Mad Men (AMC)

puckhead

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Anyone as excited as me to see how this show ends? One of my all time favorites. Will be sad to see it go.

Right there with you.

To Crisper's comment, it has lost a little of its luster over the last season or two, but I'm still quite attached to the show.
 

DeAnna

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Ok, so this summer, I shall attempt to watch it from the very beginning.
 

Phrazbit

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I don't want to say too much about the finale for those who have not watched it yet... but I thought it was almost perfect.
 

Cheesebeef

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i thought it was solid. nothing more, nothing less. Saw the Coke thing coming from a mile away, same thing with Joan and her dude's storyline. Loved the Pete-Peggy and Peggy-Stan scenes.

but as a series finale, this doesn't even scratch my top 5.
 

HeavyB3

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i thought it was solid. nothing more, nothing less. Saw the Coke thing coming from a mile away, same thing with Joan and her dude's storyline. Loved the Pete-Peggy and Peggy-Stan scenes.

but as a series finale, this doesn't even scratch my top 5.

Yeah, I was kind of hoping that Peggy would actually go with Joan to start her new business.

So Don finally makes a connection with another person, and then invents enlightenment to sell soft drinks. Kinda like how people like him invented love to sell greeting cards.

At the very end of the episode I was kind of like "that's it?"

I also just felt really bad for Sally. Her life gets derailed by the fact that she will have to take care of her younger brothers. How will she remember Betty? Will she be bitter?
 

Phrazbit

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I'm on the opposite end of you cheese. I wish they had done this Peggy-Stan thing earlier, it was easy to see coming and ending on that note I felt belittled her journey as a 60s career woman. I wish they'd found a way to end her story with the scene where she walks into McCann with the octopus porn under her arm and that cigarette dangling, that would have been a phenomenal ending for her.

While Don's ending was great. He goes on this journey to escape Don Draper, shedding all the trappings of Don's life and ends up creating what will be Don Draper's greatest legacy. Sitting there trying to find inner peace... and that jingle pops into his head. A very fitting ending for him.
 

Cheesebeef

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I'm on the opposite end of you cheese. I wish they had done this Peggy-Stan thing earlier, it was easy to see coming and ending on that note I felt belittled her journey as a 60s career woman. I wish they'd found a way to end her story with the scene where she walks into McCann with the octopus porn under her arm and that cigarette dangling, that would have been a phenomenal ending for her.

that would have been a fantastic ending for her arc, no doubt and I wouldn't have minded that at all. But more then anything, IMO, Peggy needed to realize there was more in life then work and when she finally did, THAT is what separated her from Don, who from my read of the finale, went right back to being the same guy he always was. Using an emotional epiphany... to sell products to the masses. That ending was been there, done that numerous times in the show, IMO.
 

Phrazbit

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that would have been a fantastic ending for her arc, no doubt and I wouldn't have minded that at all. But more then anything, IMO, Peggy needed to realize there was more in life then work and when she finally did, THAT is what separated her from Don, who from my read of the finale, went right back to being the same guy he always was. Using an emotional epiphany... to sell products to the masses. That ending was been there, done that numerous times in the show, IMO.

I agree, but I think that was the point. Don can't change who he is. I thought it was great way to slam that home. He has grown some over the course of the last 2 seasons; he kept in touch with his family during his hobo odyssey, he has been more open about his past, but overall he is still the same person he was when we first met him, and I'm okay with that. I think from what we've known of Don doing it much different would have been out of character.

And I did like them giving him credit for arguably the second most famous ad in TV history. That was fun.
 

Cheesebeef

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I agree, but I think that was the point. Don can't change who he is. I thought it was great way to slam that home. He has grown some over the course of the last 2 seasons; he kept in touch with his family during his hobo odyssey, he has been more open about his past, but overall he is still the same person he was when we first met him, and I'm okay with that. I think from what we've known of Don doing it much different would have been out of character.

agreed... but slamming a point home that's already been slammed home every season just didn't make much of an impact for me.
 

Phrazbit

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agreed... but slamming a point home that's already been slammed home every season just didn't make much of an impact for me.

I feel that this one is a bit different. I don't think that him coming up with that Coke ad and him having a bit of enlightenment are mutually exclusive. Optimistically, I'd say Don is more at peace with who he is than he has been before. He is an ad man.
 

chickenhead

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I thought the finale was fine, and I think my hesitancy to pile on with ambivalence is based on how much I enjoyed the entire show. I think in this case, though, the penultimate episode made a better finale, as did the "original" finale at the end of season 6. That, of course, would have left us with Don still on leave, and wondering whether his life would change course...

...even though it probably wouldn't, which is what we largely ended up with in season 7 (which I liked in a different way). I'll skip to the Coke commercial here. I didn't love that ending simply because so many TV writers had explicitly anticipated it. Obviously there would have been no way for Weiner to change it at that point, but it wasn't a surprise.

Nonetheless, I didn't mind the fact that Don's spiritual retreat led to an ad pitch at all. He's an ad man. He's good at it; he wanted to do it when he was still selling cars and furs; his biggest thrills in the show were good ideas and good pitches. Despite all the cynicism and back-stabbing, there's a lot of the ad business (and the way it was one of the few professional careers available to commercial artists) that I think he genuinely likes. Even if it's based on a way for him to try to understand "normal people" who had the upbringings he never had.
 

Cheesebeef

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M*A*S*H
All in the Family
Freaks and Geeks
The Dick Van Dyke Show



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Freaks and Geeks was so damn good. Died because of a Terrible time slot and it was wayyyyyy ahead of its time.
 

Cheesebeef

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Switch out Sopranos for Walking Dead. Add remake of Battlestar Galactica.

oh yeah.. Battlestar remake was GREAT, INCREDIBLE, AWESOME (not enough superlatives to list!)... up until the last Cylon was revealed. They kinda jumped the shark there and never quite stuck the landing on the end of the show.
 

DeAnna

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I'm kind late to the party, but now that I've had the time I've watched the first few episodes of Season 1. Man, they sure smoked a lot! Even the doctors, lol.

Also just finished Lost - all 6 seasons :shocker:
 

Dr. Jones

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Based entirely on this thread.... Disc 1, Season 1 is next in my blockbuster queue.

Haha.... I never asked for disc two. And then 12 years later.....

I bought the series on iTunes in December for 20 bucks and binged it over a 6 week period.

What a great ride. Some good stuff, some odd stuff, some cigs, and some liquor..... but all in all, the highs of this show were better than most things tv ever produces.

Top 3 for me
The Wire
West Wing
MASH

GOT, mad men, parks and rec, sopranos, and others are all tightly grouped together.
 

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