Mad Men

[The NZA]

eh, disagree

 

 

Don did get his breakthrough - he didn't get (or make) a 2nd chance like Pete or even Stirling; he tried picking up every piece he could find (and tried his hand at some other paths too) but nothing fit. the other dude that cried about the fridge story, i kinda took that here was a dude who was good, did right by his family, and ended up in the same place Don did somehow. i guess this made him find peace, cause he stayed meditating and and living on hippie commune island while the rest of the world went on without him.

 

he'd be done with ad agencies since at least the finale of the other season (with the hershey people), he just hadn't made peace with it, and the merger clearly sealed it. i dug the final few eps in an Easy Rider kind've way, and if Don would've scraped something together with the remnants of his family - or the actual Draper one - i think that wouldv'e been cheapened.

 

not saying it's perfect, but it had infinitely more closure than, say, Sopranos. and with the low bar of other shows ending in the last year or so (Breaking Bad aside) i'm happy with the one we got here, felt oddly appropriate

 

[Da Cap'n 2099]

Who wrote the jingle then?

[The NZA]

hadn't even thought about it...

 

 

wasn't Don, unless that was some leftover work they dug up which i don't know how likely that sounds. Peggy stayed on, so i guess we can assume it's her swan song or something? she did finally hook up with the more hippie guy & all

 

[Da Cap'n 2099]

I think the ending was left open ended to leave you guessing on who wrote it.

[The NZA]

huh...hadn't really thought of that, but in hindsight it should be obvious, right? it's a really iconic ad, feels like a great sendoff

[Mr. Hakujin]

Well, after reading some interviews series finale writer/director/creator Matthew Weiner did before the finale aired,

I think the audience is not meant to know who created the ad. Several articles I read about the finale mentioned the real guy who created the ad (McCann-Eriksson did have Coke as a client and really did create the ad in 1970).

 

I admit, I never thought for once Peggy might've done the coke advert. I don't think that's likely as even her newest vocal cheerleader, Leer Jet exec Pete Campbell, thinks Peggy is realistically a decade away from getting the clout in the company to pull off something like that for a client like Coke. Hell, she even had to fight for the pantyhose account she brought with her from SCDP--or was that Avon? I forget, but it's that account in the scene she had at the end of the meeting with Queen Bitch in the finale I'm referencing. Anyway, I don't think we're meant to think Peggy created the iconic ad. But I did like the ending she and Roger got especially. Looking back on it, there were a lot of happy endings for characters. Even Joan and Pete. Pete probably changed the most out of all these characters. Go Pete.

 

Going back to those interviews the creator did, I think Don still didn't really change. I think that peaceful look is more an acceptance of who he really is and always has been--a drifting con-man. I guess technically that acceptance could be called a "breakthru" but I feel as if he's always known that is who he was, just maybe for now he is okay with it out there on the California coast.

 

Weiner said the series is meant to reflect an era, the 1960s and that era has now ended. Don no longer needs to pretend he's a family man (white shirt, starched collar, buttoned up, suit and tie). But he is still a con-man, selling gut rotting sugar water instead of cancer causing cigarettes. (Which is something I forgot--the series literally started with Don trying to save the Lucky Strike account for Sterling-Cooper.) Don is still that con-man, ad man, deep down. But now he's altered with the times. He's still got that white shirt, but it's unbuttoned and not starched, worn barefoot with khakis instead of with a suit and tie.

 

So, I guess what the show is trying to say is that the more things change the more they stay the same.

 

*edit*

Also, after writing all that and really thinking about the finale, I realized I liked it a lot more than I thought I did. I was initially thrown off that something "bigger" didn't happen for Don and that it was such a bummer for Don's family--Sally especially.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Mr. Hakujin

[Mr. Hakujin]

Here's a really good interview with John Hamm.

 

There was a little bit of a crumb dropped earlier in the season when Ted says there are three women in every man’s life, and Don says, “You’ve been sitting on that for a while, huh?” There are, not coincidentally, three person to person phone calls that Don makes in this episode, to three women who are important to him for different reasons. You see the slow degeneration of his relationships with those women over the course of those phone calls.

 

And another with Creator Matthew Weiner where we get his definitive answer about that Coke ad.

 

Yup, Don created it.

 

 

"I didn't realize until the end that Don likes strangers. He likes seducing strangers, which is just like advertising. ... You're gonna walk down the side of the road, and now we know each other. And once he gets to know you, he doesn't like you. It's gonna turn once they feel exposed. That's why he picked Megan over Faye. He just tells Peggy, just move forward — that's his philosophy in life."