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The End of Mad Men 7 - Person to Person

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On 5/21/2015 at 9:24 AM, CLWheeljack said:

Matt Weiner on the ending:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mad-men-series-finale-matthew-797302

I also find it somehow unsatisfying that Don created the Coke ad, for reasons I can't specifically articulate, but if you accept that interpretation, the thematic content of the end of the show are pretty straight-forward, I think.

 

Well, thank heavens that the author is dead and more satisfying interpretations exist!

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I find the "Don creates the Coke ad" ending satisfying in some ways, and unsatisfying in others. The idea that Don returns to McCann and creates the Coke ad is unsatisfying in part because I think it Forrest Gump-s Don's character a little bit in a Mary Sue way. "Hey, you know the greatest ad ever? Yeah, I did that."

 

I also have a bit of a logistical problem with the idea that Don still has a job at McCann after taking his unplanned hiatus (there are hints that it's possibly somewhat acceptable, but it seems hard to imagine). Also, you could argue that his experience at the retreat made him better equipped to deal with his role there, but I'm also not sure I believe that the fundamental problems with that environment that made him run in the first place would become acceptable to him.

 

But, as Ted Chaough would say, there are 3 thematic considerations in every Mad Men series finale:

  1. Don as a character
  2. Don as a metaphorical avatar for the era
  3. The ending of a television show

I've listed those in the order that I think matters to Matthew Weiner.

 

Don returning to advertising in some capacity is the most respectful of Don's character (and also the most consistent with the rest of the show). Don's journey, such as it is, is about how he doesn't have a journey. Which isn't meant cynically: It's not that he doesn't learn anything ever. It's that he's still Don doing the learning, and that his essential nature doesn't change. Don goes out and has real emotional experiences, but what he does with those experiences is process them and transform them for his own ends. There's no big personal growth or "accepting that he's an ad man", because that isn't how people really grow. The same way that showing his true identity to Sally was "accepting that he's Dick Whitman". He's still both things. He learns that other people have the same feeling of alienation and aimlessness, but that doesn't cure his alienation or aimlessness, it just gives him another lens to process it with.

 

And well, we've seen Don put his head down and grind out work in unpleasant circumstances. So it's not impossible that he'd suffer under McCann's rule.

 

As the "finale", we feel the episode should mean something different. Either it should be making a statement, or ending a story, or something. But, it doesn't have anything to say other than what's already been said, and the end of the series is still just another day in Don's life.

 

My initial, very bleak, reaction was similar to Sarah's upthread, in that I saw it as the inevitable grinding hand of commercialism devouring genuine emotion and experience and spitting it back out. But, while occasionally cynical, the show's been rather more measured about advertising and commercialism in the past, and so I don't think that's a reading consistent with the rest of the series. I think that that reaction is in part caused by expecting Weiner to make a statement at the end of the show. 

 

If Don DID make the ad, I hope that he managed to pull Peggy onto his team. I think she'd be satisfied with that as "something of lasting value."

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My initial, very bleak, reaction was similar to Sarah's upthread, in that I saw it as the inevitable grinding hand of commercialism devouring genuine emotion and experience and spitting it back out. But, while occasionally cynical, the show's been rather more measured about advertising and commercialism in the past, and so I don't think that's a reading consistent with the rest of the series. I think that that reaction is in part caused by expecting Weiner to make a statement at the end of the show.

I think there's a very valid reading of the show that advertising is an empty commoditization of humanity (and how it's in direct opposition to real emotion, which is a possible reading of the Hershey's pitch especially), so I don't see the bleak reading as inconsistent with the show.

Weiner's is just his interpretation of the ending. His is far from the only input on the show, so while he's an authority on the show, he isn't necessarily THE authority on the show.

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Don returning to advertising in some capacity is the most respectful of Don's character (and also the most consistent with the rest of the show). Don's journey, such as it is, is about how he doesn't have a journey. Which isn't meant cynically: It's not that he doesn't learn anything ever. It's that he's still Don doing the learning, and that his essential nature doesn't change. Don goes out and has real emotional experiences, but what he does with those experiences is process them and transform them for his own ends. There's no big personal growth or "accepting that he's an ad man", because that isn't how people really grow. The same way that showing his true identity to Sally was "accepting that he's Dick Whitman". He's still both things. He learns that other people have the same feeling of alienation and aimlessness, but that doesn't cure his alienation or aimlessness, it just gives him another lens to process it with.

 

And well, we've seen Don put his head down and grind out work in unpleasant circumstances. So it's not impossible that he'd suffer under McCann's rule.

 

As the "finale", we feel the episode should mean something different. Either it should be making a statement, or ending a story, or something. But, it doesn't have anything to say other than what's already been said, and the end of the series is still just another day in Don's life.

 

I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I think that the episode itself undermines the "just another day in Don's life" angle. The writing is chock full of signs that Don is reaching a vital decision point in the finale, something more than just making a successful ad. Don leaves McCann in the middle of a meeting because he feels "invisible" among "half the creative directors in the whole company," later reflected in his sudden and extreme connection with the lonely man in the circle. He tells the young con artist that once you make a decision that screws people over, you have to go your own way and "never come back to that place." He confesses to Peggy over the phone that he has "stolen a man's name and made nothing of it." Finally, the last words spoken in the show are the guru saying that the dawn brings "new hope," maybe even "a new you."

 

With all of those lines in place, and without anything like Peggy's storyline about deciding between staying or going, it feels really unnatural that the endpoint for Don's character arc just in the past few episodes (not even taking into account his arc over the entire series) is a simple return to glory at McCann, doing what he's always done but perhaps with a bit more happiness on his side now. The crisis of Don's character has never been about his ability to make good ads, and earlier instances of him turning personal demons into quality product (like the "Carousel" ad) were all about the way that that work reflects on his personal life, so it doesn't follow for me that Don's character now is suddenly all about making the ad and that that's what he meant by "making something" of his borrowed life.

 

I understand the literal interpretation of the finale is very popular, and will only become more so with Weiner's explicit endorsement, but I think it is the mostly weakly supported in the text of the show, out of the three possible interpretations that come to my mind (meta-commentary on modern culture, depiction of Don's mental state in the show, depiction of Don's subsequent actions in the show).

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I think there's a very valid reading of the show that advertising is an empty commoditization of humanity (and how it's in direct opposition to real emotion, which is a possible reading of the Hershey's pitch especially), so I don't see the bleak reading as inconsistent with the show.

Weiner's is just his interpretation of the ending. His is far from the only input on the show, so while he's an authority on the show, he isn't necessarily THE authority on the show.

Granted that's true, but honestly I had already convinced myself out of that interpretation before I read Weiner's comments. I think that the voice of the show as a work in general is more interested in the consistency of Don's character than that particular commentary about commercialism.

 

For instance, while on the one hand we do have the Hershey's pitch, we also have Burger Chef, which presented the constructed "family" unit of Don, Pete, and Peggy reflecting that ad's themes entirely sincerely.

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