"Mad Men" -- *Final* Season Official Thread (possible spoilers) (part 2)

Being an Oakland A's Fan is more being stuck into the past.. Go Giants!

 

I don't see a mention of New Coke there...

 

Actually during the course of this episode my beloved Birds were busy taking the World Series in 5.

 

I liked the finale when I watched it for the first time. But after I let it sink in I have to say that I actually love it. I'm still thinking about certain
scenes, certain emotions, the stories continue in my mind...brilliant writing...brilliant acting.

 

Random fashion observation I had this morning:

We see Don wearing blue jeans towards the end of the episode. Have we EVER seen Don wear jeans before?? I honestly can't recall him ever doing so. Maybe one of the earlier California episodes, way back? It's been a while since I've seen those, so I honestly don't remember.

 

Little Gene speaks for the first time on this episode. I never noticed until watching the marathon this weekend that it was the same kid as on Sons of Anarchy (well, two kids - they're twins).

 

Do any Brits know after which series the BBC stopped screening Mad Men?

 

The ending was heartwarming. The Coca Cola ad was a bit jarring though.

 

Funny considering that the a lot of the people you're referring to were tired of the previous generation living in their past and tried to move things forward. And now they're doing the same thing. Of course, it could be argued that there isn't that much to love about the present.

 

I thought that too at first. But you don't have to "pitch" that commercial. It was clearly a great success.

 

I'm fascinated with camera movement, more so in film than television, but there's no denying the cinematic quality of the closing montage last night. One thing that was noticeable to me was the movement of the camera that starts with the scene at the retreat where Leonard breaks down in tears. Most of that scene is shot to establish Don on the left side of the frame and Leonard on the right. There are numerous cuts to reiterate the placement of Don on the left side of the room. After Leonard starts to bawl Don gets up to console him. At that point, however, the camera flips 180 degrees and Don is on the right side of the frame and moves to the left, walking across the room to hug Leonard (Don eventually winds up on Leonard's left shoulder). And from there we cut to the montage showing all the other major characters, and each segment of the montage is shot with the camera panning from right to left (Pete and Joan also move right to left with the camera). The montage ends with a still shot of a cliff and a low-sitting sun. Don walks into frame from right to left, stopping so that his body envelopes the sun. As Don turns toward the sun, via voiceover we hear the therapist saying "Mother Sun, we greet you", we then cut to another still shot, this time of the therapist sitting in a yoga position addressing the group. At the next cut, this time to the group seated in the yoga position on a mesa, the camera pans from right to left, eventually stopping on Don.

From there it's a few cuts of still shots from Don to the therapist, back to the larger group, and so forth, culminating with the very slow zoom on Don. But the right to left stuff is over. Without going too much further in detail, I'm wondering what, if anything, you folks make of the camera and action movements described above. It's worth noting that the camera, while moving right to left isn't moving in straight lines, in the case of Joan it's a bit more circuitous, and in all cases the placement of the subjects in the frame relative to the panning camera and the geometry of the sets gives multiaxial movement, but the impact is one of decided motion of right to left. It's so deliberate that it's obviously not coincidental so my question is: why? I have some theories but I'll hold out for the time being.

 

think how incredibly different the end of the show would be (and its tenor) if we cut to black immediately after Don's grin and the chime of the bell

 

It's deliberate. You're right. My first thought was that it symbolized Don's trek across America from New York to California--right to left (east to west, rather).

 

Another random thought:

What happened to Dawn, the young African-American lady who was Don's secretary until she got promoted to Joan's old job? Was there a line I missed somewhere that stated that she didn't make the transition to McCann?

 

Could someone tell me what today's fashions and trends are?
I feel terribly stuck in the past.
I feel ashamed.

 

So true.
Zen retreat = Iconic media. Something not lost on..Steve Jobs.
Long haired pot smoker in the workplace = Gets the girl!

 

I noted that the Mad Men credits did not note any licensing or "Courtesy Of" to Coca-Cola in its credits. I bet yours did (and I probably taped that but I don't know where it is).

 

April 26:
https://twitter.com/msicism/status/592225019163357184
https://twitter.com/EWDocJensen/status/592553898906234880

 

I just think ending the show with shots of Don "ohming" and then cut to part of his Coca Cola pitch and then back to ohming and then the commercial and then more pitch and then more ohming... might've been more interesting. I get it's a bit more "hit you over the head" but the series of shots and the editing and the wording of the pitch could've made it very powerful as a final statement.

 

I never noticed that, either. When he spoke, it still took a few seconds to make the connection that Little Gene and Abel from "Sons" were played by the same child actor(s).

 

One more thing...

 

I hope you mean that you like the symbolism and not the reality because I certainly don''t like that the hopes and dreams of a generation were destroyed..

 

Actually I can't say for sure that we licensed it. Certain commercials we were not able to license due to rights issues involving the talent (meaning the owners of the overall rights in the spot - which were often the producers not the companies whose products were featured - would have had to renegotiate talent contracts to license re-airing, which they were not about to do unless they were going to relaunch a campaign), but they made clear they would have no objection to us showing them on a fair use basis. We tried to license all the ads we used, but 16 years later I can't say for sure which were licensed and which were fair use.

If we fair used there was no credit given.
For a fictional show of this nature, the clip definitely would have been licensed.

 

Does she have some connection to Mad Men?
Either way I'm glad you posted the picture