Man Men - one of the best TV dramas of all time - Part 2
To continue from my last post:
Sally Draper was an interesting character. I liked how we saw her grow up from a little kid into a young adult on the series. One of my favorite later scenes was when Don took her & her friends out to dinner while they were on the summer bus tour. Sally was shooting daggers @ Don when she realized one of her friends was flirting with him, and then right before she got on the bus to leave, she verbally attacked Don & bad-mouthed him & her mother, saying that they used their looks to get what they wanted. Don then said to her that she was more like them than she realized, and that she would have to make sure that she depended on more than just her looks to get ahead in life. This was one of the few heart-to-heart scenes he had with her throughout the series (since he was typically absent from her life), and I found it quite a significant scene - for both characters.
And, even though Sally bad-mouthed both her parents throughout the series, she ended up being there for her mother after she got cancer. The final scene of her washing dishes in the kitchen (while her mother sat at the table, smoking) strongly implied that she had left the boarding school & had transferred to a school near her parents - so she could help her mother at home. I found the letter that Betty wrote Sally (in a previous scene) very poignant, and when she was reading this it was a nice - if sad - ending/finale for these characters.
Conversely, Don's other two children (Bobby & Gene) never got too developed as characters, primarily because they were little kids throughout the series.
The scenes after Don fled NYC & his job, was staying at the motel, & was temporarily taken in by the others there because he was a veteran went along with previous sequences in the series, i.e. when he would just temporarily "take off" from work & his life to go "find himself". I was initially surprised by the subsequent scenes when he got falsely accused of taking the money from the fund-raising benefit. When I first saw this I wasn't sure what the point was of these scenes. However, after analyzing this it seems to me that after he was falsely accused, he had a kind of epiphany - which led to his giving his car up to the kid who had taken the money, and starting out fresh.
What I did not see coming was Betty Draper's illness; obviously she passed on after the series ended. Unfortunate, but serious illness/death was a running theme throughout the series. I.e., Dick Whitman's wife Anna (the woman in CA who walked with a limp) passed. So did Rachel - the woman who at one time ran Menken's (sp?!) department store.
I also half-expected
Glenn Bishop (Sally's childhood friend) to die in Vietnam - however, we never heard from him after his final scene with Betty Draper in the family's kitchen. Which is just as well - some things are better left to the imagination. I.e., we didn't really need to know what happened to him. Maybe he survived, and maybe he didn't.
Re: the last five minutes of the Season 7 series finale:
I still can't get over how brilliant that final scene was - Don smiling/smirking with his eyes close while 'meditating', and the immediate segue into the Coke ad. Prior to this, we had seen Don as having "lost his identity" when he was talking to Peggy Olsen on the phone and complaining about not knowing what he was doing, being a bad person, etc. However, shortly afterwards in the finale Don was taking his experience and would use it to do what he did best, making ads that made a lot of $. He is & always would be an "ad man".
From another stand-point, I always felt that these "self-help gurus" and "spiritual retreats" were a bunch of B.S. & were just designed to scam people out of their hard earned cash. So, it's very appropriate when we see Don Draper smile in this last scene as he's "meditating" at one of these retreats & then it perfectly segues into the iconic '71 Coke commercial. I.e., the commercial - like the retreat - were both designed to make people feel like they're participating in some huge communal worldwide spiritual experience - when, in reality, they're both just designed to get people to be consumers & spend $. In reality, the Coke ad was created by McCann Erickson. Here's an interesting article:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...s&emc=rss&_r=0
BTW, as a kid growing up in the late '70's, I loved that commercial (which played on TV throughout the '70's). As I've gotten older, I've realized that the ad is obviously intended to manipulate viewers into wanting to buy Coke so they can "feel good" - which is obviously a pile of B.S. But, hell, despite this the ad worked for many people - including me. And, since I hadn't seen the ad in years there was definitely a strong sense of nostalgia associated with seeing this again in the finale.
Even though the finale aired over a year ago, since I just saw this there is a kind of sadness associated with the ending of the show - definitely bittersweet. This was a truly amazing & unique series.
I read some criticisms of the finale online, because Don Draper's storyline was unresolved. I.e., did he go back to the ad agency; reconnect with his kids, etc? I'm guessing he did both, but why do we need to see this?! I don't need to have everything spelled out for me.