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

[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.