Anyone else find Mad Men’s final episode to be kind of disappointing? Some are touting it as a genius move by show creator Matt Weiner, but I dunno if I agree with that. To elude that Don Draper was the mind behind the “I’d Like To Buy the World a Coke” ad campaign wasn’t exactly the pay-off that I was hoping for.
This. This is what I’ve been waiting 7 years for?
Perhaps I’m missing the commentary. Maybe Weiner’s whole point of last night’s episode was supposed to be an “Aha!” moment, where the audience was supposed to finally realize that the entire 7 years that we’ve spent investing in the show, getting caught up in the sentimentality and nostalgia, was just the greatest sales pitch ever.
Yeah. Sure. I bought Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara and had a week where I pretended to really “get” poetry. I also researched Sharon Tate when people were drawing comparisons between her murder and Megan Draper with the red star tee. So I understand the “shallowness” of the show.
But it also allowed its audience to reflect on their own flaws and hopes. It became so much more to its watchers than just an entertaining hour every Sunday night. It was a history lesson, it was an examination of the human condition. It was story telling at its finest, the kind that tugs at your heartstrings and strikes chords.
Last night, it felt like instead of devoted fans of a remarkable show, it was suddenly revealed that we were merely just a client sitting in one of the board rooms of SC&P getting pitched the greatest idea of what a show should be to us. And ultimately, all it ends up being is a 15 second spot with a catchy jingle.
If that was in fact the angle of the final episode, then bravo. But to say that the final episode redeemed itself and that the pay off was worth it? To quote Don Draper himself “This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”
The Zippster Files 