The CD2 Love Theory: Volume I (Part 1)

Is there anything more subjective than the concept of love? Is love even a true feeling? Or is it a broad-stroke term that covers care, trust, lust, and companionship? Love is one of the beauties of life primarily because of its subjectivity. Who knows what love really is? That is for us to decide individually.

The Love Theory is something that will cover a seemingly endless amount of topics that have to do with what we all call love. In this part, we will discuss the "fun" and "interesting" kind of love.

But first, I need to clarify the different types of love. There is, what I like to call, Default Love, the love that is inherited from when we were born. This includes family, friends, or anyone that we love by way of simply being born in a situation in which those people are around. This does not mean this love could not be developed or lost.

There is also Platonic Love. This is the love that comes from attachments that we develop with people that were not part of our lives from the beginning, unlike Default Love. The people that we meet throughout the course of our lives become people we come to love on a level similar to those that we love by default.

However, we have that other kind of love. That love that makes us cry. That love that causes us to go into an internal or external rage. The kind that is capable of making us bad people. The kind that compromises our rationality or even our sanity. The kind that makes our hearts work overtime. The kind that causes your world to stop when you are initially confronted with it. Yes, it's that fun and interesting kind of love I mentioned a bit earlier, Romantic-Companionship Love.

Romantic Love can stand on it's own. However, many strive for that Romantic-Companionship Love. This is where we do want the Romantic Love, but we want that relationship to persist forever; thus, the companionship portion would need to come into fruition. As my grandmother could attest to, Companionship Love could stand on its own as well. Two could simply be life mates without the romantic portion of it, as with my grandmother and her life mate.

Nonetheless, we are in the first volume of what should be a fun topic. TLT will only deal with all things romantic with and without the companionship component.



Don Draper, played by Emmy Award Winner Jon Hamm,
nervously awaits calling Faye to give her the news...

This first volume has the season 4 finale of AMC's Mad Men as its muse (I didn't forget about you Muse, you are still the Executive Muse ;-)  ). I get that I am the only one among my peers that watches the show. I recommend it if you like non-cliche, non-cheesy complex dramas that make you think with out-of-this-world writing, directing, and acting. I will do my best to explain what happened in the finale to make it make sense without you having to have watched the show.

Anyhow, Don Draper, the focal point of the show, is dealing with life as a major partner at his advertising firm Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP), being divorced from his wife, having to layoff employees due to the firm's fiduciary uncertainties, and constantly live with the fact that he is living under the identity of a man that is not really him. Like I said, you have to watch this show. Earlier in this season, Don started getting cozy with Dr. Faye Miller, who worked for the company (before she too was let go) by conducting research on consumers and the firm's clients. Don has a history of a wide variety of conquests with perhaps only one of them being in Dr. Miller's league, Rachel Menkin, a former client of the firm before Draper and the three other partners jettisoned their previous firm before creating their own.

When Faye and Don first hooked up earlier in the season, it did not pass the eyeball test, something was just missing (a la the late David Arquette Courtney Cox union). Faye was on another level from the rest of Don's previous affairs including his former wife Betty. It was almost as if Faye was too good for Don, and even Don knew this on some level.

Don had to go to California (his firm is in New York City) on business, and he takes his three children with him. His ice queen ex-wife, Betty, went on a mini string of tirades, which ended up getting Carla, their maid/nanny, fired for a terrible, frivolous, and childish reason (the reason in itself is good in a sense that it was great drama for the show...and the result of what she did is just crazy...please watch the show!). Don is obviously pissed not only because Carla would not be able to go to California with them to look after the children while Don was in business meetings, but because Carla was outstanding with the kids, arguably a better mother figure than their actual mother Betty. In haste to get someone to watch the kids for him while he attends business in California, he calls on his secretary, Megan, to come to California with him. She agrees...

While in California, Megan does a marvelous job with the children, and Don and the kids are at peace the whole trip. Don likes what he sees, and the two hook up in Megan's room while the kids were sleep. *Rewind sound* Back when Don and Faye were getting together in the early stages, Don and Megan had an impromptu hookup in Don's office. So, there is a tad bit of history there, though it was a one-time rendezvous. Anyhow, Don's epiphany about Megan came towards what appeared to be the end of the California trip. While at a diner, Sally, Don's eldest child, spilled her milkshake. Sally's mother and Don's ex-wife would have lambasted Sally, and would have probably sent her to her [hotel] room. However, Megan took it in stride and told Sally very calmly and gracefully, "It's just a milkshake," and simply grabbed some napkins to clean it up. Don initially was going to go off on Sally, but he was also overtaken by Megan's grace in handling the situation. The Drapers were all in shock by the way Megan took over the situation with absolute grace rather than the terror from Betty they were accustomed to.

Right after the diner scene, there was [inexplicably] a scene with Don and Megan in the morning in what appeared to be a dream sequence. It wasn't (I waited for the next 20 minutes for everything to come back into reality...only to find that what I watched really happened...). Don abruptly proposed to Megan, and she accepted. ???!!! A small business trip caused Don to spontaneously propose to Megan while he was entangled with Faye?

Don's proposal irked plenty of fans because of the implications for Faye, in which Don told her "I love you," before he left to California. Faye was there when Don was recovering from being a shell of himself and being reduced to sex with a prostitute in which he instructed her to physically beat him during sex. A sad day in the life and times of Don Draper. While Faye did not have that motherly quality, she was one of those people that did not have any other apparent flaws, which is actually not a good thing. The scene in which Don called Faye to tell her that he was now engaged was thee most excruciating thing that I every had to sit through on television (barring the movie 8mm). I could not even look at the screen while it was happening. So painful. Especially after Don hung up and Faye erupted in the most painful cry I've every seen.

So what happened? Why did Don chose Megan over the nearly perfect Faye?

To be continued...