Mad Men
It took the better part of a decade and untold man-hours, but in 1969, a dream shared by millions finally came true: Don Draper and Peggy Olson shared a late-night slow dance to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Okay, so maybe it’s not the moon landing, but for many Mad Men fans, this was like witnessing first contact between the two most important constants in the show’s universe, one made possible by sharply contrasting life trajectories.
Peggy’s faced more than her fair share of challenges in her career, but has always found a way to keep her star ascendant. Meanwhile, Don’s booze-fuelled free fall has only gotten worse as the years go by, and the hot California sun melted the remainder of his wax wings like an exposed Hershey bar. Yet, for one fateful evening in the SC&P office, they found each other sharing the same orbit, and like the majority of the cast watching Neil Armstrong touching down on terra luna the very next week, all we could think was: this was worth the wait.
Plenty else went down in the unfortunately bifurcated first half of the final season of Mad Men’s, including a wedding proposal, another merger, and a major death. But it’s the unexpected breakthroughs for these characters, like Don talking Sally into a dine-‘n-dash, or Bert Cooper’s whimsical big finish, that will be missed the most when Mad Men soft-shoes out of our lives next year. Network meddling gave the abbreviated season a few tasks it couldn’t handle in short order (Joan basically being the Betty of the season was no fun), but the final pair of episodes were among the finest in the show’s history, paying off arcs and storylines in ways that made Mad Men the most rewarding show of 2014.
By all means, Matthew Weiner and company could have ended the show with that last image of an overwhelmed Don, and it would have been enough. While we’re thankful to be getting seven more episodes to say goodbye to Don, Peggy and all the rest, the finale’s foreboding title, “Waterloo,” now reads like a dare: Mad Men will return from exile next year, and will no doubt be hailed as a conquering hero. The question remains if it can go out like one.