Television Review: Meditations in an Emergency (Mad Men, S2x13, 2008)

Meditations in an Emergency (S2x13)

Airdate: 26 October 2008

Written by: Matthew Weiner & Kater Gordon
Directed by: Matthew Weiner

Running Time: 48 minutes

The second season of Mad Men is, by a discernible margin, inferior to its groundbreaking first. This decline is not one of technical execution—the production values remain impeccable, the acting superb—but of conceptual ambition and narrative cohesion. The diminution is perhaps most starkly observed in a direct comparison of their respective final episodes, both helmed by series creator Matthew Weiner. Where Season One’s *The Wheel offered a masterfully subdued, character-driven coda steeped in melancholy irony, Season Two’s Meditations in an Emergency opts for a grandiose, history-laden climax that feels simultaneously over-determined and curiously hollow. This finale encapsulates the season’s core weakness: an over-reliance on iconic historical touchstones at the expense of the subtle, psychological portraiture that defined the show’s initial brilliance.

Weiner’s decision to set the season in the eventful year of 1962 was a double-edged sword. It allowed the series to chart the subtle societal shifts—in attitudes towards race, gender, and sexuality—that would erupt later in the decade. However, this choice also shackled the narrative to a parade of iconic moments. Amongst these, the Cuban Missile Crisis looms largest, and it is this world-historical event that Weiner controversially elects as the backdrop for his season finale. The decision is a fateful one, transforming the episode from a character study into a fraught, and ultimately problematic, exercise in historical juxtaposition.

The plot mechanics hinge on a contrived simultaneity. Don Draper returns from his prolonged, mysterious Californian sabbatical on 22 October 1962—the very day President Kennedy announces the naval blockade of Cuba. As the crisis escalates towards potential nuclear annihilation, a palpable panic grips the populace. Yet Don, the archetypal self-made man, appears either oblivious or wilfully philosophical. His focus remains stubbornly parochial: the crises of his crumbling marriage and his precarious professional standing. However, it risks rendering Don not as a complex tragic figure, but as a solipsistic bore. His personal turmoil, while significant, feels trivial when framed against the backdrop of global thermonuclear war. The episode never quite resolves this tension, leaving the audience to question whether we are meant to critique Don’s myopia or share in it.

Betty Draper’s parallel storyline is arguably more compelling, precisely because it operates on a human scale. Pregnant, betrayed, and advised by her doctor to keep a child she does not initially want, Betty’s arc captures the terrifying constraints of her era. Her subsequent, uncharacteristic act of picking up a stranger (Ryan McPartlin) in a bar for a brief sexual encounter is a raw, desperate lash for agency. It is a powerful moment, brilliantly underplayed by January Jones, that speaks volumes more about her internal crisis than any of Don’s brooding. The eventual reconciliation scene, culminating in her revelation of the pregnancy, is charged with a profound ambiguity. It feels less like a new beginning and more like a mutual surrender to biological and social fate, a ceasefire in their marital cold war brokered by an unborn child.

The professional sphere mirrors this upheaval. Don’s return to Sterling Cooper coincides with the finalisation of its merger with Putnam, Powell & Lowe. The corporate machinations are handled with the show’s customary sharpness. Duck Phillips’s rise and spectacular fall is a miniature tragedy of hubris and addiction. His belief that he has outmanoeuvred Don by leveraging a non-existent contract is a superb piece of dramatic irony. Saint John Powell’s cynical manipulation—first plying the recovering alcoholic with liquor to secure his loyalty, then using his subsequent drunken rage to discard him—is a chilling display of corporate realpolitik. Don’s victory here is passive and procedural; he wins simply by having never signed a piece of paper, a testament to his inherent, anarchic distrust of institutions.

Meanwhile, the spectre of annihilation prompts two very different men to make final appeals to Peggy Olson. Father Gill’s attempt to use the threat of hellfire to reclaim her soul is grotesquely exploitative. In contrast, Pete Campbell’s vulnerable admission of love, and his offer to spend their last moments together, carries a pathetic sincerity. Peggy’s devastating revelation—that she bore his child and gave it away—lands with the force of a moral grenade. It is the episode’s most emotionally raw exchange, brilliantly exposing the chasm between Pete’s romantic self-pity and Peggy’s lived, brutal reality. This subplot succeeds where others falter because it uses the crisis not as mere backdrop, but as a catalyst for irreversible, personal truth-telling.

This brings us to the episode’s fundamental structural flaw. Using the Cuban Missile Crisis as a setting is one thing; choosing to end the season before the crisis is resolved is a strange and ultimately frustrating narrative gambit. It creates a rather disappointing cliffhanger. The audience, armed with historical hindsight, knows the world did not end. Consequently, the pervasive dread Weiner works so hard to cultivate is undercut by a foregone conclusion. The tension becomes artificial, a manufactured suspense that the show cannot pay off. Unlike The Wheel, which ended on a note of profound, personal loneliness that resonated deeply, Meditations ends on a note of historical suspense that feels cheap and unearned.

The episode’s legacy is further complicated by off-screen controversy. While Weiner and his co-writer Kater Gordon won an Emmy for their script, Gordon was fired from the production staff immediately afterwards. Her 2017 allegation that this stemmed from her discomfort with Weiner’s sexually inappropriate remarks casts a long, unsettling shadow over the episode’s creation.

Meditations in an Emergency is a beautifully crafted but deeply flawed piece of television. It showcases Mad Men’s signature strengths—meticulous period detail, superb performances, and literate dialogue—but binds them to a narrative concept that ultimately overwhelms the characters it seeks to illuminate. By placing the intimate crises of the Draper universe inside the pressure cooker of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Weiner aims for a profound statement on the personal amidst the political. Instead, he achieves a dissonance that diminishes both.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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