About Last Night: Mad Men Season 4 Finale

Butler sits back with a glass of fine whiskey and a pack of lucky strikes to talk about the conclusion of another epic season of Mad Men.  Speculation and spoilers after the jump!

And so we mourn the passing of Mad Men from our lives once more, until we meet again next summer when everything goes off the damn air again.  But as it does with everything it handles, Mad Men left with style once again.  While it didn't have the same frantic urgency that made season 3's finale one of the best things I have seen on television, last night's episode certainly demonstrated that the show is not slowing down any time soon.  I could give a brief synopsis culminating in my assessment of whether or not it was good, but let's pretend I did and said that yes, this episode was great.  Now, let's talk about the juicy parts.  Anyone who hasn't seen last night's finale should stop reading... now.

1. Don's getting married!

It's probably safe to say that this is what most people are going to be wondering about in the agonizing wait for season 5.  Earlier in the season, we were shown a brief glimpse of how Don is beginning to turn in to Roger when we were enlightened as to how he started at Sterling Cooper, and his proposal to his secretary is not helping the matter any.  This season demonstrated how rapidly antiquated Roger is becoming as a human being, and it should be interesting to see whether or not Don catches on to these signs of his slow descent to obsolescence.  Of course, it could be that Megan really is the Maria Von Trapp to Don's cold and closed-off Georg, but past experience tells me not to buy it.  We've seen this kind of behavior from Don before, and last week's episode showed the fallibility of his rash impulsiveness.  I'm not saying that I don't like Megan and don't want to see her around, but I think that with Don, we can probably assume "once a poonhound, always a poonhound."

2. Joan is to bear the progeny of Roger Sterling after all!

I thought that they dealt with Joan's abortion somewhat unceremoniously when it happened.  Not to say that I feel any time something like this happens in any show it should be hammered in to the audience's brain, I'm simply not used to being given credit by Matthew Weiner to feel my own emotions on an issue.  But who gives a shit? This is absolutely going to turn out to be interesting, and means that we are assured to get more Roger in the picture next season, as he was noticeably lacking in season 4 as compared to previous years.  I have a feeling that things could turn dark for Joan in a very bad way, at least when recalling the scene at the end of Season 2 where her husband pretty much rapes her on Roger's office floor.  Somehow, he will probably find out about her indiscretion (I'm assuming an asynchronous conception timeline) and things will probably not be pretty.  It will also probably be nail bitingly gripping to watch unfold.  As we watched Joan struggle to maintain relevance in the office this year, I did start to wonder where any further utility was in her character.  It's good to see that they saw me coming on this one.

3. Sterling Cooper Draper Price is ... uh, well...
This was probably the one point where I felt that the season was a little obnoxious in its ambiguity.  Cosgrove and Peggy got an account, and we saw Don meet with the American Cancer Society, but at the same time all of those layoffs from last week are still very real, and the company can't afford to pay for promotions.  Are we to assume that things are back on the up and up?  Or will next season be a continuation in the struggle for the fledgling agency's future?  With the time skips they tend to employ between seasons, its really anybody's guess, and that impacts a lot of the speculation I have going on up here.  Still, though, the fate of the company took such a backseat in this episode that I almost forgot it was an issue until the very end, and the lack of acknowledgment left me feeling somewhat unfulfilled, though only in that particular department.

Obviously, this is not the grand scope of everything that happened last night.  Betty Draper continued to vie for the position of "absolute worst", and it will be a pleasure to watch Henry eventually leave her.  The writers continued in their quest to make me care about anything that happens to Sally Draper, though their efforts were met with great disinterest, almost as if I couldn't care less whether Sally lived or died and hate when they make her bullshit a focal point.  Lastly, there was still no development on the "Peggy's bastard fathered by Pete" front, leading me to wonder if they legitimately forgot that this was a plot point that they used.  With Trudy's pregnancy, we'll probably see something next season, but I'm pretty sure there hasn't been any significant development on that front since season 2.

"These things are remarkably forgettable"

Still, this season was incredibly well done, played host to several amazing episodes, and I can't wait to see where we go from here.  In the meantime though, The Walking Dead should keep me watching AMC.