It's kind of hard to know exactly what to describe the last episode as. It was not the season finale, much less the series finale. It does feel like the season finale, since this final season is split into two.
Yes, and on the one hand, I completely think it is BS to make fans wait one extra year to see how Mad Men concludes.
But on the other hand, when next year comes, I very well might be glad to see it extended through to 2015. So, it can be both good and bad.
As for the episode itself, the title, "Waterloo", pretty much tells it all. Everything seems to be coming to a head all at once.
And throughout the entire episode, which takes place in July of 1969, there is the backdrop of the lunar landing mission. We get to see, and get to hear, the actual images that were broadcast on live television back in 1969. Perhaps even more importantly, to get a legitimate feel of what it very well may have been like to have been around back then and watching these events unfold as they actually happened, we get to see the characters that we have grown so familiar with completely absorbed by the moon landing. With all of their different, even conflicting, traits and characteristics, they are all glued to their television sets (well, almost all of them, Sally actually seems more interested in a potential romantic interlude) and marveling at this enormous scientific achievement for all of humanity.
Yet, life goes on, as well. And the internal office politics is heating up, and big time!
Jim Cutler is not playing around anymore. Lou storms into his office, and complains about how Jim essentially promised him that Don would be out of the way soon. But after Don interrupted their meeting with tobacco, and after Pete gives a ringing endorsement of Don's abilities to keep lending the firm his Midas Touch, Don's leverage since returning back to work seems stronger than ever. Slowly but surely, he has begun to repair the damaged relations that he had with some people (not just coworkers), including his daughter, and Peggy. Even Bert Cooper has returned to a sense of loyalty to Don.
Still, Cutler is determined, and he sends a note circulating to the execs that Don is guilty of a breach of contract, and will therefore be terminated. But he failed to notify, much less get the approval of, the rest of the partners. When they vote on it, the measure is rejected.
In the meantime, Don is trying to help Peggy make the sale with Burger Chef. They are traveling to Indiana to try and make the sale, when everything begins to fall apart, with Don seeing the note that he is fired. Not knowing whether he has a future with the company or not, he talks to Peggy, and urges her to make the presentation on her own, without his assistance, so that it can be her account. The better side of Don, at long last, is prevailing.
Peggy hits it out of the park with her presentation, and things seem to go swimmingly there. Peggy now seems to have completely gotten over her earlier skepticism of Don. And Don, going home to an uncertain future, is surprisingly approached by Roger, who tells him that he has made moves to get the firm sold, and that Don's position within it is now secure. Don responds by saying that he has his support, but doesn't think that he will have the votes, although Don is probably used to frustration by this point, with all that is happening to him.
And he's been through a lot, so he seems to have grown up. In this episode alone, he both loses his job (briefly, and it does not last), and loses yet another relationship. When he talks to Megan about the possibility of moving out west to be with her, finally, and her response is silence. When he inevitably inquires about it, they essentially end things between them without actually acknowledging it outright in words. Don talks about making sure that he will take care of her.
In the meanwhile, Roger Sterling finally seems to have broken out of his lethargy, and sees Cutler as an outright rival. Roger now sees the removal of Don as just the first step in Cutler's attempts to take control of the company, and sees how single-minded he is about it, mentioning it within minutes after he, Joan, and Roger have returned to the office after the unexpected death of Bert Cooper. Roger is quite torn up by the sudden death of Bert Cooper, and recalls with horror that his last words to him were quotes of a song, just before slamming the door and storming off. Now, he sees Cutler immediately taking advantage of Cooper's death to assert more control over the firm, and Roger understandably sees that as threat to the old firm that he and Bert Cooper were in charge of for so long. So, Roger works behind the scenes in order to try and make some alternative possible, with the firm being essentially sold to a long-time competitor, although the terms are clear: they specifically want Don and Ted.
The problem is that Ted insists he is done with advertising, and we see more fully, for the first time, what Pete has been complaining about Ted while with him in Los Angeles. There seems to be something really wrong with him, and he insists he is absolutely done with advertising. But when Roger holds a meeting with the partners and tells them of his maneuvering to get the company sold, and the conditions (particularly, keeping Don Draper and Ted), Ted reluctantly agrees. Hell, even Cutler, by now almost everyone's rival, agrees, shrugging off the obvious charges of hypocrisy by saying, "Hey, it's a lot of money!"
And at the end of the episode, when the imminent sale of the agency is about to be announced to the employees, Don is asked by Peggy where he is going, and he says, simply, that he is going back to work. But as he goes downstairs, he hears Bert Cooper calling him, and then watches Cooper sing and dance, accompanied by some beautiful women. It is a strange way to end the episode, and it does end in that way, with what at least appears to be a dream. We see Don kind of slumping onto the top of a desk, and contemplating the meaning of this, before the credits begin to roll.
So, finally, we come to another Sunday, the first in a couple of months without a new episode of Made Men to look forward to. After all that happened in this last episode, I am wondering how they are going to follow it up next year. The sixties are pretty much wrapping up in the series, as it is July of 1969. In August, there was Woodstock, and I am looking forward to that episode, always assuming that it will make it. Surely, it will, but the assassination of Bobby Kennedy hardly received a blip on the radar screen. So, you never know!
Still, I think they will do something for Woodstock (how could they not?), and probably do something with the much more somber Altamont Music Festival, which was supposed to be another Woodstock for the West Coast, but which instead ended in tragedy, as people were killed. Many view this as the unofficial end of the sixties, and I think there indeed may have been a case for that argument. Will Mad Men end with that?
Time will tell...
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/05/25/mad-men-recap-season-7-episode-7-waterloo/
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