MAD MEN on AMC - Seasons 7(a) & & 7(b)

Well there often has to be a dumb person there asking obvious questions to act as audience surrogate and also someone the audience can look down on.

I think I remember being surprised at learning that song was a coke jingle. But I have no idea how I would have heard it in Denmark, in what version.

i learned about it from a smash mouth song

i've still never seen it but eventually miscellaneous references accrued the density of an actual experience

I think I may have seen remake with the candles before seeing the original. (Plus I had "The New Seekers Live at Royal Albert Hall" as a kid and knew the song from there)

did the finale remind anybody else of /inherent vice/?

Someone at work asked me about the ending, someone who watched the first season, a few episodes from the next, then stopped. After giving her the most minimal 45-second summary possible of what she'd missed of Don's story--divorce, remarriage, divorce again, ups and downs at work, ongoing identity crisis, Ken dancing, now estranged from everything, job included, embraces fridge guy--I played the final scene for her, curious as to how she'd interpret it. Without a second's hesitation, she said that Don had had a flash of inspiration and went back and created the Coke ad. Which doesn't mean anything, I just thought it was interesting that someone who wasn't nearly as immersed in the show as some of us are would immediately come to that conclusion.

Before putting all this aside, I rewatched the first episode last night. Pretty great, with lots of fascinating connections to where it all ends up.

Yes re:inherent vice

Xp

i do think that if don didn't make that exact coke ad then i imagine he made a different coke ad plagiarizing the sad stranger's refrigerator dream. "you're a can of coca cola. you're in the fridge, and when the people open the door, they see you and smile and reach for you and you feel their love"

Hm, Don also pretended to be giving away a fridge full of Miller beer just two weeks ago

Probably Leonard was inside that fridge, which is the real reason the husband chased Don away--he didn't want this sad-sack of a man living inside his house in a fridge. It's all starting to come together.

I am the secret man who lives in your fridge

I suppose you *could* interpret the Coke ad purely metaphorically but why on earth would you want to when the literal interpretation is so much better?

Otm.

the literal and metaphorical interpretations are p much same diff

Yeah it's up in the air what he does with the rest of his life. If you believe he goes back and makes that ad, your still back to square one w what he does after that.

13 years after the success of the Coca-Cola ad, Don retired and died while watching television. On the tv? Wendy's famous "Where's the Beef?" ad played for the first time.

I don't think the literal and metaphorical readings are same diff,

fridge seems like it has the right idea

Need to re-read Conquest Of Cool. Coincidentally I drove past Esalen yesterday.

13 years after the success of the Coca-Cola ad, Don retired and died while watching television. On the tv? Wendy's famous "Where's the Beef?" ad played for the first time.
Holy shit how great would it be if they would have ended with the where's the beef ad instead

avoid the noid

people under 40-45, had you never seen the Coke ad before?

i just squeak in at "under 40" but i was very familiar with the ad. i don't know where i first encountered it -- woodstock-era nostalgia started to reach a fever pitch around '88-'89, but i feel like this was something i was exposed to much earlier than that.

my grandparents had this album and that's why i knew the song from way back

http://eil.com/images/main/The-New-Seekers-Wed-Like-To-Teach-371107.jpg

Hamm thinks he wrote the ad! not sure if this has already been posted, thread is crashing Firefox.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/mad-men-finale-jon-hamm-interview/

was that the first actual pop hit that originated with a TV ad? or did it originate there?

i find it weird that people doubt that the takeaway was that don created the ad (or helped to create it, anyway). there were a few things in the episode—- the girl whose outfit looks precisely like that of a character in the coke ad, don's knowing smirk just before the last cut to the ad-- that really serve no purpose /except/ to strongly point to the obvious conclusion. i don't really see it as being particularly ambiguous. the other options would be almost embarrassingly protracted and/or literal: don writing down "i'd like to teach..." on a napkin; don jetting back to NYC and pitching the idea to Coke; Don calling up Peggy and saying "I'm comin' home!" i mean, to the extent it was a formally satisfying ending it's largely b/c it was clear but terse.

(i mean the other options to getting the same conclusion across)

Yeah it's up in the air what he does with the rest of his life. If you believe he goes back and makes that ad, your still back to square one w what he does after that.

If you consider it a question of whether or not Don is capable of becoming a less shitty person then it's a pretty big difference, not least because it completely changes the nature of his interaction with Leonard.

If he makes the advert then the 'Don Draper' story pretty much begins and ends with him making a bigger and more successful self from other people's misery and/or destruction.

Something about Leonard reminded me a bit of Dick Whitman's brother, but that might be all in my head.

But it's been Don's destruction and misery as well. Not that Leonard's feelings aren't valid, but Don isn't just looking into the fridge and wondering if he is alienated from his family. He has lost everything, his house, his wife, his car, his kids, his other wife, his other wife, etc. This is why he went to the ends of the Earth. The final downward arc of his character was nihilistic and miserable. He was spiraling into annihilation. He welcomed it.

Leonard simply reminded him of his own misery. All season he has been seeking validation, asking people about the future, about the past, and not having any real confidence in himself. Don may go on to bigger and more successful things after the finale but that is what he does, it is how he survives.

He has lost everything, his house, his wife, his car, his kids, his other wife, his other wife, etc.

He also hadn't had a big win on an ad campaign in a long time, which seems (to me, anyway) just as relevant. I don't know if the spiralling personal life or the creative slump came first, and I'm open to correction because I haven't rewatched recent seasons, but when the ad came up at the end, it occurred to me that the smile wasn't just one of inspiration, but one of relief.

don's knowing smirk

I liked the fact that you have a second where you're not quite sure. It might not be a knowing smirk, it might be a genuine smile of enlightenment. But then the ad kicks in, and you realise that Don has a different idea of what constitutes enlightenment.

I've watched the last scene a few times now--played it for my class yesterday, trying to provide as much context as I could beforehand (I think they got the gist of it)--and it just doesn't look like a smirk to me. Don could be very sardonic and pessimistic when people got philosophical about life, but I don't remember him being someone who smirked. Maybe I'm just not remembering right. I think the first part of your post is exactly right: "the smile wasn't just one of inspiration, but one of relief."

The whole last 10 minutes is on YouTube for the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPxLruTzHug

Smirks are fine. When you meditate all kinds of weird stuff pops into your head. Reaching spiritual enlightenment is about an inner peace, you can go right back to work and carry that with you.

Spiritual enlightenment and worldly matters are not mutually exclusive. There are many famous saints and mystics that reached a state of transcendence and were about to cross over to complete egolessness and decided to stay in the material realm in order to help others rather than drift away. This is seen as virtuous and selfless. Salvation/enlightenment can come to anyone at anytime regardless of context, that is the unqualified grace that separates spirituality from the value-based transactional realm of materialism/consumerism.

Using that to sell Cokes, in the grand scheme of things, is not really that evil.

perhaps better labeled "mundane" or "mediocre"

it just seems weird to me to assume that after he and everything in his life have mutually abandoned each other - his family(ies), his job, his home, his identities - that he would just... go back to them (and be successful!) It feels counterintuitive. Maybe it does happen, I will never know cuz the show is over.

xxp maybe matthew weiner thinks that today's world is one of an incredible loving and understanding coexistence of different peoples and for that the coca cola ad is to thank

Well his job didn't really abandon him, Peggy's phone call is essentially God calling him in the depths of hell to remind him there are still people that value him.

Peggy has no power there

they fired his secretary

also he called Peggy not the other way around, and I read that scene as an appropriately Catholic last rites confession

Well she must have heard something to the effect of him still having his job. I don't see why Peggy would make something like that up.

Forgot about his secretary being fired. Doh.

I read Peggy sympathetically implying that he could get his job back as her expressing faith in his ability to fix things (which he has demonstrated many times before), not that they were holding his job for him - which, tbh, why would they

Cos he's under contract and everyone knows he does this sort of thing.

McCann has been wanting the dude to work for them for years

it's not like he fucked up a client meeting like he did in the Hershey pitch--he just has taken off for six months. he's powerful enough to walk back in and get his job back

he is not powerful at McCann

and his boss was pretty obviously fed up with him in the previous episode

his boss? you mean the one who made him say I'm Don Draper and I work at McCann?

I think he'll get over it

he may not be powerful enough at mccann but he's powerful/convincing enough to talk his way into a job

he called don his white whale

i wonder if that makes Peggy Queequeg