Yes, I noted that earlier. But it was at the beginning of the series as they were setting up the Don Draper character, and hadn't done that kind of thing since. In fact, it seemed they had taken special pains to avoid that. That's why it seems so odd at the end, although it could be a fitting bookend, I guess.

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I agree but a TV show that took great pains to stick to story lines that fit into our reality. It sort of sucks if it tossed all that in the trash in the final scene.

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This drives me nuts when people start thinking this way. Why not take it a step further and complain that actor John Slattery was born in 1962, thus an eight-year-old clone of Roger Sterling was somewhere out there in the world of the TV show! Where do you draw the line at stuff like this? I mean, there's literally no way to make a 100% true-to-life show anyway, so why not have a little fun with it?

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Yes, I noted that earlier. But it was at the beginning of the series as they were setting up the Don Draper character, and hadn't done that kind of thing since. In fact, it seemed they had taken special pains to avoid that. That's why it seems so odd at the end, although it could be a fitting bookend, I guess.

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But like I mentioned before, THAT'S the brilliance of it. The notion that Don created the Coke ad is only hinted at and alluded to, not confirmed. You can literally read it either way.

If you don't like consistency, that's fine.

That I agree with. I do believe the ending is ambiguous. I'm just saying what I dislike about what appears to be the majority interpretation.

First, I really don't think the ending is ambiguous. It refuses to spell out the inessential details, but it is very clear that Don returns to NYC and sells to ME the ad he came up with at the hippie retreat. I suppose there is some ambiguity about whether he changes and becomes a better parent/emotional partner, but to think that he does flies in the face of all the evidence throughout the series.

Second, the show merges reality and fiction throughout. There really was, and is, an ad agency called McCann Erickson, but no one named Peggy Olson or Don Draper or Roger Sterling ever worked there.

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Confession: Don getting the idea for the Coke add didn't click with me when I watched it live.

I was under the impression that his grin meant he was finally ok with letting everything else go. On the rewatch, I think it's pretty obvious he came up with the ad right then.

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it clicked with me instantly only because someone posted links to the ad on this thread like 20 pages ago after the McCann takeover episode. I think we mostlu agreed that it was a cool idea to speculate on but didn't think they would actually have don create the ad. Well they did.

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First, I really don't think the ending is ambiguous. It refuses to spell out the inessential details, but it is very clear that Don returns to NYC and sells to ME the ad he came up with at the hippie retreat. I suppose there is some ambiguity about whether he changes and becomes a better parent/emotional partner, but to think that he does flies in the face of all the evidence throughout the series.

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Don created the Coke ad. Obviously. But IF you want to read it as Don simply being content with his new self or whatever, you can. There's a reason Weiner chose not to show Don walking into McCann and pitching the idea. That's all I'm saying.

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I think the people that hated it and posted right away didn't get it. Then when people get it explained to them, they like it.

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No, I got it from the get go. he obviously went back to ME and was responsible for the Coke ad. I just wanted to see more with his transformation, I thought it was boring. And, so he does embrace Don, okay, fine, but he goes back to work for a place he hates. Maybe he grows to like it, but he hated everything that place stood for and it's smarmy people.

I just don't like it.

I liked the ending with Peggy and Stan, but wish she'd gone in on the partnership with Joan.

All in all, it was just okay. But I've found over the years, that most last episodes never live up to the hype.

But, it was a great show and I loved it over all.

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That says more about you than it does the show. It did not meet YOUR expectations.

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I think we're simply going to see him leave the agency and go do something he wants to do. Possibly with another woman at his side, possibly without. But there will be more optimism than pessimism with the way it ends for Don. Then it's up to the viewer to decide for themselves whether Don will really find happiness this time, or if he'll fall back in the vicious circle of self-destruction

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BTW, here's what I said back on 4/23. Not bad. Pretty much exactly how the Penultimate ended, and last night was vague enough as well to have the same idea.

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-Don knew this whole McCann takeover was coming as he predicted it in the finale last season.

-No way Don is still working for McCann when this series ends, Looking more like he goes to California. Ted's story of meeting some random woman on the street will inspire him and maybe that's how they end it...insert Tina Fey as random girl he meets last episode lol

-they opened the door to a Pete-Trudy reconciliation. I'm really rooting for that couple for some reason.

-Peggy went through the generic Feminist debate and is further emboldened by her career choices. She wants to create something important and make a lasting impact on the world and sh's okay now with that creation not being a child.

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This was posted on 4/27. Pretty solid job here, InternetFan02.

It's called suspension of disbelief, people. Just because it didn't "really" happen? Really. Spoiler alert: It's fiction, none of it really happened!

If didn't find the ending ambiguous at all. I did allow myself to be blindsided, by the entire Don arc the past few episodes, but that was only because I enjoy "genius Don" doing his thing so much. It took about three notes into the song (what, less than a second?) to get it. But as I've mentioned, unless you actually lived through that ad and "Coke. The real thing." you can't appreciate just how huge and iconic it was and the emotions it inspires.. Of COURSE Don came up with it. who else could have?

Heck the ambiguity is whether or not the Hippie chick at the retreat screwed him to get her part in the ad! And given that it's Don, that's not even very ambiguous!

i like the fact that peggy never took the partnership with joan. why would she leave something she's good at and has worked so hard at (advertising) for a completely different profession on a whim? her goal has always been to be the first female creative director at an ad agency.

besides a joan/peggy combo is doomed to fail.

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I don't believe Peggy came up with the Coke ad, if she had, they wouldn't have put Don right before it. It would have transitioned from her to the ad. I don't believe Don did either. That ad has a very specific, and well known origin...http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-hilltop-story. If Weiner wanted Don to create a world changing ad, I think he would of written a fake one, like he did so many other times in the show. I think it was just a sign of the times, a symbol of the end of the 60s (which this show was partly about) and the beginning of the 70s.

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I agree with what you're saying about Don not changing... but he came up with the ad.

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But he obviously didn't. That's what I don't like about that ending. I mean, if Don did come up with the ad, it wasn't in this reality.

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If you don't think the writers intended to let us know that Don created the Coke ad, then why do you think they showed us the Coke ad? Assuming that Don did not think of the ad, It seems to be a very weird ending...just showing a random ad that has nothing to do with the Mad Men characters?

I thought I explained it in my original post, but that ad on the show is the end of the 60s era, and beginning of the 70s. That wasn't an overt theme of the show, but the conflict of generations sure was.

The show and the 60s both ended on that ad.

Don't know your age, but at least in a cultural sense the "sixties" didn't really start until 1963-64 (the Kennedy assassination followed by the Beatles three months later.) and didn't really end until about 1973 (Watergate and the Viet Nam war winding down). I view that ad as very much a "sixties" thing!

Fighting a losing battle Quad Dog. You might as well tuck your tail and leave this thread. I am not going to say you are wrong, but you are as far from right as you can be. You are in Antartica.

The calendar behind Joan in the final montage was November 1970. Presumably, Don was sitting with the Californian yogi at approximately the same time.

The "Hilltop" ad first aired in July 1971 and was created at McCann Erickson by a creative director.

The song first aired on radio in January 71 I believe. Due to so many requests to hear the commercial as if it were a song, they then decided to make the video commercial.

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Fighting a losing battle Quad Dog. You might as well tuck your tail and leave this thread. I am not going to say you are wrong, but you are as far from right as you can be. You are in Antartica.

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That's why they are opinions. This discussion is a testament to the writer/creator. He wanted an ambiguous ending, and got one. Well done.

I know when the sixties began and ended, but think that for the purposes of this show and its characters it all ended at that ad.

I'm just saying I think it is a misstep to have Don create the Coke ad. It was too big of a historical event to take and attribute to Don Draper. Historical fiction has to be a balance of the true (historical events) and the false (the story of the characters). The writers get to choose how faithful they want to be to the history. In the case of "Mad Men," they chose to play it very close to historical fact. It was supposed to be part of what made the show work.

Let's say they make a show about minor-league baseball in the steroids era, and they sell it as a true-to-life look at what playing pro baseball was like in the late '90s and early 2000s. The writers stick with that conceit all the way through, getting the uniforms right, the steroids correct, playing everything historically accurate around the lives of the characters. Then, in the finale, they have their minor-league hero, Needles McGee or whatever, go play for the Cardinals and blast Brad Lidge's pitch to the parking lot to win Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS. Personally, I'm going to be disappointed. The false breaks through the sense of the true they were working with.

I guess it comes down to do you think the creation of the most-famous advertising campaign of all time is a big enough historical event to be above changing.

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I thought I explained it in my original post, but that ad on the show is the end of the 60s era, and beginning of the 70s. That wasn't an overt theme of the show, but the conflict of generations sure was.

The show and the 60s both ended on that ad.

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Ignoring the fact that you said it wasn't an overt theme of the show so it seems like it would be weird to end the series on a non-overt theme, I guess I just think they could have easily shown the 60s ending and the 70s beginning in other ways that didn't involve telling the audience or at least strongly implying that Don created the ad. I thought it was clear he thought of the ad at that moment. And then it's up to the viewer to decide if he ended up creating the ad, gave the idea to Peggy, etc.

It just seems like a far, far reach to try and say that Don didn't think of the ad at that time. It's like you are searching for another meaning of the ad other than the obvious one the writers gave you (not you personally, just anyone who wants to say that Don didn't think of the ad). We can always find alternate meanings to anything if we look hard enough, but that doesn't mean it's what the writers intended.

But that's just my opinion. I guess the writers left it open enough to where you don't have to believe Don thought of the ad if you really don't want to.

Don created the ad. It's not a misstep to think he could be responsible for a "historic event" especially when he was just crying to Peggy that he stole a man's name and did nothing with it. Now he has.

Only if Don goes back to McCann as Bill Backer

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Let's say they make a show about minor-league baseball in the steroids era, and they sell it as a true-to-life look at what playing pro baseball was like in the late '90s and early 2000s. The writers stick with that conceit all the way through, getting the uniforms right, the steroids correct, playing everything historically accurate around the lives of the characters. Then, in the finale, they have their minor-league hero, Needles McGee or whatever, go play for the Cardinals and blast Brad Lidge's pitch to the parking lot to win Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS. Personally, I'm going to be disappointed. The false breaks through the sense of the true they were working with.

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The difference in the case of Don is that no one in the world, other than the family and co-workers of the guy who actually had the idea for the Coke ad, knew at the time who created the ad. No one else knew the name of the actual agency that represented Coke. And no one watching Mad Men knows who created the ad or the agency involved other than a tiny number of media experts, who passed that along to those of us interested in the inner workings of the show.

In your analogy, the hitter is somewhat well-known. In the case of the Coke ad, both then and now, the actual creator is essentially anonymous, as is the creator of the "It's Toasted" line used earlier in the show and attributed to Don.

The little details in set and costume design are so amazing. I thought the cheap, elementary school like Halloween decorations all throughout the office were great - you can totally imagine a secretary whose job includes putting up seasonal decorations in this big office.

Peggy had the little black cats artfully arranged on the octopus porn painting.

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Let's say they make a show about minor-league baseball in the steroids era, and they sell it as a true-to-life look at what playing pro baseball was like in the late '90s and early 2000s. The writers stick with that conceit all the way through, getting the uniforms right, the steroids correct, playing everything historically accurate around the lives of the characters. Then, in the finale, they have their minor-league hero, Needles McGee or whatever, go play for the Cardinals and blast Brad Lidge's pitch to the parking lot to win Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS. Personally, I'm going to be disappointed. The false breaks through the sense of the true they were working with.

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The difference in the case of Don is that no one in the world, other than the family and co-workers of the guy who actually had the idea for the Coke ad, knew at the time who created the ad. No one else knew the name of the actual agency that represented Coke. And no one watching Mad Men knows who created the ad or the agency involved other than a tiny number of media experts, who passed that along to those of us interested in the inner workings of the show.

In your analogy, the hitter is somewhat well-known. In the case of the Coke ad, both then and now, the actual creator is essentially anonymous, as is the creator of the "It's Toasted" line used earlier in the show and attributed to Don.

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He might not be so well-known in 40 years.

Anyway, I'm just making a point about something that bothered me and turned me on a certain direction on the finale.

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But as I've mentioned, unless you actually lived through that ad and "Coke. The real thing." you can't appreciate just how huge and iconic it was and the emotions it inspires.. Of COURSE Don came up with it. who else could have?

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I agree with this. I was on the young end when the ad came out but remember it either still playing or variants of it that came later in the mid 70s. I think based on what Weiner put Don through, only he had the "insight" to pull it off. Not Peggy, not some other creative at McCann, but Don.

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It was too big of a historical event to take and attribute to Don Draper. Historical fiction has to be a balance of the true (historical events) and the false (the story of the characters).

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In the world of Mad Men, Don Draper was THE creative guy in NYC. So much so that an ad giant like McCann was trying to get him on their side for years. So its not a stretch to say that in that world, he was the best creative mind of his time so him coming up with the Hilltop ad is not a stretch in this context.

On Peggy, I agree with another poster that was glad she didn't go with Joan. it was clear from the scene where she "won back" the Chevallier (sp?) account that she was already commanding some presence at ME and after Pete's statement to her about "people being proud to work with Peggy Olson", I can see why she would have wanted to continue to improve her status/stature at a major firm.

OK, but there was a bunch of opportunities over the last 10 years to feel similarly about the show.

And even in the analogy of a show about baseball, every single pitch of every single game is tracked. ANYTHING they showed in a baseball game would have been "false". If "real" were a requirement such a show about baseball would have to be a documentary and nothing else.

I'm still giggling over how perfect it was!