Thoughts, not all that thinky, on Mad Men

[shadowkat]

Just finished binge watching the final five episodes of Mad Men, and..well, I have the same reaction that I had to the last season of Breaking Bad, The Wire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, MASH, and Justified, yes, I liked the ending but the middle seasons were better. I don't know what it is about television series and final seasons...but they feel as if the writers have gotten tired? And maybe the series should have ended a year earlier?

That said, they did wrap up all the story arcs rather neatly in the finale, and everyone got a happy ending but Betty Draper Fisher and her kids. (They sort of killed her off - ironically with lung cancer. A final word on all the smoking in the series. I felt a little sorry for Sally, but since I could not stand Betty, it was hard to care. And actually I think everyone is better off without her, especially Sally.)

Loved Joan, Roger, Pete, and Peggy's endings. Those worked for me. And their arcs actually worked throughout the series. The only characters that I had issues with were Don and Betty...I found them sort of boring and a touch cliche. The show worked best when it focused on the AD industry.

But, there are some nifty isolated moments in Don's finale story arc...that sort of save it.

I may have to write a meta on this at a later point. All in all, I enjoyed the final four episodes quite a bit, the first couple were a bit slow. And I will miss the series, it was amongst the few that I felt was well written with consistently strong performances, and production.

And yay, finally, to Stan and Peggy, who I'd been steadily and quietly shipping for the past three years and never thought would actually go anywhere.
They are perfect together.

Vincent Kartheiser amazes me. I saw him in the cast roundtables, after they'd finished filming, and he looks nothing like his character on Mad Men. He's actually attractive. In fact I didn't recognize him. Nor did I recognize Elizabeth Moss. Those two actors are insanely good. You don't recognize them from one role to the next, they disappear into their roles.

Kartheriser who had formerly played Connor in Angel the Series, has impressed me for a while - in that he was riveting as Connor. (At least I found him to be riveting. He upped David Boreanze's acting.) He pulled off the same thing in Mad Men that he did in Angel, for me at any rate, in that he made me care about a very complex and not necessarily likable character.

Overall it was a good finale. Not quite as good as the Justified finale, or the Breaking Bad finale, but close. And definitely better than Battle Star Galatica, Buffy, or Lost.
(I didn't like the finales all that much of BSG, Lost or Buffy - they all felt forced, preachy, and over the top. I prefer subtle endings.)

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I agree about middle seasons often being much better than final ones. I thought Mad Men went on for a year longer than it should have--the slow unraveling of the firm and the marriage to Megan was just too long.

At first I really didn't like the finale and thought the show should have ended with the next to last episode, where all these things are hinted at in a more interesting way. I read Matt Weinberg's discussion of what he intended in the final (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mad-men-series-finale-matthew-797302) and liked it a little better after that.

If I hadn't read the Weinberg piece, I'd be tempted to argue that the finale scene might be read as Don's new life being a fake guru, but all the stuff about Coke in the episode and others, and Weinberg's view, convince me that that it's really meant to suggest that he goes back and creates that ad.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Mad Men is on the summer watch list. Despite the fact that I've seen every other thing VK has ever made, the basic concept of this show turned me off. But so many of my LJ friends like it, I may give it a whirl.