{"id":6819,"date":"2015-05-19T16:44:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T23:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=6819"},"modified":"2015-10-10T00:14:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T07:14:21","slug":"the-mad-men-finale-don-draper-goes-out-with-an-om-and-we-fade-to-a-coke-ad-where-is-walter-white-when-we-need-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=6819","title":{"rendered":"The Mad Men finale: Don Draper goes out with an &#8220;Om&#8221; and we fade to a Coke ad. Where is Walter White when we need him?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"The%20Mad%20Men%20finale%3A%20Don%20Draper%20goes%20out%20with%20an%20%22Om%22%20and%20we%20fade%20to%20a%20Coke%20ad.%20Where%20is%20Walter%20White%20when%20we%20need%20him%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.11.51-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-6820\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 3.11.51 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.11.51-PM-300x223.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.11.51-PM-300x223.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.11.51-PM.png 318w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a>By Peter Lance \u00a9 May 19, 2015<\/strong> New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum called the ending of Sunday night\u2019s <em>Mad Men<\/em> finale <a title=\"New Yorker Nussbaum\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/cultural-comment\/the-original-resonant-existentially-brilliant-mad-men-finale\">\u201cexistentially brilliant.\u201d<\/a> But as a devoted fan who binge-watched the first 6 seasons just before the final 7 episode run, I felt as if I\u2019d just downed a 16 oz. bottle of Coca-Cola.<\/p>\n<p>I also came away thinking that Matthew Weiner, the series creator who wrote and helmed the last hour, finally got his revenge on Lionsgate. After he\u2019d won four back-to-back Emmys, the production company put the series on ice for a year while they forced him to squirm through contract negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>Weiner finally settled in 2011 with a three-season contract worth $30 million but he told <a title=\"Man Men Hollywood Reporter\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/mad-men-uncensored-epic-never-780101\"><strong><em>The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/strong><\/a> that, \u201cBeing off the air that long was bad for us. I felt that the show\u2019s prestige was damaged.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s little doubt that in terms of popularity, awards and critical acclaim <em>Mad Men<\/em> was quickly eclipsed by AMC\u2019s other iconic series <em>Breaking Bad.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Given the true (non-existential) brilliance that Vince Gilligan demonstrated in tying the threads of Walter White&#8217;s life into a violent, action packed tapestry, every <em>Mad Men<\/em> fan had the right to expect something approaching closure from Weiner.<\/p>\n<p>Instead he literally devoted one third of a 45 page script to the end of Don\u2019s cross-country odyssey at Esalen Institute. It included one interminable four and a half minute soliloquy by a first-time peripheral character that played out like slow-dripping sap.<\/p>\n<p>I actually expected Weiner to fulfill the promise of his tease in Episode 12 when Don taps on the window of his new office at McCann Erickson, as if to test its tensile strength. How auteur would it have been if he then returned to Manhattan for a real-life out-the-window take on the animated open?<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.12.51-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-6821\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 3.12.51 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.12.51-PM-300x274.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.12.51-PM-300x274.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-3.12.51-PM.png 647w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But that would have required Don to understand that the biggest vow he\u2019d broken in his runaway life was to the public \u2013 to the millions of consumers whose lives would be shortened or abruptly ended by the many products he so slickly packaged.<\/p>\n<p>And since Weiner is the God of all this, that would have meant an admission on his part that he\u2019d built his gorgeous 92-episode house on a moral Superfund site and that the ring-a-ding lifestyle of the Martini swilling, two-pack-a-day Luckys smoker embodied in Don Draper was not such a pretty thing.<\/p>\n<p>Except for a couple of peripheral characters like Abe Drexler, Peggy&#8217;s ex-boyfriend and the conscience of the Sixties who ranted about corporate greed, virtually every principal character in the series would roll their eyes at any hint that what they were selling caused cancer or killed (back then in the pre-seatbelt\/airbag days) nearly as many drivers in a single year as all of\u00a0 the U.S. troops who died in Indochina.<\/p>\n<p>And Vietnam itself, like most of the historic events bookmarked in the series like the JFK assassination and the late 60\u2019s race riots was treated pretty much as an off-screen annoyance. It was Joan\u2019s problem when her doctor-husband abandoned her for the war.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Dow + agent orange\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dow_Chemical_Company#Vietnam_War:_napalm_and_Agent_Orange\"><strong>Dow Chemical,<\/strong><\/a> the company that defoliated much of Vietnam and condemned thousands of American GI\u2019s to a painful death from exposure to<a title=\"Vet exposure to Agent Orange\" href=\"http:\/\/www.publichealth.va.gov\/exposures\/agentorange\/conditions\/\"><strong> Agent Orange,<\/strong><\/a> was treated as a prize to be courted and won.<\/p>\n<p>Even as late as the finale, Joan got rescued when Ken Cosgrove tossed her an in-house documentary contract that Peggy would also get rich from. The prospect of helping Nixon grab the White House, servicing Dow or \u201ckeeping&#8221; the Lucky Strike account were Sterling-Cooper challenges that millions of viewers found themselves rooting for.<\/p>\n<p>In the end when Weiner could have paid off Don\u2019s on-again\/off-again ad man flirtation with a chalk outline amid broken glass on Madison Avenue, we got him going out in Lotus position chanting \u201cOm,\u201d as the music faded up for Coca-Cola\u2019s legendary <a title=\"Coke Hilltop commercial\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1VM2eLhvsSM\"><strong>\u201cHilltop\u201d commercial.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re over 40 you remember that one. It featured lines of slim, happy, racially diverse young men and women in native dress holding bottles of \u201cThe Real Thing\u201d and promising to \u201cteach the world to sing in perfect harmony.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.29.00-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-6822\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 4.29.00 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.29.00-PM-300x226.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.29.00-PM-300x226.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.29.00-PM.png 501w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a>It was hard to escape Weiner\u2019s clear suggestion that Don, now having reached a state of enlightenment, was on his way back to Manhattan to conceive that spot and maybe pick up another CLIO. He even dressed the actress who played the concierge at Esalen in a way that mimicked one of the young women in the ad who wore braids and a red \u00a0and white peasant shirt.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CRITICISM IS EASY &#8211; WRITING IN HARD\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As an investigative reporter who also writes fiction, I fully appreciate the genius that went into the 92 hours of <em>Mad Men<\/em>. It was a series that broke new ground in cable with some of the finest writing and acting in television history.<\/p>\n<p>I occasionally get hit by trash one-star book reviews on <a title=\"PL author's page amazon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Peter-Lance\/e\/B001HD1116\/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1425767896&amp;sr=1-2-ent\"><strong>amazon.com,<\/strong><\/a> so in my own small way I know how easy it is for someone to write a shoot-from-the-hip critique and how hard it is to fill the blank page as Matthew Weiner did year after year.<\/p>\n<p>But Stephanie, the attractive\/whiney niece of the woman Dick married to legitimize his transition to Don, complained in the last episode that she felt everyone was<em> judging<\/em> her so Weiner, who wrote those lines, has to expect a few lumps.<\/p>\n<p>Television is an amazingly powerful force and I witnessed first-hand the beginning of the end of the great network news divisions. Having reported in the halcyon days of ABC News during the 1980&#8217;s it\u2019s difficult for me to watch a glamour boy with a paper-thin resum\u00e9 like David Muir sitting in the chair once occupied by Peter Jennings or <em>a conflator<\/em>\u00a0and talk show host wannabe like Brian Williams as the heir to Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC.\u00a0At least with Scott Pelley The Eye Network has a real reporter as the anchor of <em>The CBS Evening News.<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.35.56-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-6823\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 4.35.56 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.35.56-PM-300x207.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"186\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.35.56-PM-300x207.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.35.56-PM.png 436w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Still, the once hard-hitting news mags like <em>Dateline, 48 Hours<\/em> and my own alma mater <em>20\/20<\/em> have morphed into little more than \u201ctrue crime\u201d skiens. They celebrate forensics. The documentary equivalent of CSI, NCIS and their crime scene progeny. Try and get the news from CNN on a weekend night and you&#8217;ll get <em>The Forensic Files.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Like Coca-Cola, those \u201cnews\u201d magazines are tasty but they have zero nutritional value and high caloric content. You down enough of \u201cThe Real Thing\u201d and you don\u2019t end up on a hilltop singing in a size two sahri or dashiki, you end up obese.<\/p>\n<p>What does it say about the state of television when for years the best journalism on the small screen came from Jon Stewart and now it\u2019s being practiced by Anthony Bourdain and VICE?\u00a0 Given all that, one has to mourn the loss of any missed opportunity for TV to challenge viewers and expose hypocrisy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WHAT WEINER COULD HAVE DONE\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was absolutely possible for Matthew Weiner to entertain us while using his sleekly designed bully pulpit to teach us important lessons. But he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>He left young women who might aspire to corporate leadership thinking that maybe Joan and Peggy telling lies for a chemical company was a great career move.<\/p>\n<p>His solution for a happy reboot to Pete\u2019s broken marriage was to fly his family off in a Lear Jet. Our last shot of Betty dying of lung cancer was with a butt in her hand; brassing it out as her children watched her. Some life lesson that was.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-21-at-8.24.32-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-6875\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-05-21 at 8.24.32 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-21-at-8.24.32-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"127\" height=\"212\" \/><\/a>And what about Don, the series&#8217; central protagonist? We&#8217;re led to believe that he underwent a quick moral scrub overlooking Big Sur before returning to his job as a merchant of deceit.<\/p>\n<p>The pilot began with him making cocktail napkin notes so he could &#8220;pitch&#8221; Lucky &#8211; later coming up with that clever diversion, &#8220;It&#8217;s toasted.&#8221; And though he later denounced that move in his infamous letter to the NYT, Don had a packet of cigs in the breast pocket of his green polo shirt in the final moments of the series at Esalen. And that was\u00a0<em>after<\/em> he&#8217;d learned that the mother of his children was terminal.<\/p>\n<p>One of the truest expressions of a life lived is that \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where you start out, it\u2019s where you finish that counts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now consider Don: He hijacked another man\u2019s identity in war. He blew through two marriages and went through the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s womanizing and plastered while still looking great in a suit. And what did he learn from all of this? What was his \u201ccharacter arc,\u201d as they love to say in network development meetings?<\/p>\n<p>Weiner leaves us believing that as always, Don will just take a nap, shower, shave, light up an un-filtered cigarette, pour himself another single malt and be back on ad row telling beautiful lies.<\/p>\n<p>If there is something brilliant about all of that, I missed it.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.41.39-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-6827\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 4.41.39 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.41.39-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"701\" height=\"321\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.41.39-PM.png 876w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.41.39-PM-300x137.png 300w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Screen-Shot-2015-05-19-at-4.41.39-PM-800x366.png 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 701px) 100vw, 701px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"The%20Mad%20Men%20finale%3A%20Don%20Draper%20goes%20out%20with%20an%20%22Om%22%20and%20we%20fade%20to%20a%20Coke%20ad.%20Where%20is%20Walter%20White%20when%20we%20need%20him%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>By Peter Lance \u00a9 May 19, 2015 New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum called the ending of Sunday night\u2019s Mad Men finale \u201cexistentially brilliant.\u201d But as a devoted fan who binge-watched the first 6 seasons just before the final 7 episode run, I felt as if I\u2019d just downed a 16 oz. bottle of Coca-Cola. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[838,814,555,822,849,847,816,868,826,848,852,871,865,846,856,224,819,837,842,876,813,867,877,820,818,870,809,821,862,834,859,832,875,879,854,884,872,825,836,860,844,843,869,810,812,827,866,864,851,840,881,858,857,815,863,883,807,833,811,808,885,845,878,831,874,829,882,817,853,839,841,861,830,850,855,880,873,824,828,823,835],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6819"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6829,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions\/6829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}