"Love was invented by guys like me. To sell nylons."
Anyone want to talk about the end of Mad Men?
I've had my fair share of issues with this show and I've steadily become a lesser fan from S5 onwards. But I mostly like the way they've ended it. With the Coke advert especially. Perfect really. Like, look at all the progress we've made in the last decade. Progress for women, progress for ethnic ( Read more... )
I've had my fair share of issues with this show and I've steadily become a lesser fan from S5 onwards. But I mostly like the way they've ended it. With the Coke advert especially. Perfect really. Like, look at all the progress we've made in the last decade. Progress for women, progress for ethnic ( Read more... )
Weiner knew the series’ ending while wrapping season four. It’s well known that Weiner disclosed Don’s inspired idea to Hamm early on, but he also knew Betty’s fate at that point too. “People die of cancer in the US. It’s up there. I knew very early on. Her mother had just died in the pilot, and I knew this woman wasn’t going to live long, and we love the idea of her realizing her purpose in life right when she ran out of time. … I think there’s a lesson to be learned about the randomness of things, and also she has some predisposition and some fairly seriously cancer-causing behavior.”
As for it being a 'punishment' to that character, it was a gift to January Jones! What actor doesn't wish for a great death scene? And look at how it turned opinion on Betty, now forever after referred to as, "poor, poor Betty". Thematically and significantly, it played more as a reward. The fact that Betty stuck around the entire series, considering she wasn't part of the office environment and was no longer part of Don's life, is a testament, I think, to how much the writers wanted that character around.
The gaslighting thing is interesting. I see people use that word all the time in conjunction with Don and Betty's marriage, but I just felt that the way he treated her was a sign of the times, and it was a story worth telling. Don wanted Betty as part of his slick package, and for much of the early seasons, Betty had no depth. She was absolutely fine with being a housewife and all the surface benefits that entailed. You said "but just Don's lack of support for Betty having any interests outside being a housewife. - what interests? Outside of horse riding, she had frighteningly few. Even her friend calls her old-fashioned when Betty doesn't buy into the fulfillment she's received at her job. Betty doesn't consider going back to college until she's watched her daughter grow up to be a strong, opinionated young woman, and only then does she think she might want to be more intellectually challenged than what she has at home.
As for the Coke ad, I used to watch that ad when I was a kid and it never inspired contempt in me. Probably because I was too young to really understand that cynicism, but what I remember most is that the image and the music would give me a nice little lift in my chest, a bubble of empathy and happiness at the idea of 'perfect harmony'. I didn't walk away thinking I really wanted a Coke. So I took it much differently than a lot of viewers. I could see the vestiges of Don's earlier nylon speech, but there was something so fundamentally changed in that vision that I have to believe it came from a pure place. I am also making it my headcanon that both Peggy and Stan helped work on that ad.
I just watched the entire Weiner interview on youtube. I feel vindicated now that he's essentially said the same thing that I was expressing on the boards about the Coke ad.
"I did hear rumblings of people talking about the ad being corny. It's a little bit disturbing to me, that cynicism. I'm not saying advertising's not corny, but I'm saying that the people who find that ad corny, they're probably experiencing a lot of life that way, and they're missing out on something. Five years before that, black people and white people couldn't even be in an ad together! And the idea that someone in an enlightened state might have created something that's very pure - yeah, there's soda in there with a good feeling, but that ad to me is the best ad ever made, and it comes from a very good place. ... That ad in particular is so much of its time, so beautiful and, I don't think, as - I don't know what the word is - villainous as the snark of today."
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Maybe. Personally I felt that after Don/Betty divorced, Betty more often featured as a supporting character in Sally's story than the central character in her own plotline.
I just felt that the way he treated her was a sign of the times, and it was a story worth telling. Don wanted Betty as part of his slick package, and for much of the early seasons, Betty had no depth. She was absolutely fine with being a housewife and all the surface benefits that entailed. You said "but just Don's lack of support for Betty having any interests outside being a housewife. - what interests?
Betty was working as a model when she met Don and in 'Shoot' she wants to go back into modelling but Don tells her she already has 'a job' being a mother. Then in S3 she got involved in local politics saving the reservoir, another thing Don took no interest in. Certainly Betty is partly to blame for leaving her own ambitions till it was too late, but I disagree that she was fine being a housewife. Betty's whole S1 story was about how being just a housewife was driving her nuts. And the gaslighting came from Don encouraging Betty to think she was crazy to keep her from finding out that he was a liar, fraud and adulterer. Don could have encouraged Betty to take up classes and hobbies but instead he sent her to therapy.
As for the Coke ad, I used to watch that ad when I was a kid and it never inspired contempt in me.
I actually had never seen that particular Coke ad until watching this episode. So I guess it seems more manipulative to me now? I found it hard to see that final moment of MM strictly in its historical context and not fast-forward to all the modern Coke ad campaigns that continue to use those sort of sentimental cultural hooks to make so much money off of sugary brown water.
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