Lovely Megan

Brands&Films has been covering Mad Men very closely, mainly from the product placement point of view. But the series isn’t interesting just from that aspect, but also as a character study, relationship analysis, use of real events in the storyline … Even more; Mad Men has produced some memorable episodes and even higher number of memorable

moments.

When speaking of product placement the most memorable moment occurred in the last episode of the Season 1 when Don delivered the now famous Kodak Carousel speech. I’ve written about it in the blog post The best product placement in the TV shows and also put that placement at number 2 in my list of Top 40 product placements of all time.

The ninth episode of the Season 5 has brought us one of those moments. We could’ve seen Don’s love note to Megan on the back of one of his son’s drawings. It says:

Lovely Megan –

I went to buy a light bulb.

When I got back, I’ll see you better.

Love,

Don

Don Draper's note to his wife Megan (2012, AMC, screen capture)


This note doesn’t contain any product placement :) It’s just lovely and tender. Alan Sepinwall described it as the best writing he’s [Don] done in a couple of seasons. Just perfect: short, to the point, incredibly romantic, and inadvertently designed to stick a knife in Betty’s heart.

Sepinwall also noted that “Mad Men” does a good job of having the pitches live up to the quality that the characters see in them; but Don’s pitch for Sno-Ball campaign wasn’t one of those times.

Is Don’s love note a sign that he’s slowly getting back to his best form? Can we expect the second coming of Kodak Carousel speech?