Finales do not make a show.

We expect too much from finales. It is not that we desire a happy ending, it’s that we desire an ending at all. “Mad Men” has never been a show about endings; it has always been about how everything in the world keeps on going when personal troubles destroy a person. It happened to Joan, it happened to Roger, it happened to Sally, and it most certainly happened to Don. But on Sunday night, the show saw its last run.

So, is it too much to ask for Don to have a permanent change of heart to end the story? His cry with Leonard the Nobody gives him the only ending he could really have — acceptance. Don accepts that spending more time with his kids will not help their situation and that his Dick Whitman secret carries no emotional weight to anybody but himself. This may not be enough of a crash-bang ending for the casual finale viewer, but for “Mad Men,” there was never a way to wrap everything up, just as life cannot be wrapped up.

If you think any relationship, job or campaign could ever create something final in Don Draper’s life, you are kidding yourself. So why not end with Don on a slight upswing by creating one of the most famous ad campaigns of all time?

Ambiguous as it might be, the “Mad Men” finale neither upsets the balance of the series nor does it leave the viewer feeling salty. It ends a mess for some, while giving others hope, which sums up the series as a whole.

Here is an infographic courtesy of Jenna Dutcher that tracks the character’s professional ups and downs during the show’s seven seasons:

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Kyle Stevens is a sophomore advertising major. You can email him at ksteve03@syr.edu or reach him on Twitter at @kstevs_.

 

Published on May 19, 2015 at 8:57 pm