Mike Teavee and the Chocolate Factory

Tags

charlie and the chocolate factory, children's fiction, roald dahl, television

Have you ever read a book that profoundly shaped your life?

I have. The book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When I read it for the first time in the second grade, I promised myself that I would never, ever behave like those awful, beastly children that accompanied Charlie on the tour of Willy Wonka’s factory. I would not be spoiled like the little peanut heiress Veruca Salt. I would not be sassy like the gum-chewing Violet Bureaugarde. I would not be gluttonous like the greedy Augustus Gloop. Finally, I would not watch television all the time like the vacuous Mike Teavee.

As a new reader and an eight-year-old, I loved the subversively dark humor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was turned down for being in poor taste by several publishers in the 1960s, even though Roald Dahl was already a successful author at the time. But I also understood the book to be a cautionary moral tale. When children behave badly, bad things happen, was the lesson I took from it. I was determined not to become one of those bad kids. For most of my childhood, I think I succeeded.

A few months ago, I read the book to my six-year-old son over the course of several bed times. I thought he would enjoy the book, as I did. Perhaps he’d also appreciate that the hero of the book was the humble, good-hearted, impoverished Charlie, not the loud-mouthed brats who won the other four Golden Tickets to the factory.

My son did enjoy the book, especially the songs that the Oompa-Loompas sang each time a child met some grisly fate. The moral component seemed to be lost on him, though.

“What do you think this book was trying to say?” I asked him after we finished the last chapter.

“Always follow the rules,” my son said after some thought.

“Who was your favorite character?”

“Mike Teavee!” he said without hesitation.

“Why Mike Teavee?”

“He loves television and I love television. And I love my iPad,” my son said, leaping off of his bed and reaching for his digital device. “I want to be known as Mike iPad.”

I could barely hide my disappointment.

A few days later, when I was signing him up for a summer reading program at our library, the librarian asked what password we wanted to use on our summer reading online account (because God forbid we actually tabulate the hours on a simple sheet of paper).

“What password do you want to use?” I asked my six-year-old, who was busy trying to balance a Magic Marker between his upper lip and nose at the time.

“I want my password to be ‘TV!’” he said.

“You are killing me, man,” I replied.

So my son’s password for his online summer reading log is “TV,” and his literary hero is Mike Teavee. Somewhere, out there, Roald Dahl is shaking his head. Or maybe he’s laughing wickedly.

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How to Tell if There’s a Frank Underwood Lurking in Your Office

Tags

d.c., frank underwood, house of cards, kevin spacey, netflix, office, politics, sociopath, television, washinton, workplace

If you are among the millions of Americans who subscribe to NetFlix, you probably know that Frank Underwood is the scheming, manipulative, smooth-as-molasses congressman played by Kevin Spacey in the popular political series, House of Cards. If you are not familiar with Frank Underwood, but plan on binge-watching House of Cards before the third season comes out in February, you might stop reading this post now. I may or may not have included a few spoilers. As Francis Underwood might say, consider yourself duly warned.

Even though a few of Frank Underwood’s actions and deceptions while consolidating political power seem far-fetched, most of us accept the idea that the halls of the U.S. Capitol are teeming with charming, well-dressed sociopaths. That’s why House of Cards works – it feeds off of and heightens our cynical perception of D.C. politics. “Yep,” you might say after watching Frank Underwood’s latest late-night maneuver, “I could totally see that happening.”

Watching Frank operate in the Beltway is entertaining, but what if he’s a little closer to home? Specifically, what if there is a Frank Underwood milling around right now in your workplace?

The good news is that few sociopaths are clever and socially skilled enough to take over an organization the way Frank takes over Washington. If you do, in fact, have a true Frank Underwood in your office, chances are good that he already has you well on your way to being fired or, worse, indicted for a white-collar crime you did not knowingly commit.

What’s more likely is that the sociopath in your cube farm is of average intellect and has left a few hints as to his or her true intentions. Here, then, are a few warning signs that you might have a co-worker who is up to no good:

He Lays it on a Tad Too Thick

Frank Underwood’s greatest strength is his charm. He can butter people up – or fire them up – to go forth and do his bidding. Everyone on House of Cards, from the owner of Frank’s favorite barbecue joint to the President of the United States, falls prey to Frank’s country-boy-from-South Carolina routine at some point or another.

Most folks do not possess the strength of character that propels Frank Underwood. Narcissistic people can be extremely charming and charismatic, but their spells do not work on everyone. When dealing with coworkers, trust your instincts. What kind of vibe do they give you? When someone tries to seduce you with flattery and magnetism, they are likely to overdo it, or their approach may seem out-of-character. Ask yourself: Why is Rick in Marketing being so nice to me all of a sudden? Why is he bringing donuts into the office every Monday after years of not even participating in the Christmas potluck? What does he want?

This approach to your working relationships may seem cynical, but it can also prevent you from becoming an easy target.

She Wants Everyone to Know How Hard She Works

Law enforcement types say one of the tell-tale signs of a serial embezzler is that he or she rarely takes time off. Embezzlers fear that their schemes may be exposed while they are on a vacation, so they never take one.

Taking pride in a job well done is an attribute. However, be leery of colleagues who go on and on about how hard they are working, make a big show of staying late, and regularly go into the office on weekends when no one else is around. Be especially suspicious if these efforts do not result in increased productivity, or if that employee has a “process” to their work that nobody else seems to understand. What the heck are they doing with all that extra time in the office if they aren’t getting better results?

Frank Underwood makes a big deal about how hard he works, staying in the office late into the night to broker deals or hold strategy sessions. He does this even while working on bills he secretly wants to fail. It’s all great political theater, and it makes Frank look good to his colleagues. Don’t let these kinds of tactics fool you in your workplace.

He Dishes Dirt About Other Employees

Everyone enjoys a little office gossip, but do you work with somebody who has something derogatory to say about everyone? Kind of makes you wonder what that person is saying behind your back, doesn’t it?

Frank Underwood keeps files on all of his congressional colleagues that detail their salacious deeds. He uses this information as ammo when he wants to blackmail someone into voting his way. Tread lightly around the co-worker who, like Frank, has the dirt on everyone and is more than happy to dish it. You don’t want to give that person too much material for the file he is keeping on you.

She Lies

In Washington, lying is a part of doing business. If you aren’t lying and deceiving, you aren’t getting much done.

In the workplace, however, lying is destructive. Catching someone in a pattern of seemingly harmless lies may seem minor, but it could be a sign of a larger deception. For example, your co-worker Patty in Accounts Receivable has a habit of fudging a little bit on her vacation time. This many not be a capital offense, but if you can’t trust someone to fill out their vacation requests accurately, can you really trust them to dutifully manage a core business function?

At some point, you have probably caught a colleague telling a whopper of a lie. Maybe you even confronted this person about it, and got to hear a sob story about how she’s having trouble at home, or that your boss is putting too much pressure on her. Listen to the grievances, nod politely, and make a mental note: I cannot trust this person.

He Always Has a Good Excuse

In a pivotal scene in House of Cards, President Walker rightly suspects that Frank Underwood is undermining his administration, and the president decides to cut off all contact with him. Desperate to regain the Commander-in-Chief’s favor, Underwood fires off a type-written letter about how he had an unhappy childhood and other challenges, but that he would never, ever betray the president. The earnest-sounding plea works, Underwood regains President Walker’s trust, and promptly destroys him.

The point is, every Machiavellian co-worker has a sad story to tell. He or she will employ it as a last-ditch way to stay out of trouble.

Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone deserves to be treated with compassion. Even Frank Underwood once gave his troubled henchman, Doug Stamper, a “third chance.” However, if the sad stories start piling up, and the excuses become more elaborate, it is time to take a critical eye to your co-worker’s behavior.

She is Always the Hero, and Always the Victim

When things are going great, your Frank Underwood wanna-be will find a way to claim credit. When things go poorly, he or she will be first to dodge the blame. Of course, Frank would use a little false Southern humility to take some of the edge off accepting all the glory, but not all of us are so deft and self-aware.

Keep a close eye on the colleague who feels the need to dominate every staff meeting with his or her profound commentary, then is strangely quiet when your manager wants answers about a missed deadline or a product idea that tanked. If that colleague has any Frank Underwood tendencies, he or she is already mulling over how to put all the blame onto you or someone else.

He Occasionally Turns Toward the Camera and Says Something Deliciously Snide

That would be great, wouldn’t it? Some of the best parts of House of Cards happen when Kevin Spacey’s character turns toward us and shares with us his true, evil intentions.

Unfortunately, real-life villains seldom do this.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Live From New York, It’s Saturday Tripe!

Tags

jimmy fallon, late night TV, lorne michaels, nbc, saturday night live, television

Have you ever sat in church, listening to the same pastor you’ve listened to for four years, and thought to yourself, why am I here? I’ve heard this sermon at least six times before. Why am I going through the motions like this? I could be at home in bed or eating chocolate chip pancakes right now.

The evil genius behind the most unoriginal show on TV today.

I had a similar feeling last weekend as my wife and I sat down to watch our weekly recording of Saturday Night Live. About halfway through the show, I thought to myself, why are we doing this? I don’t even enjoy this show anymore. In fact, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed it in at least two years.

As we know, Saturday Night Live has gone through all sorts of incarnations in the almost 40 years it has been on the air. There have been bad seasons and good seasons, and just so-so seasons of Saturday Night Live. The problem with the show now, in my opinion, isn’t the cast or the guest stars. It’s the plotting and the writing. Saturday Night Live has become more formulaic and devoid of innovation than ever before.

Here’s a summary of the formula:

1. Opening political sketch that usually runs for five minutes before the first joke.
2. Guest monologue with a cutesy song-and-dance number that includes a cameo of Lorne Michaels.
3. Game show parody.
4. Talk show parody.
5. A music video parody that hasn’t been the same since Andy Samberg left.
6. Musical guest.
7. Talk show parody.
8. Weekend Edition.
9. My wife or I usually fall asleep.

Anyway, last Saturday night, after watching about an hour of this, I stood up and declared, “Saturday Night Live sucks. I’m not going to watch it anymore.”

My wife did not disagree.

We have started recording Jimmy Fallon instead. So far, I think he’s been pretty funny.

The Drone on the Shelf

Tags

children, christmas, north korea, nsa, orwell, parenthood, spying, television, the elf on the shelf

The Elf on the Shelf has been around for a few years now, I know. It’s new to our household this Christmas, however, because our son has reached the age when we felt that hiring a member of Santa’s secret police would be most effective in curbing his holiday behavior. Last year, he was just getting used to the idea of this fat guy in a red suit flying around in a sleigh and spreading good cheer all over the world. This year, he really gets it. Our son is almost four years old and he completely buys into the Santa Claus concept.

“It’s almost Halloween,” I told him one warm October afternoon when we were sitting on the front stoop, eating popsicles.

“That’s nice,” my son said. “But it’s not Christmas.”

On Friday night, we unveiled the Elf on the Shelf package ($30 for a cheaply made elf doll and a hardcover storybook. Can you imagine the profit margin on this product?). We introduced our son to the elf, I read the storybook, then we sat down to watch the Elf on the Shelf Christmas Special on TV. Then, it was time to “name” our elf and file the necessary paperwork, which included registering online for an official adoption certificate. After some thought, our son decided on the name “Nick.” My wife promptly placed Nick on top of the upright piano, and explained that we cannot under any circumstances touch the elf, because then he will lose his magic.

Our son likes the idea of having Nick around the house, and so far he delights in getting up each morning to find where Nick has landed (he flies back to the North Pole every night to report to Santa on how our child is behaving). I can’t say that Nick’s presence has improved our three-year-old’s behavior, but he does understand that the elf is there to do a job.

“He talks to Santa,” he said solemnly when I reminded him that Nick wouldn’t be very pleased to see how much leftover turkey our son had left on his plate during Sunday dinner.

As a parent, I have mixed feelings about The Elf on the Shelf. On the surface, it seems like a fun Christmas tradition (one that could easily be staged without paying $30 for the boxed set). But in reading the storybook, which lays out the elf’s duties in somewhat clumsy rhyme and meter, I grew a little concerned. Take this passage, for instance:

I tell him if you have been good or been bad.
The news of the day makes him happy or sad.
A push or a shove I’ll report to “the Boss,”
but small acts of kindness will not be a loss.
In the car, in the park, or even at school,
the word will get out if you broke a rule.

Wow. So Nick is part of a vast network of elf spies who report to Santa each night leading up to Christmas on everything your child has been doing, good or bad. Then Santa alone will pass judgment on whether or not the child should be rewarded or punished in the form of giving/withholding Christmas presents. Correct me if this doesn’t sound a little bit like North Korea?

On the other hand, maybe The Elf on the Shelf is distinctly American? After all, our children are going to grow up in a world where anything they do in public or on their digital devices can be filmed, monitored and analyzed, where GPS in their phones will track everywhere they go. Maybe the elf is just a primer for the big, Orwellian world to come?

Perhaps it is good that our children become acquainted at an early age with the reality that somebody out there is watching them and taking notes. At least Nick the Elf is up-front and friendly about it:

The gleam in my eye and my bright little smile
shows you I’m listening and noting your file.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And be good!

Here’s Boomer!

Tags

current events, dogs, gary matthews, government, here's boomer, humor, media, news, observations, pittsburgh, Stephen Roth, television

When I was a kid, there was a show on NBC called “Here’s Boomer,” about a likeable, shaggy dog who led this wandering, hobo life. It was an unremarkable series, a kind of knock-off on the more popular Benji films of the day. The show had become such an arcane piece of TV trivia, in fact, that I actually thought I might be the only person alive who even remembered or thought about “Here’s Boomer.”

Then I read this article a few days ago, about a Pittsburgh man who was so affected by the show, that he actually decided to become a shaggy dog himself and have his named legally changed to “Boomer.” My first impression upon reading this was, “Boy, the people of Pittsburgh have changed a lot from the tough, hardscrabble steelworkers of the industrial age.” My second thought was, “What a sad, lonely man.” My third thought was, “Well, why not become a dog, if that’s what he wants to do?”

Pittsburgh’s Gary Matthews

I guess you could say I’m a little conflicted about this story. Part of me thinks that, as long as you aren’t doing something that’s destructive, criminal or harmful to somebody else, you should be free to do it. By all accounts, Gary Matthews, or Boomer, just enjoys barking, eating from a bowl on the floor and occasionally sleeping in his dog house. What harm is there in that?

Another part of me, the “judgy” part, thinks perhaps Boomer should get some psychiatric help, and also worries if this story isn’t indicative of a larger trend. There is, after all, a sub-culture of people called Furries who like to wear animal suits and pretend that they are cute, cuddly creatures. Most Furries treat this as a hobby, but what if many of them, like Gary Matthews, decided to pursue their passion full-time? A lot of kids, like Gary and myself, loved “Here’s Boomer,” and the 1976 Disney movie, The Shaggy D.A. Could these media now be considered gateways to a mid-life crisis spent chasing garbage trucks, digging holes in the yard, and marking territory on various hydrants and mailboxes?

The original Boomer

Finally, how does local government respond to activities by men who decide they want to become dogs? Does a leash law go into effect? We can’t just have these Boomers running loose on the city streets, can we?

“It won’t come to that,” you might tell me. “This is an isolated incident,” you might add. But, in this age of social media and attention-seeking me-too-ism, is there really such a thing as an isolated incident? Gary Matthews may be the first American to attempt the transition from man to Man’s Best Friend, but will he be the last?

I think we better have some extra Pooper Scoopers on hand, just in case.

The Story Behind the Photo… Maybe

Tags

bear, fiction, fitness, grizzly, humor, jackson hole, personal trainers, television, weight loss, wilderness

Amanda Armstrong
Fitness Trainer
Hollywood, CA

Dear Miss Armstrong,

Let me just start by saying that I’ve been a huge fan of yours since Season One of Ultimate Hardcore Weight Loss Challenge. What you accomplished with that 460-pound woman from Little Rock convinced me that there was someone out there who was strong, passionate and caring enough to help me with my own weight problem. I’m writing to ask you to consider working with me on your show, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that this may be the very last chance for me to change my destructive eating habits.

As you can see from the above photo, I’m a bear. There I am, tipping the scale at more than 700 pounds shortly after an unfortunate eating binge in which I devoured four campers and their Labradoodle. This was just outside Jackson Hole in the summer of 2012 and, as the picture illustrates, I’m not feeling too good about myself. There was a time not long ago when I was a trim cub of under 350 pounds, splashing around, scoring fish, and mixing it up with my buddies in the river. As I packed on more weight over the years, however, my metabolism took a real hit and I had to feed on slower, more docile prey. Like tourists, for instance.

I don’t want to live this kind of life. I’ve tried all sorts of diets and other weight loss programs over the years. Some were successful, but I always ended up gaining back the pounds I lost, and then some. Now, I’m pretty close to just giving up. Some days it’s all I can do to drag myself out of the cave and dig through the trash of a nearby campground. Other days I’m too depressed to even do that. I just veg out in front of the TV, counting the weeks until hibernation.

Miss Armstrong, I know you’re a busy woman, and that you get letters like this all the time. I also know that having a man-eating grizzly on your show might be considered a risk. All I can say is, if selected to participate in Season Two of U.H.W.L.C., I promise that I will do everything you ask of me, and then some. I know my health and happiness depend on it.

Best Regards,

Hungry Bear

My Little Brony

Tags

boys, bronies, build-a-bear, kids, my little pony, parenthood, shows, super hero squad, television

As is the case with a lot of things, I was the last person in my office of young, hip professionals to learn about the Bronies trend. Bronies, I am told, are a growing demographic of young men ages 18 to 35 who are fans of My Little Pony, a cartoon TV show created in the 1980s and originally aimed at little girls. Hasbro decided to revitalize the franchise with the release of the 2010 movie, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and found an unintended audience of young men who liked the upbeat storyline, the anime-style animation and, well, ponies, I guess. The Bronies trend is now officially a thing, so much so that there is an acclaimed documentary about this community of men who celebrate, and sometimes dress up like, little ponies.

Upon learning about this from my hipster co-workers, then doing a quick Google search, my reaction was disbelief. Why on earth would adult men, some of them middle-aged adult men, obsess about a cartoon for little girls? I even thought about writing a smug, what-is-the-world-coming-to blog post about a fanboy trend run amok. Then, something curious happened. My three-year-old son started watching My Little Pony. It soon became his favorite show.

And you know what? It’s not too bad. It’s well-written, the animation is sharp and inventive, and there are many pop culture references (scenes lifted straight from movies like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example) that adults can appreciate. Unlike some kid shows, the overarching theme is positive and socially progressive – it’s the story of how six very different ponies join forces and learn that they can accomplish almost anything if they work together. I like it better than one of my son’s other favorite shows, Super Hero Squad, which is about the Marvel superheroes working together, mostly to blow stuff up.

A few weeks ago, we went to the mall with our son and stopped by a Build-A-Bear Workshop. He had no interest in building and naming a Teddy Bear. From the time we walked into the store, all he wanted was the baby blue Pony, Rainbow Dash, which also came with her own set of roller skates.

We got him the stuffed animal, which he immediately wanted to take outside. My wife, seeing an opportunity, strapped the pony to the back of his mostly neglected John Deere bicycle, and suggested he take his new friend for a ride. Our son got on the bike, started peddling, and has been crazy about it ever since. He doesn’t even need Rainbow Dash to accompany him anymore on bike rides to the playground. Still, she was the catalyst. I guess that friendship really is, as they say, magic.

The NFL: Bloated, Sanctified, Self-Important

Tags

ben fountain, billy lynn's long halftime walk, culture, espn, football, iraq war, kansas city chiefs, NFL, nfl draft, television

As most of you know, today is hugely important for America because it is the first day of the NFL Draft. Intense coverage of the draft began roughly two minutes after the Super Bowl ended and has continued nonstop on ESPN’s fleet of cable channels since that time. There have been camps, combines, workouts and any number of nattering nabobs speculating on how the draft will transpire. In a way, the NFL Draft has become a season unto itself, only slightly less important than the NFL regular season, and more important than just about everything else in sports.

In Kansas City, where I live, the draft is of particular interest because the hometown Chiefs have the first pick. Locally, there’s been endless guessing about what the Chiefs will do with their coveted selection. The consensus is they will pick a left tackle because there are no elite quarterbacks in the draft and because, well, they’re the Chiefs. There’s a reason why this boring, humdrum team hasn’t visited the Super Bowl since 1970.

“With the first pick of the 2013 NFL Draft, the Kansas City Chiefs select… a left tackle?”

All the hype about the draft, and the fact that the NFL is now a year-round story, mystifys me. Like a lot of people, I watch my share of pro football games, and I track the standings during the season. But there’s an arrogance and hyper sense of self-importance around the NFL that turns me off. Each season, I find myself watching less and less pro football, and the fact that we have a toddler running around the house is only part of the reason for that. The other part is that the games, more often than not, are boring, plodding affairs that steal too much of a Sunday afternoon. The army of television personalities charged with selling the NFL brand also leaves me cold: while the hosts play grab-ass in the studio like a bunch of aging frat boys, the announcers call and analyze the action with the breathless intensity of reporters covering a hostage crisis. Either way you slice it, it’s overdone and over-the-top.

Ben Fountain’s best-seller, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, describes in a single paragraph what the NFL has become better than anything else I have read. His book, which is about how Americans view our soldiers and the Iraq War, takes place over the course of a Dallas Cowboys football game (if that makes no sense whatsoever, click here for this fine review of the novel).

Anyway, here’s how Fountain describes the action on the field at venerable Texas Stadium:

And if it was just this, Billy thinks, just the rude mindless headbanging game of it, then football would be an excellent sport and not the bloated, sanctified, self-important beast it became once the culture got its clammy hands on it. Rules. There are hundreds, and every year they make more, an insidious and particularly gross distortion of the concept of “play,” and then there are the meat-brain coaches with their sadistic drills and team prayers and dyslexia-inducing diagrams, the control-freak refs running around like little Hitlers, the time-outs, the deadening pauses for incompletes, the pontifical ceremony of instant-replay reviews, plus huddles, playbooks, pads, audibles, and all other manner of stupefactive device when the truth of the matter is that boys just want to run around and knock the shit out of each other.

That about covers it. There is no “play” in today’s NFL. And football is far too lucrative now to be considered a mere game. Somewhere along the line, the league engulfed autumn Sundays so completely that many churches have adjusted their service times to accommodate kick-off. It’s official: pro football is bigger than God to a lot of people in this country.

The Episode in Which “Madmen” Jumps the Shark

Tags

1960s, advertising, amc, don draper, madmen, new york, peace corps, television

SCENE: It is a Sunday morning at the Drapers’ spacious Manhattan apartment. MEGAN DRAPER lounges on the couch in a silk nightie, flipping through the pages of Look Magazine and smoking a Virginia Slim. DON DRAPER enters the apartment and drops his keys on a nearby table. He wears a ruffled charcoal grey suit and a loosened burgundy tie.

DON: Good morning.

MEGAN: Where were you all night? You look like hell.

DON: (Staring into the hallway mirror and smiling slightly.) I do, don’t I?

MEGAN: Are you drunk?

DON: As a matter of fact, I’ve never been more sober.

(DON drags a trash bin from the kitchen and places it next to the living room liquor cabinet. He stoically pulls one bottle after another from the cabinet and tosses each one into the trash. MEGAN rushes to him and grabs him by the arm.)

MEGAN: Don! What are you doing?

DON: (Not looking at her) Something I should have done a long time ago.

MEGAN: This is crazy. What’s gotten into you?

(DON ignores her, continuing to pile bottle after bottle into the bin. There are a lot of bottles, so it takes a while. When he finishes, DON turns to his wife and puts his hands on her shoulders. He looks at her dreamily, as if he is seeing her for the first time. He takes the skinny cigarette from her mouth and tosses into the trash with all the bottles.)

DON: Honey, this guy walked into my office yesterday. We spent the whole night talking.

MEGAN: What kind of guy?

DON: I’ve never met him before. He said he was with the Gideons and he gave me this (He pulls out a pocket-sized New Testament and places it on top of the liquor cabinet). Megan, have you ever heard of being born again?

MEGAN: What are you talking about?

DON: (Getting down on one knee and looking up at his wife with a pleading expression. There are tears in his eyes.) Look, I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. Drinking, carousing, deceiving. There’ve been women. A lot more than you know about it. So many, even I’ve lost count. In a way, you could say my whole life has been a lie. When I came back from the war in Korea… Well, maybe that’s a story for another time.

MEGAN: Don, I–

DON: –But I think I’ve got a chance to set things straight. Tomorrow morning, I’m walking into Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and I’m handing them my resignation. I’m giving up my partnership. The agency’s no good for me. Not for what I’ve got planned. Besides, advertising has bored me for years. I think it’s the Heinz account that finally put me over the edge.

MEGAN: But you’ve spent your whole career building up that company. What on earth are you going to do?

DON: (Smiling slyly.) Well, there’s this little thing call the Peace Corps.

MEGAN: Oh, Don, no!

DON: Listen. All my life, I’ve taken from people. I’ve been a crappy husband, a crappy father. I’ve made up ads that testify that true happiness can only be found through the purchase of the right brand of deodorant. I’ve worshiped false idols, and I’ve created false idols. But now I think I can give something back. I think I can get my hands dirty in a different way. Megan, do you know where Sierra Leone is?

(MEGAN says nothing, but starts tearing up).

DON: Hey. Hey! I know it sounds crazy. But listen to me! Listen to me! Listen to me! (He is shaking her by the shoulders.) Everything we know, everything in this apartment… It’s all phony. It’s nothing. Out there is the real world. The Third World. Look, it’s only for a couple of years. After that, you can go back to your acting. You hate working on that soap opera, anyway.

(He kisses her tenderly on the forehead, puts a hand under her chin and nudges it up so that MEGAN is eye-to-eye with him.)

DON: What do you say? Just you and me? We can start over.

MEGAN: (Looking at him hopefully). Yes. YES!

DON: You’ll never regret this. I swear. We go in for our immunization shots tomorrow.

MEGAN: Uhm, okay.

(The two hold hands and look out the massive window as the sun peaks above the New York City skyline. It is a new day for DON and MEGAN DRAPER).