Mad Men Finale Thoughts

[author_by_night]

Not a review, really, just... thoughts.


- Loved Joan's reaction to Roger getting married to Megan's mother. They get each other. (Also liked Joan's "no, he's just a terrible person" regarding Greg forgetting all about about Kevin.)

- Preferred Betty's final scene last episode. Oh well. i did like seeing Sally stepping up to take care of her brothers, but I really hope she's not essentially becoming a mother at seventeen. i don't want her to turn into Betty 2.0. (Though really, I don't think she will.) Didn't get Betty wanting the kids with their brother though - didn't he screw over their father? Unless he had a major personality change, from what I remember of him, I don't see him having the children's best interests at heart.

- No idea what to think of Don's weird hippie commune thing (ETA: I take it back - apparently it's a real place, and an actual spiritual/healing center...), except I didn't like it. Did he go back and come up with the coke ad? That seems to be the general consensus.

- In a way I wish Peggy and Joan had joined forces, but... in all honesty? While that was even a very popular fan theory (and certainly something I was more than in favor of myself), Joan and Peggy never worked well together. They weren't enemies, but unfortunately they were put in a situation where they found themselves in constant competition, and I'm not sure whether they would've been able to surpass that.

- Peggy and Stan were cute - it was alllmost a bit too rom com, but to heck with it, they deserve happiness. Plus, I think they're the only people who've been able to be 100% straight with each other and still stay standing the next day. (Besides Don and Peggy, maybe.) Peggy pisses Stan off sometimes, but she's never pushed him away, and vice versa.

I don't think this episode was good as a series finale. It wasn't terrible, but... it reminds me of some of the fanfics I've written, where eventually I ran out of steam and just sort of tacked on an ending. That's how this felt, even if it's not what MW intended. (Wonder if some of the writers and other people involved felt that way, though.)

I think the other problem with the past few seasons is that we got way too much late sixties/early seventies stuff - for obvious reasons, that's when they took place, but media's already covered the late sixties and early seventies so much, not a lot really felt new. It was more... Mad Men characters in scenarios we'd already seen before, whereas the earlier seasons really covered less explored ground.

In any case, I think the show ending after season five would've been perfect, or even the first half of season seven. The whole world watches man walk the moon, Cooper dies, etc.

I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts. Making this public so anyone can contribute. :)

Comments

[tediousandbrief.livejournal.com]

Betty wanted the boys to have a maternal influence growing up and they wouldn't have had that with Don (or Henry).

The hippie thing was an actual place in California at the time (or was supposed to be without it being mentioned by name). He hit absolute rock bottom there and realized he needed to be needed and he needed to distress. His life was an absolute mess starting with the merger with McCann lost nearly everything:

- His position with his own company (the take over with McCann
- His job (one he walked out of the meeting)
- His furniture and apartment
- His hope at finding Diane (the woman for the diner)
- His first wife who he obviously still loved
- His kids (in that it is possible that they'd be living with his brother-in-law)
- His link to his not-really-his-daughter Stephanie

So he finds a semblance of catharsis and peace and comes up with the ad. There was a lot of telegraphing that Don would come up with the Coke ad: Coke is the pitch that is made to him to get him to feel that going to the big, evil McCann agency is a plus, Peggy mentions it (plus that he can return back to work...these things happen) during their phone call "Don't you want to work on Coke?," etc.

Also, that specific coke ad was created by the real McCann agency in 1971, so it seems pretty clear that he went back to New York to feel needed and create that ad.

I really hadn't followed much other media dealing with the late 1960s and early 1970s stuff. It did just remind me that that area had some terrible choice in clothing.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had no idea that was a real place and an actual healing center. I actually feel a little bad now, because if it was real I'm sure people got something out of it. :/ I think because of the direction the show has taken before with those things, that's just what I jumped to. Also, I was so distracted by the other stuff I think I sort of overlooked the healing center parts. (And that may have been other people's problem, too.)

Ohh, so it was the real McCann too. That actually answers questions a lot of people were asking about the fact that they used a real ad! Though the concern was more claiming/implying Don did it - honestly, I'm fine with that. It's obviously not the real McCann anyway, so that's obviously not the real ad anyway. It's always been clear to me that the companies are meant to be stand-ins so they can use the names of actual brands, as well as their advertisements. Otherwise the real Lucky Strike people and Jaguar people would probably have a case for libel...

I know Betty wanted them to have maternal influence, and it also makes sense to me that she may have wanted to avoid Sally having to fall into that role - as she said in her letter to Sally, Betty knows Sally's meant for more than that. I just remember Betty's brother being very selfish, though IIRC his wife was okay, even apologetic of her husband. And it'd be good for them not to lose their only connection to Betty, too.

[tediousandbrief.livejournal.com]

Even if it wasn't the actual place (it isn't mentioned by name), there were places like that. They're all trying to feel better in the workshops. To me it seemed pretty clearly a New Age group therapy of sorts.

Quite a few of the products were real products. Conrad Hilton was a real, historic person, for instance. The real McCann twitter feed actually reposted the commercial last night congratulating Don for finally coming up with a good idea for McCann (that coke commercial).

Betty's brother wasn't loaded and wanted to live in the house. People get crazy when family members die/are dying. I've witnessed similar fights over who-gets-what once the parents are dead before.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

To me it seemed pretty clearly a New Age group therapy of sorts.

Yeah, like I said I think I was so focused on "but what about everyone else?" I may actually go back and rewatch, because spiritual healing type of things are normally right up my alley.


Quite a few of the products were real products. Conrad Hilton was a real, historic person, for instance. The real McCann twitter feed actually reposted the commercial last night congratulating Don for finally coming up with a good idea for McCann (that coke commercial).

Yeah, that was what I was trying to say. Maybe I need to back up - I was reading posts worrying that the show "stole" the coke ad, since it was real. My point was that most of the figures and companies we've seen on the show have been based on real people and agencies, probably intended more as stand-ins. Or the show is supposed to be an alternate history of sorts. Either or.


Betty's brother wasn't loaded and wanted to live in the house. People get crazy when family members die/are dying. I've witnessed similar fights over who-gets-what once the parents are dead before.

I may be remembering wrong anyway. I hope you're right. (But I also know families can get pretty intense in bad times. I've witnessed it in my own, unfortunately.)

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

I don't think this episode was good as a series finale. It wasn't terrible, but... it reminds me of some of the fanfics I've written, where eventually I ran out of steam and just sort of tacked on an ending

Yeah I felt that way too with the finale.

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

I think the other problem with the past few seasons is that we got way too much late sixties/early seventies stuff - for obvious reasons, that's when they took place, but media's already covered the late sixties and early seventies so much, not a lot really felt new.

Agreed. The hippie revolution - objectively it's interesting historically, but it's been so done to death that I don't care much about it. (Also, the clothes have been so hideous.) That said, one of my Things is that so much historical fiction treats a period like a solid block of time and you don't get the sense that the characters were living in a different age before and will be living in a different one in the future, so I'm kind of for it.

I don't think this episode was good as a series finale. It wasn't terrible, but... it reminds me of some of the fanfics I've written, where eventually I ran out of steam and just sort of tacked on an ending. That's how this felt, even if it's not what MW intended.

Yep, agreed there too. As much as I liked most of the endings, it felt like the show as a whole deserved something more amazing than just individual little happy endings.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

I did love how Mad Men dealt with the era, especially as it tried not to beat us over the head with the biggest staples of the era. There were hippies, but other things happened, and most of the characters were observers and occasional dabblers. (Although by 1970 everyone had dabbled a bit, but that was the point - the way I always understood it, "real" hippies were more the mid to late sixties, then Woodstock made everyone and their brotherly love want to be a hippie. Not to mention the prototypes like beatniks, which we see as well.)

I mean, even in context of my our "time", I can see how the majority of people were just trying to live their lives. Not that they were necessarily indifferent or unaware, but it's not like you were either a hippie or Part of the Problem... people just were who they were, did what they did, and so on. Not all media captures this believably, but Mad Men does.