Mad Men: Hang In There

28 Comments

1. 1
   tiffa_leah
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 2:55 pm

   I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this, and my feeling is that it was in character. Lane seemed to think that there was no turning back and he couldn’t bare anymore humiliation in his life. He doesn’t always make the right choices, he’s not the guy that girls flock to, he’s not the fun guy…he’s seen as the boring accountant. An accountant that couldn’t keep up with his own finances in check, so in a way he probably saw himself as a complete failure. When you feel you’re too old to start over, and have that unbearable feeling of utter defeat, sometimes you do seek a permanent solution.
   If we even look at the relationships between himself and his wife as well as his own father, there didn’t seem to be any real love. It was money and stature. He lost both. He was never able to live like he truly wanted to, but lived like how everyone expected him to. If you think back, I don’t think Lane EVER got ANYTHING that he wanted. And he failed them, and most importantly himself. He just didn’t have the strength to try anymore.

   I am truly saddened by this arc and didn’t want it to come to this, but really to me, I think it was the only way it could. In the next episode, I think this will tie with everyone elses’ stories. They are all trying to find a reason to live and what makes them happy. They can grab life by the balls and do what THEY want, or live for someone else. Either way, the ultimate choice is theirs.

2. 2
   ChaCha
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 4:27 pm

   Like what happens with most suicides, we don’t see it coming, but once it has arrived we look back and see how it has been sending out signals for quite some time. Lane deteriorated all this season. Out of character? Do we really know anyone’s character or just what we think their character is? Lane didn’t show it to those around him, but we got to watch it all happen this season and part of last season, when he was forced to give up his Bunny and watch how he allowed his father shame and abuse him. He was worn down and worn out.

3. 3
   maryedith
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 5:35 pm

   McWeanis I REALLY liked this recap. I love the way you ask questions about things as if you’re in a conversation with the readers. About Lane, I felt that his arc made sense. He wanted the American Dream so badly and he could never quite grasp how to go about living it. I thought his character was good for the show because it highlighted how crass and unprincipled the other men on the show can be because they’re unencumbered by a sense of history or having to live up to their role in a class system the way an Englishman would be. Don and Roger can rewrite themselves at the drop of a hat (or they think they can; not sure where the writers really come down on that) but for Lane the only way to make an “elegant exit” is to kill himself.
   Where do you come down on Megan? I think she is just unrealistically perfect. She always says just the right thing! Give me a break.

4. 4
   Jdiggity
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 8:20 pm

   Love the Mad Men recaps, thank you for spelling out things I would typically not get on my own. A cancelled check is a check that has cleared the bank, and the funds had been paid, therefore cancelled , as in not good anymore. (I’m really not a know it all, just years of my life wasted in the banking industry)

5. 5
   Elmstreet
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 9:36 pm

   I wish Joan had been the one to discover the forged check. I really do. Of course, this is Mad Men world, and Matthew Weiner is in a competition with Joss Whedon over killing off the popular characters. Anyways, if Christina Hendricks does not win an emmy for this season (her face when she registered Lane’s death was heart breaking), I’ll send Lane’s dad over the pond to pimp slap the emmy voters.

   Don did the humane act, as far as firing Lane was concerned. Lane could have been arrested, and Don was absolutely correct that you can’t trust someone who runs the finances if they forge checks. Especially in your own name. But as soon as Don started implying that Lane could make a fresh start, I wanted to yell “Don, you never had your dad beat your grown ass with a cane!”. Of course Lane could have never made a fresh start. Not with his rigid upbringing and background and family. He was just never enough, and it’s a sad end to a sad story.

   Ken Cosgrove has been awesome for about three seasons now. But who knew he was such a ball-buster? That’s pretty hot, actually. Maybe he’ll take over the Punching Pete Campbell duties now.

   This has to be the best recaps of yours that I’ve ever read. You reminded me of Loula’s MM recaps, where she’d expand on the themes of the episode and bring out the insights that we were supposed to have been given. I know you felt attacked when you first started recapping this show because you were trying to find your footing, but this recap is the intelligent, character-driven analysis that we MM fanatics wanted all along. It’s the kind of show it is. Great job.

6. 6
   maryedith
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 9:49 pm

   Yes, what Elmstreet said. I hope you can stay with this show because you’re doing it justice and that’s no easy task.

7. 7
   kloewent
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 10:03 pm

   Wow, Matthew Weiners kid is creepy and unattractive, plus he can’t act at all. Nepotism at it’s best!

8. 8
   itchy
   Posted June 8, 2012 at 10:53 pm

   Yes, that kid is a definite clunker in a great series. Sucks the life out of the screen. The only justification for him will be if his character turns into a serial killer. He’ll be great at that.

9. 9
   Derek Hazelton
   Posted June 9, 2012 at 12:34 am

   @kloewent and @itchy, I actually like the Young Weiner as Glenn. Glenn is always supposed to be socially awkward, so I think it’s more of an acting choice than him sucking the life out of the screen.

10. 10
    itchy
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 4:37 am

    Well, Mrs. Itchy agrees with me. And she’s ALWAYS right. She’ll tell you that herself.

11. 11
    maryedith
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 6:39 am

    My feeling is Weiner has no idea where he’s going with Glen so Weiner Jr probably has no direction other than “be ambiguous.”

12. 12
    tiffa_leah
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 8:08 am

    @ Maryedith – On Megan, she is definitely too good to be true, and she has too much fire to settle down and be an abiding housewife like Don wants. Don has blinders on, and he won’t see it coming, but she will leave him.

13. 13
    maryedith
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 8:27 am

    I hear what you’re saying, and it’s certainly the majority viewpoint in the things I read about the show, but I don’t know… I somehow think whatever goes wrong with Don and Megan won’t be Megan’s fault. In the Zooby Zooby Show, Megan told Peggy that SCDP was full of cynical people who couldn’t enjoy anything. The season has borne her out, to the point that Peggy had to leave. I think that if something happens between Don and Megan it will be that Don cynically misreads and misjudges something innocent on Megan’s part. Because Don doesn’t Get the Sixties. BUT it will all be pretty ambiguous and open to interpretation. IF something happens.

14. 14
    itchy
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 8:31 am

    About the 13-day thing, Lane was expecting to receive a bonus, which would have allowed him to pay back his “loan.” When the bonuses were cancelled, he was screwed.

    I like the Ken character, wish they’d do more with him, the idea that he’s a good writer but that he’s conforming to expectations by not writing.

    And I like the Megan character too — always seems to know how to handle Don. If anyone leaves anyone, it’ll be her leaving him.

    Meanwhile, I’m getting tired of seeing Fat Betty. Bring back January Jones. Please.

15. 15
    maryedith
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 8:39 am

    @itchy — Do you think Lane was an embezzler? On other sites (which I was ONLY reading whilst waiting for this recap) there were lots of discussions about embezzlement and how Don didn’t have choice but to do what he did because Lane was an EMBEZZLER. I could see that that was the case from Don’s point of view, but I thought Don’s point of view was seriously limited. I know people who embezzle money lie to themselves about paying it back, but the show didn’t give us any indication that Lane would not have paid it back as soon as he got it. All he wanted to do was stay in the States and work at that job. So, he wasn’t really embezzling, was he?

16. 16
    itchy
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 9:59 am

    It doesn’t matter if he would have paid it back. He was clearly and illicitly taking funds from the company (to pay for something completely unrelated to the company). To make matters worse, he forged someone’s signature in order to do it. Another felony. Don was letting him off very lightly. Very.

17. 17
    itchy
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 10:09 am

    Oh, also, I have my own summer camp period story. Not me, of course. But one of the girls, must have had hers for the first time while swimming. Because there she was, freaking out, with blood trickling down her leg. Except within seconds, she was surrounded by an entire phalanx of females and their towels, who shielded her from view and got her out of there.

    I found that extremely impressive.

18. 18
    maryedith
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 10:35 am

    When it happens to someone else, it really is like it’s happening to you. I’m not surprised at all.

19. 19
    maryedith
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 10:40 am

    That’s funny about Lane; I didn’t see it as unrelated to the company because it was to keep Lane AT the company. But I can see that you’re right, itchy. It was just interesting how it happened right after the Joan thing. The letter of the law gets broken all over the place; whether to prosecute depends on how the characters interpret the spirit of it.

20. 20
    Annie
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    Oooooooooh

    Do you think Lane was gung-ho about Joan becoming partner so that she WOULDN’T be doing the books anymore….thus she (and everyone else) wouldn’t know about the check? At first I thought he just liked Joan and wanted her to succeed, but now it may have been part of his plan…….sadly, plan failed when Cooper randomly checked out the finances.

    Either way, I really liked Lane. He was a good guy, hard working, and I loved the role he played during the “Sterling Cooper” defection. I think he always felt he was a disappointment to everyone (remember his father beating him with his cane?) and this was all the he could handle, the final straw. Very sad, he’ll be missed.

21. 21
    cat
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 2:47 pm

    I thought it was ironic how Dick Whitman used Don Draper’s name to forge a whole new life for himself, while Lane forged it for one check to cover back taxes on money he used to help finance the new agency’s start-up costs. One man goes on to build quite a good life for himself and then stands in judgement of the other, who for 3 years straight took losses he couldn’t afford. Yes, he should have been more like an American and come out and asked for help. He could have been upfront with his wife about not having the money for their son’s private school. Of course, this is the same woman who never wanted to leave England to begin with. She only became more complacent because he kept giving her everything else she asked for. And he owned a stake in the company, so certainly he should have been able to use it as some kind of collateral with the partners. All year, he tried to be anyone but himself. He was so obviously unhappy. He fantasized that he was the guy with the hot girl on the side. He tried to land the Jag account. But in everything he failed. And he burned all his bridges with his connections back in England when he left for SCDP. He couldn’t accept the idea of going back to England as a failure. Don should have known that, but he’s been oblivious to everything happening around him for most of this season. If there was anything that could bring down SCDP in an instant, it will be the truth coming out about Don’s real identity. It won’t matter that all his accomplishments were truly his own. They will only think about his forgery. I wish he had shown more compassion towards Lane, but just as he wanted his brother to go away, he wanted Lane to go away, too. And Lane sure did go away. Just like his brother, he left permanently.

22. 22
    maryedith
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 3:25 pm

    I think it was to stop her asking for the $50,000, Annie. Which was why he looked conflicted about it afterward.

23. 23
    itchy
    Posted June 9, 2012 at 11:49 pm

    It was definitely to stop her from taking the money — they’d planned to pay her from the bonus fund, which would have exposed him right away.

    I think Dick/Don was fully aware of the irony of firing Lane. If he’d had a nastier character, he would have let Lane stay, and use his knowledge as leverage. But in the real world, the Lane character was played out and the actor was probably looking forward to moving on anyway, so this was a pretty good exit.

24. 24
    Exene
    Posted June 10, 2012 at 4:05 am

    Itchy–in all of the interviews I read, Jared Harris didn’t sound happy at all with no longer being part of the cast.

25. 25
    itchy
    Posted June 10, 2012 at 7:12 am

    Who would? Not many television roles for self-effacing Brits these days. Although he was pretty good as the evil genius in Sherlock Holmes.

26. 26
    TalldrinkofH2O
    Posted June 10, 2012 at 7:28 am

    McWeanis,
    A little disappointed that you didn’t mention the comedy of Lane’s first suicide attempt. I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. Life is like that: at the moments of deepest despair, sometimes there is comedy. The guys had been alluding all the time to what a “lemon” Jaguars were at the time, how unreliable they were, and sure enough, just when he needed to depend on it to kill himself, damn thing wouldn’t start. I loved how he broke his glasses into two pieces right before he tried turning the ignition. Then, after it wouldn’t start, he had the hood up holding one piece of the glasses to one eye to try to see what could be wrong in the engine that was causing the failure to start. That black humor in the situation was quite rich. I almost expected his character to take all that as a signal from the Universe that suicide wasn’t the way to go.
    I also loved how his wife “bought” the car by writing a check. That so illustrates how little most women of the time knew about finances because bank accounts were usually controlled by men. [Part of the training I received as a naval officer was in counseling people who thought that as long as they had paper checks, they somehow magically still had money in their bank account to cover whatever amount they wrote the check for.] It also made me a little nostalgic for the days of “playing the float” before automatic check scanners and instantaneous transfers of money from accounts came into existence.

27. 27
    TalldrinkofH2O
    Posted June 10, 2012 at 8:18 am

    Oh, also there was the irony of the fact that she said, “I wrote a check.” That’s exactly what Lane did to get himself into trouble. So, there he is in a vehicle purchased by “writing a check” to attempt to erase the disgrace he brought upon himself by “writing a check.”

28. 28
    Jo
    Posted June 12, 2012 at 3:46 pm

    Fabulous ep and recap.