The next episode is second-to-last (“penultimate”), isn’t it?
Next episode is the last, but a week later is a 2-hour finale, I think. That’s enough time to wrap up storylines for everyone except Don. Don will figure in the 2-hour finale and possibly there will be an epilogue set in the future when he’s really old.
I love when a movie or TV series ends with little bits showing what happened to the characters. I wish they would do that all the time.
They could time hop. 1975. 1985. 1995. 2005. 2015. People dying along the way. It would be interesting.
Unmentioned so far: That was a nice send-off for Dawn. I would have liked to have seen Roger offer her a letter of recommendation or something but I guess she didn’t need one anyway with her new job already lined up.
edit: that wasn’t Dawn; that was Roger’s second secretary, whose name I don’t recall. We haven’t seen Dawn at McCann yet.
Don actually told us why he finds Diana so compelling, when he was talking to her ex - “she seems so lost”. She’s an allegory for how he’s feeling. We’ve seen this kind of behavior from him before, where he charges off to fix some unrelated thing that is similar to whatever problem is going on in his life that he doesn’t want to deal with. Hopefully, he’ll finally realize what he’s doing in the finale, and move on.
Judging from the Mad Men previews (as much as one can from those things), I’m thinking next week is going to annoy me, though. Ugh, Betty with marriage problems. At least there was some Pete screaming in there, and maybe Harry will get his comeuppance. I’m thinking the finale will be mostly Don, Roger, and Peggy; Joan, Betty, and Pete storylines should be wrapped up before then.
Ah, yes, that was it. It’s been so long, details are blurring.
If so, that would give us a possible Big Reveal ending:
Don invents Uber!
I’d feel worse but, beyond the principles, I know most of the office cast as “Guy from creative” and “that one secretary” :smack:
No need for that, TL.
I suggest that you round up a bunch of your favorite people - or failing that, put an ad in Craigslist looking for a group of folks that feel the same way you do about MM and are willing to accompany you while you hit the bars and get good and smashed.
I’m sure you’ll be able to find a fun-loving group but just in case you have any problems, have an Uber car standing by outside - ready to take you home in a moment’s notice.
After suffering through all the tortures of this long, extended season, you deserve nothing less than the best - at least, that is my opinion.
So, … get yourself a top line car. It won’t cost you more than $100 for the entire evening and it’s bound to be worth it. That averages out to about $12 per season. So it’s downright cheap, even at twice the price.
Good luck!
All that stuff about people being screwed over after a merger hit way too close to home for me and I’m feeling angry and shitty about everything.
Her name is Shirley.
Hmmm…you’re an interesting sort of fellow, aren’t you?
Heck I cried when Don asked Peggy to dance during the last episode of the last half-season.
I remember during one of the Obama-Romney debates, there was a post-along thread here-- kind of a slow version of twitter. I propose a post-along/weep-along thread for, maybe not next week’s episode, but the finale anyway.
The more you think about it the more like an idiot Joan looks. There’s no evidence she bothered to actually talk to her lawyer about her contract or to see if Jim is actually allowed to fire her after 2 days and give her only 50 cents on the dollar as severance; the only people she asked for advice her boyfriend and Roger. :dubious: And McCann Erickson only bought 51% of their shares (& 100% of Cutlers); what happens to the 49% they kept? 
Does ME have to buy that out as well, or do they each now on a few shares in it?
What would Roger ignoring the office even look like? 
When was it announced that finale is 2 hours long?
And her and Dawn had an entire bit about how everyone in the office keeps calling them buy each other’s names. I wonder what happened to Dawn. On one hand the show’s at the point in time her some at McCann would say something along the lines of “Make sure both Black girls are hired”, but she’s not going to still Director of Agency Operations (which IIRC is basically a glorified office manager). My WAG is she either goes back to being a secretary, or get’s some non-managerial job in the Personnel Department where’s off the floor.
What does Roger ignoring the office look like? Not showing up at all. You can’t tell me anybody would care.
That wasn’t severance. What happened was Joan was making trouble for Jim and, rather than deal with her, Jim offered to buy out her remaining shares for 50¢ on the dollar. It wasn’t him firing her – if she did something deserving of termination they probably wouldn’t have had to pay her anything. Their contracts wouldn’t let them show up to work naked or ride a horse around the office to use extreme examples.
Had Jim just fired Joan (without good reason beyond “started saying a bunch of stupid woman shit”) then he knew she’d lawyer up and cause him headaches. If Joan stayed there, she’d be a constant annoyance (but not enough of one to pay out the full $500k). Offering to buy out her contract means that she’s gone for good and the agreement no doubt has a clause prohibiting her from suing at this point.
Pride aside, I still think it was a decent deal. She got $750k in 1970 dollars (just under $4mil in today’s dollars) and isn’t shackled to McCann for the next four years.
Whoops, make that $4.5mil in today’s dollars. I fumbled the inflation calculator.
Joan also can’t work in advertising for the next four years but I doubt that she cares. She probably will never get another advertising job again after McCann bad mouths her.
The real “what an idiot Joan looks” problem is that she should have waited until they actually sexually discriminated against her before threatening to reveal their sexual discrimination.
One guy didn’t read her brief and was dismissive, and the other… offered to travel to Atlanta with her to fix things. The only actual discrimination was his telling Joan that she couldn’t expect to be the boss of the other guy who had a wife and kid.
(… It’s far too close to the end for me to remember the names of new characters.)
“Oh noes, what he said could be construed as sexual innuendo if I assume the worst” wouldn’t pass muster even today.
You think that today a person can be liable for sexual harassment only if he states in explicit terms that he is expecting sex? That would be a pretty toothless legal regime.
I think that you need to be able to establish a pattern of behavior for hostile work environment if you can’t prove quid pro quo. Joan is on day two at McCann. Even with her prior encounter, she’s got a ways to go.
You don’t need to prove hostile work environment at all if you have direct evidence of harassment, such as demands for sex, or statements that a woman executive cannot expect a male executive to take orders from her. Those are direct acts of sexual harassment and discrimination. Proving them doesn’t require an evidence of a pattern.