Definitely a fitting end. I think the whole point was Don was only really at peace when he was coming up with ideas. He knew he was on the verge of something at the hippie resort, but didn't really find his happy moment until the Coke ad clicked in his head.

Weiner obviously wanted people to debate the ending (hence the ambiguity), but I thought it was pretty clear Don made his way back to NY and created the Coke ad -- which is the most successful ad in TV history IIRC.

One more fun fact is that McCann Erickson was the real-life firm responsible for "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" ad.

5/19/2015 12:03:59 AM

There is only ambiguity for stupid people

5/19/2015 2:02:27 AM

The ending was purposefully ambiguous. It would have been really easy to have a montage of Don returning to McCann and remove the ambiguity, but the fact that they didn't do that means they wanted people to interpret the ending different ways. You'd need to be extremely close minded to not at least accept the possibility that someone other than Don created that ad.

5/19/2015 2:41:00 AM

Quote :

"Definitely a fitting end. I think the whole point was Don was only really at peace when he was coming up with ideas."

yeah that was kinda my takeaway as well.

as for it being ambiguous (or not) - i'm of the opinion that don definitely made the coke ad. it just seems obvious to me. i even saw some people claiming that peggy created the coke ad? where does that notion come from? it has no basis. don creating the coke ad is by far the most realistic idea that actually has a basis in the show.

for a split second i was kinda disappointed when i thought the ending was gonna be don finding inner peace there at the hippie resort and that being the end - but the cut to the coke commercial was perfect, imo.

5/19/2015 9:16:36 AM

the ending really wasn't that ambiguous

5/19/2015 10:35:06 AM

Quote :

"It would have been really easy to have a montage of Don returning to McCann and remove the ambiguity"

That wouldn't have been easy...it would have been stupid.

5/19/2015 10:36:08 AM

there were multiple mentions in the last couple of episodes of "don always does this, and don always comes back". and i mean, ol' leonard basically talked about fantasy in which he was a lonely lil coke bottle looking for love in the fridge.

i wanted to see something bad happen to the dude who played the dad from one tree hill, the sexist dude at mcann. but oh well, can't have it all!

5/19/2015 10:38:27 AM

Quote :

"That wouldn't have been easy...it would have been stupid."

How about both stupid and easy?

I'm not saying that's how they should have ended it (even if they did mean to imply that Don created the ad) I'm just saying that the ending was purposefully ambiguous as opposed to blatantly spelling it out for you. The fact that they didn't explicitly show anyone creating the ad means that by definition, the ending was left open for interpretation by the viewer.

Quote :

"there were multiple mentions in the last couple of episodes of "don always does this, and don always comes back". and i mean, ol' leonard basically talked about fantasy in which he was a lonely lil coke bottle looking for love in the fridge. "

If you're looking for symbolism, look no further than the opening credits, where Don is falling to what we can only assume is his demise, only to appear back in the chair, relaxed where he started as if nothing had happened at all and he's back on top of the world again. I think that points to him being the one to create the Coke ad as much as anything else tangible that we were actually shown.

5/19/2015 1:21:21 PM

Quote :

"If you're looking for symbolism, look no further than the opening credits, where Don is falling to what we can only assume is his demise, only to appear back in the chair, relaxed where he started as if nothing had happened at all and he's back on top of the world again. I think that points to him being the one to create the Coke ad as much as anything else tangible that we were actually shown."

i think all those things together point to it obviously being don. i mean, they were pretty heavy handed with mentioning don and the coke account (or fixing a broken coke machine) in just about every single episode this season. yeah - they don't show don pitching the idea and/or creating the ad. but i find it to be by far the most realistic ending of the show. any other conclusion has very little basis given the context of their show.

5/19/2015 1:57:51 PM

I think another valid interpretation is that the commercial was shown right after Don reached a blissful place to show the difference between him being truly happy with himself at that moment juxtaposed with the fake happiness that Madison Ave. is trying to feed you to sell products. I do think it's possible (and probably likely) that Don took the happiness (real or otherwise) that he found at the retreat back to NY and used it to create the ad, but it's also possible that he actually did find happiness and he stayed retired/became a mechanic/handyman/whatever. I really do think that either ending is possible, and while there's certainly no harm in having your own opinion about what happened, I think it's pretty close minded to just assume that there's only one way to interpret what we were shown.

For me, I think your interpretation of the ending is tied up in whether or not you think that Don could ever find happiness doing anything other than making ads. He was told by his family that he wasn't needed back home, and then he had an emotional pull from Peggy to come back to work, and an emotional pull from group therapy crying guy that seemed to register pretty hard. Everything he's done professionally up until this point hasn't actually brought him happiness, so if he is genuinely feeling good out in California, I have to think it's at least a possibility that he stayed out there. The cynic in me says that's probably not how it ended up going down but I'll always hold that open as a possibility until we see the deleted scenes showing him making the ad or Matthew Weiner explicitly states otherwise (neither of which I actually hope happen).

Also, how come nobody's talking about how ham-fisted Peggy and Stan getting together in about 20 seconds felt? I know for sure this isn't how it went down, but it felt like they were wrapping up "happy tv ending" storylines because they weren't sure if the show would get picked up for another season or not so better make it a happy ending just in case. I guess the chemistry was there, and the back-story was laid for quite a while, but the execution felt super rushed to me.

5/19/2015 3:57:46 PM

at some point, Weiner is going to explicitly say what happened at the end (and probably what happened after the credits)

dudes loves to talk too much not to

[Edited on May 19, 2015 at 4:00 PM. Reason : .]

5/19/2015 4:00:25 PM

^ ding ding

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/mad-men-finale-matthew-weiner-119490567755.html

Quote :

"So did Don create that ad? Weiner confirmed he did, saying that “the idea that some enlightened state, and not just co-option, might have created something that is very pure” appealed to him. Weiner also rejected the notion that the 1971 ad is “corny”: “The people who think that ad is corny probably see a lot of life like that. Five years before that, black people and white people couldn’t be in an ad together… To me, it’s the best ad ever made." "

[Edited on May 21, 2015 at 9:53 PM. Reason : f]

5/21/2015 9:52:30 PM

stupid people

5/22/2015 1:41:58 AM

close-minded people

5/22/2015 9:15:50 PM

:-{

5/23/2015 7:34:31 PM

Just finished binge watching this show! Sad that it is over, but glad that I was able to enjoy it. Its like the characters on the show were my friends and I'm already starting to miss them.

6/10/2017 11:37:40 PM

Rewatched

So awesome.

8/12/2019 9:52:46 PM

Rewatched

So awesome.

11/4/2019 7:25:52 AM