Oh thank you thank you for this! The only part of the episode I really couldn’t stand was that Pete, PETE, gets a happy ending. But now you’ve said it, it’s obvious!
This was my favorite bit
Roger: “You’ll land on your feet”
Meredith: “I always do!”
because it revealed to me that Meredith is the star of her own show, just like we all are.
As the ending meditation scene opened I found myself thinking “oh Don Draper, of course you wear a fitted unwrinkled white shirt to meditate in” We are visually already being told to start seeing Don back in the world of advertising. Oh yes he wrote that Coke jingle.
As I have read this thread my children have been badgering me for Cokes. The circle is unbroken.
Well that’s a rather parsimonious view of human decency. It’s pretty common in my view that living full time with small children as a primary caregiver tends to create binds. If nothing else, he’s been the full-time adult man in Gene’s life since his birth.
Remember the episode when Don took Bobby to see the Planet of the Apes, when MLK was assassinated, and there were riots that Henry was helping Mayor Lindsay deal with?
Bobby had trouble falling asleep at Don’s place that night, and he told Don it was because he was worried that something would happen to Henry. That was very telling about the way he saw Henry in his life. Don was kind of bummed out about it, as I recall.
That was my husband’s theory too. I’m going with that.
I don’t know about you guys but I was actually clapping and cheering all through that phone conversation between Peggy & Stan. I wish I could thank Matthew Weiner personally for giving them that ending.
Betty still smoking: My husband and I were like “Ha. Fuck it, eh.”
I honestly don’t think the question is whether he made the ad or not (I think the staging of the scene makes it clear we are supposed to think he did) but to me the real unanswered question is whether all Don got out of his self discovery was a world changing ad or if it somehow made him whole and happy on top of it.
There are many ways to be a good parent, or at least an adequate one. He doesn’t have to be cuddly or warm to genuinely care for the children in his household or to want to give them a stable home. The kids certainly see him as someone they care about and depend on.
Agreed. And it isn’t something that is just “Hollywood” either. I’ve known people who have been good friends for years suddenly realize, oh wait… I’m actually in love with this person, so it didn’t see unrealistic.
I’m also glad that Pete got a happy ending, regardless of all his flaws. I think he saw the Wichita opportunity as a way out - while he enjoyed being a big wig at McCann, I think he also though that WTF is he doing, esp when talking to his brother about the bro’s affair. And we forget that Pete has grown quite a bit since the first season.
In the first episode, Don tells Pete that if he doesn’t stop acting like such a shit: “Keep it up, and even if you do get my job you’ll never run this place. You’ll die in that corner office, a midlevel executive with a little bit of hair who women go home with out of pity. Want to know why? Because no one will like you.”
That’s exactly the road Pete was headed on (including the production team shaving back Kartheiser’s hairline!). Pete has his own epiphany moment just like Don in California or Peggy & Stan or Joan realizing she’s independent or Roger finding new legacy in his son & grandson.
It’s telling that even as Pete was seemingly cruising along at McCann and I’m sure his work was appreciated, his leaving the company earned him a tin of cookies, a potted cactus and lunch with Harry (and Peggy’s sole sincere goodbye). His gladhanding was effective in business but didn’t make him any real friends. Returning in contrition to his wife and daughter and starting a new life away from advertising was how he avoided the fate Don predicted for him.
I dunno. Even 52 years later, a woman in a pink suit next to an airplane recalls that day to me. I was 15 when it happened and it really made an impression.
Yes. And if we’re supposed to believe that Don is now “whole and happy,” on what basis are we supposed to believe that? What was presented in that finale that would keep Don from being the same hard-drinking, heavy-smoking guy he’s always been–and moreover, from being a guy who’s now starting to find that women expect to be paid for sleeping with him?
If viewers believe Don had an epiphany, of what does that epiphany consist? Was the act of hugging a stranger sufficient to change Don’s habits of a lifetime? If so, how, exactly, would that work?
Again: I don’t begrudge anyone their opinion that this finale was well-written and/or satisfying. My own view differs: I think Weiner is capable of better work. And I think he’ll regret having made the 1971 Coke ad the culminating moment of his series.*
*Because it resonates only for people who were old enough in 1971 to remember it as having been a big deal. For anyone younger, the reason that the Coke ad was Iconic and Resonant and Important must be explained. Because they’re not old enough to remember, to them it’s just a cheesy old ad for a sugar drink.
Any creator of an ambitious series must hope that their series will be viewed for years, and even decades, to come. And they surely hope, too, that viewers will come away with both admiration for the work, and an emotional reaction to it. The finale plays a large role in the overall response that viewers have to a series.
As the decades pass, a smaller and smaller proportion of viewers of the series will have any emotional reaction at all to that old commercial. For most, its use in that powerful position–the concluding scene of the entire series–will simply confuse and annoy.