried at this bit. I had no idea I was this attached to Betty.) ## BETTTTTTTTY ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0064.jpg) And then she just...goes about her business. "Why are you doing that?" Henry asks when she leaves for class. "Why was I ever doing it?" Betty responds, and kisses him goodbye. ## SAAAAAALLLY ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0066.jpg) Although Betty instructed Sally to open this letter when she is dead, Sally reads it pretty much immediately. It is in fact a lot of instructions -- what Betty wants to wear to be buried in; how she wants her hair done -- but the end is the real gut punch: "Sally, I always worried about you, because you marched to the beat of your own drum. But now I know that's good. I know your life will be an adventure. I love you. Mom." ## SAAAAAALLLLLLLY ![](https://static.gofugyourself.com/uploads/2015/05/IMG_0068.jpg) WE ARE ALL SALLY. Talk to you next week when this whole thing comes to a close. I've got to go call my Mom. [Fug the Show: Mad Men, "The Milk and Honey Route"Well, this episode was A HOOT!!!! In all seriousness, this episode gave me a lot of emotions: sadness, delight, irritation, impatience. And thus this week's methodology shall be FEELINGS. Next week is, as you know, the series finale, and I think I reached a point where...whatever happens, I am at peace with it. I am emotionally prepared for it to be terrible. I don't EXPECT it to be terrible, but I am -- for some reason -- going into the finale with the belief that there is no way it will be satisfying. Not because I don't think this show can deliver, but simply because I think it is impossible for one episode of TV to perfectly cap off the experience of watching Mad Men, because for me that experience has been both sublime and irritating (irritating because of the sublime, if that makes sense. When you've experienced how great this show can be, when it spends X amount of time going nowhere \[the traditional first three episodes of every season\], you get antsy for the good stuff to start). It's simply too much to ask; how many shows have really pulled off the perfect series finale? Breaking Bad, and that's about it, right? AMC, your bar has been set very high.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/bf/b9/bfb99790-924d-4e41-a7e6-5e3c6e04fe57/content/images/static-gofugyourself-com/uploads/2015/05/img_0012.jpg)](https://go-fug-yourself.ghost.io/fug-the-show-mad-men-the-milk-and-honey-route-05-2015/)