Mad Men was a TV show that resonated with me on many levels: as a biting social and political commentary, a dissection of the interior life of my parent’s generation, and a portrayal of our universal questions about identity, happiness and meaning.
Below is my take on last night’s grand finale. I’m pretty sure this is the only time I will post about a TV show. If you’re a Mad Men fan, I hope you enjoy.
The real McCann Erickson advertising agency (now McCann Worldwide), which created the infamous “I’d Like To Buy the World a Coke” ad back in 1971, tweeted last night: “Thanks, Don. About time you came up with a good idea. #MadMenFinale”
Cute.
And then seemingly unrelated to the show, this morning they tweeted a study stating “85% believe that global brands have power to make world better. #globalbrands”
Wow.
And that right there, folks is why I love Mad Men and the brilliance of Matthew Weiner.
Archetypal characters, mythological themes of journey and redemption and a setting that fully immersed my generation into not only the place and time of our childhoods, but the heart (ha!) of commercialization and consumerism – Mad Men is the kind of art that becomes the Rorschach test upon which we can project our deepest internal struggles.
Did Don evolve (even a little) at his enlightenment retreat or was it all just meaningless fodder to sell a toxic product?
Can both be true?
When I hear the first few notes of that Coke ad, it triggers within me a faint hazy memory of childhood happiness. It really does.
But that feeling then dissolves into a hollow memory of my own absent and scoundrel father – a man who, unlike Don with his daughter, has not revealed his true self to me. You see, Don did evolve beyond my expectations because I did not expect him to become more open than my own father, and yet he did.
And then I hear the rest of that Coke commercial, and am reminded that a corrupt multinational corporation is using peace and happiness to get me hooked on their toxic chemical beverage.
See how complicated life is?
Was Mad Men nothing more than a giant Coke ad? A Coke ad that Matthew Weiner held up to the mirror of Donald Draper’s Coke ad that was held up to the mirror of the real Coke ad and on and on into infinity?
Are the peons who now tweet for McCann Worldwide blind to the irony that first they acknowledged a show about the evils of advertising and then they gloated over the fact that 85% of people believe the bullshit that advertisers tell them?
Matthew Weiner gets the irony. That is why the series ends with Don’s ex-wife dying from lung cancer after smoking cigarettes that Don sold in the first season. And last night’s seemingly random scene of coke snorting was surely a wink to the poisons that Coke provides.
So much to analyze and make us angry and sad and puzzled – and more reasons to love the genius of Mad Men.