Mad Men finale! (Spoilers, of course)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Btw, why were there halloween decorations all over - on peggy's octopus painting, on joan's refrigerator, etc.

That will be analyzed for decades. And will never be fully understood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Btw, why were there halloween decorations all over - on peggy's octopus painting, on joan's refrigerator, etc.

That will be analyzed for decades. And will never be fully understood.

Marks time. Don was gone for two months.

[Anonymous]

Maybe being at e retreat helped Don find his inner peace. Maybe he finally won't be so tormented, and use booze and women as his escape.

[Anonymous]

Loved the finale. Loved Don and Betty and got chills when he said,"Birdie..." Loved Roger and Meghan's crazy mom. Loved that Don used all his hippy therapy and created the Coke ad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Btw, why were there halloween decorations all over - on peggy's octopus painting, on joan's refrigerator, etc.

That will be analyzed for decades. And will never be fully understood.

Betty's letter to Sally was dated October 1970.
Joan's final scene (her own company) was standing in front of a November 1970 calendar.

It WAS Halloween. Nothing very odd there. All I can think is that they've grown up. Instead of dressing up and getting plastered they are just taking up little office decorations.

[Anonymous]

I liked that in the final scene Don was wearing khakis and a button down shirt. Not the hippyish jeans wearing "existential crisis" Don of the previous few weeks but not suit and tie Don either. I would have liked to see New Don functioning with the people in his life.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if any of the participants at the retreat were in the original coke ad? Yes, I'm tearing a page out of Sopranos finale.

[Anonymous]

I loved it. Ending with an iconic ad a staying true to Mad Men's roots . The promise of happiness through advertising was a central theme - advertising can even promise World Peace! Fantastic.

I am glad Peggy did not take Joan's offer. She proved she can handle the BS at McCann - she needed to stick to the game plan and take advantage of everything it had to offer (which was a lot, despite some if it's crumminess.) And, she gets some Stan-love to keep her balance and put work in it's perspective. Perfect.

Also, go Joan. She was always so much more than a kept woman.

[Anonymous]

This show was always written in carefully crafted haiku.

I always saw the whole show as a metaphor for the U.S. in the 20th century. Don emerges from the depression era, pulls himself up by his own bootstraps, cheats a little, but still very much self made. Gets himself out of the depression (his home of origin) into his new re-invented life of prosperity - in the same time frame as did the U.S. - post-war boom, cigarettes, the automobile, civilian/passenger air travel - all of it. Dawdles a little in the hippie life, but returns to full-throttle thrust ahead american motivation. Just like the U.S., the tawdry past is never far away-- his / our closet full of skeletons. A 20th-century coming-of-age metaphor.

Yes I was an english major.

[Anonymous]

When Joan did coke I was sorta hoping for a Scorsese-esque montage of her slipping into a full 1970s tailspin - coke, orgies, disco, etc. but I am glad for how things turned out for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This show was always written in carefully crafted haiku.

I always saw the whole show as a metaphor for the U.S. in the 20th century. Don emerges from the depression era, pulls himself up by his own bootstraps, cheats a little, but still very much self made. Gets himself out of the depression (his home of origin) into his new re-invented life of prosperity - in the same time frame as did the U.S. - post-war boom, cigarettes, the automobile, civilian/passenger air travel - all of it. Dawdles a little in the hippie life, but returns to full-throttle thrust ahead american motivation. Just like the U.S., the tawdry past is never far away-- his / our closet full of skeletons. A 20th-century coming-of-age metaphor.

Yes I was an english major.

This is good stuff.

[Anonymous]

Weiner is a genius. It's apparent that He learned a lot from the Sopranos. The Sopranos had it's sublime moments of course- but I did tire of the way Tony always seemed to be somehow morally justified in his dirty work. Tony seemed to be beyond the Law that governs the rest of us. Tony's skeletons never seemed to resurface -

Don isn't so much. He actually makes mistakes and suffers consequences. If it weren't for that Grecian Formula I'm certain his hair would be the same color as Rogers!

We love Tony and Don because, as actors, these men are masters of showing us strength AND vulnerability - in the same facial expression.

[Anonymous]

A show like this can never really have a really great ending because life doesn't end. It's the reason the Sopranos and Sienfield and tons of other shows like this have had crappy endings. Because you can't tie up people's lives in neat little packages without ruining the whole premise of the show to begin with.

[Anonymous]

I felt so sad for Sally. Poor girl could never show emotion because she never saw her mother show any.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But, but...how can he hear that guy go on about the refridgerator and how people loved him all along but just didn't show it exactly the way he wanted - and then NOT go home to his daughter?

He needs to help his daughter. It's crap that he doesn't.

I think he did go home, and then he made that Coke ad. But Don had to wait until people were leaving, at the end of the week, to get back home, and during that time, he found peace. At least that's what I'd like to believe.

He even told Peggy that he'd see her later or soon.