Does Betty's sickness go all the way back to the numbness in her hands she was having in Season 1? I know they said that was nerves originally, but as I recall that plotline kind of spun off when Betty found out Don was talking to her psychiatrist at night.
The last two episodes have mostly given us satisfactory resolutions to most characters' arcs. Pete took a dream job and reunited with his family. Don more or less accepted the idea that he needs to abandon Don Draper's persona and started over. Joan cashed out of the company. Peggy waltzed into the company like a boss and plans to kick ass. Ken has moved on, Betty made peace with her death, Roger is resigned to his position in the company.
On paper, these are all reasonable series--ending conclusions to each character's arc. And there's one more episode left.
I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen.
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The next episode is where we discover it was all a dream
Bobby Draper Westphall.
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UnluckyThat's not meant to happenRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
Ken was and always will be my favourite character in the entirety of Mad Men.
Newest season spoilers:
His exit was simply fantastic. "Nope. Don't need you arsehats anymore. Good day."
Pete on the other hand. I really liked him to begin with. He was that plucky underdog I loved to root for. Now, good lord is he simply a terrible, terrible person. DON'T TAKE HIM BACK WOMAN!
Also Don getting hit with a phone book really made my day.
Still dislike Joans character the most. For some reason, I just have never cared about her. Never felt any kind of emotional connection I have with most others. Sterling and Cooper sort of fell into that category for me too.
In hindsight, I think ultimately the only two people I like in Mad Men are Peggy and Ken. Sally has become a very good character too. A Ying to her mothers Yang.
Finally. Doug always was and is a continued laugh. Oh you scamp.
Edit: I am super curious. Who actually likes the characters in Mad Men? If so, who?
I've always liked Ken. He was the "normal" guy who usually stuck to his morals and principles in a company that lauded doing whatever it took to close the deal.
Edit: I am super curious. Who actually likes the characters in Mad Men? If so, who?
When I'm watching a series such as Mad Men, whether I like the characters as people isn't really a concern. I'm not looking to connect with the virtuous. If we take like to indicate whether these characters are compelling/engaging, then pretty much all of them are that for me, aside from maybe the side characters like Ken and Harry.
Lucid on
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I suspect the series finale will be one of those "10 years later" things.
I seem to recall the show runner talking a few years ago about how that's the way he wanted to end the show.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
Edit: I am super curious. Who actually likes the characters in Mad Men? If so, who?
Meredith is an angel who should have been in the series from the beginning as maybe a Joan in training or something, I was super sad to not see her in this week's episode. Ken as mentioned was a good guy who gave up nearly everything to help people who didn't deserve it and got to end on his terms. I liked Ted, even with the Peggy stuff, because he was always a good counterpoint to Don and a guy who was like Ken who just buckled under the weight the SCDP assholes dropped on him. And I like Don and Roger, Don because he's a good guy to frame the series through even though he has flaws (the same with Peggy) and Roger for being unrepentant in how he acts and can sometimes get away with it, like with losing Lucky Strikes.
Stan was always a good character who felt like he just never got the time he deserved, mainly because Harry is dumb and stupid.
One thing the show does do better than others is that for almost 85% of all the characters involved, you empathize with them and can see their reasoning for x, y or z.
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RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
10 bucks says there's an ambiguous ending, possibly focusing on Don trying to fix his TV for 30 minutes.
Or will the whole hour be devoted to Harry Crane's quest for a decent sandwich?
RhalloTonny on
!
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Peggy
Stan
Yes
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
The only thing that bothers me about that is, presumably there was an actual person who came up with that ad and the show is giving credit to a fictional character.
Am I being silly?
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I think they've done this for a bunch of other famous campaigns in the past -- I suppose they could have had Don coming up with a campaign for Coka-Coola or something to avoid confusion, but I think we're just meant to ignore that stuff. (I didn't realise that the song was originally written for the advert until I looked it up, I assumed Coke had adapted an existing song)
The only thing that bothers me about that is, presumably there was an actual person who came up with that ad and the show is giving credit to a fictional character.
Am I being silly?
Yes.
But I'm not sure the takeaway is meant to be that Don went back to work at McCann and made a Coke ad.
I think the takeaway is that Don is Coke. He is the thing that united everyone around him and made their dreams possible.
Peggy wouldn't be where she was without Don to spur her into being awesome at what she does. Ditto Pete, ditto Joan. Roger wouldn't have met his future wife if not for Don. Sally wouldn't have grown into the woman she became.
Don didn't necessarily work selflessly to make all these dreams possible, no. A lot of it was happenstance, or people succeeding in response to Don being an asshole. But regardless, Don is the common link. He is the magical togetherness-power that the Coke commercial wishes Coke actually was.
The Coke ad is Mad Men's response to Don's assertion that he made nothing of his life, and was an echo of Peggy's rebuttal that yes, he did. The world, at least as regards this handful of people, is a better place because Don was in it.
Now, Don is in a new place. He can start over. He's not Dick and he's not Don. He doesn't have the shadow of his father looming over him, he doesn't have the spectre of the man whose life he stole. He is a blank slate, and he can write on that slate whatever he wishes.
I don't think he'll go back to advertising. That was Don's world, and I think he's done with that. Don didn't make the Coke ad. He just made the Coke ad possible.
Curious to see others' interpretations, though. It seemed a pretty open-ended ending.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I really appreciated that analysis, as have never been very good at picking up on the subtext of Mad Men.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
The only thing that bothers me about that is, presumably there was an actual person who came up with that ad and the show is giving credit to a fictional character.
Am I being silly?
Yes.
But I'm not sure the takeaway is meant to be that Don went back to work at McCann and made a Coke ad.
I think the takeaway is that Don is Coke. He is the thing that united everyone around him and made their dreams possible.
Peggy wouldn't be where she was without Don to spur her into being awesome at what she does. Ditto Pete, ditto Joan. Roger wouldn't have met his future wife if not for Don. Sally wouldn't have grown into the woman she became.
Don didn't necessarily work selflessly to make all these dreams possible, no. A lot of it was happenstance, or people succeeding in response to Don being an asshole. But regardless, Don is the common link. He is the magical togetherness-power that the Coke commercial wishes Coke actually was.
The Coke ad is Mad Men's response to Don's assertion that he made nothing of his life, and was an echo of Peggy's rebuttal that yes, he did. The world, at least as regards this handful of people, is a better place because Don was in it.
Now, Don is in a new place. He can start over. He's not Dick and he's not Don. He doesn't have the shadow of his father looming over him, he doesn't have the spectre of the man whose life he stole. He is a blank slate, and he can write on that slate whatever he wishes.
I don't think he'll go back to advertising. That was Don's world, and I think he's done with that. Don didn't make the Coke ad. He just made the Coke ad possible.
Curious to see others' interpretations, though. It seemed a pretty open-ended ending.
I can not awesome this enough.
(Not necessarily because I took away the same thing, but because I would love this to be what Weiner was going for. )
The only thing that bothers me about that is, presumably there was an actual person who came up with that ad and the show is giving credit to a fictional character.
Am I being silly?
Yes.
But I'm not sure the takeaway is meant to be that Don went back to work at McCann and made a Coke ad.
I think the takeaway is that Don is Coke. He is the thing that united everyone around him and made their dreams possible.
Peggy wouldn't be where she was without Don to spur her into being awesome at what she does. Ditto Pete, ditto Joan. Roger wouldn't have met his future wife if not for Don. Sally wouldn't have grown into the woman she became.
Don didn't necessarily work selflessly to make all these dreams possible, no. A lot of it was happenstance, or people succeeding in response to Don being an asshole. But regardless, Don is the common link. He is the magical togetherness-power that the Coke commercial wishes Coke actually was.
The Coke ad is Mad Men's response to Don's assertion that he made nothing of his life, and was an echo of Peggy's rebuttal that yes, he did. The world, at least as regards this handful of people, is a better place because Don was in it.
Now, Don is in a new place. He can start over. He's not Dick and he's not Don. He doesn't have the shadow of his father looming over him, he doesn't have the spectre of the man whose life he stole. He is a blank slate, and he can write on that slate whatever he wishes.
I don't think he'll go back to advertising. That was Don's world, and I think he's done with that. Don didn't make the Coke ad. He just made the Coke ad possible.
Curious to see others' interpretations, though. It seemed a pretty open-ended ending.
I can't see it that way because of Don's smile. It goes straight from Don's very epiphany-like smile to the commercial. Without the smile maybe. Also Mad Men is usually a lot less subtle then the above interpretation would have it. Of course I hate the ever loving shit out of new age nonsense so Don going back to soulless adman is the happy ending for me.
The Stan/Peggy thing was weird in that the whole declaration of love didn't seem very Mad Menny, but I guess it didn't come out of nowhere. I am just glad that we got a lot of Stan who I think deserves the title of least evil Mad Men over Ken.
Stan/Peggy was awesome and perfectly foreshadowed. Just like Peggy, you don't think about it too much, then it hits and you're like what? Oh. Um. Ohhhhhhh, right. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
I loved her increasingly confused "What? What?"
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
The "what?" is going to become a meme. And I call it here it will be used in the Emmy opening bit where they do mashups or something of all the TV shows.
Good enough ending, it didn't shit the bed like others have in recent years, though not as complete as Breaking Bad's, and is more satisfying if you maybe marathon the second half of the season. Severe lack of Meredith, but because she's an angel she knew things would always work out for her. Because she's perfect. Would you convert a speech into pig latin? o-nay ay-way.
-Stan/Peggy worked very well, because we saw throughout the series how inter-office relationships were basically momentary flames, but there was always something there with the two.
-Hella weak of Joan to use Holloway/Harris, someone's ego is out of control and smashing buildings left and right. Starting her own production company works for her, but the breakup between her and real estate guy seemed as forced and as weird as Joan choosing him over her kid a few episodes earlier. Maybe that was Peggy writing her resignation letter to go with Stan to join Joan, but it could have also been the two becoming the power creative team like Uncle Jesse and Uncle Joe were.
-A part of me wanted Roger's finale to be him on a cruise ship with his new evil french wife yelling at him again because she's Maleficent, and just pushing her overboard.
-Don, the ending worked with him hugging the guy and breaking down, as does him creating the Coke ad in this world, but the lead up to it was weird and took up more time than necessary. How he reacted to Betty was solid, but too much was put on his not niece or whoever she was from his identity swapping.
I can't see it that way because of Don's smile. It goes straight from Don's very epiphany-like smile to the commercial. Without the smile maybe. Also Mad Men is usually a lot less subtle then the above interpretation would have it. Of course I hate the ever loving shit out of new age nonsense so Don going back to soulless adman is the happy ending for me.
The smile was Don finding some real happiness, something he hasn't done for almost the entire series. Some of his pitches throughout the series were actually veiled statements about his own miserable experience of life that he was able to spin, he understood how to talk about happiness because he had so little of it. He has an understanding of how others work, except himself. That's what he started to do at the retreat. Meditation can have legitimate therapeutic benefit, and isn't really 'new age nonsense'. I think that to assume that Don created the Coke ad is a cynical read (it suggests that all of the emotional lead up was merely a ploy), it was as Jeffe suggested, more symbolic than anything - something Mad Men uses constantly. I don't think that Mad Men is as non subtle as you're making it out to be, in fact I think it is pretty subtle quite often.
I think it's important to consider Don as a changed man, or who he is as a man. This is a core focus in this series, and I think in the end we witnessed Don embracing a masculinity outside of the accepted norm, the 'rugged individualist' or whatever other alpha male type. That's what made the hug a moving scene, two men being able to have that connection in a moment of turmoil is just something that (still) doesn't happen a lot. Don was giving himself to another, something he had a difficult time doing as the prime archetype of what is supposed to be the height of manhood. He relinquished power, instead of domination he came to accept another way of experiencing life. This is what men are or need to be doing, then and now. The new age nonsense was just a motif for Don to start coming to terms, and it was a great place to set this part of his life at because it touches on what the series has been doing by setting itself in the sixties. Places like the Esalen institute were becoming popular in that era, it's fitting to have Don begin his exploration of a different self there.
VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
I am amused by the certainty with which anyone clings to any interpretation. of anything!
my instinct was the cynical read and I laughed my ass off and loved it. I appreciate that it's not necessarily what happened and there's value in other interpretations absolutely.
The show missed a perfect opportunity to take a dig at Dexter by having Don pitch a Brawny commercial.
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I am somewhat amused by the certainty with which a lot people cling to a cynical reading of the episode's end.
You mean in this thread? Because nobody in here is actually doing that.
What was your read?
ElJeffe on
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My issue with the cynical reading we're talking about, is that it seems to be incongruous with the messaging and development of the rest of the series. The only way it would work is if it was trolling, but I have never had the impression that Weiner or the series are looking to use that. The cynical reading would be a negation of what came before, which could be something clever going on but I keep coming back to what the purpose would be and I can't think of any reasoning for that.
The cynical reading is
actually no people don't change
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I don't see why the ending can't be both.
Don cleansed himself, basically emptying out his "suppress it all" emotions tank he carries around all the time, and then he's sitting there and, like in the first episode back at home, an idea hits him that is a big one that shows why he's Don Draper. So he goes back, because it was stated walkouts have happened at McCann before, and makes another iconic ad. That Joan and Peggy produced.
And then from afar, watching the group film the Coke ad, we see Meredith, dressed in white, possibly floating. And she gives a nice smile and nod and flies away, just as Don catches a glimmer of sunshine in his eye. Because he knew. He knew.
I am somewhat amused by the certainty with which a lot people cling to a cynical reading of the episode's end.
You mean in this thread? Because nobody in here is actually doing that.
What was your read?
No, not on this thread necessarily. Some of the critic's websites seem keen on reducing Don's journey this half-season to being merely about making a good ad; others yet see the last scene as some larger criticism and takedown of the 70s as a whole and capitalist/consumer culture in general. I feel that's all very cynical and dismissive.
I do think that Don does get some modicum of happiness in the end; that he does at least find a way to be happy. Even if the show only gives vague hints and suggestions as to what that way might be. But I don't think it matters how he lives happily or for how long. He can do it now, in a way that I'm not sure he could in any of the earlier seasons.
What I think is the most fantastic part of the ending, though, is that it gives you enough to come up with a fairly solid interpretation, which happens to be far more revealing of yourself than of the show. Mad Men has done a Rohrschach-test of an ending. You can't help but fill in the gaps with how you understand and/or believe the world to work. What you think the ending means reveals much more about yourself than the show actually does on its own. But that has always been part of the pleasure of watching Mad Men. Many of the stories work because of what you read between the lines, not necessarily because of the things that characters spell out for you.
I thought the juxtaposition of the heartfelt epiphany for Don and a Coke ad (with all the callbacks this entails) was more about suggesting that the sublime can be found in the banal; or that a commercial product can also say something of value. Like, say, a commerical-sponsored TV show can say something meaningful about people's lives.
And I think the moment where Don sees himself in that monologue and gets up to hug the sobbing man, is just such a pure gesture of shared humanity and compassion (even amidst the phoniness and egotism of those New Age self-help circles), that I can't even fathom why you'd consider the ending steeped in irony to the point of being cynical.
Why is it so important that he possibly returns to make that ad? Just putting the ad in doesn't lend any weight in itself. I think the ad was symbolic at Don realizing that it's not just I, it's 'we', thinking about other people ( along the lines of Jeffe's reading). I think the ad was also there to suggest that the creative power that spirited Don's advertising career was still part of him, and it's what helped him see another way of living. I think that reading it as him then going back to capitalize on that is cynical because then he's not being genuine, it's just another personality trait or characteristic to exploit which would just lead Don back to the depersonalized state he was in most of the time.
Hey so I have been watching Mad Men live since Season 2 and I just wanted to say I adored the final episode as much as I anticipated. The open-endedness led to some wonderful interpretations that I've read in this thread and elsewhere, and I urge all of you to read as many as you can. The show did not end on a cliffhanger, but on an open ended moment to which much can be applied or inferred.
What are we calling the "cynical reading" of the ending, exactly?
In the general sense of "people don't change" I don't see much evidence of that in a universal sense. All of the characters see major changes in the finale relative to where they started the show, and it's implied that at least most of those changes are to be read as the new status quo.
Peggy, who began the show as a talented by uncertain protege of Don's, who was driven strictly by career, has become a confident creative director who can take care of herself and demand respect, while also finding room for a personal life.
Joan has gone from being an invisible glorified secretary to being the financially secure owner of her own (presumably successful) company.
Roger goes from being a perennial philanderer who bounces from young waif to young waif to settling into a more mature, if slightly cynical, relationship.
And so on.
The only question mark is Don. But at the very least, the finale showed Don gaining a new acceptance of who he is and where he came from, and an understanding of what that means. Whether or not he returns to McCann, he's far from the same superficially driven facade we saw in the series premier.
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In my mind, the cynical reading of the ending basically argues that there is no deeper understanding of Don to be found, there is no hope for him to change (because even when he seems to do so, he just cannibalises this change to make money, i.e. a new and better ad campaign) and that people are doomed to be miserable (a friend of mine suggested that Pete getting into his jet was an indication that he would die like his father).
I think most of it is based on how you react to the Coke ad in the end. Do you reject it as cloying, manipulative garbage? Then this taints everything that has come before, because it suggests that this season and by extension the whole show has laid down character work and complex emotions to build up to an ode to commercialism and mindless consumerism.
I don't hate the ad, though. I don't turn up my nose at it for being "only" an ad.
Posts
I'm really curious where Don't going to end up now
The Port Authority Bus Terminal.
On paper, these are all reasonable series--ending conclusions to each character's arc. And there's one more episode left.
I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen.
Bobby Draper Westphall.
Newest season spoilers:
Pete on the other hand. I really liked him to begin with. He was that plucky underdog I loved to root for. Now, good lord is he simply a terrible, terrible person. DON'T TAKE HIM BACK WOMAN!
Also Don getting hit with a phone book really made my day.
In hindsight, I think ultimately the only two people I like in Mad Men are Peggy and Ken. Sally has become a very good character too. A Ying to her mothers Yang.
Finally. Doug always was and is a continued laugh. Oh you scamp.
Edit: I am super curious. Who actually likes the characters in Mad Men? If so, who?
When I'm watching a series such as Mad Men, whether I like the characters as people isn't really a concern. I'm not looking to connect with the virtuous. If we take like to indicate whether these characters are compelling/engaging, then pretty much all of them are that for me, aside from maybe the side characters like Ken and Harry.
I seem to recall the show runner talking a few years ago about how that's the way he wanted to end the show.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
And him saying something about how he knew a rough idea of where Don Draper was going to be up until sometime in the 80's.
Meredith is an angel who should have been in the series from the beginning as maybe a Joan in training or something, I was super sad to not see her in this week's episode. Ken as mentioned was a good guy who gave up nearly everything to help people who didn't deserve it and got to end on his terms. I liked Ted, even with the Peggy stuff, because he was always a good counterpoint to Don and a guy who was like Ken who just buckled under the weight the SCDP assholes dropped on him. And I like Don and Roger, Don because he's a good guy to frame the series through even though he has flaws (the same with Peggy) and Roger for being unrepentant in how he acts and can sometimes get away with it, like with losing Lucky Strikes.
Stan was always a good character who felt like he just never got the time he deserved, mainly because Harry is dumb and stupid.
One thing the show does do better than others is that for almost 85% of all the characters involved, you empathize with them and can see their reasoning for x, y or z.
Or will the whole hour be devoted to Harry Crane's quest for a decent sandwich?
Stan
Yes
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
embed was not working, so spoilered:
Am I being silly?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Yes.
I think the takeaway is that Don is Coke. He is the thing that united everyone around him and made their dreams possible.
Peggy wouldn't be where she was without Don to spur her into being awesome at what she does. Ditto Pete, ditto Joan. Roger wouldn't have met his future wife if not for Don. Sally wouldn't have grown into the woman she became.
Don didn't necessarily work selflessly to make all these dreams possible, no. A lot of it was happenstance, or people succeeding in response to Don being an asshole. But regardless, Don is the common link. He is the magical togetherness-power that the Coke commercial wishes Coke actually was.
The Coke ad is Mad Men's response to Don's assertion that he made nothing of his life, and was an echo of Peggy's rebuttal that yes, he did. The world, at least as regards this handful of people, is a better place because Don was in it.
Now, Don is in a new place. He can start over. He's not Dick and he's not Don. He doesn't have the shadow of his father looming over him, he doesn't have the spectre of the man whose life he stole. He is a blank slate, and he can write on that slate whatever he wishes.
I don't think he'll go back to advertising. That was Don's world, and I think he's done with that. Don didn't make the Coke ad. He just made the Coke ad possible.
Curious to see others' interpretations, though. It seemed a pretty open-ended ending.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Spinoff! Spinoff! Spinoff!
I can not awesome this enough.
(Not necessarily because I took away the same thing, but because I would love this to be what Weiner was going for. )
The Stan/Peggy thing was weird in that the whole declaration of love didn't seem very Mad Menny, but I guess it didn't come out of nowhere. I am just glad that we got a lot of Stan who I think deserves the title of least evil Mad Men over Ken.
I loved her increasingly confused "What? What?"
Good enough ending, it didn't shit the bed like others have in recent years, though not as complete as Breaking Bad's, and is more satisfying if you maybe marathon the second half of the season. Severe lack of Meredith, but because she's an angel she knew things would always work out for her. Because she's perfect. Would you convert a speech into pig latin? o-nay ay-way.
-Stan/Peggy worked very well, because we saw throughout the series how inter-office relationships were basically momentary flames, but there was always something there with the two.
-Hella weak of Joan to use Holloway/Harris, someone's ego is out of control and smashing buildings left and right. Starting her own production company works for her, but the breakup between her and real estate guy seemed as forced and as weird as Joan choosing him over her kid a few episodes earlier. Maybe that was Peggy writing her resignation letter to go with Stan to join Joan, but it could have also been the two becoming the power creative team like Uncle Jesse and Uncle Joe were.
-A part of me wanted Roger's finale to be him on a cruise ship with his new evil french wife yelling at him again because she's Maleficent, and just pushing her overboard.
-Don, the ending worked with him hugging the guy and breaking down, as does him creating the Coke ad in this world, but the lead up to it was weird and took up more time than necessary. How he reacted to Betty was solid, but too much was put on his not niece or whoever she was from his identity swapping.
I think it's important to consider Don as a changed man, or who he is as a man. This is a core focus in this series, and I think in the end we witnessed Don embracing a masculinity outside of the accepted norm, the 'rugged individualist' or whatever other alpha male type. That's what made the hug a moving scene, two men being able to have that connection in a moment of turmoil is just something that (still) doesn't happen a lot. Don was giving himself to another, something he had a difficult time doing as the prime archetype of what is supposed to be the height of manhood. He relinquished power, instead of domination he came to accept another way of experiencing life. This is what men are or need to be doing, then and now. The new age nonsense was just a motif for Don to start coming to terms, and it was a great place to set this part of his life at because it touches on what the series has been doing by setting itself in the sixties. Places like the Esalen institute were becoming popular in that era, it's fitting to have Don begin his exploration of a different self there.
my instinct was the cynical read and I laughed my ass off and loved it. I appreciate that it's not necessarily what happened and there's value in other interpretations absolutely.
You mean in this thread? Because nobody in here is actually doing that.
What was your read?
The cynical reading is
And then from afar, watching the group film the Coke ad, we see Meredith, dressed in white, possibly floating. And she gives a nice smile and nod and flies away, just as Don catches a glimmer of sunshine in his eye. Because he knew. He knew.
That's my Mad Men interpretation of the ending.
No, not on this thread necessarily. Some of the critic's websites seem keen on reducing Don's journey this half-season to being merely about making a good ad; others yet see the last scene as some larger criticism and takedown of the 70s as a whole and capitalist/consumer culture in general. I feel that's all very cynical and dismissive.
I do think that Don does get some modicum of happiness in the end; that he does at least find a way to be happy. Even if the show only gives vague hints and suggestions as to what that way might be. But I don't think it matters how he lives happily or for how long. He can do it now, in a way that I'm not sure he could in any of the earlier seasons.
What I think is the most fantastic part of the ending, though, is that it gives you enough to come up with a fairly solid interpretation, which happens to be far more revealing of yourself than of the show. Mad Men has done a Rohrschach-test of an ending. You can't help but fill in the gaps with how you understand and/or believe the world to work. What you think the ending means reveals much more about yourself than the show actually does on its own. But that has always been part of the pleasure of watching Mad Men. Many of the stories work because of what you read between the lines, not necessarily because of the things that characters spell out for you.
I thought the juxtaposition of the heartfelt epiphany for Don and a Coke ad (with all the callbacks this entails) was more about suggesting that the sublime can be found in the banal; or that a commercial product can also say something of value. Like, say, a commerical-sponsored TV show can say something meaningful about people's lives.
And I think the moment where Don sees himself in that monologue and gets up to hug the sobbing man, is just such a pure gesture of shared humanity and compassion (even amidst the phoniness and egotism of those New Age self-help circles), that I can't even fathom why you'd consider the ending steeped in irony to the point of being cynical.
In the general sense of "people don't change" I don't see much evidence of that in a universal sense. All of the characters see major changes in the finale relative to where they started the show, and it's implied that at least most of those changes are to be read as the new status quo.
Joan has gone from being an invisible glorified secretary to being the financially secure owner of her own (presumably successful) company.
Roger goes from being a perennial philanderer who bounces from young waif to young waif to settling into a more mature, if slightly cynical, relationship.
And so on.
The only question mark is Don. But at the very least, the finale showed Don gaining a new acceptance of who he is and where he came from, and an understanding of what that means. Whether or not he returns to McCann, he's far from the same superficially driven facade we saw in the series premier.
I think most of it is based on how you react to the Coke ad in the end. Do you reject it as cloying, manipulative garbage? Then this taints everything that has come before, because it suggests that this season and by extension the whole show has laid down character work and complex emotions to build up to an ode to commercialism and mindless consumerism.
I don't hate the ad, though. I don't turn up my nose at it for being "only" an ad.