Mad Men's Final Season

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Franz Ferdinand
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Franz Ferdinand »

It's amazing how time flies, but my wife and I finally managed to wrap up the last season through Netflix (we had got rid of our cable around the time of season 7.2, much to my chagrin), and two comments:

a) this thread (and the general Mad Men thread with the other six seasons) has been a wonderful read; and

b) has the passage of time changed anyone's views on the end or the show in general?

It is still fresh in my mind (and I haven't read the HuffPost article of Weiner explaining the finale) and it did feel like a tidier ending than such a normally open-ended series might have done, but then It would have been out of character for a big dramatic ending (the DB Cooper conspiracy, to name one). I am looking forward to revisiting the series sometime down the line.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Kellens101 »

http://youtu.be/bt2EzCODIL8

I suggest everyone watch this amazing tribute video to Mad Men.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Greg »

'Mad Men' Creator Matthew Weiner Explains The Series Finale:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/2 ... 22608.html
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by OscarGuy »

For Don Draper to grow, he needed to resolve his internal conflict, the conflicts that had plagued him from the first episode until the end. He was surrounded so often by people who either knew him or who were like him. Peggy, Roger, Joan, Pete, Betty, Sally. These characters all exhibited facets of the Don Draper character that he so easily identified with. It was environment in which he strove. However, as things began crumbling for him throughout the last two or three seasons, his Dick Whitman persona couldn't find an emotional outlet. These people were too like the facade he had created and none, at least superficially, exhibited the foundation of the man he would escape.

Yet, when he finally found himself faced with the crumbling reality around him, bottoming out at a remote location, removed from the luxuries that enabled him to suppress Whitman and unable to return when he most wanted to, he was finally able to find his loneliness. His mind was forced to confront the reality that he had created and how its superficiality had consumed what laid within him. With no one to guide him back to Don Draper, Dick Whitman was forced to reflect on not only how he became Don Draper, but how he managed to subsume Dick Whitman.

I look at the refrigerator story as a personification of Dick Whitman. Here's this lonesome schlub who feels unwanted, unloved, unappreciated. Don realizes that with this one man's story, he's finally come face-to-face with who he was. It is with that one moment of weakness that he finally begins to accept who he was. It's also fitting that the man's story sounds like a pitch for a bottle of ketchup or some other pantry item. This is where I think Magilla's impression of the ending becomes most appropriate.

The ideas that he came up with are all within him. He has finally realized that without Dick Whitman, there would be no Don Draper. He is harmonizing himself into one man and that Draper smile is back. As Dick Whitman, he never quite found happiness. As Don Draper, he never quite found happiness, but he came close. That's why I believe that the smile means he will return to the advertising world. Peggy herself said many have come back to McCann Ericson from worse. I believe that's our hint that he would still be welcome back.

Something the cast said in one of the pre-show remembrances was that these characters were constantly changing, but always rebounding to where they were. We look at where all the other characters are and find that not only have they all changed, but ultimately, they are still the same. Peggy is a career-driven, go-getter. Joan is a determined woman looking to be her own boss. Roger is emotionally connected to a beautiful woman who accepts his frailties and issues, but hasn't made a monumental shift in place. Pete returns to Trudy and whisks her away to a big, plush new job that fits his personality. They are all changed, but are ultimately still who they always were.

That makes me think that with the changing, but staying the same comment must apply to all characters in the show and thus why ultimately, I feel Don had to return to New York to create something iconic. He has changed, but like the others, he has found happiness. He has found zen in what he thinks and what he does, and through that experience, like all of his past experiences, he will turn it into a successful bit of advertising.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Mister Tee »

As expected, a number of day-after thoughts have occurred to me. Presented in no particular order:

flipp, you’re right this thread has provoked fine conversation. It’s like having a fall/winter-calibre movie to discuss every week, during the time of year we generally stay in hibernation.

To the cocaine question: I believe it’s what Fonda & Hopper were dealing in Easy Rider (1969), so the drug was out there, but I don’t recall it becoming a thing until the disco time kicked in, which was 1974 earliest. However, if anyone would have had it early, it would have been a multi-millionaire. (And I’m with you, that Joan’s reaction to it was delightfully fresh and on the money.)

FilmFan, the show did, way back, offer a fictitious version of the development of the Lucky Strike “It’s toasted” slogan. And I thought it was strongly implied Peggy had come up with the Virginia Slims “You’ve come a long way, baby” campaign. (In retrospect, it seems Weiner was purposely highlighting how important cigarettes were in the era, to set up Betty’s plight.) Plus, though it wasn’t the campaign per se, Don did seem to coin “Carousel” on the spot for the slide projector that had been earlier called simply The Wheel.

You’re correct, that the show offered lots of examples of how love and work play off one another in Sterling Cooper world. Not even love, just any kind of interpersonal encounter – witness Joan’s “Can I have a sip of wine first?” to Ken Cosgrove, when he’s plunging right into business… and then Peggy’s assumption Joan is calling in friendship, when it’s work-related. The characters have to strike balances, and finding the right one is rarely simple.

I kind of think it’s just as well Peggy didn’t team up with Joan. They’ve had bumps along the way but have now come to friendship, and I don’t think they’d want to test that by working together. I’m with BJ, by the way: Joan had said having their two names together made it sound like a serious company; I’m delighted she decided her own two names were enough.

It strikes me that Joan’s refusal to concede to Bruce Greenwood’s demands is a variation on the ending of An Unmarried Woman – the guy expects the woman to adjust to his needs, and is shocked she won’t go along. And it tells you we’ve come a ways with feminism even in the years since Unmarried Woman – because, back then, a lot of seemingly reasonable people treated the Jill Clayburgh character as if she were being hopelessly stubborn for not being the one to bend. I don’t see anyone viewing Joan that way.

It’s touching that Betty – who, back in the early seasons, had her shrink reporting to her husband, and who even, just an episode ago, couldn’t hear her diagnosis without a male escort – finally gets to call the shots on what happens to her and her kids. And that last shot was both heartbreaking and fuck-yeah! – why, after all, shouldn’t she enjoy a cigarette now, when it’s not going to make a lick of difference?

Finally, Don:

The early scene with the nameless woman (hooker?) was interesting for one thing: that he wasn’t angry she was ripping him off; only that it deprived him of the pleasure of paying her himself. Remember Don’s demonstrative “That’s what the money’s for!” to Peggy? Having been brought up dirt-poor, money – the ability to give it -- has an emotional value to him (which even makes me rethink his last moment with Megan just a bit).

I read some of this someplace else, but it’s worth noting: Don spent this season being divested of everything that made him Don – his furniture, his apartment, Sterling Cooper (his real work-home), his office garb, his car. In this episode, he was reduced to an insignificant bag of I don’t even know what. And he went to seek out the one person left on the planet who knows him, and addresses him, as Dick. He’s effectively tossed off all traces of Don Draper and become Dick Whitman again. (Maybe that’s what the title Person to Person means) When he talks to Peggy – in a speech that might as well be taking place inside a confessional – he’s Dick Whitman owning up to his sins (even ones that no one would blame him for, or that flat aren’t true, as Peggy objects). In a sense, Peggy should be worried he might kill himself; he certainly seems set on killing the Don she knew.

But then, maybe he’s reborn -- as an ad-man, perhaps even as a human being. The Don Draper he’d created for himself was the perfect man for the postwar years and the Eisenhower era. But such figures became hopelessly passe when the 60s rolled in. People like Pete or Harry Crane tried to keep up with trends, and looked pretty ridiculous in the process. But Don didn’t even make the effort – he couldn’t conceive of how to go about it. The 60s and its mass movements – civil rights, the anti-war protests – were baffling to him (despite his obvious feelings about his own wartime experience). He fundamentally didn’t get the 60s.

But the 70s – the Me Decade, when people abandoned the streets, and withdrew into themselves, looking for meaning there – Don could relate to that. More to the point, he could SELL to that – which is what I think the meaning of that final moment is. You can argue, as I said last night, whether that’s a positive or negative thing. But Don (or Dick, or whatever name he wants to call himself now) can get his mojo back in this emerging era…which feels like a rebirth, or at least the end of a long struggle.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Greg »

Maybe this is reaching , but I think Don's smirk before the Coke commercial is partly due to his realizing that Peggy did not believe him when he said he stole another man's name. Peggy did tell Stan on the phone after she talked to Don that Don was talking nonsense. Her tone of voice when Don confessed to her could have revealed to Don that was what she felt. That could be at least part of why Don was unable to move for some while after the call ended. He made his big confession, that only a few other people knew and they all kept quiet, to one of his closest confidants and it only came off as delusion. When he was on the mountain top, he realized he could then stop trying to hide this from his past and still go back to his "mad man" life.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by CalWilliam »

I just loved every minute of this finale, and I hope Hamm and Hendricks will win the Emmy. They deserve it. Those person to person final encounters or conversations between all the characters were priceless, joyful, exhilarating and deeply sad to watch, and they were all I desired for this ending. I missed a last conversation between Don and Joan, but I suppose that funny moment at the elevator was the proper thing to close their relationship.

I'll miss the show.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by The Original BJ »

I can't say I thought this finale stuck the landing for the series as much as I'd hoped -- on its own, I wouldn't view "Person to Person" as one of the standout episodes of the series (or even the season). But I thought it provided a memorable send-off for a lot of characters we've grown to love over the years, and overall I found it a rewarding goodbye.

I'm glad, most of all, that the guessing game of who we'd even get to see in the finale was answered with a resounding "everyone." Don got emotional phone call scenes with Betty, Sally, and Peggy -- the three people who mean the most to him in life. Peggy and Roger both ended up in relationships that, however odd both pairings may be, seem perfectly right for the couples involved. Pete and Trudy flew off almost literally into the sunset. Joan took her huge professional defeat and used it as a springboard for greater career success -- and I LOVED that when she needed a second name for her company, she came up with the identify-affirming Holloway-Harris. Even Ken and Harry got one last little hurrah. (In this context, I was halfway hoping for Megan to show up and rescue Don in California -- she was pretty much the only still-around major character who we actually did say farewell to earlier in this season.)

The show also tied up a lot more loose ends than it seemed like the finale of a show this open-ended might have. Roger's scene with Joan re: Kevin was a great capper to their long and complicated relationship throughout seven seasons. Ditto Pete's goodbye to Peggy, which revealed that despite everything they had been through, he still deeply respected everything she had accomplished. And, as previously noted, Don's three phone calls were all pretty perfect last scenes in those relationships.

It probably says a lot that I haven't talked about Don's plot line so much, and I have to admit that this was the section of the story I found least compelling. It's not that it wasn't interesting on its own, as numerous moments seemed brimming with strong ideas -- Stephanie telling Don that she'll never be able to escape her past (and his growing realization that he needs to accept that with his own life), the woman shoving Don, the telling of the dream and Don's emotional embrace of that guy. But it felt way more like a detour than a culmination of what the show was about, and I know I was more interested in seeing Don back in the advertising world than what felt like a one-off story at the retreat. And, yeah, I totally agree with Mister Tee -- the TV writer in me got really annoyed when the emotionally climactic moment of the episode that ended seven seasons was handed to a day player.

As for the VERY end, I interpreted it in the sunnier way possible, that Don found some kind of rejuvenation at the retreat, and was able to go back to doing what he did best. (I immediately noticed the similarity between the girl with the red ribbons in her braids and the girls in the ad, the main detail that made me assume the episode was implying it was Don who brought back the creative inspiration for this ad). But perhaps it was because it seemed that, overall, the tone of the finale was decidedly non-tragic (well, as non-tragic as it could be with a major character on the road to death), and that final smile seemed to suggest that Don had finally found a personal contentment he hadn't ever experienced in his life before.

One line that really stuck with me is Meredith's "There are a lot of better places than here." (Nice that she got a last scene goodbye too.) Despite personal triumphs, there was always a great deal of unhappiness for most of our characters at the various incarnations of Sterling Cooper. And it's interesting the way the finale allowed so many of them to move on and finally find those better places, with Don, Pete, and Roger finding escape in new cities, Joan starting her own company, and maybe even the most unhappy character (Betty) finding some sort of peace in the fact that she will soon be off in that proverbial better place (a place that already claimed Bert Cooper and Lane Pryce). Given how the series ended up for everyone else, it seems appropriate that Peggy is the one major character poised to excel at McCann -- she entered the show a naive secretary, and she always seemed destined to follow in her mentor's footsteps, and this episode (in which she even found personal happiness in the work place) seemed the culmination of all of that.

It's interesting to me that so many found this episode an acting tour de force for Jon Hamm -- I was hoping for an episode that might FINALLY win him an Emmy, and I have to say I found his role here a bit too passive for that to seem a likely outcome. (Perhaps this was also part of the reason I was bummed the guest star got that great emotional moment near the end -- I'd wanted to see something like that from Hamm.) I've always found it discouraging that none of the actors have managed to nab TV gold for their work here -- Hamm, Moss, Slattery, and Hendricks especially -- but I don't think this season will carry any of them there unless goodwill for the past eight years comes into play.

Not a finale that felt instantly iconic for me -- the way the endings to Six Feet Under and The Sopranos did -- but a rewarding enough conclusion to a truly splendid television series.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Kellens101 »

Is it just me or did this finale sort of feel like "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice"? The ambiguous and funny/cynical ending, the California hippie retreat, the time period. It's probably just me. The finale echoed the 1969 film's ending with Burt Bacharach's "What the World Needs Now".
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by flipp525 »

The “person-to-person” calls with all the significant women in Don’s life was such an effective vehicle for me, mainly because the silences were so telling and wrought with palpable, unsentimental emotion (and has an episode title ever been that obvious and immediately identified?). In so many ways, this felt like a typical episode of Mad Men (a compliment) which I appreciated. The phone call with Betty was filled with so much heartbreak, remorse, pain and ultimately acceptance. It had to be some of the best acting I’ve seen from both Jon Hamm January Jones. And because I knew that Don was probably not going to return to NYC during this episode, I had been worried that we’d be robbed of a final Don/Peggy moment (one of the most central relationships of this entire show from day one) and, boy, was I mistaken. Their scene was really a master class. In a lot of ways, Peggy is the one who knows Don the most so it was fitting for me that she had this very stripped-down moment with him. Like Luise Rainier, you really can sell a phone call if you do it right, folks!

The growth of the character of Sally really reached a zenith in this episode and I thought Kiernan Shipka just really went out so on top here. She sounded so effortlessly adult in that phone conversation with her father. I’m excited to see what she does in her career after this. Watching that one final promo, it’s amazing to feel like we – alongside the fictional Don – have really watched her grow up through the years. Letting go of “Sally” is bittersweet, but I feel like the character really matured and came into her own in this final season.

I immediately disliked Bruce Greenwood’s character when he was initially introduced and I’m so happy that Joan cut the cord on that relationship and chose her career and her burgeoning feminism over him. That line though about the cocaine was excellent though (and quite true): “I feel like someone just gave me some really good news.” Was it not a tad bit early for coke at that point though? I’ll have to leave it to those who were alive at the time. I know my parents and their friends were doing it at 54 five years later, but this seemed not anachronistic, but slightly ahead of fad time.

It pains me to say, but I found the Peggy/Stan romantic wrap-up unconvincing and a tad rom-com-ish. There was something way too on-the-nose about it for this show. I'm happy that the character gets a happy ending because she's always been a personal favorite, but that just really didn't land. I was holding out hopes that the cute lawyer would return with whom I thought she had great chemistry.

I thought the scene at the end with Leonard and his fridge dream was profoundly moving and, while I share Tee’s initial reservation about watching a character we’ve never seen before going on on on for that long in the final minutes of the last show in the series, it was a very effective, cathartic moment. Jon Hamm was putting in everything he got into this episode - he had some of the most extreme emotional responses throughout this episode that we've ever seen. The embrace between the two strangers felt necessary and inevitable and that man's monologue could not have been better written (I also felt like the actor was kind of a Matt Weiner-looking guy for what it's worth – make of that what you will...) Dick Whitman has been heading towards a catharsis like that ever since he first assumed Don Draper’s identity. When he saw Leonard tell his story and weep, he felt compelled to weep too. Because this was Dick Whitman's unresolved issue from childhood that he had been running away from unsuccessfully - especially in the last years when he couldn't keep the Don persona going. I do think it was significant that Stephanie Draper was the one that led him down the path to it, as if she's the only person left of that life who could fuse Don with Dick once and for all. That smirk at the end told me that it might just have “taken” this time around. But it’s Don, so you never really know.

Speaking of, a lot of Internet/Twitter chatter is already being made of that smirk during his final lotus pose immediately followed by the iconic Coke commercial. Of course, Peggy mentioned to Don on the phone that he might miss out on working that account, Joan does “coke” earlier in the episode, the broken-down Coke machine in Oklahoma that seems only Don can fix. Whether or not, Don really does go on to create the “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” ad, one of the most famous commercials of the ’70s, it seems an all but fitting note to end on. In my mind, Peggy’s choice to stay at McCann-Ericsson could lend credence to her (as Don’s protégé and creative inheritor – no more brilliantly displayed than in her Burger Chef pitch earlier in the season) coming up with a big idea of her own somewhere down the line. Don's smirk prefigured the genesis of the "Me Decade" with, as FilmFan said, Don's commodification of introspective peace and tranquility, once again turning his own personal trauma into brilliant ad copy a la The Carousel. Some of the people at the retreat certainly looked like the people in the Coke ad (from Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanatella/status/6 ... 1166072832). Don was the last guy on Earth to "get" the 70s. But once he did, he knew how to commodify it.

On a semi-final note, I’m sorry to see that this thread will kind of die out after this. I’ve enjoyed discussing this show with you guys. Your astute commentary has been one of the things I look forward to after each new episode. Things might be moribund elsewhere on the Board, but this was a consistently and dependably interesting, lively and enlightening space. So…thank you for that.
Last edited by flipp525 on Tue May 19, 2015 3:03 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by FilmFan720 »

Going in, I was really hoping that we would get a Don-centric episode. I felt like we had gotten such great closure to all the other characters the past few weeks that I didn't need to revisit any of them, except maybe through the lens of Don. Instead, we got the first steps in the next chapter of their lives and it was a wonderful farewell: the new businesses, loves and adventures they are taking beyond the constraints of the story of Mad Men.

I found the Don at Big Sur section really powerful. I haven't been a big fan of Don's California adventures before, and I am always weary whenever Weiner tries to show us the alternate lifestyles going on at the time, but I felt he really nailed it here. I found everything in California entrancing and heartbreaking, with a tour de force performance by Hamm as he tried to balance the two people inside of him and come to terms with who he really is. Then, at the end, as Dick Whitman relaxes into a zen state, we get that Don Draper smirk and feel like he has finally found the balance in life. A lovely ending. Fade to back, and we are done!

Then, Weiner tacks on the classic "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" ad and turns the whole thing upside down. Suddenly, we have something to debate and an ending that makes us question what Don't next chapter is. Does he go back to New York, inspired by his new balance, and write the most iconic advertisement of all time? Weiner has never, I believe, given our fictional characters credit for a real-life ad campaign, so it would be out of character for him to finally write this one. So is Weiner merely commenting on Don's position, pointing out that the new world Don has entered is going to be corrupted by an ad (from his old world) in just a few short months? Is he reminding us that nothing in the world is truly special because advertising in our society commoditizes it all? As one friend quoted to me last night, "what you call love is something invented by guys like me...to sell nylons."

This balance of life and commerce has always been one of the underlying themes of Mad Men. In the end, that is what this finale is all about: Joan sacrifices love to move ahead in business, Peggy sacrifices business power but gains love, Sally sacrifices her education (and travel) to take care of her mother, and Pete somehow manages to get both. Maybe that is what Weiner is saying about Don at the end: he gets personal peace, and welcomes Dick Whitman back into his self, but the world of advertising will haunt and mock him forever.

In the end, though, I don't care. The final image was powerful, we got more of a conclusion to our characters than I expected or even desired and the world will go on for our friends at SCDP.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Big Magilla »

I crammed in the six episodes leading up to the finale during the course of the day. I found it to be the most satisfying conclusion of any TV show I can remember. All the major characters' stories were concluded in an open-ended way so that you could imagine what their lives would be going forward. Would they remain as they were at the end or change again and again as they go through their lives?

At first I thought the Don/Dick story would end with his dying at the unnamed Esalen Institute and being buried in an unmarked grave because no one knew who he was. Then came his epiphany while another character described himself (and in essence Don as well) and I thought no, he's just going to end up a hippie and disappear that way. But then came the iconic "I Want to Teach the World to Sing" Coke commercial with Big Spur as a background and I realized that smile during his morning exercise was a light bulb going off and he returned to the advertising world with one of the greatest ideas in the history of advertising. It was the perfect way to end the series.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by Mister Tee »

Much more about this tomorrow (or when I get time to discuss in detail). But, briefly:

I remember Damien, back in Season 1, saying he didn't think the show needed the Dick Whitman storyline, but, it turns out, for Weiner it was always an essential (if not THE essential) part of the show. I think this played out tonight, to some audience dissatisfaction. There was so much going on back in NY that was wonderfully engaging, whether tragic (Betty), giddily happy (Peggy and Stan), or some middle ground between (Joan). But then we kept cutting back to Don, a coast away, working out his long-standing, Dick Whitman-related demons far from the characters with whom we most wanted him to engage. The Don scenes that worked best, his most powerful, were his three phone calls, with Sally, Betty and Peggy. (Seems even Weiner understood that on some level, naming the episode after the method used to place those calls.) And even if you think the scenes of Don at Esalen were right for the show emotionally (which I think is debatable), they were still frustrating because they seemed disconnected from the core of the series. When that guy started telling his story about his refrigerator dream, I could understand how Don was responding to it -- it was in a sense a perfect illustration of the Draper/Whitman dichotomy, the outer one who got all the acclaim and the inner one who thinks no one cares about him or notices him. But at the same time, I was thinking, there's under ten minutes left to this show -- why am I listening to a character I've never met before? I had the sense Weiner's devotion to Don as a character off by himself undermined his sense of the show as organic whole. Either that, or he had conceptual ambitions for this final episode that he wasn't able to successfully execute as a writer.

But there were all kinds of wonderful takeaways from the show -- a bunch of Roger Sterling beauties ("That was a joke" "Rich bastard... He really is, isn't he?" "Champagne for my mother"); Sally once again being more grown up than Don; Stephanie telling Don his governing philosophy ("You won't believe how much this didn't happen") is bullshit; Harry Crane being a whiner right to the end; Pete Campbell appreciating Peggy; Joan deciding her work self is worth building a life around. And then there was the ending, which had enough ambiguity to generate Sopranos-level buzz. Did Don get the idea for the legendary Coke ad out there on the cliff at Esalen? Or did Peggy (who spoke of wanting to create an ad so massively memorable)? And if it was Don's work, is that a happy development (Don went back and created a positive ad) or deeply cynical (the only thing he took away from his retreat was finding a way to commodify the hippie movement)? And what does it mean that the show's final words are the repeated "It's the real thing"?
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by OscarGuy »

I'm finally caught up ready for the finale. Unfortunately, 5 pages of comments is too much for me to sift through before Sunday.

I'll just leave this as my prediction.

On the first episode of Mad Men, Peggy was the new girl, just having started with Sterling-Cooper.

In the finale, everyone else who worked at Sterling-Cooper at the time (Don, Roger, Joan, Pete) will have left McCann and Peggy will be the only one left. It's clear Don, Joan and Pete are leaving. Roger's the only one I'm not sure where they'll go. Someone at work suggested that perhaps he'll go off to somewhere exotic with Don's ex-mother-in-law, which is certainly plausible.
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Re: Mad Men's Final Season

Post by flipp525 »

Weird predictions: The show closes with "(Theme from) Valley of the Dolls."

Also, I found this, The Milk and Honey Route: A Handbook for Hobos by Dean Stiff: http://www.derringerbooks.com/derringer ... 005901.jpg
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