Mad Men Series Finale
I watched the Mad Men Series Finale. End of an era. I really liked the series finale, although not as much as many. I'm pretty sure, as a whole, I prefer The Sopranos and Breaking Bad finales as perfect pieces. Actually, I could argue that Person to Person was a little like Not Fade Away. Unbelievably creative and poetic- but with too many faults breaking up the transcendent parts.
However, the eps' true strength was the its depiction of the Drapers (Sally, Betty, even Bobby, ESPECIALLY Don.) That's made it a classic, creative piece that broke the prestige drama/dark anti-hero of having an unsettling or depressing series finale. To be frank, I was a little underwhelmed at how the finale dealt with everyone else. Here's my initial word vomit. I didn't have the discipline to cover everything. Here's what I really want to get off my chest since I watched it last night.
Person to Person
To be fair, I think Pete actually already had a really good conclusion to his story and just needed the homage of the finale's small grace notes. Roger's end was superficial. It could have been more interesting. However, it felt appropriate to Roger's typical role on the show as comic relief and his relationship with Marie was a long time coming.
However, I was disappointed in Peggy's and Joan's end which I found on the empty side for both. IMO, I would have kept Joan asking Peggy to join her production company but ended it with a *fight*. It felt realistic that Joan would ask Peggy to be her partner. Peggy is brilliant and Joan has all of the nostalgia of being out of the biz and away from Peggy for awhile. Moreover, Joan's "Don't you hate it there?" remark screamed that Joan using her new ME version of feminism to project how Peggy would feel about McCann. However, at the same time, it's ridiculous to assume that they'd be partners for the same reason why they fight and Joan, in particular, mistreats Peggy whenever the conversation gets heavier than snarking on Don for marrying his secretary or writing a roommate ad. It would also be a brilliant reversal if there was a conflict where PEGGY was fine at McCann and wanted to...."always be a supplicant" in a flawed, sexist company because if she "really makes the right moves", she can be a Creative Director by 1980 of a major ad agency. Meanwhile, JOAN was in the "I can't work within this system"/"I want to burn this place to the ground" mindset. Why is that every McCann guy who takes a girl to lunch considers her the desert? (To add, the major personal note for Joan is that she ends the show romantically alone while the major personal note for Peggy is that she ends the show in love.) Mind you, I believe that role reversal did happen and can join its place on meta on why the show is so awesome. However, I wanted to see it in the form of a S1-style *debate* between the two ladies. That conflict would have been far more interesting to me than Richard-come-lately creating enough conflict for just a Feminism 101-type storyline.
Of course, I do have state the practical obvious. Peggy can still be empowered working within McCann's system in 1971; I'd argue the life-long secretaries, especially at it stood in the early and mid-1960s, could not be empowered. Peggy had to become a copywriter for a chance at mobility in that agency. It's a different situation from pre-S5 Joan who was just resigned to a not-empowering, interesting role that drew on her considerable brain-power. Moreover, Peggy may be working within the belly of the beast instead of threating Jim Hobart with the EEOC and a Feminist March. However, Peggy, unlike S1-2 Joan isn't pushing her conciliatory methods of attaining her ambition on other women. Peggy was very supportive of Joan- even though Joan left and broke contract. AS PEGGY SHOULD BE. However, it's interesting to compare Peggy's friendly respect for Joan leaving to either retire or start a business (either one was cool by Peggy) with her disapproving, immediate stern anger with Don for leaving McCann. LOL. (Elizabeth Moss was terrific on that phone call with Don, btw. It was touching- but I had to pause from laughing twice. "Put him through" (said worriedly and loving to the operator) "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!" (said angrily to Don) LOLOLOLOL.) Some of that is that leaving to retire to an organized apartment with your son or eventually starting a plan after a public break for genuine reasons is what the grownups do. Just leaving in the middle of a meeting to California to do goodness knows what is...something else. However, some of it is also that Peggy really believed Don could actually do very well by doing what Peggy is doing- creative advertising work but even more, on Don's executive, highly paid, cossetted, glamorous level that Peggy is still yearning for. Peggy mirrors herself with Don and thus asks, "Don't you want to work on Coca Cola?"
I also didn't care for Peggy/Stan. I did think Stan was attracted to Peggy back into S4. However still, back in S4, I thought Stan was vile and even worse, a less interesting, charismatic, and funny version of faux liberal pretentious chauvinist poseur-type who couldn't get along with Peggy than Paul Kinsey. And S4 was Stan's high point because, at least, then I was intrigued enough to *think* about him. Ugh, Peggy deserved better. I ended up loving Pete/Trudy too much to hold onto my admitted S1-2 Pete/Peggy dark-shipping. However, maybe they shouldn't have down-graded Abe Drexler or Michael Ginsberg who actually did show lots of promise at the beginning for a potential end-game ship for Peggy.
However, the finale hammered home two related feelings that have been percolating inside me for awhile. (1) Mad Men likes the One Percent, or at least, thinks the quest to become rich is a worthwhile one and (2) Mad Men is actually pro-advertising.
Most of the leads got happy endings in the series finale and they were all powered by the Almighty Dollar. That goes for Joan, Roger, Pete & Trudy, Don, and even Megan who became fabulously wealthy and even Peggy & Stan who are embedded Big Agency Yuppie Class and primed for more. (Plus, Peggy owns a building address that will end up sky-rocketing.) Betty and the kids lost out a little because even money can't stop late-stage cancer. However, even Betty can pass away in more comfortable idleness and rest-assured that her children could have three sources of serious cash in Don, Henry, and Betty's brother and sister-in-law.
However, it's actually ends up being a more realistically egalitarian message than just a SJW message pouting about the evils of capitalism and how OF COURSE the rich don't have it what it takes to access the TRUE happiness and goodness. A person can facilely watch the earlier seasons and conclude that the show's crucial show is that money can't buy happiness. After all, watch the expensive attired angst in skyscrapers and McMansions. The end of the show challenges that and says that the super-wealthy can choose to direct their money and opportunities however they want. Maybe buying Cadillac or Jaguar on whims didn't make Don happy; his salve is the option to retire verrrry young and a stay at the retreat. Meanwhile, Joan just had to decide that a new business was the best way to invest her money to make her happy instead of a makeover to fit in McCann or a premature retirement. It stands in sharp contrast to the characters who really seemed to come to memorably ugly endings that they can't possibly have the resources to escape- Lane Pryce, Midge, Paul Kinsey, Diana, most of the Whitnam clan, arguably Stephanie.
Money and the opportunities it provides isn't the enemy. It's how money and opportunities are unfairly clustered in the hands of the few that's the consistent problem of Mad Men. But yet, IMO, one of the silver linings of Mad Men is that society got better and better so that it wasn't just Pete/Trudy and Roger with that cold-hard-cash-fueled happy ending. It's something that Joan has partner proceeds and Peggy is a rising player in a major agency which is all part and parcel of the change of 1960s. (Also, IMO, Megan has her $1 million partly because of the development of the modern divorce which instructed that women contribute to a marriage and should be compensated for that which trickled into Don's brain.)
Second, a bunch of my favorite moments in this show were the advertising pitches. Mad Men is paid for by advertising on AMC- and Matt Weiner is a fan of (good) advertising. A well-illustrated, witty, interestingly theme advertising is art. Don Draper doesn't just take a "Make the stewardess's skirt shorter because sex sells" or "People have a death wish so die with cigarette companies" or whatever slop you want to shovel out because monkeys can advertise. Yes, people are desperate to be told what to do....but there's some discerning, conscious or unconscious, element to whether advertising works.
Granted, FOUR of my favorite pitches were disasters- the Sheraton "Did the vacationer shed his skin for vacay or commit suicide and what's the difference?", the Bye Bye Sugar, Hello Patio! commercial, the "Why I'm Quitting Tobacco" New York Times letter, and above all, the Hershey pitch. However, it goes to show. Ad making is an art form; controversy is part of the parcel. It's just not always part of the corporate mission. Still, *I've* actually thought of MM fondly when I interact with a diet soda or Hershey bar or gone to a resort or read someone other entity's (usually less well-written and more prissily careful) letter to The New York Times. TRUE STORY. Even the failures (and perhaps especially the failures) made me feel something, even more than the actual product.
Now, the I'd Like To Buy the World a Coke commercial is no such beautiful disaster. OK. Fine. It was just an extremely skillful, slick commercial that would probably work on me subconsciously instead of the messier commercials that force me to think about them. Just as well. If that commercial embodies the wisdom of Don's slickness along with cuddly, beautiful feelings of multi-cultural LURVE because Don as grown, it's just as well that the curtain fell on that. I want Don to find genuine, wholesome happiness but it's his ARCS OF DISASTER that likely put him in my Top Three Favorite TV Characters list.
So, I guess is where I advance my theory of what happened to Don. I think Don came up with I'd Like To Buy the World a Coke commercial and came back to McCann a hero. However, still, Don may have been the toast of the agency for awhile but he was still one in a pack of creative directors. Don can't change a mega-machine like McCann but also McCann can't change a dysfunctional force of nature like Don. I think the compromise would be that Don comes up with some GREAT ideas for McCann and still works there so Jim Hobart doesn't continue to feel conned and saves face which he was losing with Don's and Joan's and Roger's departure, but Don reserves his right to flake out and go to the movies in the middle of work and daydream in meetings without consequence. That actually sounds pretty ideal for all.
I don't get where people get that Don abandoned his kids. Along with going back to McCann to make the Coke commercial, he's back in New York near his kids. If Don wasn't away or on a bender, he tended to have the kids for weekends and holidays. I say, once Betty dies, Sally stays at Miss Porters to live her life and the kids go to William's. I did disagree with Sally that I don't think Henry would disregard Betty's wishes on where her kids end up to keep the boys. Henry was a great step-father but I don't quite see the math that he feels like a father to these children, independent of Betty. Moreover, as the NON-family member and more than a stepfather but a great husband to Betty, he SHOULD respect Bettys' wishes. So, I think the boys went to William's house and his wife's house.
However, I think Don actually used the lessons that he learned to become more stable and value what he has (early S7), reduce the drinking and rampant sex (early S7), get that there are people who love him instead of dwelling on his aloneness (Leonard), to evaluate that he can drop the job and physical possessions for awhile but a relationship with his kids is the one thing he can't abandon entirely (his on-the-road-adventure). I think all of it helped him become a better split-custody parent who can reliably visit and have the children over frequently- even if he still remains a limited person who doesn't have the wherewithal and track record to stay on top of children on a regular basis and even if he's still likely to withdraw when he's with them or do stuff like flirt back with Sally's friend because he likes the attention. He will absolutely continue to spill wine on the carpet and not get it professionally cleaned if he's in the dumps or lost in his head.
Plus, based on the Gene Hofstadt storyline, William and his wife likely can't just foot the bill for providing for all three children as a matter of course like Henry could. Don will have to financially provide a lot more than he had in the last four years. Moreover, I think this is essentially what Betty expected and wanted. Maybe a little rosier. As I read it when Don leaves his temporary retreat, he won't abandon his children. He actually hadn't when he went on the road. He will draw closer to his kids as he's become a better person and his kids are older and in Don's words, thus, easier to love and relate to. However while Don got better, there is still an instability and selfishness, a "I'm so sad Betty is dying- Imma gonna get really drunk and withdraw in myself and look for bandaids for my wounds" instead of a true custodial excellent single parent's instincts to immediately return home, no matter what Sally and Betty said.
Of course, it's not ideal. Don should have gotten it right the first time and not been such a bad husband to Betty that OF COURSE she divorced him or failing that, Don should have demonstrated enough of a good adult track record that Betty would be comfortable letting him solely raise his own children (albeit helped with a wealthy man's servants) or he should have married well the second time around. Life is short. Children are fragile. Lives are easily destroyed. This is why there's no shrugging at breaking up two marriages and multi-year-long benders.
However, the flip side of the fragility and difficulty of life is that people have to have some flexibility and understanding when a flawed person chooses to make a change and willingness to work within the confines of that. Don can't fix his marriages- because Betty and Megan both divorced him. Confessing his desertion to the US government involves cutting off everyone who relies on him, including his children. Giving away everything and disappearing into hobo oblivion is more of the same. However, he can do a lot of what he'd done in the last year- try to live more honestly, give away some resources to perhaps OVER right some wrongs, cut back on the drinking and sex, seek outside spiritual and psychological help, be willing to work and even humiliate himself to recover his version of fulfilling employment, sit back and evaluate whether it's appropriate to compete with a guy to WIN (and sometimes it is) or whether you should just help them or not stand in their way, do the harder thing to recover any standing he lost by folly instead of just running away, re-connect with actual friends Peggy and Roger.
So, I think you can draw a line from Adam to Lane to Leonard to chart Don's development. Three not-glamorous, plain mirrors of Don who can't be as fun mirrors for Don to look into than an actual mirror. Three guys who made some mistakes and are breaking down and crying. How does Don deal? From the beginning, I've found Don entirely capable of empathy and human understanding. It may be worth charting but Don holds a lot of the Kindest Moments in the series. And yet, he's mistaken for anti-hero frequently. That's because while Don can easily comfort and financially help, say, broken baby bird women dealing with issues way outside of his responsibility, he struggled with displaying empathy when doing so would admit that he done fucked up. I actually think he could show grace when doing so would admit that he done fucked up (to pick an episode, with Betty, Peggy, Pete, and Roger in Shut the Door, Have a Seat). However, not empathy to help someone really down and out who isn't standing up for themselves. And that kills Adam and Lane.
Granted, it was easier for Don on a practical level to embrace Leonard than abide bringing Adam into his Don Draper world to blow his cover and re-trigger trauma or abide keeping on Lane as a partner and financial manager for the agency even when trust really was justifiably broken. However, on an emotional level, Don found it too hard to admit that he abandoned his brother and made him think he was dead and just responded to it with a "My life only goes in one direction. Forward' tautology of (bad-ass awesome sounding) nothing. On an emotional level, Don found it too hard to admit to Lane that yes, the partnership set up was inequitable and he, Bert, and Roger lined their pockets with the PPL sale and Lucky Strike while Lane was expected to just deal with the risks from those moves without the rewards.
However, with Leonard, Don essentially admitted something huge. He went beyond "Nobody loves Dick Whitnam" to admit that it's entirely possible that, as Leonard says, the people in people in Don's life do love him, they're trying to express that love, but Don is the one who is sitting in the cold refrigerator and becoming cold himself in turning a blind eye and cold heart to all of that love. That's major. And it's one of the reasons why I think that moment signaled Don can come back to New York to connect with his kids. One of the main frustrating things about Don is, not take anything away from the horrors of his childhood and how that stays with you, he's been uniquely blessed that a LOT of characters have tried very hard to love him and have really helped him. However, Don hasn't let it stick because either he's unworthy in his depressive moments or felt that there had to be something more exciting and fulfilling than the love being sent his way in his manic moments. Don's children (especially namely Sally and Bobby) are particularly emblematic of that. Like, Don throwing Sally out of the bathroom in S2 because she's looking at him with too much beaming, childish adoration while he's shaving the morning after torrid sex with Bobbi. Or Don having an emotionally fulfilling day with Bobby and having an epiphany that he loves Bobby, as a particularly kind, sensitive boy, in The Flood, and then, completely dropping Bobby for the rest of the season because that love just felt too placid compared to the DRAHMA of Megan v. Sylvia v. a Merger of SCD and CGS to OWN Madison Avenue.
However, the eps' true strength was the its depiction of the Drapers (Sally, Betty, even Bobby, ESPECIALLY Don.) That's made it a classic, creative piece that broke the prestige drama/dark anti-hero of having an unsettling or depressing series finale. To be frank, I was a little underwhelmed at how the finale dealt with everyone else. Here's my initial word vomit. I didn't have the discipline to cover everything. Here's what I really want to get off my chest since I watched it last night.
Person to Person
To be fair, I think Pete actually already had a really good conclusion to his story and just needed the homage of the finale's small grace notes. Roger's end was superficial. It could have been more interesting. However, it felt appropriate to Roger's typical role on the show as comic relief and his relationship with Marie was a long time coming.
However, I was disappointed in Peggy's and Joan's end which I found on the empty side for both. IMO, I would have kept Joan asking Peggy to join her production company but ended it with a *fight*. It felt realistic that Joan would ask Peggy to be her partner. Peggy is brilliant and Joan has all of the nostalgia of being out of the biz and away from Peggy for awhile. Moreover, Joan's "Don't you hate it there?" remark screamed that Joan using her new ME version of feminism to project how Peggy would feel about McCann. However, at the same time, it's ridiculous to assume that they'd be partners for the same reason why they fight and Joan, in particular, mistreats Peggy whenever the conversation gets heavier than snarking on Don for marrying his secretary or writing a roommate ad. It would also be a brilliant reversal if there was a conflict where PEGGY was fine at McCann and wanted to...."always be a supplicant" in a flawed, sexist company because if she "really makes the right moves", she can be a Creative Director by 1980 of a major ad agency. Meanwhile, JOAN was in the "I can't work within this system"/"I want to burn this place to the ground" mindset. Why is that every McCann guy who takes a girl to lunch considers her the desert? (To add, the major personal note for Joan is that she ends the show romantically alone while the major personal note for Peggy is that she ends the show in love.) Mind you, I believe that role reversal did happen and can join its place on meta on why the show is so awesome. However, I wanted to see it in the form of a S1-style *debate* between the two ladies. That conflict would have been far more interesting to me than Richard-come-lately creating enough conflict for just a Feminism 101-type storyline.
Of course, I do have state the practical obvious. Peggy can still be empowered working within McCann's system in 1971; I'd argue the life-long secretaries, especially at it stood in the early and mid-1960s, could not be empowered. Peggy had to become a copywriter for a chance at mobility in that agency. It's a different situation from pre-S5 Joan who was just resigned to a not-empowering, interesting role that drew on her considerable brain-power. Moreover, Peggy may be working within the belly of the beast instead of threating Jim Hobart with the EEOC and a Feminist March. However, Peggy, unlike S1-2 Joan isn't pushing her conciliatory methods of attaining her ambition on other women. Peggy was very supportive of Joan- even though Joan left and broke contract. AS PEGGY SHOULD BE. However, it's interesting to compare Peggy's friendly respect for Joan leaving to either retire or start a business (either one was cool by Peggy) with her disapproving, immediate stern anger with Don for leaving McCann. LOL. (Elizabeth Moss was terrific on that phone call with Don, btw. It was touching- but I had to pause from laughing twice. "Put him through" (said worriedly and loving to the operator) "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!" (said angrily to Don) LOLOLOLOL.) Some of that is that leaving to retire to an organized apartment with your son or eventually starting a plan after a public break for genuine reasons is what the grownups do. Just leaving in the middle of a meeting to California to do goodness knows what is...something else. However, some of it is also that Peggy really believed Don could actually do very well by doing what Peggy is doing- creative advertising work but even more, on Don's executive, highly paid, cossetted, glamorous level that Peggy is still yearning for. Peggy mirrors herself with Don and thus asks, "Don't you want to work on Coca Cola?"
I also didn't care for Peggy/Stan. I did think Stan was attracted to Peggy back into S4. However still, back in S4, I thought Stan was vile and even worse, a less interesting, charismatic, and funny version of faux liberal pretentious chauvinist poseur-type who couldn't get along with Peggy than Paul Kinsey. And S4 was Stan's high point because, at least, then I was intrigued enough to *think* about him. Ugh, Peggy deserved better. I ended up loving Pete/Trudy too much to hold onto my admitted S1-2 Pete/Peggy dark-shipping. However, maybe they shouldn't have down-graded Abe Drexler or Michael Ginsberg who actually did show lots of promise at the beginning for a potential end-game ship for Peggy.
However, the finale hammered home two related feelings that have been percolating inside me for awhile. (1) Mad Men likes the One Percent, or at least, thinks the quest to become rich is a worthwhile one and (2) Mad Men is actually pro-advertising.
Most of the leads got happy endings in the series finale and they were all powered by the Almighty Dollar. That goes for Joan, Roger, Pete & Trudy, Don, and even Megan who became fabulously wealthy and even Peggy & Stan who are embedded Big Agency Yuppie Class and primed for more. (Plus, Peggy owns a building address that will end up sky-rocketing.) Betty and the kids lost out a little because even money can't stop late-stage cancer. However, even Betty can pass away in more comfortable idleness and rest-assured that her children could have three sources of serious cash in Don, Henry, and Betty's brother and sister-in-law.
However, it's actually ends up being a more realistically egalitarian message than just a SJW message pouting about the evils of capitalism and how OF COURSE the rich don't have it what it takes to access the TRUE happiness and goodness. A person can facilely watch the earlier seasons and conclude that the show's crucial show is that money can't buy happiness. After all, watch the expensive attired angst in skyscrapers and McMansions. The end of the show challenges that and says that the super-wealthy can choose to direct their money and opportunities however they want. Maybe buying Cadillac or Jaguar on whims didn't make Don happy; his salve is the option to retire verrrry young and a stay at the retreat. Meanwhile, Joan just had to decide that a new business was the best way to invest her money to make her happy instead of a makeover to fit in McCann or a premature retirement. It stands in sharp contrast to the characters who really seemed to come to memorably ugly endings that they can't possibly have the resources to escape- Lane Pryce, Midge, Paul Kinsey, Diana, most of the Whitnam clan, arguably Stephanie.
Money and the opportunities it provides isn't the enemy. It's how money and opportunities are unfairly clustered in the hands of the few that's the consistent problem of Mad Men. But yet, IMO, one of the silver linings of Mad Men is that society got better and better so that it wasn't just Pete/Trudy and Roger with that cold-hard-cash-fueled happy ending. It's something that Joan has partner proceeds and Peggy is a rising player in a major agency which is all part and parcel of the change of 1960s. (Also, IMO, Megan has her $1 million partly because of the development of the modern divorce which instructed that women contribute to a marriage and should be compensated for that which trickled into Don's brain.)
Second, a bunch of my favorite moments in this show were the advertising pitches. Mad Men is paid for by advertising on AMC- and Matt Weiner is a fan of (good) advertising. A well-illustrated, witty, interestingly theme advertising is art. Don Draper doesn't just take a "Make the stewardess's skirt shorter because sex sells" or "People have a death wish so die with cigarette companies" or whatever slop you want to shovel out because monkeys can advertise. Yes, people are desperate to be told what to do....but there's some discerning, conscious or unconscious, element to whether advertising works.
Granted, FOUR of my favorite pitches were disasters- the Sheraton "Did the vacationer shed his skin for vacay or commit suicide and what's the difference?", the Bye Bye Sugar, Hello Patio! commercial, the "Why I'm Quitting Tobacco" New York Times letter, and above all, the Hershey pitch. However, it goes to show. Ad making is an art form; controversy is part of the parcel. It's just not always part of the corporate mission. Still, *I've* actually thought of MM fondly when I interact with a diet soda or Hershey bar or gone to a resort or read someone other entity's (usually less well-written and more prissily careful) letter to The New York Times. TRUE STORY. Even the failures (and perhaps especially the failures) made me feel something, even more than the actual product.
Now, the I'd Like To Buy the World a Coke commercial is no such beautiful disaster. OK. Fine. It was just an extremely skillful, slick commercial that would probably work on me subconsciously instead of the messier commercials that force me to think about them. Just as well. If that commercial embodies the wisdom of Don's slickness along with cuddly, beautiful feelings of multi-cultural LURVE because Don as grown, it's just as well that the curtain fell on that. I want Don to find genuine, wholesome happiness but it's his ARCS OF DISASTER that likely put him in my Top Three Favorite TV Characters list.
So, I guess is where I advance my theory of what happened to Don. I think Don came up with I'd Like To Buy the World a Coke commercial and came back to McCann a hero. However, still, Don may have been the toast of the agency for awhile but he was still one in a pack of creative directors. Don can't change a mega-machine like McCann but also McCann can't change a dysfunctional force of nature like Don. I think the compromise would be that Don comes up with some GREAT ideas for McCann and still works there so Jim Hobart doesn't continue to feel conned and saves face which he was losing with Don's and Joan's and Roger's departure, but Don reserves his right to flake out and go to the movies in the middle of work and daydream in meetings without consequence. That actually sounds pretty ideal for all.
I don't get where people get that Don abandoned his kids. Along with going back to McCann to make the Coke commercial, he's back in New York near his kids. If Don wasn't away or on a bender, he tended to have the kids for weekends and holidays. I say, once Betty dies, Sally stays at Miss Porters to live her life and the kids go to William's. I did disagree with Sally that I don't think Henry would disregard Betty's wishes on where her kids end up to keep the boys. Henry was a great step-father but I don't quite see the math that he feels like a father to these children, independent of Betty. Moreover, as the NON-family member and more than a stepfather but a great husband to Betty, he SHOULD respect Bettys' wishes. So, I think the boys went to William's house and his wife's house.
However, I think Don actually used the lessons that he learned to become more stable and value what he has (early S7), reduce the drinking and rampant sex (early S7), get that there are people who love him instead of dwelling on his aloneness (Leonard), to evaluate that he can drop the job and physical possessions for awhile but a relationship with his kids is the one thing he can't abandon entirely (his on-the-road-adventure). I think all of it helped him become a better split-custody parent who can reliably visit and have the children over frequently- even if he still remains a limited person who doesn't have the wherewithal and track record to stay on top of children on a regular basis and even if he's still likely to withdraw when he's with them or do stuff like flirt back with Sally's friend because he likes the attention. He will absolutely continue to spill wine on the carpet and not get it professionally cleaned if he's in the dumps or lost in his head.
Plus, based on the Gene Hofstadt storyline, William and his wife likely can't just foot the bill for providing for all three children as a matter of course like Henry could. Don will have to financially provide a lot more than he had in the last four years. Moreover, I think this is essentially what Betty expected and wanted. Maybe a little rosier. As I read it when Don leaves his temporary retreat, he won't abandon his children. He actually hadn't when he went on the road. He will draw closer to his kids as he's become a better person and his kids are older and in Don's words, thus, easier to love and relate to. However while Don got better, there is still an instability and selfishness, a "I'm so sad Betty is dying- Imma gonna get really drunk and withdraw in myself and look for bandaids for my wounds" instead of a true custodial excellent single parent's instincts to immediately return home, no matter what Sally and Betty said.
Of course, it's not ideal. Don should have gotten it right the first time and not been such a bad husband to Betty that OF COURSE she divorced him or failing that, Don should have demonstrated enough of a good adult track record that Betty would be comfortable letting him solely raise his own children (albeit helped with a wealthy man's servants) or he should have married well the second time around. Life is short. Children are fragile. Lives are easily destroyed. This is why there's no shrugging at breaking up two marriages and multi-year-long benders.
However, the flip side of the fragility and difficulty of life is that people have to have some flexibility and understanding when a flawed person chooses to make a change and willingness to work within the confines of that. Don can't fix his marriages- because Betty and Megan both divorced him. Confessing his desertion to the US government involves cutting off everyone who relies on him, including his children. Giving away everything and disappearing into hobo oblivion is more of the same. However, he can do a lot of what he'd done in the last year- try to live more honestly, give away some resources to perhaps OVER right some wrongs, cut back on the drinking and sex, seek outside spiritual and psychological help, be willing to work and even humiliate himself to recover his version of fulfilling employment, sit back and evaluate whether it's appropriate to compete with a guy to WIN (and sometimes it is) or whether you should just help them or not stand in their way, do the harder thing to recover any standing he lost by folly instead of just running away, re-connect with actual friends Peggy and Roger.
So, I think you can draw a line from Adam to Lane to Leonard to chart Don's development. Three not-glamorous, plain mirrors of Don who can't be as fun mirrors for Don to look into than an actual mirror. Three guys who made some mistakes and are breaking down and crying. How does Don deal? From the beginning, I've found Don entirely capable of empathy and human understanding. It may be worth charting but Don holds a lot of the Kindest Moments in the series. And yet, he's mistaken for anti-hero frequently. That's because while Don can easily comfort and financially help, say, broken baby bird women dealing with issues way outside of his responsibility, he struggled with displaying empathy when doing so would admit that he done fucked up. I actually think he could show grace when doing so would admit that he done fucked up (to pick an episode, with Betty, Peggy, Pete, and Roger in Shut the Door, Have a Seat). However, not empathy to help someone really down and out who isn't standing up for themselves. And that kills Adam and Lane.
Granted, it was easier for Don on a practical level to embrace Leonard than abide bringing Adam into his Don Draper world to blow his cover and re-trigger trauma or abide keeping on Lane as a partner and financial manager for the agency even when trust really was justifiably broken. However, on an emotional level, Don found it too hard to admit that he abandoned his brother and made him think he was dead and just responded to it with a "My life only goes in one direction. Forward' tautology of (bad-ass awesome sounding) nothing. On an emotional level, Don found it too hard to admit to Lane that yes, the partnership set up was inequitable and he, Bert, and Roger lined their pockets with the PPL sale and Lucky Strike while Lane was expected to just deal with the risks from those moves without the rewards.
However, with Leonard, Don essentially admitted something huge. He went beyond "Nobody loves Dick Whitnam" to admit that it's entirely possible that, as Leonard says, the people in people in Don's life do love him, they're trying to express that love, but Don is the one who is sitting in the cold refrigerator and becoming cold himself in turning a blind eye and cold heart to all of that love. That's major. And it's one of the reasons why I think that moment signaled Don can come back to New York to connect with his kids. One of the main frustrating things about Don is, not take anything away from the horrors of his childhood and how that stays with you, he's been uniquely blessed that a LOT of characters have tried very hard to love him and have really helped him. However, Don hasn't let it stick because either he's unworthy in his depressive moments or felt that there had to be something more exciting and fulfilling than the love being sent his way in his manic moments. Don's children (especially namely Sally and Bobby) are particularly emblematic of that. Like, Don throwing Sally out of the bathroom in S2 because she's looking at him with too much beaming, childish adoration while he's shaving the morning after torrid sex with Bobbi. Or Don having an emotionally fulfilling day with Bobby and having an epiphany that he loves Bobby, as a particularly kind, sensitive boy, in The Flood, and then, completely dropping Bobby for the rest of the season because that love just felt too placid compared to the DRAHMA of Megan v. Sylvia v. a Merger of SCD and CGS to OWN Madison Avenue.