The Mind Behind "Mad Men"

But she also knows Don is coming home. Don is an existential hero. He's the kind of American that many of us recognize in our dads but also comes from a very specific literary tradition. He has an ambiguous identity and he's a self-made man and he went out there and confronted his past. He has this realization that he really does want that life with Betty and the children, that he's been striving his whole life to have that. He wants to assimilate into the culture and that's strong enough to bring him home.

Don gets a Tarot card from Anna Draper, and she tells him he's not alone in the world. Is it true that you got the same Tarot card reading once?
Yes. A friend gave me that reading in real life, but I also do Tarot readings online sometimes. Whenever you talk about Tarot cards and psychics, you sound like a nut, but I use Tarot cards as a kind of Rorschach test for my life. I do believe in fate and I do believe in coincidence and I find that when something's on my mind creatively, it tends to explode all over my life. So when I got this reading that said, "You are trying to be strong, but the truth is, you are pushing everyone away," I looked at the cards and I said, This is me, but this is also Don — it's a lot of men. Then there's that moment afterward when Don goes into the ocean and is baptized. I put that George Jones song in there, "A Cup of Loneliness," which is really an evangelical song about finding Jesus through the pain in your life. It felt very much like Don, who comes from this rural poverty. I'm not part of that evangelical tradition, but I really identify with it. I think everyone wants a second chance and sometimes you have to go to the bottom to get it.

When Don finally goes home, the house is full, which mirrors the first season when he goes home and the house is empty.
That wasn't an accident. You know, I directed that episode and there's a shot when Don comes in through the kitchen door, you can hear the kids say, "Daddy!" It's a direct echo of that moment in the first season. And he sits down and Betty gives him this little look, and it's like, Has he been there all along? Can he just sit right back down as if he's been there all along? I wonder.

It's also interesting that both seasons end with a baby, the first with Peggy having a baby and the second with Betty getting pregnant.
Yeah there's also irony there, because they made that baby in a moment of weakness for Betty, and yet she is the one determining whether or not this relationship will go on by whether or not that baby will be there.

Was it also intentional to have her get pregnant at her father's place? There is so much emphasis on the idea that Betty is a child in the first season and a teenager in the second.
That moment at the father's place, she regressed to her childhood home, and she makes Don sleep on the floor, and then she realizes that at this moment she needs to be with him. For me, that's a story about Betty growing up.