Here are the three brands of fake perfection that ensnare our characters throughout the episode. Thus it's fitting that "Lost Horizon" is about false utopias and attempts to escape them. A perfect world is no world worth living in, it would seem. (Indeed, the hero of the story is brought to Shangri-La by a plane crash, adding extra resonance to the shot of the plane.)Īnd yet, many of the residents of Shangri-La wish to escape. Lost Horizon, in both novel and film form, is about the land of Shangri-La, a hidden world where things are perfect and people don't age.
Thinking about utopia led me to this episode's title, "Lost Horizon," which is the name of a film Don watched all the way back in the season seven premiere. It can never be.ĭon watches the movie Lost Horizon back in the season seven premiere. Utopia, as Rachel told us way back in season one, is a lie.
No matter where the Mad Men characters are, they think there might be something better just around the corner, and it's that illusion that keeps trapping them. If every episode of Mad Men can be summarized in one scene contained within it, as I suggested in the season premiere, then the shot of the plane above is the whole show in a single frame.
It's that good an endpoint for the character. Heck, I wouldn't mind if that was the last we saw of him, if the show transitioned to filling out the lives of the other characters. Paul, rather than heading back to New York, it's as close as I've ever come to thinking he'll never be back. When this episode ends with Don driving a young hitchhiker to St. He's going to leave, and he might not ever come back. We know Don well enough by now to know what that realization is. Abraham slowly pushes in on Don's face, as he comes to some sort of realization.ĭon is thinking about how he'd rather not be here right now. And then he looks out the window.Īfter director Phil Abraham holds on this shot for a long moment, he cuts back to Don, surrounded by cans of Coca-Cola, the symbol of everything he could gain from working at McCann. It's the meeting he's wanted his whole career, a chance to really impress a big client.īut his heart isn't in it. Here's the one shot that explains Mad Men.ĭon sits in a meeting, listening to the description of a Miller beer drinker, described as a man from Wisconsin. The Greeks had two meaning for it: 'eu-topos', meaning the good place, and 'u-topos' meaning the place that cannot be." - Rachel Menken, season one, episode 6, "Babylon." "They taught us at Barnard about that word, 'utopia'.
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