Megan Calvet breezes onto Mad Men like a breath of fresh air.
“You've never seen me throw a party.
Everyone's going to go home from this and they're going to have sex.”
On this show about the 60s, Megan is the character
who most reflects what we tend to think of as the spirit of the time.
She’s hip, stylish, and youthful, a thoroughly modern woman.
“I'm an artistic person.
I majored in literature,
and I've dabbled in writing and painting and a little bit of acting.”
At first we see Megan the way Don Draper does,
as an exciting person who represents a new beginning for him.
“You’re such an optimist.”
All of this is why Megan's eventual arc is so disconcerting --
rather than becoming the big star she wants to be
or the woman who magically turns Don into a mature, committed partner,
she ends up a struggling actress and a bitter divorcee.
“I wasn't going to give you the satisfaction of knowing that you ruined my life.”
Megan seems to embody the trajectory of the 60s itself as a decade --
she begins full of hope and optimism,
rejecting rigid limitations of the old-fashioned ways
that came before her,
"But I look at you and I feel like...
I don't know, I'm getting to experience my first time again."
but in the end, her disillusionment and loss of innocence
“It's sunny here for everyone but me.
I'm walking around in a cloud of ‘no.’”
mirror how the 60s ended, too --
with the sense that all of that early promise and potential
had failed to be realized in lasting change.
Before we go on,
we want to tell you about this video’s sponsor,
Audible.
Audible is the best audiobook service out there.
With an unbelievable collection of audiobooks,
just waiting for you to download them and listen.
Right now you can get any book of your choice, for free.
And thirty days of an audible membership, for free.
Just use our link: Audible.com/ScreenPrism.
Or text the code, SCREENPRISM, to five-hundred five-hundred.
So, go check it out!
Show creator Matthew Weiner has said that Megan is, quote,
“the most modern person on the show.”
Megan never seems to ask that question of whether she can have it all --
she just kind of assumes she can.
"You know I don't want you to fail."
"Good.
Because I'm not going to."
And as one of the most liberated female characters on Mad Men,
she’s fascinating to watch.
"Let's be clear.
I'm not going to run out of here crying tomorrow."
She shows up in Season 4 and takes us by surprise
with the revelation that there is a woman out there
who can cause a real stir in Don.
"When I saw you sleeping there, I thought...
I couldn't imagine not seeing you there every morning."
She ushers a new era into the story -- and we think, just maybe,
with this cool new wife, Don could become Don 2.0,
hip to the changing times.
"I got you the latest Beatles album."
Megan is his dream woman -- she’s bold and beautiful, gutsy, exotic,
"Deux, trois, quatre!"
with Peggy’s brains and talent for advertising.
“You know, she reminds me of you.”
And when she reveals a real aptitude for advertising,
"Kids want beans and they have forever."
"Oh.
I have something like, 'Heinz Beans, some things never change.'"
"Jesus, I think that's better."
for the first time, Don gets to enjoy
the thrill of sharing a professional and creative life
with a romantic partner one who feels like an equal.
“Do you know you're good at all of it?
You had the idea, feeding me the pitch, knowing to pull the trigger at that moment.”
But as exciting as he finds this modern woman,
Don is not a modern man.
And after the honeymoon phase is over,
Don and Megan’s relationship illustrates a generational clash.
“You know, we worked together and I left to pursue this.
And he was so encouraging.”
“And then you started succeeding.
He's old-fashioned.”
Don's almost 15 years older than his new wife,
and he can’t control her the way he did Betty.
"Zou bisou bisou..."
We really get to know Megan in the season five premiere,
when she throws a surprise party for Don and performs a sexy song
in front of everyone he knows.
"Zou bisou zou bisou, le bruit des bisous."
As we know, Don is an intensely private person.
“Draper?
Who knows anything about that guy.
No one's ever lifted that rock.
He could be Batman for all we know.”
And here we learn that Megan is the polar opposite --
she’s completely open.
"Dans les buissons sous le ciel du mois d'août
Les amoureux glissent à pas de loup."
Weiner has said, quote,
“whether you realize it or not in that episode,
you just witnessed the major conflict in their relationship.
That she has her own personality and Don can’t control it.”
“Don’t waste money on things like that.”
“It was my money, and you don't get to decide what I do with it.”
“Well, couId you please not use it to embarrass me again?”
As the show goes on, it’s clear that Don is uncomfortable with
Megan establishing an identity separate from his.
"Just keep doing whatever the hell you want."
we see this first come out over small things,
like when he gets annoyed she doesn’t like the orange sherbet he loves.
“It tastes like perfume to me.”
“That's why we make 28 flavors.”
“Can I get a scoop of chocolate?”
“Really?”
But the biggest strain on their marriage comes
when Megan says she wants to quit advertising to pursue acting.
“It’ll never be for me what it is for you.”
“There are 20 firms that would be glad to have you.”
“I don't want to do it, Don.”
Don perceives Megan’s rejection of advertising as a rejection of him.
“No one's made a stronger stand against advertising than you.”
Weiner has even said, quote,
“in some ways the marriage was over as soon as she decided
she didn’t like advertising.”
“I thought you hated advertising.”
“I never said that.”
“Well you certainly don’t think it’s art”
Don’s need to control her comes out even more
when she starts having success in her acting career
and he struggles to feel happy for her.
“I'm sick of tiptoeing around you every time something good happens to me.
This is my job.
No, my career.”
“You kiss people for money.
You know who does that?”
“This is really the most period storyline that we’ve done on the show --
is the way this man is dealing with his wife working.”
Ultimately -- while he liked the idea of the change and new way
Megan represented at first --
Don still expects his wife to be an extension of himself,
and as a thoroughly modern person, Megan isn’t down for that.
“‘Get in the car.
Eat ice cream.
Leave work.
Take off your dress.’
Yes, Master.”
“Second wives.
It’s like they have a playbook.”
As Don’s second wife,
Megan embodies the famous quip that second marriage is
the triumph of hope over experience.
"Look, I'm just trying to tell you because I am who I am
and I've been where I've been that you don't get another chance
at what you have."
"Brave words for a man on his second time round."
"Yeah, and if I had met her first, I wouId have known not to throw it away."
At first we see Megan through Don’s eyes, and with him we might get carried away
by this woman who seems to have an extra special something
that was missing in the many, many who came before her.
But it’s not long before the relationship becomes a complete cliché.
“He's smiling like a fool, like he's the first man
that ever married his secretary.
She's 25.
As if that's news.”
Ironically, it's exactly the kind of rebound once predicted by Dr. Faye,
Don's girlfriend in Season 4.
"Don't worry, you'll be marry again in a year."
"What?"
"I'm sorry.
I always forget nobody wants to think they're a type."
Dr. Faye and Megan represent two very different paths for Don.
Supportive, practical Dr. Faye offers him the chance for a healthy, mature relationship
--
she challenges him to do the hard work of facing his past and his problems.
“Turn yourself in, have someone plead for clemency.”
But in the season 4 finale he takes his kids to California with Megan as their babysitter,
You said you didn't have any experience and you're like Maria von Trapp."
and back in New York he abruptly proposes to her --
his secretary whom he hardly knows.
“I feel like myself when I'm with you,
the way I always wanted to feel.”
In choosing Megan, Don is choosing to escape into a completely fresh start.
“I've done a lot of things.”
“I know who you are now.”
Weiner said, “To me, the reason this episode is called ‘Tomorrowland’
is because it’s really about the choice between,
‘Do you want to deal with who you are, and live with that?’
or ‘Do you want to think about the person you could be in the future
and you’re becoming?’
And Megan said, ‘Go to Tomorrowland.’”
“You don't know anything about me.”
“But I do.
I know that you have a good heart,
and I know that you're always trying to be better.”
“People were kind of rooting for Dr. Faye, hoping that Don would grow.
Why would he marry the younger woman who saw him as the man he wanted to be?
Why would he do that?”
Don idealizes Megan because she sees him as he wants to be seen,
“I love that you stand for something.”
overlooking the gnarly details of who he really is.
“I love you.
You’re everything I hoped you’d be.”
“You too.”
We already know from Roger’s marriage to Jane
"Why don't you sing like that?"
"Why don't you look like him?"
that this kind of impulsive relationship
between an older man and a younger woman isn’t likely to end well.
“Megan is not Jane.”
“So she never said you squandered her youth and beauty?
Used up her childbearing years?
Thwarted her career?
What career?”
As the second wife, Megan also represents a very clear opposition
to Don’s first wife, Betty.
"Good night, Mrs. Draper."
"Why do you keep calling her that?"
"Because she hates it."
Betty is cold, rigid, old-fashioned, and proper --
Megan is warm, open, modern, and fun-loving.
“Don't be upset.
It's just a milkshake.
Can you grab a straw or some napkins?
This is my last dress.”
When the kids spill a milkshake on the California trip,
look how easily Megan diffuses a situation that would have made Betty furious.
Early in season five we find out that Megan knows Don’s real identity.
“Nobody loves Dick Whitman.”
And this comes out in the most casual, offhand way --
as if the scene of him telling her isn’t even significant enough
to be shown in the story --
which is a far cry from Don and Betty’s epic confrontation over his secret past.
Don and Betty have the conventional 50s suburban marriage --
they have kids together, he goes to work in the city
and she stays at home.
Don’s marriage to Megan is cosmopolitan --
they have no kids together, they live in Manhattan,
and their shared life involves work and socializing.
So given all this contrast,
it’s a letdown when Don does eventually, inevitably,
fall back into his same old habits --
when we learn that he's cheating on Megan,
on some subconscious level we might even be disappointed in her
for not being enough to keep Don from himself.
But of course that’s a ridiculous response --
and it was never fair to expect that she could somehow make him change
or make him whole.
In retrospect, it was more or less a given that Megan would end up just another example
of the kind of Second Wife Joan saw coming a mile away.
“I’m your wife.
Stop pushing me away with both hands.”
Listen to this conversation
that Joan and Peggy have about Megan in season five.
“She’s going to be a failing actress with a rich husband.”
“No, I think she’s good at everything.
I think she’s just one of those girls.”
At first we’re probably more inclined to agree with Peggy.
But once again, Joan calls it.
By the end of the show, Megan is a failing actress
who’s gotten rich off her ex-husband.
"I haven't booked anything in the last few months."
We’ve seen hints of her moody nature, and her difficulty dealing with failure before,
but in Season 7 she seems more insecure and erratic than ever.
“On Sunday she got the director's number from someone in her acting class,
called his home, then managed to run into him
at the Brentwood Country Mart
while he was having lunch with Rod Serling.”
It might not be that hard to guess early on
that a character like Betty isn’t destined for a happy ending,
but it’s unsettling to see Megan turn into this jaded, bitter person
after all the promise she seemed to hold.
“I gave up everything for you because I believed you.
And you're nothing but a liar.
An aging, sloppy, selfish liar.”
So what went wrong for Megan Draper?
There are two problems, really, that we can use to explain her undoing.
One is that she ultimately tries to take a shortcut to success.
“I aIways thought you were very single-minded about your dreams
and that would help you through life.
But now I see that you skipped the struggle and went right to the end.”
The heroes of this show are outsiders
who work hard and make painful sacrifices for what they get.
Megan starts out as one of these outsider types --
but her growth is stunted by getting together with Don
and enjoying an upper-class lifestyle paid for by her husband,
instead of pounding the pavement on her own.
“You know what?
It's just so easy for you from your throne on 73rd and Park.
Some of us act for a living and we wait tables when we don't.”
“That's not fair.”
“No, it isn't.”
She gets her first big acting job through Don.
“Do you know how hard it would be to ask Charles Butler Jr. to hire my wife?”
“I just want an audition.
I'll be Megan Calvet.”
And while she started out willing to prove herself within the advertising game,
once she abruptly announces she wants to be an actress,
Megan seems on some level to expect an instant career to be handed to her.
"You're supposed to be encouraging."
"Not every little girl gets to do what they want.
The world cannot support that many ballerinas."
Think about that in contrast to the way that someone like Peggy works steadily for
years.
The second problem with Megan’s approach is the very nature of her dream itself --
she’s chasing the superficial, very common ambition
of becoming a rich, famous actress.
She started out feeling so refreshingly different from other characters we’d met,
but her motivations, like money and status,
turn out to be more or less the same as everybody else’s.
"How much do you need right now?
I'll leave a check."
"500?"
"Who's moving you, the New York Jets?"
Megan’s disappointing journey is a mirror of her era --
the 60s promised change and hope, and the fantasy of a better future,
but the decade ultimately ended in disillusionment.
"We're torn by division, wanting unity.
We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment."
In Season 6, Megan wears a t-shirt
similar to one that actress Sharon Tate was photographed in,
and some people interpreted this as foreshadowing a dark fate for Megan,
since Tate was murdered by the Manson Family in 1969.
Weiner has clarified he wasn’t trying to suggest that Megan was going to die,
but in Season 7 the writers do seem to have fun with the Sharon Tate theory.
Megan lives in an isolated house in California,
just as Tate did when she was killed.
“Are you sure you don't want to move into a more populated area?
It's like Dracula's castle up here.”
Joan Didion famously wrote
that the Manson Family murders marked the end of the 60s --
quote, “The tension broke that day.
The paranoia was fulfilled.”
Megan’s endpoint also sends the clear message
that whatever dream she represented is over.
This is a person who once hated cynics,
“What is wrong with you people?
You're all so cynical.
You don't smile, you smirk.”
but by the end of the show, she’s become one of them.
She once seemed like a positive update to the out-of-date Betty,
but Megan's modernity was shallow and fleeting.
Her dream wasn’t deep enough, her work ethic wasn’t durable enough,
and her sense of purpose wasn’t clear enough for her to represent true change.
All the same, when we leave her, Megan is still a very young woman.
We can imagine a new era to come for her.
Throughout the story, we’ve seen Megan almost entirely
in terms of Don and how she fits into his life --
Weiner even said, quote,
“every story that I tell that involves Megan is about Don”
So when we step away from this Don-centric mindset,
we realize it’s a good thing for this yound woman
to be separated from this man from an older generation,
who can’t understand her or even see her as she really is.
However Megan may have disappointed,
we can admire the energy this fun, lively character brought into the series,
the way she embodied a moment of hope and assertive womanhood.
Megan gave us the feeling that she could effortlessly achieve what,
before her, seemed impossible.
In the end, she couldn’t, but for a time, she got us to believe.
"Zou bisou bisou."
This video was brought to you by Audible.
Audible offers amazing audiobooks in every genre.
Read to you by big talents: from Jim Dale narrating Harry Potter
To Claire Danes narrating The Handmaid's Tale.
Right now if you use our code,
you can get an audiobook of your choice for free.
And it's yours to keep forever, whether you become an Audible member or not.
Plus, with our code, you’ll get thirty days of audible membership
completely free.
Membership gets you one free book of your choice every month,
And you own all of your books forever.
And, now with membership, you also get access to Audible originals.
These are exclusive audio-titles created by celebrated storytellers,
from everything from theater to journalism to literature and more.
And all of this is not available anywhere else.
So, Go to Audible.com/ScreenPrism.
Or text S-C-R-E-E-N-P-R-I-S-M, to five-hundred five-hundred.
Go give it a try!