SPOILER ALERT
My wife and I were watching the finale of
Mad Men earlier this week.
When it ended I felt very depressed. I felt
the ending was cynical and contrived and a betrayal of what went before.
The way the main characters’ plots were
tied up was a bit pat, but who doesn’t like happy endings. I was OK with Joan setting up her own
business, Roger disappearing with Megan’s Mom, and Pete becoming a client
seemed natural.
But Peggy and Stan ending up together was a
Harlequin ending that didn’t have any kind of ring of truth about it. But I bit
my tongue – after all Don was in an existential crisis that wouldn’t end in a
pat way. But no. He has a Kumbaya moment and ends up smiling and chanting
mantras.
And then there was that cut to the Coke
“I’d like to teach the world to sing” commercial; one of the most famous
commercials ever made. Now whether the intent is to say Don went on and wrote
it is beside the point at this stage. It acts as an epitaph for the program as
a whole.
It seemed like Matt Weiner was cynically
playing with reality.
The endings he created were all unrealistic
happy endings that were a betrayal of the reality of the characterization he
had taken years to project. And then as a symbol of this he chose Coke
to make a mockery of that artificiality. Coke was, of course, “the real thing”
and promised happiness and that we could live in “perfect
harmony”. The very fantasy the
characters were now living. It is as if they all moved from the real world to that of advertising.
And to rub salt in, the only major character to have a bad ending was Don’s wife Betty, the one main character no longer part of the world of advertising. She is terminally ill with lung cancer, no doubt brought on by smoking cigarettes, the very product Don starts out advertising in Episode 1, Season 1. (“Smoke gets in your eyes”).
Although others don’t read it as cynically as this, others have some similar views. 1.2.3.
So I’m pretty depressed seeing my whole
life as a career advertising person mocked in this way.
But then my wife speaks. She's always been smarter than me. “I never liked
that ad” she says, “too cheesy, especially that song.”
Now we were both ending high school in 1971
when that ad came out and I realize she’s right. I never liked the ad either.
So why should I care about Mad Men mocking it and the fantasy it
portrayed. Heck. I mocked it as well.
We never bought into the utopia offered by Coke.
The bubblegum song in the ad that became a hit for the New Seekers was not what
we listened to. We knew then that all
that glitters is not gold and that you can’t buy a stairway to heaven. Well Matt Weiner – We won’t get fooled again
