<p>^^ and I don’t want to end up like you (personal life). Please help me not be that person, because clearly you {Don} are miserable.</p>
<p>Even though, of course, Ted has aspired to be just like Don at least insofar as his business/creative acumen (for many years, not just since the merger).</p>
<p>I haven’t read all the critics/reviews, but I guess I’m in agreement that Don is really at his absolute lowest point; it’s all come to a head. Even though he’s put the more of the puzzle together as to his past/current behavior/future outlook, he is still pretty mired in the depths of it. So whether he sinks into real hell next season (and jumps out the window, so to speak, though I don’t believe that’s where it’s going) or the Don-Sally look and visit to his childhood “home” with the kids means he is going to finally start rebuilding and we’ll have a nice happy ending (or somewhere inbetween, with contentment being the goal), I guess we shall see.</p>
<p>But Don thought he meant going with Peggy because it would be so difficult to stay in NYC with his broken-up family. The surprise was that Ted needed to get away from her. </p>
<p>I was somewhat shocked by how aggressive Peggy acted toward Ted. I think that’s a sign for next year.</p>
<p>Interesting observation about Peggy from Alessandra Stanley in the Times: “Peggy, modeled on pioneer ad executives like Mary Wells Lawrence and Shirley Polykoff, the storied creator of the Clairol commercial line ‘Does she … or doesnt she?’ is rising in the ad world without a convincing show of talent. Viewers have watched Peggys love life turn sour, again and again, without the corresponding sweet smell of success. This season viewers didnt see Peggy do much brilliant work. She was mainly shown mistreating younger staff members.”
<a href=“The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos”>The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos;
<p>^^Didn’t Don say, a couple of episodes back, that Ted would never leave his wife. I think he said that to Peggy. Consequently, he wouldn’t be thinking Ted would be going with Peggy to CA.</p>
<p>This last episode was one of my favorites. Unexpected.</p>
<p>Didnt expect Pete’s Mom to die, Joan to let Roger in, Don to send Ted to CA,
Don to bail on Megan, Don to “blow” Hershey meeting, Don to get fired…
Bob setting Pete up… brilliant!</p>
<p>I too loved the coffee mug, logo, the subtle things…</p>
<p>Remember my first day at fairly large agency 32 years ago. A client Irish coffee party served in mugs with a similar looking logo. Starting drinking at 9:00 and probably ended at 8 or 9 that night. Still had some of the Mad Men trappings in 1980 but it started to change. I was hired as an account executive over a female account assistant (summa cum laude) who pretty much ran the account before i got there. She could run circles around me.</p>
<p>^ just stumbled on this article about Madmen writer Erin Levy.
I’m particularly drawn to Madmen because of its depiction of the 60’s through the eyes of the female characters. </p>
<p>Breaking up is hard to do. We will all have to live until 2015 to see the end of Mad Men. AMC is breaking up the final season into two 7-episode runs. The first in the Spring of 2014, followed by the next seven one year later. There will be an extra episode.</p>
<p>This appears to be motivated by the end of AMC’s signature series–Breaking Bad, the Walking Dead, in addition to MM–and fears of rating losses.</p>
<p>I saw that yesterday and told D about it last night. Neither of us is too happy about the way they are milking this, but I guess it’s understandable from AMC’s point of view. IMO, last season kind of dragged until the mid-point and then near the end the episodes got better each week. I worry that they can’t get much done in 7 episodes.</p>
<p>Good news is Robert Towne joins as a writer of some sort. Maybe the show will end with Don Draper in Chinatown. </p>
<p>BTW, I looked up Towne just for kicks and noted his name is his family’s clothing store’s; they ran the Towne Smart Shop and decided that name was better than Schwartz. They should have changed it to Curtis! </p>
<p>(That’s because Tony Curtis was Bernie Schwartz. They’d be ersatz cousins in both names.)</p>
<p>They will lose viewers with this plan. A year between seven episode runs will cause people to find other entertainment and go back and watch these final runs on netflix or other venues. Wish they weren’t doing this.</p>
<p>I think it’s pretty crummy of AMC to drag it out like this. BUT…lookie here, we’re talking about it on a thread that has over 700 posts, and is 18 months old. They know we’re hooked and will watch, one way or another.</p>
<p>I think the split means I may not watch the last season, I am not sure if it can hold my attention for two more years. I probably would not have planned to watch this season at all were it not the last and I wanted to see how it ends, and now it’s not-- not really, anyway. I’ll be the odd man out and say I hated last season and only watched out of habit, I got no enjoyment out of it. Which is a bummer, because I really loved the show before.</p>
<p>I don’t think the two are comparable. Breaking Bad appeals across demographic sectors and has a lot of dangerous plot developments. Many people under 25 find Mad Men boring. I don’t, but I am over 50. I can’t imagine what they possibly could do with the Mad Men plot to have an episode that would generate 16,000 tweets per minute. [Breaking</a> Bad’s “Ozymandias” Breaks Records](<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/news/ni56186176/]Breaking”>Breaking Bad's "Ozymandias" Breaks Records - IMDb)</p>
<p>I’m kind of glad they’re splitting it - that way it lasts longer. S1, who is almost 22, started watching it in high school - now we text back and forth when the show is on. Just one more reason to look forward to it. He also got his roommates started on it too, so there are a few people under 25 who like MM.</p>