Recap / Mad Men S 7 E 13 The Milk And Honey Route

Are you lost?

Don continues his journey and has a nightmare where he's pulled over by police, who say they've been looking for him. He stops for several days in Alva, Oklahoma when his car breaks down. Don is mildly hustled by a young man who gets an extra $10 for finding him some alcohol, and later Don reluctantly attends a veterans' fundraiser to repair one of their homes. Don becomes nervous when introduced to a fellow Korean War veteran, Jerry, but is relieved when Jerry says his tour took place after Don had gone home. Don recalls for them how he killed his commanding officer after dropping his lighter, causing a fatal explosion (he omits the bit about subsequently stealing said CO's identity). Another vet shares his horror story of World War II. The vets later discover that the $400 they raised has been stolen. They assume Don stole it and beat him up, demanding that he return the money and taking his car as collateral. Don demands the cash back from the young hustler who set him up, and gives the boy advice about the difficulty of having to be someone you are not. Don returns the cash for his car, and grants the young man's request for a ride to the bus stop. Don then surprises him by giving him his car, disposing of yet another material possession, after which Don waits for the bus.

Betty feels sick while at college and suffers a broken rib when she collapses; X-rays reveal she has advanced lung cancer and may live up to a year, but only if she accepts debilitating treatments. Henry wants her to do that and asks Sally to try to convince her, but Betty — who is still haunted by having to witness her mother's lingering illness and death — refuses. Instead, she gives Sally instructions for dressing and grooming her corpse, and heads back to class.

At McCann, Pete gets an unwelcome visit from Duck Phillips that turns into a genuine opportunity for both a career with Learjet and a fresh start with Trudy and Tammy, if they will move with him to Wichita. Trudy, who reveals that she has never stopped loving Pete, agrees.

This episode contains examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Duck, who makes a bee-line for the booze as soon as he enters Pete's office in the morning. It somehow doesn't affect his skills as a headhunter.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Betty's cancer diagnosis forces Sally to realize a love for her mother that she hasn't been able to articulate in years. Likewise, Betty reveals that she's come to realize that Sally's independent nature is actually a sign of strength, rather than a cause of concern. She basically entrusts Sally to help keep the family together after her death.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • One of the veterans served in Korea and starts asking questions about Don's service there. The way he is asking, one starts to suspect that he met the real Don Draper and is about to expose Don as an imposter. Don starts to get defensive in his answers but then the issue is averted when the veteran reveals that he only got to Korea in 1953, long after the real Don Draper died and Dick Whitman assumed his identity.
  • Later on when the veterans are all sharing their horror stories from war, Don finally opens up for the first time and reveals his experiences with unintentionally killing the real Don Draper. He ends up stopping just short of actually revealing the identity theft however.
  Don: I killed my CO. We were under fire, fuel everywhere. And I dropped my lighter. And I blew him apart. And I got to go home.
• Big Damn Kiss: Pete manages to win over Trudy after years of separation, with their new life together Sealed with a Kiss.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • The veterans seem like a nice bunch of guys who embrace Don because they share a common bond of having experienced the horrors of war. However, as soon as they get into their heads that Don is a thief who stole the donation money, they turn mean, beat him up and seize his car. They have no proof and don't even give Don a chance to defend himself.
  • From the veterans' perspective Don appears to be this. He seemed like a nice quiet guy and a fellow veteran whom they invited into their circle and shared their war stories with. He even donated a full $40.00 to the fund to help their friend rebuild from a fire. Then they discover that he was actually playing them all along and was simply looking for an opportunity to steal from them. He might even be a Phony Veteran. They are completely wrong but they never get a chance to find that out.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Duck is a slobbering, irresponsible drunk who has somehow managed to become a brilliant headhunter.
• The Bus Came Back: Duck shows up once more, for the first time since the Season 6 finale. And just like then, he's present to help look for replacements after Don has vacated. He's also fallen back off the wagon.
• Call-Back: The veterans singing "Over There" is this to "The Arrangments" as this song was played over the closing credits after Betty's father Gene, himself an old soldier, died.
• Cassandra Truth: Upon hearing that the veteran donations were stolen, Don (who is accused of the theft) pleads innocence, noting that he wouldn't have any need for their money. The other veterans don't believe him, holding Don down as they beat him with a phonebook, and then temporarily take his car as collateral.
• Deconstruction: The townsfolk that Don befriends serves as this for the whole "Hero leaves his life behind and finds a place he could belong" trope. On first glance they appear to be friendly, good natured and understanding people, and implies that Don could have found a place where he could stop running. However, once the townsfolk find out that the charity auction was robbed, they immediately reveal themselves to be a pack of ignorant, violent, paranoid hypocrites. Taken even further when it's revealed the entire charity event was for someone who burned down his own store for the insurance money. Word of God states the situation was done to counter the notion that once people leave big cities, people are kinder and more down to Earth than anyone else.
• Divorce Is Temporary: Roughly two and a half years after separating from each other, Pete and Trudy get back together.
• Doting Parent: Pete truly shows himself to be like this to Tammy, patching her up and affectionately referring to her as "Wonder Woman".
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After being treated like the universe's Butt-Monkey for the duration of the series, Pete Campbell finally ends things on a high note, gaining a lucrative job with Learjet and patching things up with Trudy.
• Face Death with Dignity: Why Betty refuses to get treatment for her lung cancer. She says she knows her time is over and wants to spare her family from what she dealt with in seeing her own mother suffer.
  Betty: I watched my mother die. I won't do that to you.
• Hustler: Andy, the hotel handyman who overcharges Don for a bottle of whisky and later steals the $400 the veterans have raised. Don — himself accused of the latter — forces Andy to give him the money, which he gives back to the veterans. Perhaps recognising a kindred spirit, Don later gives Andy a chance, in the form of the keys to his Cadillac.
  Don: This is a big crime, taking those people's money. If you keep it you have to be someone else and it's not what you think it is. You cannot get off on that foot in life.
• Hypocrite: Don wanted to leave the motel multiple times, but the people running it kept convincing him to stick around for a little while longer. When he's confronted by them later in his hotel room, the woman behind the counter asks him why he didn't just leave when he had the chance.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After returning the money he didn't steal to begin with, Don tells the hotel owner that he ain't paying for his room. In fairness, his wife led the veterans to Don's room, where they beat him with a phonebook, due to them getting in their heads that Don is a thief who stole the donation money.
  • A possible interpretation is that the hotel owner, realizing his employee skipped town, put two and two together and realized who took the money. He looked more ashamed than angry when Don refused to pay for his room and wordlessly returned his car keys.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Duck's approach to setting up Pete's future. Pete is not amused. But it works.
• Lethal Diagnosis: Betty suffers a sizable fall as she's climbing up the steps at school, and schedules to see if anything is wrong. To the shock of her and Henry, it turns out that she has lung cancer.
• Love Confession: Pete, after being told by Trudy that he never actually lost her love, invokes this trope sincerely.
• Male Gaze: Don checks out the woman sunbathing by the motel pool. Then her husband and kids show up, and things go no further.
• Manly Tears: The usually tacit Henry tells Sally that it's okay to cry over Betty's fate, before breaking down in tears himself.
  • Don and the other veterans just barely avert crying as they share their history with each other. The anecdotes leave them vulnerable and shaken, and Don has clearly been perspiring wearily throughout the night.
• Mood Whiplash: Don spends an evening at the local veteran's hall where ends up bonding with some of the veterans and they even get him to open up about some of the stuff that happened to him during the war. The next day, Don is woken up when the same veterans break into his motel room and beat him up because they think he stole the donation money.
  • Betty being humorously signed as "Mrs Robinson" by the university student who got her at the hospital is followed by the reveal she's terminally ill with lung cancer.
• Nostalgia Filter: Trudy lampshades this when Pete proposes re-marrying one another.
  I'm jealous of your ability to be sentimental about the past—I'm not able to do that—I remember things as they were.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Pete managed to save the Avon account for McCann, after a McCann employee inadvertently insulted the CEO, and Joan—who had brought the account in the first place—cashed out.
• Refuge in Audacity: Duck Philips is desperate to find Learjet a new marketing manager so he brownbeats Pete into having a meeting with a Learjet executive without telling Pete that it is a job interview. The truth quickly comes out but the Learjet executive is very impressed with Pete so Duck start negotiating on Pete's behalf without Pete's permission. When Pete fail to show up for dinner with the executive and his wife, Duck convinces the executive that Learjet insulted Pete with their low offer and uses this to negotiate a bigger salary and even stock options. He then gets on a roll and manages to convince Jim Hobart that Pete going to Learjet is a good thing for McCann. Up to that point Pete did not want to leave McCann or New York but the sheer audacity of Duck's actions forces him to reexamine his life and he starts to see all of it as a sign that life is offering him a second chance. He describes the entire chain of events as "supernatural".
• Shirtless Scene: Don gets just a bit of time where we see his upper half during a swim.
• Shout-Out:
  • Betty is referred to as "Mrs. Robinson" at one point, though the nurse who initially meets up with her doesn't pick up on the joke until Betty alludes to it.
  • At the motel Don reads The Godfather by Mario Puzo, a year after its publication and two years before the movie adaptation. As he's going to be there for a few days, he'll need some more books; Andy comes up with The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton and Hawaii by James Michener.
• Silent Scapegoat: Don is blamed for stealing money from a charity that was actually stolen by a local conman. Don knows he did it but doesn't want him to be forced to leave town and get a new identity like he did, so when he finds him, Don takes the money, gives it back himself, and leaves town.
• Survival Mantra: The veterans have a variation of "You did what you had to do", as a way of coping with the stress they endure from the darker parts of their war service.
• The Topic of Cancer: They make it clear that it will end up taking Betty. She chooses to accept it. Betty realizes that, even in fighting it, that she will be reduced to something unlike herself, which she doesn't want Sally to see after being forced to watch her own mother go through a similar process.
• Unwanted Assistance: This is Pete's initial opinion on Duck's interventions, before eventually going along with them.
• Walking the Earth: What Don seems to have settled into at this point. He recounts his destination plans over the phone with Sally, without really implying that he has a set end point (though it appears that his current goal is to eventually reach the Grand Canyon).
• War Is Hell: What Floyd's story gets across.
• Wham Episode: Betty's cancer diagnosis.