Mad Men Finale Thoughts

May 18, 2015 08:10

Not a review, really, just... thoughts.

SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY )

reaction post, mad men, television

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Comments 7

tediousandbrief May 18 2015, 16:04:29 UTC
Betty wanted the boys to have a maternal influence growing up and they wouldn't have had that with Don (or Henry ( ... )

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author_by_night May 18 2015, 16:29:36 UTC
Yeah, I had no idea that was a real place and an actual healing center. I actually feel a little bad now, because if it was real I'm sure people got something out of it. :/ I think because of the direction the show has taken before with those things, that's just what I jumped to. Also, I was so distracted by the other stuff I think I sort of overlooked the healing center parts. (And that may have been other people's problem, too ( ... )

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tediousandbrief May 18 2015, 16:43:16 UTC
Even if it wasn't the actual place (it isn't mentioned by name), there were places like that. They're all trying to feel better in the workshops. To me it seemed pretty clearly a New Age group therapy of sorts.

Quite a few of the products were real products. Conrad Hilton was a real, historic person, for instance. The real McCann twitter feed actually reposted the commercial last night congratulating Don for finally coming up with a good idea for McCann (that coke commercial).

Betty's brother wasn't loaded and wanted to live in the house. People get crazy when family members die/are dying. I've witnessed similar fights over who-gets-what once the parents are dead before.

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author_by_night May 18 2015, 16:51:38 UTC
To me it seemed pretty clearly a New Age group therapy of sorts.

Yeah, like I said I think I was so focused on "but what about everyone else?" I may actually go back and rewatch, because spiritual healing type of things are normally right up my alley.

Quite a few of the products were real products. Conrad Hilton was a real, historic person, for instance. The real McCann twitter feed actually reposted the commercial last night congratulating Don for finally coming up with a good idea for McCann (that coke commercial).

Yeah, that was what I was trying to say. Maybe I need to back up - I was reading posts worrying that the show "stole" the coke ad, since it was real. My point was that most of the figures and companies we've seen on the show have been based on real people and agencies, probably intended more as stand-ins. Or the show is supposed to be an alternate history of sorts. Either or.

Betty's brother wasn't loaded and wanted to live in the house. People get crazy when family members die/are dying. I've witnessed similar ( ... )

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ragnarok_08 May 18 2015, 22:51:40 UTC
I don't think this episode was good as a series finale. It wasn't terrible, but... it reminds me of some of the fanfics I've written, where eventually I ran out of steam and just sort of tacked on an ending

Yeah I felt that way too with the finale.

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chocolatepot May 19 2015, 11:41:37 UTC
I think the other problem with the past few seasons is that we got way too much late sixties/early seventies stuff - for obvious reasons, that's when they took place, but media's already covered the late sixties and early seventies so much, not a lot really felt new.

Agreed. The hippie revolution - objectively it's interesting historically, but it's been so done to death that I don't care much about it. (Also, the clothes have been so hideous.) That said, one of my Things is that so much historical fiction treats a period like a solid block of time and you don't get the sense that the characters were living in a different age before and will be living in a different one in the future, so I'm kind of for it.

I don't think this episode was good as a series finale. It wasn't terrible, but... it reminds me of some of the fanfics I've written, where eventually I ran out of steam and just sort of tacked on an ending. That's how this felt, even if it's not what MW intended.Yep, agreed there too. As much as I liked most of the endings, it ( ... )

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author_by_night May 19 2015, 18:00:25 UTC
I did love how Mad Men dealt with the era, especially as it tried not to beat us over the head with the biggest staples of the era. There were hippies, but other things happened, and most of the characters were observers and occasional dabblers. (Although by 1970 everyone had dabbled a bit, but that was the point - the way I always understood it, "real" hippies were more the mid to late sixties, then Woodstock made everyone and their brotherly love want to be a hippie. Not to mention the prototypes like beatniks, which we see as well.)

I mean, even in context of my our "time", I can see how the majority of people were just trying to live their lives. Not that they were necessarily indifferent or unaware, but it's not like you were either a hippie or Part of the Problem... people just were who they were, did what they did, and so on. Not all media captures this believably, but Mad Men does.

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