✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

You Only Like the Beginning of Things

annehelen.substack.com · 1,713 words · saved by 1 readers

There’s a scene in Season Four of Mad Men that’s never left me. Briefly: the show’s protagonist, serial cheater / womanizer Don Draper, has developed a relationship with the first woman who’s his true match (Dr. Faye Miller, known in the show as Dr. Faye). But then Draper gets scared, sees his secretary being kind and motherly to his children, and decides to follow that road instead. When he calls Dr. Faye to break it off, she gets in a real laser of a last line. “I hope you’re very happy,” she says. “And I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.” I love this scene because I love Dr. Faye, like I love every woman on this show who isn’t Megan (yes, even Betty). But I also appreciate the wisdom of the line, which — back when I first heard it — was something I was only beginning to come to terms with myself, in my own romantic life. It’s easy to get addicted to beginnings. The first look. The meet-cute. The burgeoning tension, the will they or won’t they, the will-I-or-won’

Essays You Only Like the Beginning of Things The allure of the celebrity romance narrative Nov 15, 2023 497 164 28 Share There’s a scene in Season Four of Mad Men that’s never left me. Briefly: the show’s protagonist, serial cheater / womanizer Don Draper, has developed a relationship with the first woman who’s his true match (Dr. Faye Miller, known in the show as Dr. Faye). But then Draper gets scared, sees his secretary being kind and motherly to his children, and decides to follow that road instead. When he calls Dr. Faye to break it off, she gets in a real laser of a last line. “I hope you

Explore this link on the map →

related reading