Why the Mad Men Finale Failed Me

I have loved this show, and still love it quite a bit. I was just left a bit disappointed with the series finale last night. I have nothing against happy endings, or for that matter, open ended endings, or even unhappy endings. As with anything however, it's the journey, not the destination. And of course, only the interesting parts of the journey.

I was happy for Joan, for Roger, for Stan and Peggy, even for Pete. I wished Joan had kept her relationship, and that Peggy joined her in business, but these are small things, and good things. But then there's Don. It always comes down to Don Draper. I'll say it. We all love him, but he's a despicable human being. Don Draper is a monster. Except when he is pitching. At that moment of magic where he is doing his job, we all love him, and that is what we all have tuned in to "Mad Men" to see - the legendary Don Draper pitch.

For much of the season, Don has been a drag on the story, a waste of air time, out of his element, and doing things we neither wanted to see nor wanted him doing. It was the same in last night's finale as he wasted his time, and our time, at that hippie retreat.

Oh, I do get it. Don needed that part of the journey. Without that smile of revelation at the retreat, there would have been no Coca-Cola commercial on the mountaintop, arguably one of the greatest achievements in advertising, and the crowning moment of the real world McCann-Erickson. We are to assume that Don Draper is the engineer of this masterstroke, but man oh man. Didn't we all want to see Don pitch that? That's why I feel more than a little cheated. This was no "Sopranos."

On a side note, did anyone else also see "Happyish" on Showtime last night? They did a slightly different and just plain wrong spin on the famous Coke commercial. I'm really loving that show, and you can hear me talk a bit about it on this week's episode of The GAR! Podcast.

All Bad Things Must Come to an End…

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't write at least something about the end of "Breaking Bad" last night. I had tried to watch the opening episode when it first aired, and just couldn't get into it. A man running around the desert in his tighty whities? Come on. A couple years later, at the urging of friends and other folks online whose opinions I respect, I tried again. Once I got through that first episode, I was hooked, and from there I stripped the rest of the series, watching the final two seasons as they aired.

The show ended last night, and mighty props go to creator Vince Gilligan and his staff of writers for molding an ending that was precise and complete in tying up loose ends and completing the story begun five seasons ago. Justice is served in an anti-hero kinda way, good and evil balanced, and in a way, the good guys win and the bad guys pay. Brilliance.

Comparatively, it doesn't let the viewers decide as "The Sopranos" did, and it didn't do what "Dexter" did much to the sour reprisal of fans. It's ironic that when "Dexter" ended last week, it was almost at the same point as "Breaking Bad" was last week. Maybe "Dexter" just needed one more episode? In my opinion however, if that last scene with Dexter alive had been cut, that ending would have pleased me. Dexter alive ruins the symmetry. And getting back on subject, symmetry is what "Breaking Bad" was all about.

I was really pleased with the ending. If you want to hear more about the show, my friend and podcast partner Ray Cornwall did a pre-finale episode about "Breaking Bad" last week. You can hear it here.