Presumably, she was sleeping or up in her room, which society deemed adequate supervision. Remember that this was a different era. Kids his age would have cooked simple meals, biked to their friend’s houses, walked to school a few miles away, or played out in the woods all day (with or without their BB guns).
I was initially confused at that as well, but then I thought about it a bit and it seems like Don has same issues as the fridge guy - looking for someone to actually love him, when the folks around him have been trying their hardest but he just doesn’t realize it. So, he decided to show that guy some real love through the hug and realize he’s been ignoring the fact that he has been loved as well (and his inability to realize or feel the love that he has received led him to push others away). He kind of acknowledges as much in the call with Peggy.
I really enjoyed the episode when I sat back to think about it. I do agree that Don came back and wrote the Coke jingle. But it wasn’t just him returning to the “Don” we knew throughout the series. This is a new Don, one who has made peace with his past. Who, instead of trying to kill the Dick Whitman inside of him, has fully embraced that part of his past. A lot of this episode was reconnecting with Dick - from being a grease monkey involved in cars to going to California to be with Anna’s niece. And in fully embracing that side of him, he becomes whole and is able to come back a better man.
Also, Roger has some fantastic one liners. “She’s old enough to be her mother. She is her mother” (or something close to that) was the best.
I don’t think the ambiguity here is a bad thing. While I am pretty much in agreement that Don wrote the ad, I like that it was set up that Don, Joan or Peggy could have written it from where we left off with them.
I think it’s interesting that our two female leads still had to scratch and claw at the end, and make sacrifices and tough decisions to stay in the advertising business. And Pete falls ass-backwards into a private jet, and Don throws everything away and still manages to come back and write the World’s Greatest Ad Thus Far.
If only they had Beyonce in 1970.
I’m not fond of ambiguity in a series finale, but I have to say the ending has grown on me since last night.
I see three interpretations of what we saw on the screen.
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Don had a breakthrough and finally found happiness. Weiner uses the commercial as a metaphor that we can all identify with.
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Don’s breathrough is that he finally found the perfect ad, and since his work is the only thing that really mattered to him, that’s his happiness.
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Don’s incapable of truly feeling, so what he imagines is “happiness” is simply what he thinks happens by manipulating images and words. His inner being is simply another ad.
Peggy threw herself into her work to the detriment of her personal life…I think the scene a few weeks ago (that they’ve highlighted in almost every “previously on” bits since then) was supposed to show that it’s not easy to let something like that go. Just moving forward means running until the next time it catches you.
And it didn’t work for Don either since his “move forward” moment haunts him and colors all aspects of his life.
It’s weird that Pete still gets so much hate. If any character grew into a better but still flawed person it was Pete.
(I did want more to the Pete and Peggy goodbye)
I haven’t watched the episode, but for a few weeks the whole “Don writes the Coke jingle” has been floating around. Does this have any basis in fact or it is wishful thinking by some bloggers?
I really hated how trite and rushed the story lines felt. Peggy finds love, and it’s been in front of her all the time! Pete gets a second chance! Joan chooses her career over some guy who just showed up a couple of episodes ago! At it’s worst, Mad Men has felt like a soap opera and I felt like last night’s episode was Mad Men at it’s worst.
I do have dreams like this, or at least that’s how I remember / interpret them. However I think that’s because its a subject that I’ve always been interested in so I’ve kept a dream journal and studied my dreams for years. Most people tend to be like you and remember their dreams as a disjointed jumble. Or, you’re just not that interesting :p;) What I found odd is the premise of the dream; he’s sitting in the refrigerator waiting for people to look at / choose him? Hmmmmmm; what else sits in a refrigerator and waits to be chosen . . . let’s see . . . could it be Coca Cola?!?!?!? Not subtle, Mr. W.
Educated guess? McCann wrote the Coke jingle in the early 1970s. And the show mentioned Coke quite a bit this last half season.
In fact, the commercial was written by McCann-Erickson creative directorBill Backer. It’s nice of the Coca-Cola Company to give credit not only to the agency, but the individuals involved.
The problem with the Coke commercial is that after Weiner got flamed for appropriating a real ad in season one (Lucky Strike’s old tag line: it’s toasted) he said he would not do that again. He didn’t want to take credit away from the real people in history. And that history is well-known and easy to find.
It’s inconceivable to me that Weiner is giving credit for that to Don Draper. That’s really an insult to Weiner and to Backer.
re: the fridge guy, I think the review on Vox captures what I felt about it in a better way than I can articulate:
In that, I think that moment was about the fridge guy articulating what Don has been feeling for a long time. I think the knowledge that Don isn’t alone in that and that he kind of knows the answer to that problem at the same time made it such an emotional speech for Don.
All the talk about “Don’s gonna come back and raise/be there for his kids” is making me sad. He might come back to NY, but no way is he going to be Superdad. At least Sally doesn’t show signs of being the dictatorial parental figure. She and Bobby were already reasonably close. As for Gene, face your future, kid. “Go watch TV.” You’re looking down the barrel of ten years of hanging out in The Other Room.
Someone asked about Stan’s now-ex SO. The first we knew of her existence was in season 6, when Peggy called Stan at home on a weekend and he answered, “Hey babe.” Implying that he was on that level of familiarity with someone not from the agency. We saw her in an episode earlier this half-season: Elaine, foxy redheaded nurse. She posed nude for Stan, he showed the photos to Mimi Rogers, the photographer, and that somehow led to sex with the photographer. In the next episode, he muttered that Elaine “won’t be an issue,” meaning he confessed to her and got the boot.
As for Steggy 4-Eva, I have to admit, if it was manipulation, color me manipulated. For the last few weeks, I’ve been patiently sighing at the shippers. “Not gonna happen,” I kept saying. "I’d’ve liked to see it too, but the ship sailed two seasons ago, when Peggy broke up with Abe and immediately pounced on Ted’s dick without a glance in Stan’s direction. " So my reaction was like this:
“Dang it, are they really going to end Peggy and Stan on a bad note like this?”
“Aw, he’s going to indirectly say he loves her…the shippers will love this.”
“What…really? OMG.”
“HE REALLY SAID IT! Squeeeeeee!”
“Oh, crimeny; Peggy can’t return his feelings…”
“…really? OMG, the shippers must be shattering windows right now.”
“For real! I am seriously going to cry. I never thought they could pull it off. Dang.”
The first episode of this final season opened with a pan into Freddy’s face as he’s giving an Accutron pitch. The final shot zoomed into Don’s face. Listen to the sound Freddy makes at :59 in that opening scene.
I think Sally is going to be OK. She assumes responsibility, she is level-headed and mature beyond her age. She’s not a silly boy-obsessed hormonal typical teen girl. There are young people who are like that, I’ve known a few, girls and boys. They grow up and they have…gravitas? Betty will die within the year and it will be rough going for all of them, but when it all shakes out, Sally will be free to resume her studies and travel and go on to a fine career somewhere…And I would like to point out Sally is most definitely Betty’s daughter. Betty seldom showed happiness, and even as a child, Sally seemed serious and reserved. She is more so now. I may be delusional, but it’s possible she is also one of those people who never do achieve real happiness in this world, except for short stretches, now and then.
I voted “liked,” too, but I’m still reeling from some of the stuff in the episode.
I had forgotten how the human-potential-movement-sensitivity-session stuff PERMEATED the country at that time. I attended MANY sessions like the one Don attended (wearing beads and long dresses, too), sitting in a circle either on metal folding chairs, big cushions, or on the floor, hugging strangers, answering over and over the question “How does that make you feel?” Holy crap–I’ve blocked all that out. It definitely was not Erhard Seminars Training, which was conducted for entire weekends in big hotel auditoriums where you sat in hard chairs and weren’t even allowed to get up to go to the bathroom.
This possibility is the only thing that redeems the whole Big Sur diversion. Don with that smirk on his face is Don Getting a Really Big Idea to take back to McCann.
Agree with every word of this.
Yup. He went back.
I gotta say, Roger and Megan’s mom are PERFECT for each other.
I didn’t think the scene with Sally in the kitchen doing the dishes was primarily sad. If you’ve ever been with someone who was (to put it bluntly) on death’s doorstep, you struggle for anything that feels normal. You cling to ordinary things like those people clinging to bits of flotsam in the ocean after the Titanic went down. And you don’t look ahead. You can’t. For a daughter to be doing the supper dishes while her mom sits at the table and smokes-- that was an absolutely normal picture for their household at that time. The subtext is that Sally has stepped up to a new mature role to nurture the family, to support her mom, to be a big sister to her brothers, instead of going off to Spain. Her teenage years just abruptly ended.
Another thing that makes me sure Don came back is that he would NOT desert the kids. He just plain wouldn’t do it. As their biological father, he would not be subject to having his custodial rights taken away because Betty had different ideas. He probably didn’t come back til after she was dead, but I can only live with this ending if he’s back in New York, at McCann, living with all three children. Their phone call was incredibly sad. I liked that she called him “honey.”
God, I’m going to miss these people.
In an interview Weiner said that the creator or The Sopranos came in with the ending, so you can’t blame him. He also saw what crap the guy got for it.
I agree with this. The result of Don’s breakthrough is him going back into the business seems to go against everything the show is saying. Perhaps Don was a great advertising man because he lived a facade.
Also, every show ended with a song. The Coke ad was another - fancier thanks to it being the finale, but commenting on the episode just like the others did.
Yes, but he also saw the extra mileage David Chase and the Sopranos got out of it, too.
I’ve enjoyed reading all of the interesting ideas. When all is said and done, with the show over and wrapped up (in that blue chiffon gown hanging in the hall closet), Matthew Weiner, once again, has arranged for us all to write our own endings.