When we met Don Draper in 2007, he was handsome as a mid-century Chevy. You remember this guy? The entire show was warp-into-the-system impressive. The smoking, the drinking, the crisply thin lapels, the Le Corbusier chairs, yes. But mostly it was Draper's jaw. Mostly it was Draper's confidence. Also the way he extremely inappropriately grabbed a married woman, then growled, then made a business deal.

Here was a man. A little sexually despotic. Sometimes rampantly nasty. But he had what men admire and what women crave. Six seasons later maybe you've noticed: He's not the hombre he once was. Don's up, Don's down. He's creative, he's stealing creative ideas from Ginsberg. He's charming, he'sthrowing up at a funeral. He's beset on all sides by fear, paranoia, and baby boomers.

Now, with the final season about to start, Don is so weak and panaphobic — so entirely not what we signed up for! — that it seems fair to ask: Why do we still care about this dude?

Back in 2007, Don was not self-conscious. He was uncannily not self-conscious. Even when he seemed to admit fear — like that time he was in bed with Midge and said he had to get back to work before the younger creatives took his job, then he banged her again — he had confidence. He had ideas. He had presence. He was a charming man.

But the open secret behind Don's attractive facade has always been this: It takes an extremely disturbing amount of attention to one's self to achieve the extremely beguiling appearance of not giving a shit.

This is true for anyone, not just game show hosts, con men, or Pennsylvanians who grow up with a whore mom and abusive stepdad, lost their virginity to a prostitute after weathering the croup, stole their commanding officer's identity, married a model with all the personality of a doily, and then peddled coats and jingles for a living. Don is drywall. He is always self-spackling.

The story of seasons two through six is the story of that drywall crumbling. Or I guess you could say, the story of Don getting to know Dick Whitman. He's got this whole Total Recall, Hauser vs. Quaid thing going on. That can't be fun.

"The walls of reality will come crashing down," Dr. Edgemar says. "One minute, you'll be the savior of the rebel cause; the next thing you know, you'll be Cohaagen's bosom buddy."

That exact problem — that who-the-fk-am-I-anyway issue — comes to a rhetorical head in the season-six finale. Don sells Hershey's on the idea that their chocolate is innately lovable and trustworthy — "the wrapper looked like what was inside" — then reveals he grew up in a cathouse and that happiness is a candybar bought by a whore.

You gotta choose one path or the other, Don. Otherwise, in the end, back on earth, you'll be lobotomized.

When you talk about Don Draper, you're really talking about two separate relationships:his relationship with his true self, and our relationship to him. His relationship to himself is the narrative itself. That's why we can't get enough of his secret identity — we want to know whether Whitman wins this year, or Draper does.

Our relationship with him, on the other hand, especially as we enter the seventh season this Sunday, is akin to our relationship with anyone we've fallen in love with. It's the whole familiarity-breeds-contempt thing. When we first fall in love with somebody, they are luminescent. The more familiar we become, the more disappointed we are. The more we feel their charm, the more we see that charm for what it is: fear.

So now, seven years later, we're no longer impressed by Don. But that's the point. We're kinda like Sally Draper in that way, looking up at her dad at the end of season six and furrowing her brow. Dad was invulnerable once and we loved him and fixed him drinks. Then we found out he was a flawed human. Now we're, well, curious. We're getting to know him. We're starting to come to grips with the strong possibility that he does not mount a comeback this time and conquer Madison Avenue.

He's taking us to his childhood whorehouse. We don't know where this is going, but it's real.

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