Published May 13, 2015
As “Mad Men” fans await the series finale Sunday, I’ve reflected on seven seasons’ worth of powerful moments. After the dust has settled following the final episode, I’ll have more to say about a lightning-bolt moment for me in “Severance,” the eighth episode of Season 7, but today I wanted to flash back to a scene from the 10th episode, “The Forecast.”
After taking Sally and her friends to dinner, Don drops them off at the Greyhound bus station. As soon as the images in this screen shot appeared on my TV, I was floored by immediately being able to smell the scene, diesel fuel and all. This was unexpected, and it derailed my seamless viewing of the show so much that I had to play back everything from that scene forward once I regained my sense of the present. In that moment, I’d been transported back to every Greyhound bus I’d ever ridden on, and every bus station, in some sort of visually provoked compressed composite memory.
Or did one particular bus ride or depot become exhumed, rushing to the fore from some deep trench in my mind’s archives because of that visual stimulation? I didn’t know.