In Defense of the Season Finale of "Mad Men"
According to the always-reliable Internet, many people were unhappy with this season's finale of Mad Men. Most of the criticism seems to be either one of two things: first, that it was just too nonsensical, too fast: the sudden engagement, Don's off-putting happiness, or just the general tenor of LA and its aftermath. The second complaint seems to be that "nothing really happened." (There's a third complaint, from "Lost" creator Damon Lindelof, that it wasn't made clear that the whole cast has been dead through the entire show, but he was pretty much the only one to raise that objection.) Well let's get the first, and seemingly the most ridiculous, out of the way.
People are freaked out that, in the course of three days: 1. Don gets the engagement ring of his now-dead closest friend, 2. goes to Disneyland, and then 3. proposes to his secretary (to be fair, people don't seem so freaked out by the Disneyland thing, but it was still important). What seems to be lost in how people react to the episode, though, is that ten weeks have passed since Don bought his ad in the New York Times. That means as many as 14 weeks have gone by (more than three months!) since Megan and Don first had sex-and don't forget, even weeks before that, he was pining for her since the G-men/identity crisis episode, when we caught him staring longingly out the door.
Now, this doesn't necessarily make the engagement any less jarring or weird, but it does make it a little more sensible that Don, who's been alongside this girl he's been pining after on some level for months and months every single day, would propose after she proves herself as both charming (diamond cut-out cleavage dress) and trustworthy (very good with the children). Again, it's still crazy, and if your friend told you he had proposed to his secretary the way Don did, you would think, "Wow, that's crazy!" a la Roger Sterling. But it's important to remember that crazy is very in line with who Don has been this season (see: getting very blackout-drunk a lot, stealing ideas from short guys who were previously on "Gilmore Girls," yelling at Peggy, that sort of thing).
So, complaint number two: the finale, along with the season as a whole, was a bit of a disappointment, and nothing really happened, or at least nothing of real significance. This is a problem of expectation in the age of event television.
The expectations that people have of the season finales of serialized television boil down to two things. We want a culmination of everything a season has worked towards, if not a resolution, and we also want something to look forward to for the next season. Some more recent successful executions of this have been: the first season of "Friends" where Ross has to choose Rachel and the Chinese girl, the first season of "Lost," with the revelation of the hatch, and "Friday Night Lights" and its third season finale-I won't mention what happens because it's so good and should be watched by everyone and appreciated in its entirety.
There are the rare occasions when a neatly tied bow is enough of a conclusion to satisfy its audience, like the first three seasons of "The Wire," for example, but those instances are few and far between. More and more, season finales have become great, grasping reaching things. (See: "True Blood.") Everything has to blow up, or fall apart, or wildly open a new chapter.
And sure, with "Mad Men," we had high expectations-particularly given the precedent, with the end of the previous season and the founding of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. That was a very traditional season finale, and a very traditionally satisfying one: there was conflict, there was stress and there was the promise of something to anticipate.
And this season finale-it was unsettling. It promised something for next season, for sure. Just maybe not something you wanted.
Let's take a step back. There's also a trend now with commentary on the Internet-not exclusive to it but definitely part and parcel-to always expect to have the best and the most of everything. That's not to say that wanting nice things or having high expectations is something that's unique to now. But people expect anything that they're presented with be the best that it could ever be. This makes sense though when you consider what the internet is: a place where you can get almost any tangible intellectual property of the last however many years for free. Any TV show, movie, song, book, whatever can be found if you dig long enough. So there's more options that exist now than ever before. A product isn't just competing with its recent contemporaries, but also with everything that's ever come before to which it's even remotely similar.
Previously, memories provided the context for our comparisons-most often with nostalgia winning out-but it's even harder to watch and enjoy an episode of "SNL" on Hulu when, right after that skit is finished, the videoplayer gives you three suggestions with the most popular "SNL" skits of all time as related content.
All of this is all to say that the finale for "Mad Men" never had a chance of meeting people's expectations to receive favorable reviews. The Internet wouldn't have been happy unless there was a office threeway between Peggy and the nice lesbian and that model. (Then everyone probably would have said the show's writers went too far anyway.)
Yes, even with context, the Draper-secretary engagement was still a little crazy, and the whole season was even more unclear than previous ones regarding the pacing and passing of time between weeks, making it a little jarring for the viewer. But the episode as whole was still pretty awesome. Each of the characters' reactions to the engagement was spot on, as was the reveal of Joan's non-abortion (and I mean, "Yes, they're bigger," COME ON), and the development of Peggy coming into her own, going in hard and nabbing her own client. Not to mention Betty's unraveling with Henry (and Henry finally, finally yelling at Betty). Don't you think all of these stories have serious implications for the next season? That's how good television is supposed to work.
"They worry about how they are going to pad post counts until the next season airs generally."
"They like beating a dead horse generally."
"If it's going to die it should be in the thread of a dead horse show generally."
Next season, I want every episode to end with a con-fab between Joan and Peggy. Sort of like Statler and Waldorf on the Muppet Show.
Peggy and Joan as Statler and Waldorf is my new heaven.
Endorsed.
god damn why is that scene so perfect
And by "con-fab" you mean…
By "con-fab"Â he means "ex-pat,"Â "cocoa-nut,"Â and "olyphant"Â all rolled into one. And crushed like a coconut by an expat elephant.
It was pretty good. Whoever these "people" on the "internet" are, they should shut up.
Honestly I don't see what possible objections there could be to Don's rushed engagement as somehow crazy or even unusual. I don't remember hearing outrage or accusations of inconsistency when Roger married Jane, with no warning or indication. And it's been established that Don is more extreme, intense, and impulsive than Roger in most things. So what's the deal?
Maybe you need more omega-3s then.
Actually even Don Draper was disgusted.
But not the interwebs. I think it's because people like Don more and he is our guide in this world (though he is an untrustworthy guide who lies to us from time to time), so people care more about what he's doing.
Hum hum hum–not reading this, David, am behind a season on this show–hum hum hum–but I promise to come back and read these because I know they are guuuud!
The bitching about this season of Mad Men completely confounds me. For the last 6 weeks (not so much last night), I've been riveted watching the episodes. Maybe there wasn't much happening action-wise, but there sure was a whole hell of a lot going on emotionally, and it was almost anxiety-inducing it was so powerful (at least in my opinion, but how can I challenge the conventional wisdom of the internets?).
This is how I felt, a lot of my friends kept saying how "meh" they were on this season, and I did not get it at all.
This was as good as any of the seasons, except season 1, which in retrospect was not as strong as subsequent seasons.
Season 1 is GROSSLY overvalued, unless you're really into the trade of advertising in the 50's.
I loved this season even though it was uncomfortable at times. But I guess I love "meh" because I love Rubicon too.
I LOVED this low key, atypical season finale. I loved how it was so different from the three season finales which preceded it and from TV season finales in general, even on prestige dramas. I love how Weiner is such a contrarian and is always finding new ways to fuck with peoples' heads and confound expectations, probably because I'm a big annoying contrarian myself. I fully expected tons of people to have hated this though.
And this was my favorite of the four seasons by far. I would rank the season in descending order of quality thusly: 4,2,1,3. This one had such a broad scope and went into so many different tones and modes so skillfully, and we got to see so many new, interesting sides of Don/Dick.
Mad Men is the best show I will never watch twice.
It's riveting and yet so taxing to watch that I can't look back, because it's like seeing a slow-motion car crash with people you love inside.
I thought that most of this season was exceptionally good, which is why the last episode was a disappointment.
Yes, joshc.
Well said. I was a little puzzled by the finale, but I think you the best case I've seen on how to take it. Next season I think I'm swearing off week-to-week recaps. I've written one in the past and I can say from experience that a lot of the time it's just scraping a shovel across the ground.
Having been there in the 60's it is absolutely the way it was: HE always marries the soft, domestic one and dumps the smart, professional one. But 20 years later HE is miserable and the girls are getting smarter and more professional all the time!
This is what I was thinking. Weiner is always responding to protests with, "Well, that's what would have happened at that time…" For example, the whole Joan leaving the office and getting married. Everyone was freaked out that they were never gonna see C. Hendricks boobs smooshed in a tight sweater again and freaked the fuck out. I think it's meant to be weird and jarring and unsettling. It is not a cool thing to be dating someone pretty seriously, go on vacation, and then come back engaged to someone else even if you do have to replace your nanny. But this is the season in which Don becomes Roger and shine starts to wear just a bit.
The Don Draper of earlier seasons succeeded spectacularly at everything he tried, as if he were twenty moves ahead in a chess game. Nothing seemed to catch him off-balance until the story of Dick Whitman began to surface. Isn't it the superhero version of Draper that people miss?
Yes, and I think he dropped Dr Faye because he couldn't keep straddling the Dick/Don BS anymore, and he sure as hell wasn't going to pick the "come clean and accept yourself" option. He basically fell off the introspective/self-realization wagon.
Let's be realistic here: this is fiction and, as such, absurd. Why is anyone talking about it as if it might actually have happened?
It's narratively compelling fiction with which some are inclined to identify, I guess? Because people relate the events described to events in their own lives?
Draper has that, plus the wish-fulfilling function of the impossibly beautiful, perfect, successful etc. fictional heroes who are there as vehicles for fantasy and imagination. (Wouldn't it be great to leap tall buildings in a single bound? etc.)
What I am saying is, you ask a good question.
Some internet people are NEVER HAPPY!
I enjoyed it. Draper is a confounding character. I hate him more than I like him. But in the galaxy of the show, he is the sun that everyone else revolves around. And they're all such funny little planets, each one a world worth discovering.
Or maybe Draper is the black hole. Either way. I care less about what happens to him than what happens to los otros!
I don't watch TV dramas, but I think it's pretty hilarious how people keep watching something that doesn't amount to much in the hope that the finale will somehow finally make sense of it all and be a big revelation of what it all meant, and then they blame the finale when they finally have to face the fact that they've wasted all those hours and evenings of their lives.
Yes! All those years watching something I loved and that entertained me for free and talking and thinking about it with friends, wasted!
Yep. Wasted.
Wow I didn't realize that the guy profiled here was an Awl commenter!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/
He, he. Well, I mostly watch sports on my TV (which I like, which entertains me, and which I talk to friends about), but at least I don't deny that it's a waste of time.
Are you just trolling? Is this some super-meta shtick or something? Sports, TV drama, whatever it's all a "waste of time" as even you admit, but to self-righteously declare one or the other a waste of time in a forum that's obviously filled with a lot of people who like one of the particular "wastes of time" is just unprovoked asshole behavior. I can't fucking stand sports but I don't go on to deadspin or whatever to declare what a stupid waste of time sports fandom is, mostly because it would be stupid and pointless, i.e. a waste of time.
All right, forget it.
I can deal with (nay welcome!) a dissenting opinion. TV dramas are a waste of time (as you conceded are sports), but this is Mad Men baby! This is a whole different level of story telling.
Still, I don't think your commenting here is "asshole behavior". Who knows maybe after seeing the conversation, you'll quietly go home one night in late February and pick up an old episode and become a fan. Alright…not likely, but comment all you want.
I'm kind of pissed at Lindelof for stealing my "they were dead the whole time" joke.
I'm on your side.
Ahem.
I also never got the general upset at the Sopranos finale. All the people who wanted/expected it to end in a bloodbath, I wanted to ask, have you WATCHED this show? Do you have even a basic understanding of the characters and tropes and structures? Not to mention there was a bloodbath in the penultimate episode (par for the course for Chase, who always killed a major character in the second-last).
Whenever I see the Sopranos finale lumped in with other so-called dissatisfying endings like Seinfeld, I think NO FAIR. Hardly anything deserves to be considered as bad as the end of Seinfeld.
Sopranos finale was maybe the best in TV history.
Is there something in the DSM-IV about compulsive Mad Men discussion?
In defense of NO MORE ARTICLES ABOUT MAD MEN
I got into the Faye v Megan thing with a couple of people last night.
I am on team Megan, btw.
One of the arguments was that Faye was his "equal" while Megan was somehow less than Don.
Also, Megan did the typical "secretary" thing by seducing/being seduced by Don (coarsely, Megan was a "whore").
I disagree.
I think Faye was playing men in exactly the same way Megan may have been. It's just that Faye made Don wait longer. Doesn't make it better or worse. In fact, I'd argue that Faye was a much bigger game player than Megan…a much bigger fake.
Yes, she's smart, accomplished, in charge (though really, how in charge?) but just because Megan is a secretary, doesn't mean she's "lesser". She's just younger. I get the impression there's a lot more to Megan than meets the eye.
The feminist in me, is annoyed that these two smart, beautiful women are defined by which one ends up with Don.
The shallow part of me likes Megan better because she completely rocks the clothes.
But overall, neither of them hold a candle to our Joan and our Peggy.
The end.
Faye is more of an analyst — a 'And How Does That Make You Feel?' person.
Megan is simply undaunted — a 'What's Next?' person.
I guess I'm a bit creeped that Megan was probably about 11 years old when Sally Draper was born.
Team Faye. She acted out of love and kindness at every choice point but got shit on for no reason other than Don Draper is a prick.
I felt the same as Titty, at first. But then I realized why Don wanted Megan.
Faye was really pushing Don to come to terms with his past. This whole season was about, among other things, the "Don Draper" persona starting to wear thin. Don's been forcing his stolen identity out into the open more and more. In the season premiere, he's forced to explain who Don Draper is, something he's never had to do before now. Not to mention, all the other cast members are now linked to his name/persona through SCDP. His fake identity's on the fucking door for the world to see.
The business really starts to die when Don begins to over do it and starts accepting/stealing shit copy. Meanwhile, Don is trying to take control of the "Draper" persona by forcing the hard work and discipline of the old "Whitman" way of life (i.e. the swimming for hard work and the journal for introspective soul searching/self-loathing). But these don't work.
He was becoming Betty in a way.
A situation would pop up. It would be nothing big, like when he had to fill out some paperwork for the government with his fake name on it, and he had a literal panic attack and force the firm to give up business (what? he didn't pay his taxes, buy a house, or start a business as Don Draper?).
Faye would have had him take a long hard look and make hard decisions and choose between the two lives. But with Megan, it's like the spilled milk shake. No use getting upset over little shit. And to Don, Dick Whitman is becoming little shit. Megan is how he makes peace with who he was and who he wants to be. Now, he can just go be Don Draper and Dick Whitman is his "nickname…sometimes."
Or you know. I could be wrong.
Oh and Megan's brunette, the anti-Betty.
I thought it was BEEEEUTIFULL
I simply do not know how a girl from Montreal in the 60's would be okay marrying a divorced man. I can only imagine that she is catholic (being a French Canadian). Even is she is okay with it I am sure her mother would be less than thrilled.
Right?
Easy, he's rich.
Season 5 plot point?
I think most people who were upset are Don/Faye shippers.
Daye Shippers? Fon?
It was bound to be anti-climactic because the real denouement of Season 4 was the parting of the ways with Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Since then, the show's been treading water.
With his engagement, Don Draper didn't find a way out of the pond; he just caught the eye of a pretty girl in a distant boat.
I don't have any real problems with the finale. I understand what they did and why. Next season will be interesting. I'm not AT ALL anxious to see Don play house again so soon but we all knew this was coming as soon as Faye Miller mentioned the remarriage rate for divorced men.
But if I had one bone to pick it would be the way the show is telegraphing its intent from a mile away and with such clumsy obviousness.
A spilled milkshake leads to a Jerry Maguire moment, but instead of "You make me want to be a better man" it was "You make me realize I don't have to scream at my kids all the time."
The "On holiday with the kids! Gee being a single parent is tough. Maybe I need help. Oh look there's sexy Maria Von Trapp." Well Christ isn't that the plot of a couple of Disney movies?
Did anyone else think that dropping turgid Dr. Faye for Megan was the first time in a while Don's made a good (if rash and crazy) decision? Though the first time he gives Megan the wolf eyes is after the G-men crisis, he initially takes notice of her (and starts to doubt, I think, Dr. Faye) after she helps Sally up in the SCDP offices. Now he proposes to her right after she works her Carlaesque magic with the kids – is this Don-Draper-the-father unconsciously (finally) coming out? Megan's the only decent, non-Carla mother on the show so far – the anti-Betty.
I agree–there's a serious element of mother-worship in Don. Betty never fit the Madonna he'd built in his mind of what his (absent) mother should be. Megan fits the bill. She's uncomplicated, sees him for what he wishes he could be, and is great with the kids. This has DUH written all over it.
And boy, won't it all end badly?
Megan = 'Magical Mommy' figure (found elsewhere on a tour of the internet), which is irritating because it doesn't exist. So does she actually have a dark/interesting side as posited downthread, or she is just some kind of device that will allow Don to reassemble the perfect family portrait?
It's great writing and I've loved this season, but what still has me pissed is the fact that Don slept with Faye–his serious girlfriend of 5-6 months–and then immediately went to California and slept with Megan (after cheating on Faye with Megan once a couple of months earlier).
OK, Don would totally do that. But Don's supposed to see Megan as a sweet, kind, refreshing person, right? She's had no qualms about Faye's feelings and Don's relationship with Faye this whole time? Megan's known for months what's been going on between Don and Faye. It just doesn't add up that she'd be OK with all of this, and/or that Don would still view her as Maria Von Trapp, given her lack of scruples/empathy.
Also I'm really gonna miss Don's houses. Sally's not gonna start seeing a new psychologist in Rye, is she??
Just pleeeeease let Megan have a past as dark as Don's.
I would have stood up and cheered if Megan had sat up in Don's bed and said, "Let's go on a date first."
And when she climbs into his lap in the office, she's like, "you know I love you" but its been, like, a week?
I thought this season of Mad Men was fantastic; particularly the final episode.
As this writer mentions in the final paragraph, there are NUMEROUS stories that have now opened up and need to be explored. I can't wait until the summer of 2011 to see how they all unfold and interconnect.
Also, there are some people who just relish the following sentence: "(FILL IN THE BLANK) isn't nearly as good as it used to be. The first two seasons were good, but now they've gone downhill and they're just living off of the…" Blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Some people can't be happy with anything for too long. They think it makes them too "unhip" or, god forbid, "ordinary", you know, just some dolt who likes something that's (gasp!) popular…
Every other review was the same. Until this one.
Good stuff David.
"Don, who's been alongside this girl he's been pining after on some level for months and months every single day."
To quote Peggy: That is BULLSHIT.
Just because Don SAYS he pined for Megan doesn't mean he actually pined for Megan. He quite clearly doesn't have any clue why the fuck he does anything. No one knows Don less well than Don.
I'm giving Don the benefit of the doubt on Megan. They set it up as him trying hard to not sleep with this girl (at least hard for Don). He stammered through a few "We shouldn't do this"'s before jumping her bones. He stared from afar without making a slick quip and trying to get her panties off (something he did try with Faye more than once). So maybe, when he really looks at her, he feels something he hasn't before. Not love, necessarily. I don't know if Don can love. But maybe admiration and a recognition of the youthful drive and optimism he once had when he became Don, but has been losing ever since. He did say Megan reminded him of Peggy, who, if nothing else, is the only woman Don actually respects.
Though I think Mathnet's on to something. If you thought Betty was bad, wait till you get a load of married Megan.