"He doesn't talk for long stretches, and then he's incredibly eloquent."
Coming off of the season 6 finale, I realized once again that the enigmatic, depraved Don Draper deserved more attention. Perhaps it's unhealthy to raise such a dishonest, despicable anti-hero to further heights, but Don's jaded perspective on life merits revisiting. Don continues to be a drunk philanderer who embodies the despair of a time ravaged by high profile assassinations and riots. The summer of love isn't quite as lovely through Don's eyes. In the most recent seasons, Don has continued his dishonest way of life, but remains captivating to audiences; he is still the pitiable character we all are rooting for. Above all though, he is the same weary philosopher throwing out tastes of his downtrodden philosophy.
"It's one thing to be near the bar, another to be under it."
At face value, this moment is a piece of advice for anyone, especially the newly 21 among us. However, by delving a few layers deeper than the obvious statement, Don begins to speak to something else: endurance and survival. This quote recalls a colloquialism I'm sure we're all familiar with: get out of the kitchen, if you can't handle the heat. To put it another way, Don is addressing the feeling of drowning and the feelings of success and failure. In a succinct metaphor, Don is alluding to the hardships of his life: at times he's been near the bar (many times actually), and sometimes he's been under it. There have been times when he has been riding high, sitting on that stool, but, as we know with Don, that night usually ends with him beneath it, hair disheveled and stumbling back home.
The power of his statement is in it's combination of survival and defeat. Don seems to imply that you will never know what it means to be truly "under the bar" until you've "been near it." Likewise, you may never realize what it truly means to be near the bar until you've felt that crushing, swimming feeling of lying beneath it, bereft of your faculties and your inhibitions crushed. Don knows a lot about being crushed by the oppressive presence of the world, and for that matter alcohol.
Don evokes a seemingly simple double entendre to make his audience sit there for a moment, take a pull from a Lucky Strike or down a tumbler of rye and muse. The only way to survive is to scrub the bar's floor with your tie and never forget that feeling, then pick yourself up and never speak of it again. The two are intertwined: had you not saddled up to the bar, you never would have found yourself under it. Where you end up, near or beneath, is solely dependent upon you. Use that feeling of despair and lack of control to fuel your upward climb and maybe, just maybe, you won't end up under the bar next time.
Or maybe that's just me projecting. What do you think?
