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The 'Trolling Don Draper' Theory of the 'Mad Men' Finale

lol
May 18, 2015

Discussion of the series finale of Mad Men below.

I dunno, I guess that finale was fine? Which is to say that I don't think John Podhoretz is wrong, exactly. Mad Men probably should've ended two seasons ago, with Don ditching his second wife to chase tail because some things never change. Or, failing that, it should've ended three episodes ago, when the absorption into McCann Erickson was taking place. Closing out with a treacly, famous advertising seemed like a bit of a cop out.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

There were some things I really liked about last night's episode. The shot of Pete Campbell, for instance, hopping out of a limo and into a Learjet made me happy, as I've come to consider Mad Men a show about Pete's fall and rise. He starts off wanting everything Don Draper has in New York—business success, the adoration of his peers—and comes to realize the only thing that will make him happy is everything Don gave up in New York: his family. That he has to move out to the heartland to find contentment is doubly amusing. I'm glad Pete finally caught a break.

Speaking of family, I thought the show handled the Peggy/Joan dynamic quite nicely. It's an almost-too-on-nose reversal of their original positions on the show: If you remember the first season, Joan was the one telling Peggy to find a man and settle down while Peggy was the hard-charging business girl trying to make something of herself. In the end, Peggy realizes that she can only truly be happy by accepting the love of a good man while Joan parlays the 50 cents on the dollar she received from literally sleeping her way to (five percent of) the top into a business of her own. Well played, Matthew Weiner.

And Don? Well, Don ... um. Don, he uh ... hm. Well he stopped running! Good for him!

But it all felt kind of lame, didn't it? It did. Don's been running in circles for so long now that it's kind of hard to believe that he either had a real change of heart or has truly found inner peace, whatever that means. He seems pretty broken up by the fact that neither his daughter nor his wife think he should have anything to do with the raising of his children—and, you know, good for him. It's a continuation of the show's theme, one that stretches back all the way to the beginning of the series: family, not business, is what matters. Your photo album means more than your portfolio. After all, you can't put clips in the carousel.

He goes from being broken up to finding inner peace pretty quickly though, doesn't he? Never underestimate the power of "Ohm."

Of course, the show doesn't end with Don in a commune chanting his life away. That would be too cut and dry. So Matthew Weiner tacks on an extra little something: The "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" ad from 1971. You know it. It's the one with all the hippies standing around singing about how the world would be a better place if we simply bought each other the correctly branded products. The obvious explanation of this coda is that Don finds peace with all the hippies and uses that inner stillness to create a remarkably famous piece of advertising, thus achieving his destiny of being the greatest ad man of all time.

It's a nice theory. I like the following one better, though.

So, obviously, people are going to find out that Don is in California. After all, Don called Peggy and Peggy told the man who completes her; it's only a matter of time before the rest of McCann Erickson discovers the truth. And I'm willing to bet that the corporate drones at McCann Erickson will find Don's fate hilarious. The consummate ad man, the Madison Avenue genius, the dead-inside dick who once described "love" as an invention dreamed up to sell nylons—reduced to just another burnt out hippie chanting by the ocean.

I mean, c'mon: It is kind of humorous. And if you're an ad man at McCann, why wouldn't you have a bit of fun with it? Why not take the account that Don's always wanted to work on and tweak him a little? Why not spend a "staggering amount" while highlighting a community that rejects material goods for inner peace? Why not gather all the freaks and geeks and hippies and dippies into one place, into one shot? Why not turn Don's personal enlightenment into one more piece of crass sentimentality?

So you can think that Don came out of "retirement" and went back to the world of advertising if you want. I prefer to think that McCann Erickson trolled Don Draper. And hard.