The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

But this isn't a happily-ever-after show.

Yeah, and none of the men on the show deserve a happily ever after. Pete is a fucking rapist for God's sake.

I think the key moment of last week's episode was when one of the vets at the VFW said, "You do whatever it takes to get home." I won't speculate on where home is for Draper. But I don't want him to be "happy". It would come off as phonier than hell.

I'm still rooting for Don.

Also if you fuck someone like they are a millionaire they might go try to be one.

Don is done with advertising. He said so to the young con man - "I was in advertising."

I think the last episode is all Don on the road and some Sally, maybe years in the future.

Well, he could go home to advertising. It's really the only thing he's ever been good at. Who knows how this thing will end though. I doubt it will be anything anyone expects. Though the Wichita State plane crash theory is interesting.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Or, just another in a long line of red herrings.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I take it that the Sopranos-esque either-or here is whether Don came up with the campaign during meditation or Peggy and Stan wrote it. And so we shall debate.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

One scene from Sundays episode has been stuck in my brain...& that is the Coca Cola machine scene when the Motel owner asks Don to repair the machine in exchange for a free night, & the camera fixates on Don staring at the machine.

Coca Cola has been a part of numerous Mad Men episodes.

Coca Cola is one of Jim Hobarts McCann Erickson accounts. For whatever it is worth, McCann Erickson was actually the real advertising agency for Coca Cola in the early 1970's.

Remember way back to season 1 when Jim Hobart of McCann-Erickson met Betty at an event with Don & he suggested she would be great in a Coca Cola photo shoot, which she did.

During last Sundays episode, when Hobart shot down Don & the Sterling Cooper teams pitch to establish a California office, Hobart whispered "Coca Cola" while nodding to Don.

Don is left sitting at the bus stop in last weeks episode during the fall of 1970...maybe Don hops on a Bus to NYC, & gets back in the advertising game & creates one of the most famous advertising campaigns ever...which happened to be created in late 1970...
"Hilltop" by Coca Cola, AKA as "Id like to teach the world to sing", or, "Its the real thing".
Don casts Betty in the ad before she passes away, & he quits drinking & womanizing & re-connects with his kids.
Don & his kids live happily ever after.

Like I said. Don creates the "Its The Real Thing" advertising campaign. Don smiles & comes up with the "Its The Real Thing" ad. But, I was disappointed in most of the final episode. I wanted more clearly defined closure.

Not exactly "nailed". Golf clap for the Coke theory.

Punch in the face for the Pete theory.

Didnt I tell you this last year? I sure did.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Thinking about it more, and the general Chase-Weiner rule that bad people never change, it just makes so much sense that Don would be sitting there doing yoga, finding himself, and then the lightbulb comes on and he's taking these beautiful ideas of peace and harmony and co-opting them to sell sugar water. He didn't learn anything after all. That's Our Draper!

Golf clap for the Coke Theory? WYC??? I nailed it. Don returned to McCaan Erickson and created the Coke " Its The Real Thing" AD. No one else here predicted the Coke ad

I think this is exactly right and it isn't even really ambiguous. Just like The Sopranos ending was very clear to those who paid attention- Tony is dead (or at least he got shot in the head). In a way, this ending was a nod to the ending of The Sopranos.

Mad Men is a cynical show with a cynical main character who is employed in the most cynical of all professions. He's the man who sold you the hula hoop, the yo-yo, and now the man who cynically used hippies (or his idea of them) to sell you Coca-Cola. That's what the little smirk was about.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

In many ways, Don creating the "Hilltop" ad is the perfect ending to the show. As you suggest earlier in this thread, Don's social position--and the corporate ethos he embodies--was seriously threatened by 60s radicalism and the counterculture to which it gave birth. The challenge for those in power, then, was how to engage with the counterculture while maintaining a position of social legitimacy. Politically, this was accomplished in many ways, but most notably through "re-branding" the black urban revolution as a massive criminal threat: and so the Nixon administration gave birth to a "War on Crime" in which black youth were filtered into the penitentiary system at an astounding rate, effectively decapitating the vanguard of the radical movement. Similarly, American consumer culture navigated the challenge to its hegemony by appropriating the language of the counterculture to sell products. Ultimately, Don is the genius who saves corporate America by surrendering to the left--but this surrender is, of course, purely symbolic. And Don's genius--while exhilarating to witness--is nevertheless purely destructive.

Trae Young will be a bust. Book It!

so was the ending good? Did it wrap everything up in a satisfactory way for ALL the characters?

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.