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Mad Men: The Final Season (Part One)


Petey

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I would hope for a happy ending, it's like Don's been shedding his skin over the past couple of episodes and it's strange that it all started with a fling with a waitress. All we've ever seen in his life is self-sabotage (I've still never really gotten over the fact I thought he was getting his life together in Season 4 only to end up proposing to Megan and reverting to type) so for once I'd like to see him make it out west and begin again

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The title of the episode should've been "The One Where Everyone Talks On The Phone."

I'd argue that the three best scenes of the episode were each of the phone conversations (Don/Betty, Don/Peggy and Steggy).

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Loved the Don/Peggy conversation.  Less happy with the rom-com Peggy/Stan stuff.  Generally liked how the episode just sort of wound down - mostly without going out of it's way to create big endings for the characters.  Most of the character development was a natural evolution instead of a big change (Betty's an exception).  I was expecting Don to either go back to either go back to Betty and become the doting father and "husband" - or to give up the Don Draper identity entirely and become someone else, starting over with a new wife, job, etc.

 

Also, I'm a small person.  I wanted to cheer when Joan's boyfriend left her.  Granted, it reflects more on him than her, except as a reflection of choices she has made, but Joan is one of my least favorite characters on tv, so I was kinda hoping for an unhappy ending.  I don't expect or want every character to be likable, and it's generally pointless to hate on fictional characters. but for her, Huck, and Rush Limbaugh, I'm willing to make an exception.

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It was cool seeing the hot niece again, and I liked that Peggy finally found her match. Also Don breaking down in the group. But otherwise it was just blah IMO. The worst ending for all of them being the wife and kids was pretty dark and I don't know if that's the end for them that I would have written but it feels like the one we deserved. Don's, on the other hand...

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Now that I've given it chance to sink in, that group scene was a really fucking powerful bit of television and the way I read it was Don realising that he is the opposite of that man... someone incapable of noticing the people who love him. Whoever that actor was totally stole the episode IMO.

 

The thing I took from the final character scene(s) was that Don Draper is someone who can't ever experience real happiness except when he's fashioning a fantasy version of it for commerce. Is that enough to make him change though? History says no but I'd like to believe it did.

 

OH and because it was a series finale and you're always expecting some kind of event or explosion, I was filled with dread when Don went to the commune as my immediate thought was HE'S GONNA JOIN SCIENTOLOGY hahaha

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OH and because it was a series finale and you're always expecting some kind of event or explosion, I was filled with dread when Don went to the commune as my immediate thought was HE'S GONNA JOIN SCIENTOLOGY hahaha

 

For the same reason, I thought that Don's end would either have him going back to Betty and becoming the model husband/father - or blowing up his Don Draper identity and finding true love and happiness under a new identity with a new woman and job.  Neither of which I'd buy.

 

The wife and I were amused that Don's ending involved him going walking aimlessly away from his life, giving up his job, deinking himself stupid, nearly having an emotional breakdown, ... and then he apparently goes back to work and creates an iconic ad spot,  LOl,  One of Don's most consistent traits was his ability to fall upward.  He's basically a walking disaster but, when the dust settles, he ends up in a good spot (at least superficially).  The collateral damage wrecks everyone around him, but Don usually emerged relatively unscathed.  Or, as my wife put it, "he has a habit of setting himself on fire, but only the people around him burn"

 

Really, Don apparently emerging from walkabout to become an even bigger creative success reminded of the rant Mathis went on when Don fired him several eps back.  The "You're just handsome.  Guys like you don't need to apologize" bit.  There was a lot of truth in that bit.

 

Although, at the time, I thought Mathis might be talking about Jon Hamm as much as Don Draper.  I feel like Hamm has been near perfect in the role, but he's not made much of an impression on me in anything else I've seen him in (along the same lines, I thought January Jones was pretty damn great as Betty but she's been awful in most of the other things I've seen her in).

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Listless, dull episode.  The perfect end to a listless, dull final season.  Maybe Weiner was getting all meta, like the aimlessness of this season was a reflection on Don's own aimlessness.  All the symbolism was just so fucking heavy handed and amateurish. 

 

I didn't interpret the ending as Don going back to advertising and using his hippie experience to write the famous Coke jingle but it appears I'm in the minority.  If that's indeed the intended ending, that's awful.  Guy has a breakthrough about how he's wasted his entire life, only to return to that same empty life and make millions because the very place where he had that breakthrough also gave him a surefire idea?  Hippies give Don the only moment of actual truth in his life and then he uses it in an ad?  That's cynical as fuck.

 

"I've learned so much and really grown....oh well, back to the soulless business of selling shit to people who don't need it.  I'll call the escort service so the hookers are waiting for me when I get back."

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Don totally wrote it, even Jon Hamm thinks so. He figures the last scene was Don coming to grips with who he is and that is an ad man. This whole season has been about him accepting his past and I think the last episode was about him accepting his place in the world and taking the advice that he gave Ted Chaough, to forget everything else about the politics of the job and just enjoy the work.

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I've only seen Hamm in two other things - the Town and Black Mirror - and he was good and great (in that order).

 

Whose to say he didn't go back to advertising with a more enlightened viewpoint and accepting of who he is? That's not cynical, that's acceptance

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