^ bear panther! agree with your final assessment about change. Recently read an article quoting Matthew Weiner, saying that if the audience wanted to see Don punished at the end, ( I admit I was in that category) then they are missing the basic truths, he said something about people staying true to their essence.
So you may be quite right about this being another phase.
This is lovely background about the real men behind the " Hilltop" ad-
I thought the episode was stupid. Sorry. Esalen cures Don? Even more absurd if the ending scene implied that Esalen cured Don and made him more creative. It would be bearable if it implied that Don found peace and life goes on without him on Madison Ave. His smile could mean he found happiness rather he came up with an ad idea. It could be the first genuine smile he ever had in his life. It would also imply Peggy and Joan are launched. That at least would be saying something about that period.
And why is Salley cleaning up in the kitchen? That’s a household with multiple household help. You’d think they would double the help with Betty sick. I regret watching it.
I could be wrong but it seemed to me that Betty dismissed her help. It looked like no one was there anymore.
It’s been a steady downward trend for Don ever since he went backstage at the Rolling Stones concert (4 seasons ago?) and though we might have thought Don has been having an existential crisis for the last 3 seasons—his real crisis was that he was out of touch with America’s zeitgeist. He found it at Esalen. Now he’s one with Coke. Ooooooooommmmmm.
LOVED it. I swear that I knew this guy at Mc Cann.
^ regarding the housekeeper certainly there are times when she has off, weekends maybe and, sally was pitching in. I’m not suprised to see Betty smoking, with six months to live, why not enjoy the moments. No one knew about second hand smoke then !
@igloo, I don’t think esalen “cured” Don, but at his lowest moment, he was brought from the brink. I don’t think esalen made him " creative" it allowed him to be his " creative, less blocked, less stressed self"
The real creative director at McCann on the Coke commercial was apparently Bill Backer ( but note the similarity in the alliteration and syllable structure!) who came up with idea for the “Hillside” spot at a layover in Ireland after a flight to London was rerouted. He saw the frustrated passengers having Cokes together at the terminal and came up with the idea “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”
I don’t for a minute buy that Don “found himself” at the retreat. I took the smile on his face to be partly feeling stupid at sitting on the beach with these hippies saying OHHHMMMM and hoping for a breakthrough. Rather, I think it’s his experience with Anna’s niece, the guy in the therapy session, and his realization that he admitted to Peggy he didn’t know what the heck he was doing at the retreat (or running away from) that shook him up enough to want to get back to NY.
The hokey hippie koombaya stuff is reflected in that Coke commercial – and given a commercial gloss that made it a classic. In a way, it’s classic Don.
Also, in the past couple of episodes, Don definitely played a parent-like role with several of the people in the final episodes. My take on that is that he’s ready to parent. He’s good at it. He knows for a fact that now his kids need him in a way they didn’t before when they were part of an intact family. Whether or not he’ll live with the kids is almost irrelevant. He’ll be there for them. I think it’s premature to say that Sally will be a parentified child. I personally think Betty’s prediction that Sally’s life will be “an adventure” rings more true to me.
Having read these comments, I’d say the ending was intentionally ambiguous about Don. My first take is apparently the opposite of many; I don’t connect Don’s smile at the end as the big idea of selling Coke as world togetherness. I thought the ending directly opposed the search for inner meaning and inner peace with the crass use of that to sell sugar water.
Mad Men has always been about the best ad work getting to the heart of what you sell. The classic is the Kodak Carousel because it really is, as the pitch says, a time machine and selling it that way best represents what it really is. Another was a product whose name escapes me about the two kinds of women, Marilyn and Jackie, which had truth because a woman isn’t one kind of person. Even selling deodorant was presented as “an excuse for her to get closer”.
The Coke ad worked by taking a commonality and presenting that as the product’s virtue. We all drink Coke - or at least in those days it seemed that way - and that this was because Coke had bottlers all over the world and could ship the basic syrup ingredient anywhere to be mixed, carbonated and bottled was set aside in favor of the simplest possible notion: we all drink Coke. Budweiser’s Clydesdale ads work similarly: though the beer is made in huge factories in a continuous processing method with huge steel vats (with pieces of beechwood added) and bottled on huge lines, etc., they’ve shifted our focus away from any real attributes of the beer to nostalgia. It’s as though you could hear them saying, “all these beers taste pretty much the same, especially cold, so we want people to buy what they feel good about and they feel good about a misty-eyed version of the past”.
So there are at least three ways to read the end. First, Don’s spiritual growth, his coming to terms with himself in a deeper way, his acceptance of himself, is real and the ad at the end plays against that. Second, Don’s spiritual growth is just a process he went through because in the end he’s an ad guy and this is a great ad idea. Third, Don’s spiritual growth is real and he’s an ad guy and this is a great idea.
I thought it interesting the show gave happy endings to every character from SC&P but none to the family. Not even to Anna Draper’s family. My thought about that is we see Peggy & Stan, Roger and Marie, Joan & her independence, Pete & Trudy (and Tammy) and don’t see their actual lives beyond that and the disappointments, struggles, sorrows, mistakes, happy events, love and anger that fill our lives. Knowing Peggy, we can assume she’ll doubt herself and that she’ll fight with Stan over heaven knows what. Knowing Roger and Marie, we can assume not every day will be lobsters and champagne. Pete will assuredly feel undervalued and both of them will feel confined in Wichita compared to their lives in NY.
But none of these characters are currently dying of cancer. The darker and more complete side of life is reserved in the ending for Don’s families, both his real one and Anna’s. No matter what it will be tough for the Draper kids because their mother will be gone. Sally should be going to Madrid but she’s been thinking about how to make it better for her little brothers, worrying about how they’ll be changing both beds and schools. Bobby’s trying to keep the truth from Gene but they’re alone in the dark trying to make grilled cheese for dinner. It will be tough for Stephanie.
I thought Leonard’s speech was a version of The Grateful Dead’s Truckin’: “sometimes the lights are shining on me/sometimes I can barely see/lately it occurs to me/what a long, strange trip it’s been.” To me, a question I had while watching Don as Leonard spoke - and that actor did a great job - was “has he really hit bottom?” He’s been down before but he came back as the same Don Draper, engaging in the same destructive behaviors and patterns, getting in better shape and drinking less but cheating on his wife with his friend’s wife and exposing Sally to that. As Megan said, he’s an “aging liar”. We’ve seen moments of self-realization, like when he tells Megan he was with Bobby and realized that he loved him, that he was overwhelmed by the feelings he’d been told he should have had all along. But he hasn’t seen his kids in weeks or months because there’s something else missing.
The problem I have with Don making the Coke ad is that I can’t see him back at McCann, sitting in a group of 20 creative directors with a box lunch. Unless he’s the old Don Draper and he didn’t hit bottom but just bounced off it. I thought about this in light of what Stephanie says: Don repeats his “move forward” speech about putting it in the past and it will get better, the words we first heard when Peggy was hospitalized after giving birth and Stephanie says you’re wrong. As I heard that I remembered Betty’s comment to Henry when he asks why she’s going to class after her diagnosis and she says, “Why was I ever doing this?” Don has moved forward across the continent. He’s even moved forward at high speed in Bonneville. And wherever he goes, he hasn’t gone anywhere because he hasn’t gone somewhere in his head. He’s a hobo with a big envelope literally stuffed with cash who is on the road not because he has to but because he can’t stay still with himself alone. If he truly hits bottom, if he realizes that with the ocean at his feet there’s no place to go - and in this case, he’s actually stuck despite his money - then maybe he’s ripe to stop moving and to be where he is. Without a bottle.
Critics weigh in
http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/mad-men-finale-what-the-critics-are-saying-spoilers-1201499467/
@Lergnom – who should have a blog:
" I thought the ending directly opposed the search for inner meaning and inner peace with the crass use of that to sell sugar water."
But was Don at the retreat to find himself? No, he was there in his pseudo parent role - as a companion for Anna’s niece. And then he was stuck. His experience there varied from legitimate insight to what I perceived as barely-disguised “this is total bull crap.” Don’s always combined elements of one with the other to create his ads.
Though I DO agree with you that it’s very hard to see Don back at McCann Erickson, whose culture seems to be the very antithesis of the one he enjoyed at SC&P. I haven’t resolved that yet, just as I haven’t resolved Peggy and Stan. Now that they’re together in private, will they stay together as colleagues? They might have had at SC&P (just as Don and Megan) but I doubt it’d be permitted in the ultra-corporate McCE, likely to frown on married bosses & underlings. In which case, Peggy is open to join forces with Joan.
It’s interesting to me that Peggy is staying at McCE (at least for the time being) because Stan wants her to. In contrast, Joan’s refusal to abandon her professional dream ends her romantic relationship with what’s-his-name.
“If he truly hits bottom, if he realizes that with the ocean at his feet there’s no place to go - and in this case, he’s actually stuck despite his money - then maybe he’s ripe to stop moving and to be where he is.”
Or maybe he’s ripe to go back precisely because he DOES have a place and a reason to go: back to NY where his kids need him - we certainly know Sally does - and because he’s figured out how to sell Coke? Cynical? Of course. The series always has been very cynical.
BTW It’s impossible to do a dramatic series about advertising without at least a modicum of cynicism.
Had some time to contemplate a little fancfic. I see Don offering to pay for Peggy’s wedding–she’s the one character who didn’t strike it rich from the sale of the agency–and Peggy asking Don to give her away, cementing the notion that advertising is and always has been the real home and family for Don. You’re welcome!
Anyone else wonder about the somber music that played as Pete got on the plane with his family?
Yoga man says: “the new day brings new hope,” “lives we get to lead,” “a new day, new ideas, a new you.” The bell rings. Don smiles beatifically while in the lotus position = an ad man’s enlightenment.
Don essentially gets to be “Sterling Cooper West.” How his smile leads to the Coke commercial being filmed is up to each of us to speculate – does he go back to McCann or does he give the idea to Peggy?
Maybe if McCann really did the whole SC deal just to get Don, they will give him space and freedom, maybe just pay him on commission, etcetera
It took until this morning for me to get that Joan and her then BF were snorting Coke. (And how nice of them to treat the audience to a Joan in a swim suit top scene )
Lol about Don’s Mary Poppins bag. I Did think it significant (even if impossible) that in the final meditation scene, Don was perfectly groomed in a clean and pressed white dress shirt. That was a big signal to me that ad man Don was back.
Nobody had the Paul Anka song (Kodak commercials of my youth!) Times of Your Life on the brain today? I thought that was genius, at first I wasn’t sure whether it was part of the episode even.
And no Peggy did not go to work with Joan. Holloway Harris company is all Joan. So glad she let that jerk ride off alone…when she started saying “it’s just a few projects” while he grilled her about why she is working, it took me immediately back to Greg, from whom Joan also had to hide her ambition.
Clearly Peggy did not come up with the girl in pigtails on the exact same cliff singing in a Coke commercial. Occam’s razor, people…the most likely answer is likely correct.
We’re supposed to think about the ending and come up with our own ideas, not be spoon fed everything. I loved the Don ending (and I believe he returned, did the Coke ad, took control back and laughed all the way to the bank, but it’s okay with me if others want to think it was Peggy or Don worked on the west coast). I wasn’t so excited about the other endings, and don’t really like shows that try to wrap it all up neatly anyway. Joan was too happy, too kind to all at the end. Un-Joan like. Pete and Trudy, two die hard New Yorkers who didn’t even like living in the preppy burbs of NYC? Don’t see them liking Kansas even if they are filthy rich, but I never like them anyway so I don’t care. I guess I liked Roger’s ending because he was Roger, knowing he was marrying a gold digger and not caring. I did think they stretched the ‘Don’s big adventure’ too long. No need for him to go to the Bonneville Flats or meet the car racing guys. He could have gone right to Stephanie’s.
There were several mistakes in the final concerning timing. The scene with Joan in Key West? There is a high rise condo outside the building. Really? In Key West in 1970? Don’s shopping bag? In the scenes at the seminar, he wore at least 4 shirts - green polo, flannel shirt, sleeping t-shirt, and final scene white shirt. Jean jacket, pants, razor? Where were all these things? I loved that a Heinz product (new mustard) sponsored the episode, and that a Lincoln car did too, but Ford/Lincoln was never a target for Don, he always wanted Chevy.
But what bothered me most was them not advancing the kids in age with the show. First episode in 1960 with Sally’s 8th birthday, and Bobby was 5. Last episode in 1970 and Sally was still in boarding school and Bobby seemed to be about 12. Gene was born in 1963 and seemed to be forever 4 years old. Joan’s son should have been a little older, and Tammy too.
Sally was born in 1954, which would make her 16 in this last episode. Bobby was born in 1957, so he would be 13.
I really liked this last episode. I was born in the late 50s, so seeing the 60s this way, through this series, was both enlightening and reminiscent. Ending with that Coke commercial was genius, I don’t care who created it. I remember that commercial. I remember listening to the song on the radio; I remember singing along. It seemed to encapsulate all the positive energy of the 60s while promising a better future for the 70s. None of that promise was realized – it ended up being the high note of a decade of high inflation, gas shortages, political scandals, apathy. No wonder Weiner ended the series when he did.
I’ve read many interpretations of the ending. I think it’s wonderful that there are so many different viewpoints. Weiner is being interviewed later this week and I assume he won’t clarify, and I’m OK with that. Usually I want a more definitive ending, but I can handle imagining several different possibilities. It’s ambiguous exactly what happens to Don, but I do feel that he ends the series on a positive note, and I’m happy with that. Maybe he becomes a better person – I guess we’ll never know.
As to Don’s wardrobe, there is nothing to say he didn’t stay at Esalen for a long time. He didn’t necessarily have to come up with the Coke ad idea the next day after he had a breakthrough in group.
Then they screwed up the ages of the kids in the first episodes, as Betty was asked their ages and said 8 and 5, and it was 1960, when Nixon and Kennedy were running for president. They were often seen coming in from school.