Tommy Hough
  • Home
  • About
  • Media
  • On Air
  • 2018 Endorsements
  • Book Tommy
  • Blog
  • Home
  • About
  • Media
  • On Air
  • 2018 Endorsements
  • Book Tommy
  • Blog

Is Mad Men About to Kill Megan Draper?

5/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Is Megan Draper doomed?
Picture
by Tommy Hough

My wife thinks I'm out of my mind, but I've become convinced the creators of Mad Men are steering the show into some kind of horrible Manson Family encounter for Megan, and quite possibly, Don as well.

Grim stuff, especially considering Megan is of one of Mad Men's persistently nice and more giving characters. But given the show's current 1969 setting, and the knowledge the final season is underway, along with several less-than-subtle hints – I fear the Mad Men writers are concocting a nasty surprise, and even a nasty end for Megan.

People have been speculating for years the series will end with Don's death. This has something to do with Don's apparent cartoon caricature falling from a high-rise through the opening titles, but I've never thought of that as any kind of intended foreshadowing. It's just a metaphor for the show and a clever title sequence.

More likely, if the end of the series does call for something drastic for Don, he will simply change guises and once again become someone new. He may not be a chameleon, but he is a survivor. Perhaps Don will adopt a new name and become an early investor in Microsoft or a cable TV franchise like Ted Turner.

PictureThis may not end well.
Megan, however, due in part to her location, profession, decency and place in the overall story arc, seems headed for trouble.

The Manson Family scenario seems likely to come up with this season spending part of it's time in 1969 Los Angeles, and recent shows have gone to some lengths to point out Megan is living in a canyon community. As was the case before and since the 1960s, these are the kind of communities which attract tight-knit sets of artists, music and film professionals, the wealthy, and yes, predators. From the first episode of the season where Don visits Megan's new digs, it just gave me the creeps.

While Laurel, Topanga, Benedict, Bronson and some of L.A.'s other Cielo Drive-like canyon communities are in the midst of the nation's second-largest city and barely a five-minute drive from some of L.A.'s busiest intersections, they're also semi-remote locales where all-night parties can go unheard – and where cries for help may go unheard into the night.

My Spidey Sense tells me Mad Men is heading in this direction for several reasons.

The show is in the midst of the final season, with Don and Megan slowly growing apart on opposite coasts. At the end of this week's episode Megan is spied flying back to Los Angeles, but she looks relieved instead of wistful, as though there's something else for her to return to instead of just her acting career.

My wife also noted when Don told Megan he was next planning on coming to L.A. that July, Megan said she wanted to see Don somewhere away from New York or L.A. My wife immediately pointed out what Megan was really saying was she didn't want to see Don in L.A. Perhaps she’s hiding something, or someone. Being a thick-headed guy, I missed that one.

Mad Men
is known for the occasional, out of the blue shocker. The most famous is the sudden, rather bloody removal of Guy McKendrick's foot in a lawn mower accident in the Sterling Cooper office ("it looks like Iwo Jima out there"). Of course, Peggy accidentally bayoneted her boyfriend last season, but Ginsberg's nipple self-removal is the easily the most recent, and disturbing example of Mad Men creepy shockeroos (the homage to the lip-reading scene in 2001 was a nice foreshadowing of Ginsberg's final departure from sanity).

PictureMegan's "Zou Bisou Bisou" during Don's 40th.
More specific to a Manson Family-like scenario is Anna Draper's niece Stephanie, whom we last saw pregnant and back in Oakland at the end of The Runaways episode. While I'm not expecting Stephanie to turn into Patricia Krenwinkel or Linda Kasabian, she knows where Megan lives in L.A., knows she lives by herself, and knows money can be obtained there.

According to Stephanie, the father of her child and therefore, someone she may be continuing a relationship with once the kid arrives, is a man getting out of prison within the month. We don't know what the baby's father was incarcerated for, but he will know soon enough through Stephanie where to go for money in a pinch. Or where to go for something worse.

You'll have to forgive the key grim comparison here, but Megan is also a struggling actress who's had a few minor roles, with a husband able to subsidize her career. Sharon Tate was a struggling actress who had a few minor roles, with a husband able to subsidize her career. Some fans have noted the evolving resemblance Megan is bearing to the late Sharon Tate beyond the late 60s clothes and make-up.

This season has also gone to a few lengths to show how Megan's lifestyle has evolved beyond Don's button-down east coast businessman world, as she understandably immerses herself further into the actor and artist nightlife of L.A., with all the bacchanalian excess and fun we can draw from the era and know of the city. While the guy Megan was dancing with before her three-way with Don and pal Amy may be a colleague or harmless flirt, it demonstrates some of the "artist types" Megan works with or knows socially could've also been in the same circles which crossed paths with Manson. Perhaps they would've similarly had access or knowledge of Megan's groovy canyon bungalow home.

In real life, it was Byrds producer Terry Melcher that Charles Manson had met through Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, and it was Melcher whom Manson was seeking the night of August 8, 1969, when he dispatched his "family" to pay a visit to Melcher's then-former residence on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon with Helter Skelter and the "devil's business" on their minds. While Manson was vaguely aware Melcher no longer lived there, that didn't stop him or his murderous followers from turning it into one of the most horrific and notorious crime scenes of the 20th century.

With a Manson Family-like encounter, Mad Men would complete a kind of cultural span of the 1960s, from a time of white male-enforced law and authority order (but also a time of secrets, white male dominance, low glass ceilings, sexism, whispered racism, overt and not-so-overt hostility to the LGBTQ community, etc.), to an era in which the trust and openness of freewheeling hippiedom is shown to be poisonously vulnerable to a manipulative psychopath like Charles Manson, for whom law and order meant nothing even after two prison terms.

PictureStay safe Megan Draper.
So why would the Mad Men writers set up Megan for murder? Beyond the approaching end of the series, it may give Don an opportunity to physically save Megan – or perhaps physically fail and be injured in the process. Perhaps Don wouldn't be be there at all when, or if, it happens.

Whatever it may be, should my prediction come to pass, it would be a cruel way to rub out one of the more beloved characters in the series. Granted, there are some fans who've been cool to Megan since the "Zou Bisou Bisou" days, but in the Mad Men storyline Megan often seems to be set up as a foil, and even a sacrificial offering, to the characters more connected to the show's primary storyline of Sterling Cooper and Partners (the firm's apparent name as of the autumn of 1968).

For a while there were those who thought Pete was heading towards a sudden end, then Don, especially during some his notorious drinking bouts. But having seen this show for seven seasons and having an idea of the show's current timeline in relation to the historical events of 1969, I see an episode in which the magnificence of the Apollo 11 landing (i.e. the culmination of the "organized" early 60s buttoned-down and "orderly" white male-dominated society through which Don Draper and his colleagues rose) is thrown 180 degrees into the macabre horror of the Manson Family murders, and the terror which gripped the nation for days afterwards.

Mad Men has worked very hard this season to be a bi-coastal show, and time and time again has shown the main character to be ambivalent at best about joining his wife in Los Angeles. At the same time, Megan is living in a part of L.A. and spending time within a space that could invite the Manson scenario – or a similar scenario via Stephanie's baby's soon-to-be ex-con father.

With all the attention paid to Los Angeles in this season of Mad Men, along with some inroads into genuine states of madness, I just can't see the writers brushing the impending Manson Family terror of August 1969 into the deep background.

Picture
Will Megan survive the final series of Mad Men? We're not so sure.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    A former San Diego broadcaster and media personality, Tommy Hough is a wilderness and conservation advocate, communications professional, California Democratic Party delegate, and the co-founder and former president of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action. He ran as the endorsed Democratic candidate for San Diego City Council in District 6 in 2018.

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    January 2015
    May 2014
    December 2012
    April 2012
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    October 2010
    September 2010
    March 2010
    September 2009
    May 2009
    January 2009
    October 2008
    August 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    May 2008
    April 2008
    March 2008
    January 2008
    December 2007
    November 2007
    April 2007

    Categories

    All
    A16
    A-16
    Adventure 16
    Afoot And Afield
    Afoot And Afield In San Diego County
    Alaska
    Amy Gulick
    Ancient Forest
    Balboa Avenue Station Specific Plan
    Balboa Ave. Transit Station
    Balboa Park
    Bruce Coons
    Cabrillo Bridge
    Donate-a-Pack
    Donate-a-Pack Foundation
    Elsinore Fault
    Fort Tejon
    Fort Tejon Earthquake
    Friends Of Rose Creek
    Jacobs Plan
    Jerry Sanders
    Jerry Schad
    John D. Mead
    Kevin Faulconer
    Long Beach
    Long Beach Earthquake
    Midcoast Trolley Extension
    Mission Bay
    Mission Bay Drive
    Mount Soledad
    National Park Service
    Newport-Inglewood Fault
    Old-growth
    Old-growth Forest
    Organ Pavilion
    Palm Canyon
    Pat Abbott
    Plaza De Panama
    Rose Canyon Fault
    Rose Creek
    Salmon
    Salmon In The Trees
    San Andreas Fault
    San Diego
    San Diego Bay
    San Diego County
    San Diego Trolley
    San Jacinto Fault
    Save Our Heritage Organisation
    Soho
    Southeast-alaska
    Storm-water-division
    Temperate Rainforest
    The Salmon Way
    Tongass National Forest
    Tongass Rainforest
    Wilderness Press

    RSS Feed

Picture
Home   About    Media    Endorsements    Blog
​
Contact    Book Tommy
Copyright © 2007 – 2020 Tommy Hough