Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC In the wake of Sunday's series finale of Mad Men, there's a lot for the editors of B&C to analyze: How many people watched? Where will AMC go from here? What are the show's Emmy prospects? But we're also TV viewers just like the rest of America, and most of us have developed a strong attachment to this slow-burning show during its remarkable eight-year run. So not long after the Moment of Zen that brought the curtain down, we grabbed some Burger Chef and started ruminating. What follows is a condensed version of our group emails, polished up with some Glo-Coat Floor Wax. And, oh yes, spoilers aplenty lie ahead.
Dade Hayes: Of all the places we thought Don Draper might go by the end of Mad Men, racing cars on the salt flats of Utah and meditating on the California cliffs were not two that I anticipated. I will say that I went into the finale agreeing with those predicting that Don would return from his walkabout and re-enter the ad game, the only real home he has ever had. The episodes closing cut from a beatific Don to the Id Like to Teach the World to Sing ad for Coca-Cola strongly suggests that he did go back and engineer an iconic campaign for the blue-chip McCann client that was promised to him.
But even if, as some feel, Don himself didnt mastermind the spot, the last scene was a bravura capper. Advertising has never been about authenticity, but the moment drove home the fact that the spiritual wanderings of the 1960s are about to take pitches to new heights - think the Beatles' Revolution selling Nikes or George Orwell defining the Apple Macintosh. Guys, there is so much else I am still digesting - Peggy and Stan! Joans new direction. All that Betty left behind. But I definitely thought the finale delivered the goods. Parts of it suffered from late-Mad Men-era melodramatic sluggishness, but it ultimately offered the kind of ambitious, auteur statement that put the show on the map in the first place. What did you all think?
Tim Baysinger: Its interesting, when I first watched I didnt interpret the final scene that way, with Don writing the famous Coke ad, but I understand the logic. I still dont think he ever returned to advertising and that the Coke ad was a just a nice closer for the series, which always used its knowledge of the time period whichever episode was in.
The last few episodes were all about Don Draper freeing himself from Don Draper and actually starting over and thats how I saw the ending. (Merediths line: I hope hes in a better place - I think thats the ending for him, he finally found that better place.)
Stan and Peggy had been teased for so long it wouldve been a surprise if they didn't end up together. I thought everyone else got a fitting send off.
Mike Malone: Don 100% came up with the iconic Coke ad. I suspect Matthew Weiner would be quite upset for people not to come away with that. Thats the vision Weiner had many years ago.
And what the heck happened to Harry Crane? Over the years, TV takes over, yet the agency TV guy shrinks to near obsolescence. He gets fewer lines than Ken Cosgrove.
I thought it was an uneven finale that ultimately paid off real nicely. Stan and Peggy? Cheesy. Roger and Megans Mom? Yawn. Pete, Trudy and Tammy head west? Big whoop. Joan is in business? Yeah, OK. Don consorting with the hippies was bordering on the comical, but that final scene pulled it all together and made it one of the more memorable finales in recent television history. Of course, Don Draper gets back in the game, and dominates once again. Madison Avenue is the only mistress that ever truly held his attention and affection across these many years of Mad Men. Excuse me while I grab a Coke.
DH: So true about Harry! Although, his moment in the finale was perfectly played. He is forever the overweening striver, forever That Guy. Maybe more than any other character in the show, corporate offices everywhere have a Harry Crane (present one excluded, of course!)
John Eggerton: I thought Megan got short shrift. No closer for her. I note that none of the biggest womanizers got any comeuppance. Pete and Don and Roger all get either the girl or inner peace, though Roger was always a loveable rake rather than an insatiable user of others as was Don, or a lothario as was Pete. I definitely think Don returns to make the ad. That smile at the end was not just om-driven inner peace, it was an idea.
I thought briefly about my grandfather, who was on the client side of Coke in the '50s and HAD a great Coke marketing idea GO south quickly (Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher as the Coke Couple, when enter Elizabeth Taylor to make it the Coke Trio). If you remember the tag Coca-Cola is Coke, thank my grandfather, sort of, I think.
Paige Albiniak: In a word, I thought the Mad Men finale was perfect. I know critics are currently debating that point, but I'm not sure what they expected from a show that was never about tying up loose ends with declarative sentences. Mad Men has always been about messy human nature, and about a particularly messy person, Don Draper/Dick Whitman. It stuck to that to the very end, and that's exactly what I expected.
I felt like the ending was absolutely clear and I laughed out loud when the show cut to the Coke commercial. People had been debating whether that's where the show was headed for weeks and after all the dropped hints, the meeting full of Coke cans, it was a sort of hilarious epilogue for the creative genius/human disaster that is Don Draper. He went totally off the rails for months, he walked out of a meeting without saying anything and then he creates one of the most iconic ad campaigns of a generation. Of course he did. And everyone loves him and forgives him for it and then he can start his cycle of self-destruction again.
It's hard to be a creative.
My only regr
