‘Mad Men’ Recap: Finding “The Milk and Honey Route”
“The road the real hobo follows is never ending. It is always heading into the sunset of promise but it never fully keeps its promise….Every new bend of the road is disillusioning but never disappointing, so that once you get the spirit of the hobo you never reach the stone wall of utter disillusionment. You follow on hopefully from one bend of the road to another, until in the end you step off the cliff.”
—The Milk and Honey Route: A Handbook for Travelers, Nels Anderson (1930)
The “Milk and Honey” train route was a real place: it ran through Utah and was known among hobos as a source of friendly and accessible food and shelter. But as Nels Anderson clarified in his guide to the hobo life, “This is a transient term; what may be a milk and honey route to one hobo may not be so to another.” Don, Pete, Betty, and Sally, for better or worse, are finding the Milk and Honey route that takes them where they need to be, in their own time and on their own path.
Don Draper learned the ways of hobos and travelers early on (“The Hobo Code,” Season 1, Episode 8), and in his own way, has been following it ever since. But a month after walking out on McCann, his metaphorical path has become literal. With a loose destination of the Grand Canyon, Don has traveled thousands of miles, his only connection to his former reality being Sally, who takes her father’s escapades in stride. In true Moby Dick style, the great “white whale” McCann finally caught has eluded them once and for all. But the freewheelin’ Don Draper’s trip is stalled when his car breaks down in a small, stiflingly quiet Oklahoma town reminiscent of his life as Dick Whitman.
While stranded, he meets Andy, a young housekeeper/messenger/small-time con man who tries to fleece Don out of $20 for a bottle of whisky. Don takes a liking to Andy — perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit — reluctantly giving him the money and correcting his grammar as he leaves.
After a few days in town, Don gets an invitation to the American Legion, where “everyone who’s a vet and likes drinking” will be gathering. The event is a fundraiser, so it’s no shock that the big city guy with the slick hair and swanky car would be invited to stay an extra night just to attend. This is an uncomfortable evening for Don; a view into what life as Dick Whitman would have been, had he kept that identity and survived the war. Don is pained and uncomfortable with these men, especially with another Korea veteran who asks to see his face, and he’s visibly relieved that they had not served at the same time. Persuaded to reveal his darkest war moments, Don confesses half his story — that he killed his commanding officer — a confession met with understanding from the others. “You just do what you have to do to come home.” Yet as long as he’s Don Draper, he can never come clean and never fully trust that his secrets are safe.
His instinct to not trust was right. These men get a tip that Don stole their fundraising money and they assault him in his bed, beating him and taking his car until he returns the funds. Had he been honest about his identity, his fate would likely have been much worse.
The next day, Don — a lifelong con man himself — confronts Andy, who he knows took the money and framed Don for it. Angry as he is, Don understands Andy’s need to do anything to get out of his small town. In a surprisingly emotional moment of tough-love mentoring (complete with another grammar correction), Don covers for Andy, while teaching him a life lesson about the dangers of a life in hiding. “If you keep [the money], you’ll have to be somebody else. And it’s not what you think it is.”
Andy obeys Don’s threat to give back the money and get out of town, with Don taking him to the bus stop. Yet once they arrive, Don shocks Andy by giving him his car and the advice not to waste this opportunity. After failing to save himself, his family, his job, or Diana, Don is finally able to save a lost soul. As the young man drives off with a chance to take a new route, Don smiles, at peace. He’s truly a hobo now, alone at a bus stop, having shed everything except a small bag of clothes.
Pete Campbell is following his own unexpected Milk and Honey route. As opposed to the rest of his SC&P colleagues, Pete is pretty happy at McCann. He’s respected, well paid, has great accounts, and is quickly rising up in the ranks. He’s also settled into a regular routine with his estranged family, visiting daughter Tammy twice a week. The father who she once barely recognized is now her favorite parent, much to Trudy’s (and every single mom ever’s) chagrin. Though Pete’s relationship with his ex-wife has become closer, Trudy continues to keep him at arm’s length, his infidelities never too far from her mind.
Pete runs into the always-shady Duck Philips, who persuades a reluctant Pete to have dinner with a Learjet executive to help him win a place as their chief headhunter. Like Don, his instincts to not trust the situation were spot-on; he ends up unknowingly walking into a job interview for a top-level position with Learjet, based in Wichita, Kansas. Duck’s deception, and the thought of being tempted with something shiny and new, unsettle Pete.
Pete makes a great impression on the Learjet executive and is invited to a final level of interviews: dinner with the wives. Though still outwardly offended by the process and uninterested in the job, he decides to go, asking Trudy to go accompany him. She says no, she’s not comfortable being his date “under any circumstances.” He tries to persuade her out of sentimentality, but she’s hardened — she remembers things “as they were.” Pete doesn’t just want a date or a sentimental time, he wants back into her life, and she knows it. Trudy is firm in her resolve that Pete cannot get back into her heart, but his offer has clearly disturbed her.
Changing his mind and bypassing the Learjet dinner altogether, Pete and his brother ponder the legacy of infidelity passed down from their father: “I think it feels good and then it doesn’t.” Pete is struggling to make sense out of their quests to “always [look] for something better, always [look] for something else,” He’s seeing that his choices led to excitement, but not contentment. And by refusing to continue Duck’s Learjet ruse, he thinks he’s made the choice that he’s content with what he has.
But Pete’s plan to rebuff Learjet backfired: Duck told the client that Pete refused the dinner because the offer was too low, which generated a pay and perks package beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations — plus a negotiated buyout from McCann. Pete is horrified. Every time he rejects the offer, it comes back bigger. Like former colleague Ken Cosgrove, Pete wonders if this job is a divine intervention, a message that he can take a different path. A more mature and thoughtful Pete realizes that his Milk and Honey route may just be the one he rejected years ago: his family.
Unlike Ken, Pete listens to the message, waking Trudy up at 4am to beg her and and Tammy to move to Wichita to “be [his] wife and family again.” Trudy is naturally wary, telling him that “things can’t be undone.” But the strength of his conviction and her knowledge that they never stopped loving each other finally breaks through her walls, and in a beautiful moment, she joyfully accepts. “We’re going to have dinner on Saturday night. The three of us. Like it was the first time.” Leaving her house as dawn breaks, his parting greeting is not goodbye, but “good morning.”
In a heartbreaking and unexpected turn of events, it’s Betty who is taking the saddest and most tragic route of all. After collapsing at school, Betty and Henry receive the most earth shattering news any family can get: she has terminal lung cancer. (This is the first time smoking has seriously impacted anyone in the Mad Men world; as devastating as it is, it’s a realistic reflection of what was happening to thousands of families at the time.) The doctor gives her nine months to live, perhaps up to a year if she takes the most aggressive treatment option. Henry launches into action mode, urging Betty to give herself the chance of the longest life possible, but Betty is resistant.
Henry visits Sally at school to give her the news that Betty wasn’t ready to deliver. Yet he isn’t there to be a comforting, fatherly shoulder for her to cry on. He’s there to help him convince Betty to get the treatment she’s resisting. It’s Henry who breaks down, leaving Sally — again forced to confront adult issues well before she’s ready — with the task of comforting the stepfather she barely knows. When Henry arrives home with Sally in tow, Betty is rightfully angry that he betrayed her confidence. She pushes past both of them, leaving Sally to sit at the head of the table with her brothers and begin the heartbreakingly adult transition from big sister to mother figure.
But Sally’s presence has forced Betty to come to terms with the path she’s choosing, but it’s not the one anyone expects or wants. Betty will not put herself and her family through aggressive treatment that will only have short-term and painful results. In this moment, Betty shows her incredible growth from a woman consumed with infantile self-absorption to a mother making the ultimate sacrifice for her family: “I watched my mother die. I won’t do that to you.” Faced with two horrific choices, Betty chooses the path that allows her to go out on her own terms, the closest thing to a Milk and Honey route she can give to her family.
But sadly for Sally, Betty turns to her daughter to handle the hardest decisions of all, giving her a letter to open one Betty is gone. Back at school, Sally reads the letter, finding that in addition to burial instructions, it contains a gift: the loving words Sally has never before gotten from her mother. “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.”
It was barely a year ago that Sally attended the funeral of a friend’s mother who died of cancer and, smoking a cigarette herself, flippantly mentioned that she’d give anything to “put Betty in the ground.” When the tragedy Sally she wished for comes true, her love for her mother finally comes to the surface. But with so many adults forcing her to be their port in the storm, will she be able to stand the pressure?
Don, Pete, Betty and Sally are each finding their own way, some by choice and some by necessity. Each one has one thing in common: their new paths are as far from the lives they envisioned as could be. With one episode left, will the paths lead to the Milk and Honey route each so desires for themselves and their family?
What did you you think of Mad Men’s penultimate episode, “The Milk and Honey Route?” Tell us in the comments!
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