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There are people out there who buy things, Don Draper tells Peggy Olson in Shut the Door.
Have a Seat, the season-three finale ofMad Men.
People like you and me.
And the way that they saw themselves is gone.
And nobody understands that.
Then he adds, looking Peggy in the eye, But you do.
This is one of countlessMad Menmoments that resonated with the experience of the 2020 pandemic.
TheMad Menepisode premiered in late 2009, and the timing created a historical hall of mirrors in the mind.
And this is where the historical hall of mirrors comes in.
Where people dont shop.
Flash-forward to 2020: A nation of shut-ins watches and rewatchesMad Menduring a pandemic.
If I ever had any doubts that the show was an all-timer, this rewatch cemented it.
We were joined in our rewatch by two of our five children, ages 22 and 17.
The elder had already watchedMad Men, the younger was a newbie.
As I wrote in the concluding essay ofMad Men Carousel, the show is built to last.
Mad Mengot that and found truthful, clever ways to articulate it while focusing mainly on the characters.
The details change, but human psychology remains the same.
Don visits Peggy after shes birthed an out-of-wedlock baby in secret and given it up for adoption.
He tells her, Get out of here and move forward.
It will shock you how much it never happened.
Its an emblem of strength but also tactical coldness, at times cruel indifference.
And its often rooted in a refusal to truly confront ones mistakes.
Returning to business as usual is less traumatizing, even if it inflicts damage on others.
Is the rest of the house in play or only one room?
Harry spent the days following Kennedys death worrying about how it would affect his TV accounts.
Peggy and her boyfriend Abe worried about crime, noise, and vermin in their new apartment.
Pete destroyed his marriage to Trudy and tried to repair it.
She kissed a boy on the night of the moon landing.
Even when life stands still, it goes on.
