So Don Draper becomes a Buddhist? Well, maybe.
The “Mad Men” series finale addressed all the major storylines of the series and wrapped them up in moving ways. Peggy Olson finally found love where she least expected it, with colleague Stan Rizzo. Roger Sterling married — is this his third or fourth wife? — Marie Calvet, a k a Megan Draper’s mother. Pete Campbell whisked ex-wife Trudy and their daughter off to Wichita on a Lear jet to begin their new life together. Ken Cosgrove offered Joan some freelance work, producing industrial films, which reignited her ambitions to be her own boss and brought an abrupt end to her too-good-to-be-true romance with Richard, her super-rich LA boyfriend.
And sadly, Sally Draper took over her mother’s role in the household as the lung cancer progressed and left Betty Francis too weak.
The best moment of the final episode was Don’s final conversation with Betty. Their tearful goodbyes were Emmy-worthy. Then, Don was left to face himself. He did at, of all places, a California retreat center where he participated in encounter groups with Anna Draper’s niece, Stephanie. He calls Peggy, and she tries to get him to come back home to New York and back to his job at McCann Erickson. “Don’t you want to work on Coke?” she asks. He can’t because he feels too guilty about his sins and hangs up, seemingly paralyzed. Then he’s led to a group meeting where a man very much like Don, an office worker, confesses how insignificant he has felt most of his life. Seeing someone whom he could have worked with moves Don, and he embraces the man. Cut to Don meditating with the other hippies by the Pacific Ocean. Don closes his eyes, and says the Buddhist chant, “Om.” Cut to the famous “Real Thing” Coke commercial, with a group of young people singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”
You may conclude that’s where Don gets his next great idea: The Coke jingle that was, in fact, one of McCann Erickson’s signature commerci🌟als.
So “ding”, Don gets an idea and goes back to make the Coke Ad?
— David Clinch (@DavidClinchNews)
Unlike the abrupt finale of “The Sopranos,” the “Mad Men” finale gave viewers what they wanted: closure for the major characters and a rebirth for Don. The hippie scenes were a little hokey, but, hey, it was the ’70s. Like his colleagues back in New York, Don got something he needed: a happy ending.
It was a fitting sign-off for the Emmy-winning series, which, in its seven seasons, gave TV drama an air of sophistication and depth it doesn’t strive for often enough. It is probably the most adult show ever created for mainstream TV audiences, ambitiously breaking away from formulaic storytelling to portray one man’s search for identity.
Creator Matthew Weiner introduced us to an impossibly beautiful group of upwardly mobile white New Yorkers who pursued fame and status in a business where seduction and illusion was the name of the game.
And he gave us a haunted, charismatic, but ultimately unknowable central figure: Don Draper. Don himself was an illusion — a Korean War vet who grew up in a brothel and stole his commanding officer’s identity to come home from the war.
“Mad Men” will be remembered as the show that made every office worker wish they could join the conga line at a Sterling Cooper party. And it was the series that proved that TV — not the movies — was where adults could find classy entertainment. But the finale also reminded us, as Stan tells Peggy, “Work’s ⭕not the only thing in life.”