Mad Men: Coke x2

The Ride has Ended
"I have been watching my life. It's right there. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can't." - Don Draper, Mad Men, S02E12


Dear god, it's over. After nine years, the story of Don Draper (or Dick Whitman is you prefer,) his family, his friends, and his coworkers has finally ended. After a string of truly phenomenal episodes (the best of which, to me anyway, was the penultimate episode: "The Milk and Honey Route,") Mad Men ended in a good finale, but perhaps not a great one.

After the premiere of the final season, I wrote at length about how ending Mad Men is a very different experience and task than ending most of the other shows on television. This is because of the fact that at its core, Mad Men is a show about life, while many other programs are more about death. Breaking Bad is the story of a man who is given a short amount of time to live, and as a result, unleashes his inner demons to become Heisenberg. His story would inevitably end with what the premise had set up. Both Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos detailed the lives of mobsters, men who grappled with death in their walks of life. It was only natural that the men at the front would, at the very least, dance closely with it.

R.I.P.
However, Don Draper and his associates never killed anyone. Lane Pryce died, but by taking his own life after a traumatic storyline. Advertising is not the business of death, and the characters in the show are not dealers of it. Thus, when ending a show like Mad Men, the climax will inherently be less epic and final than the aforementioned shows. There would be no showdown and shoot-off, no arch-enemies staring each other down before a battle, and no guns on the wall ready to be fired. No, Mad Men has always been a show about life, and when Don Draper sits down for one final "ohm" before his story is gone, the inevitable happens. Just as we all knew in the back of our heads that Walter White had to die, we all knew that the true end for Don Draper was simply to live, only to maybe find happiness in that life.

But let's backtrack a moment before we come to our coke commercial and our "ohms."

The final episode of Mad Men, titled "Person to Person," followed the six major characters of the show, giving us a hint as to what direction their lives will go toward as time marches on. These six characters are Don, Joan, Peggy, Roger, Pete, and Betty. While others have come in and out, and certainly others affect these six character's lives a good deal, the show has followed these six people since the start, and continues this trend at the end.

I'll start with the plotlines I was a fan of before moving on to those I wasn't so keen on. First up, Joan and Roger!

These two have been some of the stronger characters of the show as a whole. Joan's stories constantly deal with being put down, only for perhaps the strongest human in the show to always overcome. Joan is always put down, only to get back up and conquer her troubles. She's been through a lot since the show began, trying sleeping with her boss, trying having children, and trying working under a rather hostile company in McCan Erickson. In the final season, she's been with a new man, Richard, who just wants to spend time with her and enjoy wealth together. However, in the final episode of the show, we see that what makes Joan Joan is her work. Yes, she wants love, but as a business minded woman through and through, Joan's work is what will give her happiness and purpose. She leaves love for work, a tradeoff that has been long debated by almost every character in the show, and finally settled by Joan.
Healthy Parenting (inspired by Betty Draper)
Too soon?

Roger on the other hand, decides to get married at the end of the series to the crazy mother of Megan Draper. The wild french woman is the first age-appropriate woman Roger has been with since his ex-wife, and also probably the best fit for him. Roger's story has always been one of searching around in luxury in order to find short-term happiness. He sleeps around, he tries to manage his business, and he even grows a stache. However, unlike Don, he is not searching for happiness in the long term quite as much. This changes in the finale, when he finally finds someone who has similar values to himself. Roger and Marie don't have any delusions about each other. The scene prior to Roger's marriage announcement, Marie reveals that she'd cheated on him recently. Almost comically, they are engaged the following scene. Roger has finally found a significant other he can trip through life with, even if others will slip in and out of both of their beds. This ending for this character was fantastic. Even as Roger's final lines of the show go by, making fun of Marie's age, we can see that despite it being an unorthodox relationship, Roger may have found long term happiness.

And now on to Peggy and Pete.

Peggy ends the show by falling in love with Stan Rizzo and staying at McCan Erickson in order to climb the career ladder. While in essence a good way to end our experience with Peggy, the execution was rather weak. When Peggy realizes she has love for Stan, it's done in a quite un-Mad Men esq manner. He professes her love, she walks through whether or not she feels the same, and then Stan magically shows up at her door and love music swirls as they kiss. There was no real subtlety in the scene. It almost felt like the writers wanted something happy to happen, but forgot how to nuance the scene. While most of the episode left mystique and open-ended areas for the viewer to contemplate after the fact, Peggy's story ended with an almost Sex and the City type situation. Moreover, though I appreciate that Peggy stays at the advertising firm to eventually take over the role that Don Draper once held, Peggy's story had always been about growth as a worker, not exactly one about just finding love. Thus, it felt, to me at least, a bit too concrete and bit too plain how Peggy's story ended.
Children of the Draper

Likewise, Pete gets a nearly storybook end for himself, moving to Wichita with Trudy and his kids to be the new, nice, Pete. My problem with this started a few episodes ago, when after talking with his brother and learning of his rather slandered family name, Pete almost took on a new identity. While I like the fact that Pete became less of a douche, it was too abrupt, and his end was ostensibly without prompting. Why would Trudy take him back after all the bad blood between them for so long? Despite the change of heart that Pete had a couple episodes ago, how could he shred all aspects of his personality that had been going on for so long in such a short amount of time? Once again, the character's ending felt a bit too neat and immediate. The Pete of the past, condemned even by his mother, seemed to just leave our screens and suddenly get a happy ending once he's a good guy.

Now, we come to Don (intertwined with Betty and Sally).

In episode five, we saw Don finally snap. He walked out on his McCan Erickson meeting and essentially left New York to go into the wilderness and try to sort out his life. In the penultimate episode he shared his true identity with some army vets, only to be beat up by them some hours later. He gave his car away to a kid, telling him to "make sure he can still go home," and sat on a bus bench, waiting for anything that could take him away. At the start of the finale, we see Don zooming off in a car, continuing to travel into his own wilderness. He finally shows up in California to get in touch with the one shred of his past, Stephanie, his niece. The one woman who still calls him Dick. They head off to a Hippie Retreat, wherein Don does his best to find what will truly make him happy. After Stephanie leaves him in a shouting match, we see Don listen to the harrowing tale of a man who feels unliked and unnoticed.
And just like that, Don Draper dies. Just like that, seemingly, Dick Whitman dies as well. In the final scene of the show, Jon Hamm's character meditates, almost being reborn as a new man. He begins to smile, before we cut to a Coke commercial made by McCan Erickson. Thus, we are led to believe that Don Draper goes back to advertising to ostensibly create this commercial.

At the same time, Betty is dying, and Don is told not to come back and take care of his kids, as they should stay in the same beds that they always have. However, we are not told whether or not upon Don's hypothetical return to advertising, he will take over this responsibility or not. According to his final "ohm" and his crease of a smile, it seems that perhaps Don has found his way out of the wilderness and now knows how to be happy. The show about life will continue with its protagonist finding a way to enjoy it.

Can I get an "Ohm-en?"
My thoughts on this end were mixed. While I liked the fact that Don seemed to have been reborn with a way to be happy, it seems as if after watching for eight seasons, Don may have moved back to a similar square that he was on in the beginning. Yes, he's learned some things along the way, but are we led to believe that he simply goes back to his old life of advertising, seeing his kids on the weekends, and womanizing as a hobby? Or are we led to believe that Don will move to California and leave his old identity in New York? Wherever he goes, the show didn't exactly provide real conclusion to his story, rather just leaving it up to the audience's interpretation. I may sound contradictory when saying I didn't like Peggy and Pete's story wrapping up too neatly, I'm not asking for a fully concrete end, but rather just more direction. Don's meditation and implied commercial creation feels like the end to a penultimate episode, not a finale. The conclusion of Don Draper's story was not exactly bad, but just a bit too unresponsive to be truly satisfying.

All in all, despite my problems with the finale, Mad Men will be a show dearly missed by all lovers of good television. Even if individual aspects of this conclusion were not ideal, the characters, episodes, and themes brought to us in the show were one of a kind, and the quality of this show was only matched by a scarce few. It will certainly take its place in the pantheon of all-time greats.
Moreover, the spot for "best show on television" is completely wide open now. It's almost like a power vacuum, with shows like Better Call Saul and Game of Thrones getting ready to go to war.

Goodbye Mad Men. And thank you, Matthew Weiner, for all the good times! Your show(s) will be missed!

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