You could almost hear Twitter shout collectively as Don Draper closed his eyes, smiled and the famous “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” Coca-Cola ad played out the final episode of Mad Men. If you were on Twitter at the time, your timeline practically did shout with a flurry of updates. Especially after it become apparent that was how the episode and series was going to end because the screen went to black and the credits rolled.
That’s how Matthew Weiner is ending this? With a Coca-Cola ad?
Never mind that the serene, sun-kissed, clear-skied hilltop environment closely resembled the setting in which we left Draper. The only thing missing was the Pacific Ocean in the background.
It almost seemed comical. A man at his lowest point as a human being, looking for anything that can help him make sense of what his world has become, has his moment of zen and it results in a commercial? Of course, it’s an iconic ad, one that has endured for more than 40 years and even faintly recognizable to those who were nowhere near that era. But after seven seasons and a year of build-up to these final seven episodes, to end on that note seemed kind of, well, corny.
Yet the ending was fitting and appropriate. After all, the Coca-Cola account represents Don’s return to normalcy. Peggy tosses it out there like a raw steak to a lion, saying McCann Erickson would take him back and that they need help with the Coke campaign. Given the popularity of the “Hilltop” ad, it probably returns him to prominence within the advertising industry. He’s Don Draper again, even if possibly a more enlightened, less self-destructive version of himself.
I get that some may have felt the ending was unseemly, unfulfilling or maybe even a cop-out because it was attached to an actual real-life commercial, rather than something that actually happens to a character on screen. Maybe it also felt extremely cynical, as if any epiphany Don has in his life has to be translated into a piece of advertising, as if there really isn’t anything more to him than that. And if so, maybe following his story for so many years and seven seasons felt a little less substantial for it.
AMC
Yet this final moment with Draper was also true to his nature. Just as he would inevitably do something self-destructive, like have yet another affair with another woman or do something else to sabotage his marriage(s), what distinguished Don Draper from Dick Whitman, the identity he tried to escape and bury, is that Don was really, really good at something. He was exceptional at creating a resonant, perhaps even transcendant ad campaign, capturing emotions or a moment in time to make something poignant and lasting.
Don’s personal life is a total mess. He has destroyed every relationship he’s been in, been a failure as a husband and father, and hated himself so much that he became someone else. Hell, Don was having such an identity crisis that he even tried to escape the new life he created (and squandered). But he made himself into a success and the type of man others strived to be through advertising. If you consider that Don Draper was really only good at one thing in his life, then it makes complete sense that he would turn his moment of clarity into what is his art.
While that was a happy moment for Don, it also underlined the sadness of the character. Maybe he ends up taking what he learned — his personal, spiritual change — and channeling it into becoming a better person, a suitable husband for someone and father to his children. But what if creating another ad is all he has left? What if there is no home furnished with love, as the Coke ad says? Well, at least he brought people a fleeting moment of happiness with a one-minute ad and catchy jingle. Don Draper will always have that.
