Sometimes, when you’ve been watching a TV show for 7 seasons (that were really stretched over nine years) and said TV show has always inspired conflicting emotions—like “Is Mad Men really that good or are we getting suckered by the prestigious vibe?” or “Was that last episode just straight-up depressing and unsatisfying or true art…which is often depressing and unsatisfying?”—then it make take a few days to figure out exactly how you feel about the series finale of that show.
I’m still not sure if I really liked the ending or hated it, and a lot of that has to do with exactly how you intrepret that final shot of Don smiling. Was he finally coming to terms with himself and embracing all his identities or was he just coming up with a cynical marketing campaign out of this very real moment? Even if it was both, then isn’t that kind-of disappointing? Don had just had one of his biggest breakthroughs ever after a series of horrifying phone calls (Betty, Sally, and Peggy), has been abandoned by all the other women in his life (one of them literally left him in the middle of nowhere) and was seriously considering suicide before a guy in his talk therapy group perfectly articulated a problem “Don Draper” will never have but Dick Whitman did have: people treating him like he’s invisible and no one caring what he does. Don’s hug of this man seemed to be him reconciling his two opposing identities but that felt immediately contradicted by the knowledge that he used this experience at the retreat to make a Coke commercial. It may be a brilliant commentary on how the Old Dogs co-opted the “Hippie,” “free love” movement through branding, turning them into stealth yuppies before you knew it, but that’s not exactly how the scene plays.
Oh, and a bunch of other shit happened to other characters that felt totally tacked on: Pete got remarried (or something) to his wife, Joan was dumped again but started a great company, Betty handled even cancer with January Jones’ same hateful, robotic inflections (yes, Betty is supposed to be frosty, but yes, January Jone is also a very limited actress), Roger made his dumbest marriage move yet by marrying Megan’s mother, Megan continued her “Am I still alive?” ambiguity by not being in the last five episodes of the season, and Peggy figured out Stan was the one for her…in the last few minutes with very little romantic foreshadowing. [It was a nice touch that it be Peggy who found real love and a man who understands her while the most objectified character on the show–Joan–was the only main cast member who wound up single, but fulfilled with a new business only loosely connected to advertising.]
It’s been said that the final episode of a show is really the entire final season, and in that regard Mad Men failed. I think the series finale was the best episode of this 7-episode half season, but the rest of them were frustrating, aimless, introduced new characters that went nowhere (the waitress), ignored more important ones from past seasons, and it was an obvious ploy by AMC to stretch out the franchise. [They were successful at this with “Breaking Bad” but “Mad Men” stayed on the air too long. Splitting a final season into two different years remains a dicey proposition that will frustrate as many times as it pays off.] Grade for Series Finale: B
Ranking the Seasons
Worst: [Tie] I would say season 6 and season 7 don’t work as well as the others. Season 7 often felt aimless and padded-out (although I loved the moment when Don walks out of the McCann Budweiser meeting after looking out the window at airplanes that inspire him more), and I can barely remember a single thing about season 6 except Don’s glum tryst with Linda Cardinelli’s neighbor, probably Don’s most depressing and repetitive affair. Grade: C+
Middle: Season 2 was, to me, pretty middle of the road. It didn’t have the originality of season 1–how could it?–but it wasn’t yet taking the narrative leaps of the middle seasons. Grade: B
Runner Up Best Seasons: Season 3 and Season 5 are both underrated seasons, in my book. Season 3 got dissed a lot at the time, but the last three episodes are excellent, including the decision to start a new agency while Don’s marriage is ending. And season 5’s season finale has one of the coolest endings of any “Mad Men” episode with “You Only Live Twice” playing as Don contemplates stepping out on his second marriage, leaving Megan to her sound stage while another connection approaches him at a bar “Are you alone?” It could be the perfect question for all Mad Men’s existential-crisis driven characters. Grade: A-
Best Season: I’m calling it a tie between Season 1 and Season 4. Season 1 perfectly sets up the world, and season 4 blows it up as we see a new agency, a new marriage (bonus points: it’s before we realize how annoying Megan is), and a perfect character arc for Don: a guy thrown out of his old surroundings, succumbs to depression and alcoholism (hitting a low point in “The Suitcase”), before being lifted out at the end of the season…by choosing Megan over the much-better Dr. Faye Miller, the rare woman who might actually understand him or even really want to. Don turns down a woman who could be his equal or smarter than him for a woman he barely knows and doesn’t know him, you get a sense that his “salvation” is just more of the same mistakes. It’s a rare show that can make psychological holding patterns riveting television, and it’s a mark in “Mad Men’s” favor that a show that is largely internal could be so interesting for so long. Grade: A
So long Don and the gang. It’s been a mostly great 7 seasons.