A Fond Farewell to Mad Men

I'm pretty excited.

In 20 minutes the final episode of Mad Men begins, and it looks like I am going to manage to be able to stay awake for it.  Hopefully that will still be the case after I pour myself a good measure of Bourbon with which to toast what has been, for me at least, a wonderful show.

I've enjoyed most the passing of time on the show.  If you go back and watch the first episode now, it just looks like a completely different world.  The suits are different.  The office is dour.  The music is older.  The men are more masculine in an old fashioned Joe DiMaggio don't forget your hat at the bar kind of way, and the women are merely secretaries who are there to type memos and have their butts punched (in the first episode Don meets Ms. Menken,  a new client, and he can barely work with her.  A female client, the very idea!).  

But now?  It's 1969.  Women are still treated badly but with more respect than before and some of them are making gains, rising to increasing prominence in the world of advertising.  Some of the creative types have disposed of the suits and favor the beards and long hair like the late Jim Morrison, or Sgt. Pepper mustaches.

And if there is a theme to the last few epsidoes, it has been a sort of "is this all there is?" motif.  Here are all these characters who have spent their lives climbing to greater heights in the advertising world, using every ounce of their talents to sell material goods, and now that they have achieved so much or become incredibly rich (or in some cases both) they find themselves asking what else there is.

Perhaps the last episode will answer the question, but I'm guessing that few will find any kind of fulfillment.

But we'll see, yeah?  Let the end begin!