Mad Men's Uneven Amazing Finale

So Mad Men is finally over, and the finale was, well, OK. Which is a bit of an anticlimax for a show that started off so very well. The best, I think, that can be said of the finale is that it could have been worse.

Several of the stories ended satisfyingly: Peggy and Stan are finally together, Joan is still trying to balance personal life with ambition, Pete somehow lucked his way into a new lease on life, etc. But Don's ending doesn't really work, and unfortunately that's the critical one.

The show's writers have said that one thing they really tried with this show was not letting the characters change too much. Sure, Don might go on the straight and narrow for a while, but you know he's coming back to his philandering ways soon enough. So at the end we see Don at a yoga retreat in California, presumably breaking through something in himself and starting anew. It's dawn, of course, with obvious symbolism. But this breaks the whole contract of the show. It's a happy ending, I suppose, but we can't really believe it.

The one thing Don is always saying is that he "wants to build something". But he never quite does - he's constantly hemmed in by the strings other people attach. He's also haunted by his own identity crisis, but he doesn't resolve this. (The crisis, by the way, is why the hypothetical ending in which Don switches identities again in order to start anew doesn't work: he hates himself for what he did. Doing it again would be even worse, and he knows it.) It would have been great to see progress on at least one of these problems of Don's, but we don't.

Endings are hard, so not failing is actually better than average. But it could have been so much more.

Update 5/19: And now I finally realize I may have missed something critical: the final commercial for Coke may have told us that Don goes back to work with a new idea. Maybe his final smile was actually inspiration for a new ad campaign. That fits what we know much better, and works as a "resolution" (i.e. it doesn't actually resolve his inner demons, but it keeps the show consistent and shows his ability to rise to ever-greater challenges). Good. Now I feel better.

Separated at birth?

Roger Sterling

Charlie Crist

Mad Men Moment: Duck and the Dog

My wife and I are watching the AMC series Mad Men on DVDs from Netflix, so we're behind the actual run of the show: we've reached about the middle of season 2. It's a tribute to the excellent writing and plotting that little moments can lodge in one's thoughts for long after each episode.

One tidbit that struck me of late was Duck Phillips' abandoning his dog, Chauncey. His act spoke volumes. The moment of abandonment resulted in audible shock from both my wife and me. Why did he do it? There is the practical reason: he had learned that his ex-wife was marrying a man who was allergic to dogs, so Duck would have to keep Chauncey (who had previously stayed with the ex and the kids). Perhaps as a single man in Manhattan he could not have kept a dog.

But this does not explain why he would not have given Chauncey away, instead of just abandoning him to his fate. Duck earlier had treated the dog like a valued member of the family - more so, in fact, than his own children. My wife and I had actually agreed about that earlier in the episode.

A clear turning point in Duck's mind appeared to have been reached when he - a recovering alcoholic - nearly took a drink after a stressful day. With Chauncey at his side, he was unable to do it, haunted, evidently, by guilt sparked by the dog's trusting gaze. After abandoning Chauncey outside the building, did Duck return to the office to have his drink unburdened? We don't know.

Another clue comes from the exchange between Duck and Pete Campbell just prior to Duck's near drink. Pete shows affection for Chauncey and indicates an interest in having a dog, but only around the office. Duck rebukes him. If he had wanted to escape the responsibility of keeping a dog, that was his opportunity. But clearly he wants no part of Chauncey.

Chauncey represents the last vestige of Duck's past. His kids are teenagers and live with their mother, who is remarrying. He wants to forget his alcoholic, failed life in a London ad agency. He is trying to start a new life with Sterling Cooper in New York. He feels obvious love for the dog, but he is able to harden his heart and cruelly abandon him for the sake of "moving on."

In this way Duck is not unlike Don Draper, who is also capable of taking extraordinary measures to escape his past. It remains to be seen how the already strained relationship between these two similar men will develop.