Except the finale.
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No one knew Matthew Weiner's Mad Men was going to change television forever when it premiered on AMC on July 19, 2007. For the TV business, the quality of dramas on basic cable was about to hit its apex, and Mad Men would soon start collecting the Emmys to prove it. For fans, Mad Men's visual beauty, its attention to history, and its rigorous narrative complexities have been their own rewards. Of course, it's never been the most fun show of television's second Golden Age. And there are plenty of people who loved Mad Men's beginnings more than its later developments — those who watched it for period kitsch or jokes about how kids used to put dry cleaning bags on their heads would soon be disappointed, as Weiner drilled down into his characters and story and began to veer from gimmicks.
If you have watched Mad Men for seven seasons, then you may think, like I do, that there are no bad episodes. So to rank them is an exercise in the relativity of excellence; an excuse to rewatch them in a compressed period of time (as opposed to the years over which I had originally seen them); a new way for me to see all seven seasons as one whole story with strengths (and sometimes tiny weaknesses) and callbacks; a personal exorcism that evoked laughter and tears; and, as someone said to me recently, something that could be perceived as trolling. It's certainly a show that inspires its fans to know an inordinate number of episode titles: There will be fights.
Especially given the cultural anxiety we now seem to feel when a series finale of an important show — a show we have put time, thought, and emotional work into — looms. We've all been let down before. Not knowing how Mad Men will end on Sunday night is actually terrifying, and as we saw from the penultimate episode, Weiner probably won't shy away from a big finish. (After the finale, this post will be updated.) Whatever happens, even if it's infuriating or disappointing — though I don't expect either — Mad Men gave us these people: Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan Harris (formerly Holloway, Christina Hendricks), Betty Francis (formerly Draper, January Jones), Roger Sterling (John Slattery), Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka), Megan Draper (Jessica Paré), and dozens and dozens more. Mad Men's 10-year sweep of a crucial time in American history has been told through these characters, and it's been both particular and huge: a story about class striving, women, passing, de facto racial segregation, New York City, the call of the West, American ambition — and so on. Mad Men has constructed a whole world.
It will be terribly sad to say good-bye. But as Don Draper would say, we have to move forward.
"Mystery Date" (Season 5, Episode 3)
Writers: Victor Levin and Matthew Weiner
Director: Matt Shakman
There's one supremely satisfying scene in "Mystery Date." Greg (Sam Page) has returned home — permanently, Joan thinks — from Vietnam. He's never met Kevin (who is actually Roger's son, but Greg doesn't know that). After a seemingly happy reunion, Greg tells Joan that he has to go back to war; later, she finds out from Greg's mother that he volunteered to go back. After fighting with him about it for a bit, Joan tells him to leave forever. "I'm glad the Army makes you feel like a man. Because I'm sick of trying to do it," she says. "The Army makes me feel like a good man," he snaps at her. Joan's answer is what we've been waiting for since Season 2's "The Mountain King," when Greg raped Joan on the floor of Don's office. "You're not a good man," she spits at him. "You never were. Even before we were married. And you know what I'm talking about." Greg is shocked. And then he leaves Joan's life forever. I don't necessarily buy that Greg would know what Joan was talking about, this awful thing that they have never discussed — but I'll take it.
Other than that, "Mystery Date" offers us a feverish Don who is frightened of Megan's jealousy, so much so that he cheats on her in his fever dreams, and then strangles the woman (played by Mädchen Amick) when she taunts him. The Chicago nurse murders of July 1966 loom over the proceedings here — as death and violence do over all of Season 5 — and bring out a campy dynamic between Sally and Henry's mother, Pauline (Pamela Dunlap).
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"The Fog" (Season 3, Episode 5)
Writer: Kater Gordon
Director: Phil Abraham
Season 3 was still building its foundation at this point. Don's flirtation with Sally's teacher Miss Farrell (Abigail Spencer) begins, even as Betty is in labor and seeing things, including her dead father. Betty has the baby boy she thought was going to be a girl; Don has a protracted and uninteresting exchange with a prison guard in the hospital's waiting room for expecting fathers.
At work, Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) is nickel-and-diming everyone over expenses and costs. And Duck (Mark Moses) reappears, having landed at Grey — we haven't seen nor heard from him since his meltdown in "Meditations in an Emergency." He wants to poach Peggy and Pete to come work with him, but he gets off on the wrong foot with Pete by saying, "You two have a secret relationship." He means they cover for each other, but it sends Pete into a panic. Peggy decides that if Duck wants to steal her, she must be worth more, and asks Don for a raise. After he tells her no, blaming Lane's cheapness, she looks at all the presents he's gotten for the baby and says, "You have everything. And so much of it." It's a resentful thought, but Moss delivers it dreamily. Peggy is realizing how things work.
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