Josh Reviews Mad Men Season 7.1
It’s a very rare thing when a TV series is able to end at a time and place of its creators’ choosing. There are many things that are problematic with today’s TV landscape, but I must say the recent trend of more TV series having this sort of opportunity is extremely refreshing. Certainly there are older shows that didn’t just fizzle out but were allowed to have a well-crafted ending (such as M.A.S.H. or, more recently, Seinfeld and Friends). And certainly today there are still great TV shows that are brutally cancelled without allowing the creators to provide any sort of closure for the audience. But more and more, particularly with series that become successful and click with an audience, I am seeing creators allowed to design and execute an ending to their series. Just look at how many great series-finales were in last year’s list of my Top 10 Favorite Episodes of TV in 2013!
Mad Men is one of those shows that is being allowed to end at the point at which creator and show-runner Matthew Weiner wanted it to end. This is a terrific opportunity, and also, of course, a make-or-break moment for the series. The strength of a show’s ending plays a huge part in determining the over-all success or failure of a show. For five seasons I thought Lost was one of the greatest television shows ever made, but the total catastrophe that was the show’s final season really ruined the whole show for me. (If the creators weren’t going to bother to answer the vast majority of the questions they’d set up in the previous five seasons, why would I ever want to re-watch the show, knowing it would end with only disappointment?) On the other hand, I love the finale of Babylon 5 — a good-to-middling sci-fi show — so much that to me it elevates the entire series.
I’ve been watching Mad Men since the show began. As I’ve written about before, for the first three seasons I liked the show more than I loved it. It was clear, right from the first episode, that this was a fascinating, extraordinarily well-crafted show. But so many of the characters were so mean and so nasty that I found it off-putting. I respected the show intellectually more than I actually enjoyed the experience of watching it. But gradually that changed, and I began to fall in love with all of these characters, despite their continuing self-centeredness and bad behavior. By season four, I was hooked in hard, and I thought that last season, season 6, might have been the best of the show’s run. I have noticed that the show has lost some of the critical acclaim that it had in its early seasons, and I don’t understand that at all. To me, Mad Men is the rarest of breeds: a show that started out strong but/and has gotten better and better every season.
The first half of season seven (bizarrely split into two short seven-episode half-seasons by AMC) continues that trend. These seven episodes were magnificent, a terrific build on everything that had come before. They’ve left me quite eager to see the show’s final seven episodes next year!!
The opening scene of the premiere — in which former drunk Freddy Rumsen is seen looking right into the camera, delivering a brilliant ad pitch that, we’ll soon learn, was ghost-written for him by Don Draper — was fantastic, a dramatic, unusual way to open the show. And the final scene of the finale (or mid-season finale, or whatever we want to call episode seven, the last of this year’s batch of episodes) was even more eye-catching: a crazy singinging-and-dancing scene apparently hallucinated by Don Draper. Wow. What a great send-off for Bert Cooper, and what a great, nutty way to leave the audience for the next ten months.
Everything in between those two scenes was pretty great, too!
For me Mad Men has always worked best when there has been interesting work-related goings-on to balance all of the characters’ tumultuous personal lives, and season 7.1 nails that. There was so much great juicy stuff going on at the agency this year. Lou Avery is a great new character to love to hate, and the way his presence disrupted Peggy’s life sparked some terrific scenes. Even better was Don’s eventual return to the office (which sort of reminded me of George Costanza’s returning to his job the day after quitting in dramatic fashion — something the real Larry David apparently did back when he worked on SNL) and his new position now working for his former protege Peggy. That was fantastic stuff. I was frustrated at Peggy by how cruel she seemed to be to Don when he returned, but boy the drama of the complex dynamic between the two of them was terrific. And it made the end of this half-season all the more sweet, when for the first time in the show we got to see Don and Peggy reach a true understanding and working relationship as peers. Oh lord did I love Don’s surprisingly honest and self-effacing reply when Peggy finally asks him to explain his working method to her in “The Strategy.” And the look of approval and support Don gives Peggy during her pitch in the final moments of “Waterloo,” and our getting to see Peggy actually deliver a home-run pitch to Burger Chef, was immensely satisfying. Had that been the end of the show, I would have been satisfied.
In only seven episodes, I was pleased that almost everyone in the Mad Men ensemble got a strong story-line. It was sad to see Bert Cooper go, but man what a final scene for that character in “Waterloo.” (And props to whoever decided to have him do that song-and-dance number sans shoes.) Roger Sterling got a great focus episode in “The Monolith,” trying to find some common ground with his daughter. It was also great to see him stick up for his ol’ buddy Don in the season’s final episodes, and for him to finally take charge and attempt to take control of his own (and the firm’s) destiny in the finale. I hated Pete Campbell so much in the early seasons of the show, but I’ve grown to love that smarmy bastard, though I do still derive enormous pleasure from watching all of his small humiliations. I loved his new California look. I also found myself surprisingly taken by the scene at the end of “The Strategy,” in which Pete, Don and Peggy sit at a table in Burger Chef, and we get the sense — for me, for the very first time in the show — that these three were a family (albeit an extremely bizarre and unconventional one). Despite all the cruelties these three had done to one another, there was a bond between Don, Peggy and Pete much tighter than that between Don and any of his wives, Pete and Trudy or his new real estate agent girlfriend, and Peggy and any of the men with whom she’d been romantically linked. Like the scene of Peggy’s pitch at the end of “Waterloo,” this scene at the end of “The Strategy” could ALSO have been a great finale for the show!
I was pleased that Bob Benson returned for one episode, so we could get some resolution on his story-line. I was so worried for Joan in that episode, and so proud of her when she turned down Bob’s offer of a sham marriage. It was somewhat of a surprise in the final episodes seeing how little sympathy or patience Joan had for Don Draper, but also understandable considering how much money his antics had caused her last season when he screwed up the agency’s attempt to go public. It’s nice seeing Joan finally in a position of power and authority in the agency.
I always wish we could spend more time with the goofy guys in the art department. I always want to see a lot more of Stan, and I’ve been rooting for he and Peggy to wind up together for a few years now. We’ll see. The season’s one big mis-step for me was the fate of Ginsburg. That was so out of left-field, and it seemed like a waste of this character who I felt still had so much potential. Actually, that whole episode, “The Monolith,” was this season’s only sub-par installment. That whole episode was so weird it almost felt like the whole thing was a hallucination, and I didn’t feel any of that episode’s different story-elements hung together. (Speaking of the art department, though, I will repeat my oft-expressed wish to get to see former art department master Sal back on the show at some point before the end. Pretty please?? I am surprised this formerly-major character has been so abandoned by the show.)
I’m also still not that interested in the Betty Draper stuff. I rather like January Jones, I don’t share the dislike I often read about her acting skills on-line. But Betty at this point is so disconnected from any of the show’s other characters or story-lines that any time the show cuts to her it feels like a spinning of wheels. The last glimpse of her — arguing with Henry when her political opinions no longer jived with his — intrigued me, though, and I will admit to some curiosity as to where her story-line is going to go in the final batch of episodes.
Harry Crane got some fun stuff as well, getting to be an arrogant prick while also surprisingly loyal to Don Draper. It was also such a classic Harry story to see him finally get offered the gold ring — a partnership in the firm — only to dither in his negotiations and then lose his opportunity at the last opportunity. Roger’s shutting him out of his office was hysterical.
The ending of the season, with Roger’s bold plan to retake control of the firm, was great. Admittedly, this is the third time Mad Men has done this story (with the escape from British control back in season three, and then the whole agency-merger story-line last season), but somehow those echoes only made this story-twist feel more powerful (rather than a dull rehash of what has come before). It served as a great culmination of many of the story-lines from these first seven episodes of the final season, and in particular it was great to see Roger so cunningly outfox Jim Cutler. (I have also been wondering for years when Mad Men would catch up to the moon landing, and how that would be addressed by the show, and seeing that moment finally arrive in “Waterloo” was extremely compelling.)
I’m extremely excited for the show’s final seven episodes, coming next year. I desperately hope that Matthew Weiner and his talented team of collaborators are able to stick the landing. I can’t wait.