Mad Men Series Finale “Person to Person” Review: A Shakespearean Comedy

Pete and his cactus get say goodbye on the series finale of Mad Men

Photo Credit: AMC TV 

A review of the very final episode of Mad Men ever as soon as I sleep with you and try to steal your money…

“It will get easier when you move forward”

-Don

It may Don it may, but boy am I ever going to miss this show. Anyways on to that finale.

In his final hour with Mad Men Matthew Weiner decided to go full on sappy, and I loved every last second of it. Maybe sappy is not really the word, but maybe it’s more that Weiner decided to do the ending to a Shakespeare comedy. This is a show that’s had so much of everything, drama, comedy, tragedy, sadness, happiness etc. and really the final note of the show is where its final tone will be decided. Weiner went the happy, nearly everyone gets married route, and in this day and age of constant mostly depressing finales to big television drama it was a breath of fresh air to see Weiner go for the Shakespeare comedy ending rather than its tragic counterpart.

Of course, despite all the pure happiness found in the finale, Matthew Weiner could not let the very last episode go by without a chance to mess with us one more time. Don is on his final soul searching journey throughout the hippy retreat in California and finally hits perhaps his lowest point followed by what seemed like the potential “come to Jesus” moment. Along the way we get him finding out and then coming to drunkenly accept the death of Betty and the fact that despite how much he does love his children that he really hasn’t and ultimately wouldn’t be a person who could be their full time father, and seemingly gives in to Betty’s plans and wishes one more time. He also gets to meet up one final time with Stephanie, only to have her, really the final piece of his “old life” stripped away from him. Then there is the wonderful breakdown to Peggy on the phone (which as we’ll get to later gives her her own kind of funny “come to Jesus” moment) as his life seems to have hit a final rock bottom, and the ultimate lifting up of the great monologue from a man who seems to be the only one who in a strange way understands his warped feelings. Don seems to be on the way towards the road of redemption and that little smile on his face while doing the mystical heeling that is yoga…

…and then that damn coke add plays to close out the episode and makes us potentially question everything that has come from this big moment for Don. It doesn’t have to really Matthew Weiner could have presented the add entirely to convey the mood of the moment, or to ultimately relate the big final scene of the show back to advertising. But let us not kid ourselves here, the reason why Matt Weiner put that add as the very last moment of his masterpiece of a series was to twist the knife a little bit. It was to spin a great and wonderful sequence where Don finally finds himself and give people the idea that maybe Don was only really in that moment taking just enough inspiration for a trip home to come up with the Coke add. That can be seen as a really cynical way to look at the ending, Don after all this time may just never change, he may just be destined to be the same old Don Draper forever.

But on the same token even if he does end up coming home like Peggy suggests in her call, and ends ups getting lured in by having the chance to write for Coke, Don is ultimately happy in that ending sequence. There does seem to be change that occurs in the mind of Don as he is going through this trip, and it is entirely possible that he can return to the world of advertising, a man with a different view on life. The suggestion that Don wrote the add does not have to be negative and like so many more of the endings on the show could be it could be Don’s perfect Shakespeare Comedy ending. It may be a choice of either or between an old life and a new but maybe a combination of the two. As we’ve seen so many times on this show the answer does not have to be clear and simple, the choices that these characters make and their ultimate consequences are not binary in the way that some are interpreting those final moments.

Don’s story may be the driving force of the finale but it certainly isn’t the only ending that we get. I was wrong to say last week that we may get an entirely Don centric finale as there are many characters who get to come in and say their final goodbyes in their own beautiful ways. Never this late in the series would I have envisioned a phone conversation in which Peggy and Stan both profess their love for each other at nearly the same time but that’s what we got in “Person to Person” and every second of it was marvelous. I’m glad that Peggy got to have a good happy ending that had absolutely nothing to do with work which is something that she has arguably been partaking way too much in for at least the last several seasons. It was a sudden ending for the two characters but the way it played out was so beautiful. Just the reactions of both characters as they both individually talked through it and just came to the realization that they loved each other, along with Elizabeth Moss’ just wonderful facial expressions made the sequence so great even if it was something that may have come out of nowhere.

Joan also gets a great little send off as well, just in an opposite but equally happy and satisfying. Through the power of Ken and his eyepatch Joan gets to get into the producing business and ultimately gets the thrill of finally getting to pull of the “starting her own business” game. Sure she has to ditch Mr. Leisure suit and his cocaine but I’m glad that the show got to see her finally fully give in to her amazing business instincts that she has developed throughout the show (and arguably had the whole time). It’s a nice little send off for Joan and a great way to send off a character that I really did not expect to see in the finale.

Oh yes and Betty is not dead yet. The whole sequence of Don finding out that his ex-wife whom he still loves a whole heck of a lot, was pretty devastating. Their final conversation, as so many of their big emotional conversations looking back have been, was a dynamite sequence that really showed where these characters are and have been throughout the series. From Betty calling him out on the fact that he hasn’t really seen the kids in forever to the just gradual devolution of the conversation to tears between two people who still have a wonderful connection. January Jones was again marvelous, and while Betty sadly had to be the one sad ending in a litany of happy, like last episode the arc proved to be incredibly powerful.

“Person to Person” marks the beautiful Shakespearian comedy style ending to this amazing television show. Whether Don does go back to advertising and never changes or if that smile is a sign of the true change so many have been clamoring for this finale was so brilliant and wonderful, paying off so many arcs and giving all of these characters a chance to say their own individual goodbyes. I am very much going to miss this show.

Final musings for Mad Men:

• Yes I noticed (and saw confirmation on Twitter) the similarity between the pig tailed woman in the Coke add and the pig tailed woman at the desk at the retreat. Matthew Weiner does not do this by accident folks.

• Pete and Trudy doing their walk to the private Jet needed to be in all of the slow motion ever.

• Roger also got a great little happy ending here with Megan’s mother. I laughed out loud at the way he explained to Joan just exactly who he was getting married to with her claiming “I guess somebody finally got their timing right.” It’s great to see Roger not only realize that he is aging and maybe not going to any longer be a relevant part of the business but to fully embrace it and just be legitimately happy in a marriage for the first time ever.

• Hey if Don does go back to the office then Meredith does get to keep her job after all.

• The interaction between Sally and Bobby is both heartbreaking and super sweet. These two will do a fine job taking care of their little brother Gene no matter who they end up with.

And there we go so ends this marvelous show. Mad Men was a hell of a show and a hell of a ride through the happy and sad, and old and new of the 1960s. It was the show that I consistently enjoyed writing about the most week to week once I started doing weekly reviews for the last few seasons and a show which I will always cherish. This one ending hurts but at the same time I love how it has progressed and ultimately ended. This is one of the best ever, one that I will remember for the rest of my days.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

Mad Max Fury Road Review: On the road again

Max stuck in a rather precarious situation in Mad Max Fury Road

Photo Credit: Warner Brothers Pictures

Mad Max Fury Road

A+

A review by Frederick Cholowski

A lot has changed since the last time that George Miller visited the Mad Max franchise. The summer action blockbuster has seen the rise of the superhero and along with it a new formula. Now to make a successful action film you need to have a grand backstory, quippy dialogue, and a giant battle that will determine the fate of the world (or at least one major Metropolitan city).  Mad Max Fury Road takes that formula, throws it out the window, flips it off, and then runs over it with a monster truck. The film dares to be different and in doing so creates a fascinating masterwork of an action film that speaks almost entirely in images.

Mad Max’s plot plays out almost entirely in a giant action sequence. It involves the return of Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) who is found in quite the precarious situation after being kidnapped by the evil warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keayns-Byrne). All hell breaks loose when one of Joe’s best warriors Impeator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) kidnaps all of his many wives and makes off to try and gain a better live for the tortured women. This initiates a giant car chase between Joe, his giant army, and Furiosa, with Max unwillingly thrown into the fray as a “blood bag” for the sick members of Joe’s legion.

The most marvelous part of Fury road is the extensive use of visual storytelling. The film never feels a need for long scenes of exposition and instead instead works almost all of its world building and character development into the images on the screen. Characters in this film do not speak often, instead Miller uses a mix of facial cues and short visual flashbacks in order to convey the characters’ emotions and backstory. All of the world building is achieved in almost the same way and it helps that Miller has created a world that is so wickedly wacky, that images don’t just stick in the brain they are permanently burned in. For example Immortan Joe’s army features a giant car that features a single blind guitarist and stacks upon stacks of amplifiers whose only job is to hype up his crew. It’s such a breath of fresh air from the dialogue and exposition heavy action films of 2015, and it works on a near perfect level to create an experience that is unforgettable.

It also helps that the pacing of the film is practically perfect. As mentioned earlier most of Fury Road is just one giant action sequence that builds upon itself with layers upon layers of complexity and wackiness. What this achieves is a white knuckle race that so perfectly fits this kind of visual oriented picture. I could count the amount of breaths I took throughout the film and its two hour running time is gone in what felt like mere seconds. In other words there is no wasted frame in Fury Road, and only about a 15 minute pause from the action throughout its entire two hours. It really creates and exhilarating experience and one of the most perfectly designed action film not only of recent memory but perhaps ever.

There is little in the way of virtuoso performances in Fury Road but at the same time, the few prominent performances are in their own way quite extraordinary. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in particular have to use a lot of facial expressions to display almost the entirety of their characters. Both actors make it look easy and expression exchanges between the two as well as between them and the many wives of Joe are a marvel just to watch on their own. Never has the old cliché of a picture is worth a thousand words applied more, the visuals of this film achieve a striking story that no dialogue could tell and that is clearly reflected throughout the films' performances.

But no matter how good everything else is if the action does not deliver then the film itself will not; gladly that is a non-issue in Fury Road. The action sequences (or really sequence) are all exhilarating and perfectly executed. They all play out in perfectly building layers, and each little meta sequence progresses and becomes more intense and more wacky as it goes on. Everything is also shot very coherently; never did I, never in the moments where what seem like a million little things are going on at the same time did I lose track of what the main focus of an action scene was and where and what are main players are doing in particular scenes. The film also works surprisingly well in 3D. This is one of the few films where I never noticed the glasses for its entirety and I felt as though some of the wackier portions of the action sequences actually benefited from the foreground, background contrast that 3D in its best can provide.

Mad Max in all is one for the best and most unique action films I have ever seen. Perfectly paced and beautifully composed, the film is not only an exhilarating masterwork on its own but provides a nice contrast to the same old same old feel that can dominate many modern superhero driven action films. If you can see only one summer blockbuster in 2015 make it Mad Max Fury Road.

Mad Men “The Milk and Honey Route”: Time to move on

Betty in deep though on the penultimate episode of Mad Men

Photo Credit: AMC TV 

A review of the penultimate episode of Mad Men as soon as I find something better than that two headed cow…

“Say yes with your voice, not with your eyes”

-Pete

Mad Men has been a battle of conflicting change. As we’ve moved through the changing landscape of the 1960’s we’ve seen profound social change alongside little character change. “The Milk and the Honey Route” more or less tries to work against this finding little pieces of change within each of the characters presented. This was a powerful, at times strange, and 100 percent Mad Men penultimate episode, an hour of characters coming back together and veering apart. It’s a great showcase for characters we may never see again and a great tipping off point for the direction that our main character may ultimately be headed.

I guess a great place to start is with the DEATH OF BETTY. Seriously! After all my sometimes complaining and sometimes praising of Mad Men’s favorite housewife (in later years sadly it veered more to the complaining side of the coin) Matthew Weiner managed to give her an awesomely emotional send off. In an episode of characters desperately looking for an opening to try and start anew when Betty is diagnosed with lethal lung cancer she realizes that her time in the world is indeed over and that it’s time to move on. What it turned into was a fantastically emotional goodbye not only to Betty but to the entire Francis/Draper children section to the story. Kiernan Shipka has been one of the very brightest lights to shine throughout this great series and one could not have had a better farewell for her. The reactions to the death of her mother and the reading of the final letter were truly powerful moments that really shown off how far Sally and the young actress who plays her have become over the course of this series. While I am really sad that I am probably not going to see Sally there was no more perfect way for her to depart the season then the final sentence of her mother’s letter that said that it was a good thing that Sally marched to the beat of her own drum. While I can only imagine the future for Sally at this point I feel at least that it can only be positive.

January Jones was also fantastic throughout this episode. If we can give Betty one thing throughout the series it’s that when Matthew Weiner puts in the effort to put an emotional twinge to the Betty arc it, more than often works. The same applies here, Betty figuring out that she needs to move on was devastating and the best portion of the episode. The sadness yet confidence in Jones’ eyes throughout the episode was near perfect and made for nice emotional sequences between her and the characters around her. It’s not that Betty wants to leave everyone behind but she also does not want to cause them pain in her final year and knows when to move on. It was powerful and while I have not been a fan of the character throughout parts of the run her final payoff made a lot of the bad spikes seem less painful.

Then there was Pete, and Duck, and Trudy and this is where the penultimate episode of Mad Men became a tad strange to me. Pete getting a sort of kind of maybe happy ending felt strange, not really wrong or contrary to everything that has happened before but a little bit strange. Sure there was a clear return to a connection between the two a couple of weeks ago during the conversations about Tammy’s schooling but I had no expectations of them getting back together in the way they did. Not only that but SOMEONE ACTUALLY TOOK A JOB PITCHED TO THEM BY DUCK PHILLIPS (as far as I remember with the main characters on the show… correct me if I am wrong). Maybe this ending does signal profound change for Pete I just don’t know that I entirely buy it. Maybe I am not really supposed to buy it that is entirely possible, as an arc it did seem to come out of nowhere and the final scene between him and Trudy seems to indicate that Trudy is trying desperately to buy it and in the moment does but as Pete is walking out the look on her face indicates a little bit of doubt. All the sequences between Trudy and Pete were really good and Duck’s constant attempts to trick Pete into taking Job interviews were quite fun. Maybe Pete will be a better husband and father and maybe he’s learned a valuable lesson over the last few years as indicated in the conversation he had with his brother about cheating. Maybe getting away from New York is entirely what Pete needs at this point to stay faithful, I just maybe don’t know how much I buy it. I will say this though, with all my confusion about this the scenes themselves did work for me, and to give Weiner and crew a bit of credit maybe there is a since of conflict that is supposed to be created through the heads of the audience as Pete and Trudy reconcile.

With that all out of the way it seems that we are headed to a potentially Don only finale. I won’t say too much about Don in “The Milk and the Honey Route” because to me the arc felt very background save for a few key scenes, but at least his final moments in the penultimate episodes were very interesting. Don is finally in full hobo mode, giving the con man kid (who clearly reminds Don of a younger version of himself) his car and taking the bus to nowhere is seemingly the final shedding of the previous Don Draper persona (or maybe he’s just finally going through his “come to Jesus moment of sorts). Don has finally gone all the way with running away from his former life and I’m fascinated to find out where Matthew Weiner is going to take our main character in his final hour.

“The Milk and the Honey Route” was seemingly the final goodbyes for everyone but Don. It was strange at points and often times really quiet for a penultimate episode of a television show, but it was a powerful and ultimately satisfying episode of a one of a kind show. Whatever strange or maybe even conventional place that Weiner takes us I am ready to take it all in. I’m sad that this show is over in a week, but am fascinated to see how the book is finally closed.

Some other musings:

• Don is a mechanical genius… At least to the people from the Midwest. Not only does he get to fix a typewriter but a coke machine too! It’s too bad that Don has to get overcharged for his car though…

• I’m happy we did get one final appearance of Duck who is again trying to not only find a replacement for Don Draper (a running joke at this point) but to also yet again try and trick Pete into taking a job that he has zero interest in (at least for a little while). Oh and he does it while drunk. Classic Duck…

That’s all I have for this week! I don’t think that I am going to be able, due to lots of time constraints, to do a series of posts on Mad Men’s five finest but I will try to be back on Saturday to discuss a lot about Mad Men’s legacy and some thoughts about my overall experience with the series headed into a probable all-nighter writing about the finale on Sunday…

Only one episode to go… I’m bracing myself for the end…

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?