Donald Draper never quite knows how to have fun when he's supposed to. At garden parties and cocktail galas, he sits still-lipped and sullen in his tuxedo, ignoring his current wife, or making hesitant friends with a stranger he meets at the bar (e.g. Conrad Hilton, G.I. Dinkins, etc.). At the start of Season 6, Don lies on a sundrenched beach in Waikiki, reading Dante's Inferno while Megan chatters next to him. They smoke weed and drink blue cocktails, and appear, on the surface, to be in a good place. "I love it here," she says to him, beaming, but Don hardly opens his mouth.
Like many of the other central characters, Don is preoccupied. It is Christmas time, 1968 and death hangs heavy in the air at the newly expanded mod offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Roger is unhappily reminded, once again, of his mortality when his mother dies suddenly at the age of 90, and Don is shell-shocked after witnessing the near coronary attack of a doorman at his Park Avenue apartment. Practically everyone has grown facial hair, and even Pete is rocking a mean set of sideburns. Despite the long length of premiere, "The Doorway" only checked in with a few of the major characters and many ends from last season are left unresolved (what's been happening with Joan? Why is Ken hating on that overeager Bob guy from accounts so much?). Here's what they've been up to:
Don and Megan: After he and Megan return from their extended vacation in Hawaii, courtesy of new client Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Don remains distracted and drawn. He gets wasted before Roger's mother's funeral and ends up puking on the umbrella stand during an elderly aunt's eulogy. Soon after, he pitches a print ad to Royal Hawaiian executives that features a pile of men's work clothes scattered on the seashore, with the slogan "Hawaii: the Jump Off Point." Everyone at the meeting immediately associates the image with suicide, but Don fails to see the connection. Megan, meanwhile, has found a steady gig as an actress on a daytime soap, "To Have and to Hold," and is doing well enough that friendly middle aged ladies from Minnesota ask for her autograph when she dines out. Oh yeah, and in the last two minutes they reveal that Don is having an affair with Linda Cardellini (Lindsey from Freaks and Geeks), his downstairs neighbor and wife of his new confidante Dr. Arnold Rosen.
Peggy: Continuing in her steps from SCDP, Peggy is spending late nights at Cutler, Gleason and Chaough, masterfully averting crises and intimidating her subordinates. Reports that G.I.'s in Vietnam have been witnessed wearing necklaces made of the ears of dead Vietnamese soldiers cause client Koss Headphones to cancel their campaign. Peggy spends New Year's Eve at the office rewriting the ad (the copy originally read "Lend me your ears") and is rewarded with a weird mild flirtation with boss Ted Chaough, who voices his approval for her work in a way Don never did.
Roger: While Roger initially appears unaffected by his mother's death, we see him grow increasingly upset during afternoon chats in his analyst's heavily carpeted office. "Goddamn it, how many times do I have to tell you: I don't feel anything. Life will eventually end and someone else will get the bill," he rants. As usual, he is petulant and eager for something to numb the pain: a drink, a quick fling with his ex-wife. These are emotions we've seen from Roger before. But later in the episode, when his secretary tells him a man he scarcely knew-the man who used to shine his shoes at the office-had passed away, Roger shuts his office door and collapses. With no one there to pretend for, he finally breaks down.
Betty: Betty seems unusually content in her spooky upstate mansion, despite being alternately ignored or roundly dismissed by an awesomely sulky Sally every time she enters the room. Betty consoles herself by playing mother to Sandy, an older friend of Sally's and violin prodigy who is staying at the Draper/Francis residence. When Sandy abruptly takes off for New York, Betty puts on a headscarf and ventures into the underbelly of the Lower East Side, finally tracking her to a flophouse on St. Marks populated by goulash-eating punks. In a talking down that seemed a bit too on-the-nose, the leader of the crew sneers at her suburban address and prim handbag, calling her out as a representative of the repressed, neurotic consumerist society that they had chosen to reject. It's 1968 now, okay?
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