>How did Don's 50th birthday party in May of 1976 go? Was he remarried? It was nice, he was spending most of his time in California by then with his third wife (and a few side chicks). >Did Bobby come home from college to be there? Bobby got into (((film school))), much to the dismay of his father, but was there recording the thing as a gift >What about Sally, did she bring a boyfriend and did Don approve of him? (and was it "Rambo: First Blood" army vet Glen Bishop?) She had a boyfriend whom she met in college. They are engaged by the time of Don's 50th anniversary, and Don has no opinion on the lad. Glen died in 'Nam. >We know Bert wasn't there, nor Betty (or did she live by some miracle? probably not but...) both dead >Was Roger still kicking, or did he have yet another heart attack that got him? He got a lot lighter after his few drug experiments, and was really into prog rock during the early 70s >What was Don and Megan's relationship by then? Don and Peggy's? Megan never appeared again. Don just has a faint memory of her and gets embarrassed when she's mentioned near him. Peggy is still the closest thing he has to a female friend, and he's still caring towards her and Stan, from whom she's pregnant. She is creative director and he got a job as storyboard artist for a major studio. >Did Pete and family fly in on a Lear jet to attend? Was punished Ken there? Anna's niece? Be nice to see one more episode... Pete sent a nice gift and a letter through the mail. Punished Ken became an accomplished author and lost touch with most people in the ad business.
Cameron Flores
OP here, I honesty, and unironically, like this very much, and if I win the lottery tomorrow you and I are heading to Hollywood, user, to get this made. I don't care if it has to be animated it's getting made.
After Betty died of cancer Don decided to take back custody of Bobby whom he learned had mild autism (this was actually hinted, not a meme) but learned he was good at drawing so sent him to a fancy art school. Bobby became a talented sketch artist for Disney animation studios.
He sees Sally in between breaks at College, she got decent grades enough to stay in. She decides to become an anti smoking activist inspired by Dons attack on the tobacco industry and her mothers death from lung cancer. She eventually becomes a low level politician (head of a county council in New York state)
Aiden Morris
OP here
What was his 3rd wife like? Blonde like Betty, brunette like Megan, or did Don finally go for a red head? Maybe even ethnic?
Bobby filming the whole thing on a bulky noisy film camera he borrowed from school and seeing a lot of the party through that lens would be great.
Why does Don have no opinion of Sally's boyfriend? You mean he's spineless and Don doesn't think much of him? Is he bland? Unimaginative? Why does Sally like him? Is he good looking and Sally went for somebody that looks like good old dad?
Brody Williams
OP here I always wished the "Sally" story could have continued, that last episode where she's reading the letter from her mom gave me... the feels
After Betty died, wouldn't Don have taken back both Bobby and Gene, as they actually were his kids and none of them were Henry's? Obviously Sally could temporarily help take care of them wherever they were but she eventually would have had to go off to college and another arrangement found. Did Henry end up all alone after Betty died? Kinda sad as he turned out to be a pretty good guy.
hell, I wish I'd even make it a fan comic book, if I had more time to draw the whole thing >What was his 3rd wife like? Blonde like Betty, brunette like Megan, or did Don finally go for a red head? Maybe even ethnic? She's got brown hair, but big gorgeous green eyes and freckles Don has had a black mistress, though >Bobby filming the whole thing on a bulky noisy film camera he borrowed from school and seeing a lot of the party through that lens would be great. Yes, he'd film the whole thing under Don's complaints. About a week or so after the party, Don would be feeling distant and alienated for some reason, and a package from Bobby would come through the mail with a letter saying "Happy Birthday, dad! Sorry I'm late. Love, Bobby". In it, there would be a rough (even somewhat experimental) montage of heartwarming moments from the party, that would make Don fuzzy inside and all that crap >Why does Don have no opinion of Sally's boyfriend? You mean he's spineless and Don doesn't think much of him? Is he bland? Unimaginative? Why does Sally like him? Is he good looking and Sally went for somebody that looks like good old dad? Don just prefers not to meddle too much into Sally's life, and wants her to make her own mistakes. The guy is very average looking, has long hair, is skinny and has a light beard. But he's polite, educated, and treats Sally nicely, so Don doesn't mind too much about him. also: Pete's gift is a chip n' dip
William Brown
>Was Roger still kicking, or did he have yet another heart attack that got him? >He got a lot lighter after his few drug experiments, and was really into prog rock during the early 70s
you will never trip on shrooms at the Aug 77 Emerson Lake and Palmer concert in Montreal with hippy grey bearded Roger
>Iron Man >Ad Man nice, this style would be perfect for the continuing adventures of Sally and the rest (the Glen in Vietnam parts would be killer too)
>Pete sent a nice gift and a letter through the mail. a chip n dip, lol
>Punished Ken became an accomplished author and lost touch with most people in the ad business. and the whole Mad Men tale ends with Ken writing the last chapter of his best selling (reached #1 in Sept 82) novel about his life, and all the colorful characters he encountered, as an Ad Man in 60s NYC
HEY YOU ASSHOLES, WHAT ABOUT ME? DOESN'T ANYBODY CARE ABOUT ME? YOU KNOW IF IT WASN'T FOR ME AND MY DEPARTMENT YOU'D ALL BE SELLING INSURANCE BY NOW, I'M THE ONE WHO THOUGHT UP JOE NAMATH ON BROADWAY, I'M THE ONE WHO PUSHED FOR US TO GET A COMPUTER... (walks away in a huff)
Its a small affair. Calm collected Don is starting to feel aged, and doesnt want people from his work at a family affair.
Pete was in NY on business so he visits and gifts him a carton of Lucky Strike in a bout of nostalgia. Sally comes home from getting her masters in media at NYU, she doesnt have a boyfriend, she wants to focus on herself after finding out Glen was KIA.
Bobby doesnt visit, his fiance has her talons in him and wont let go. But he gave a nice phonecall. Roger is fashionably late to the party and takes Don out for drinks when his third wife goes to sleep early.
Sadly Harry, after living life in the fast crane, died on the 101 freeway driving drunk and getting sucked off by his assistant.
Charles Martinez
t. matthew weiner
Isaac Adams
>yfw so much potential for great drama, and maybe even a little pathos in the Don story (and as always subtle comedy all around) but nobody working to make it happen
Mad Men is a soap opera Mad Men is a show for women
Dylan Lopez
Harry spent a lot of time in the 70s hanging out at the Playboy mansion (but Hugh thought he was a bore), he became kind of a regular there and would always tell the playmates he was a big Hollywood casting agent (he almost got one of them a job on a commercial once) and he had a hell of a time.
Henry was going to keep the kids after betty died. She told don she wanted them to stay with henry to keep their lives relatively normal. This was a huge condemnation of Don's parenting because Henry was more of a father to his kids.
Jose Cook
>Don goes around banging chick while weaker males raise his spawn
pretty alpha desu
Xavier Brooks
>Don has had a black mistress, though Don's no filthy oildriller.
Harry died not knowing he harbored the AIDS virus, he was one of the first non-gay/non-IV drug users to contract it in North America, and was lucky to have died in a car accident (coming from a party at the Playboy mansion) before he got sick.
she did din't she? So Don didn't fight this and let Henry keep his two little sons? Well, I guess the proven tendency to run away for weeks at a time made it pretty obvious to everybody (including Don) that they should stay with Henry. He becomes closer to them when they get older and they take more of an interest in/want a closer relationship with their biological father (and he's settled down by then)
Man, I used to have a friend who was a Chad like Don, and it was weird because he'd go out of his way to make me feel like shit even though as a beta incel I posed no threat to him. Sort of like the episode with Don and Roger on the stairs, only imagine Roger is an antisocial loser with no standing in life.
Robert Allen
he wasn't a chad then
Daniel Perry
>also: Pete's gift is a chip n' dip
KINO
Josiah Nelson
I'm pretty sure they were gonna live with Betty's brother?
Jackson Powell
>being a chip n dip is kinda a joke, there's real swanky $$$ cuff links inside (Pete of course wants to make sure Don knows just how successful he is at Lear Jet)
Jackson Ross
Go and watch GOT and other such drivel you fucking pleb
Adam Torres
nah, I hope not for their sake, that guy didn't need extra mouths to feed
>Meredith ended up taking the statue home when SC&P closed up and it was discovered in the back of a storage closet, it is still sitting in her living room in her apartment at the active senior community where she lives with her husband Walter, and whenever she notices it she becomes nostalgic for her time as an executive secretary in the 60s, and sometimes she even thinks about "what if" she had become the third Mrs Draper...
>in October of 78, tired of years of being overlooked by his colleagues and feeling underappreciated by everyone around him, Harry Crane decides it’s time to change his life >he takes that old book of lore he managed to steal from that shady guy in a robe at the Hare Krishna gathering years ago and drives from California back to NY, and goes to the only place he knows he should be at: Bert Cooper’s grave >on a Saturday, just before midnight, he’s completed all preparations for the ritual, Kenny’s eye, or what’s left of it, is on place atop Bert’s resting place...Harry hopes it’s enough of a flesh offer to appease whoever is listening from beyond, be it Cooper or someone or something far worse
Andrew Bennett
low brow unironically the best
Jaxson Rodriguez
How does one play 'the game'
Adam Gomez
>Kek, Harry conjures up Bert's ghost but all he gets is Bert doing a little song and dance number from "Some Like it Hot" and is mystified as to what it means
low brow would be mid/high brow today
One does not simply "play the game"
Nicholas Edwards
>One does not simply "play the game" Spill the beans, you pretentious faggot! How do we play this "Game"?!
>tfw a bitch nigga I'd never have made it in the world of 60's advertising.
Jeremiah Bailey
> How did Don's 50th birthday party in May of 1976 go?
His 25 year old girlfriend conned him into taking her to studio 54.
The doorman let him in because he tipped heavy; and because she's a regular. Her friends are all there, and the know Don is too old for her, but he always buys the coke and that's what it was about in '76.
As everyone partied, he sat in his both quietly drinking, thinking about the direction his life had taken. At the end of the night, his girlfriend helped him to fall in bed to sleep it off. She then went out and watched his TV, since he was the first on the block to have that new HBO service.
Elijah Ross
I'n the guy who wrote that and the other one answering OP's reply. Hate to sound reddity, but I'm getting honestly flattered at the replies to what was merely meant as a joke post. Do you guys think I should pursue my dream as a screenwriter? I've never mentioned it to anyone I know irl.
Grayson Miller
The original expanding brain meme
Gavin Anderson
I hope a roastie doesn't get a hold of him but it does sound plausible if he became an ageing Lothario and decided to never get married again, maybe disco era Don wouldn't be as aesthetic as 60s Don and we shouldn't go there. No, I still would like to see what became of him.
But that's how relationships work between old men with money and young women with daddy issues.
The man always knows she has something on the side, but as long as she doesn't flaunt it he can still imagine he's enough for her.
And even if she isn't totally turned on by him, she appreciates a generous nature, so it's a match that works for a little while.
Brody Thomas
Wha- Don't try and confuse me, you faggot. Just give it to me straight. What's "The Game"? How's it played? Answer me! I don't understand jigaboo speak. In English, goddammit!
William Ramirez
OP here, it was exactly the sort of stuff I'd like to see if they did a "2 hour" reunion show, and is the sort of stuff I look to elicit when I make these MM threads, I think what you wrote has a lot of what made the original show great. I haven't heard good things about the prospects of making it in Hollywood these days without family already in the business though.
Did you idiots even watch the finale? The hippie superpowers he developed at Esalen powered his personal and professional renaissance. He quit drinking in favor of meditation, exercise and psychedelics (at reasonable dosage levels). His parenting improved, but only a little bit. After the Coke ad he wrote a bestselling non-fiction book about his creative process. He never remarried, but he did shack up with a laid-back yoga teacher with an uncanny resemblance to Faye Miller. For his 50th, he hiked Kilamanjaro with Robert Redford and a new client named Richard Branson.
I like this too, the "transcendent" Don theory, so you don't think he fell back into old habits once he got back to Manhattan? Him giving up drinking completely is a pretty radical idea.
ha, if you lose you have to hang yourself in your office
He transcended his old habits, but he used his newfound strength on behalf of the same old explotative bullshit: sugar water, fast food, big banks, overpriced pharmaceuticals, etc.
That’s the crux of it. Weiner is GOAT.
Nathan Parker
Nothing implied he transcended, or became enlightened or some hardcore hippie shit, just that he found peace and comfort right there in that commune. He found himself in Leonard's (fridge guy) monologue, because he felt the same way: as an outsider in his own life, workplace and family. Throughout the show he ran away from his problems, and constantly said you're supposed to move forward. That message is exactly what the guru in the final scene said "a new day brings new ideas (...) a new you.", which isn't a conflict with Don's approach to life, but rather the same speech he carried on with him. So it does make sense that we see him so peaceful in the ending: he found comfort in being who he is.
Also, the ambiguous ending implies he came back to advertising later, coming up with the Coca Cola ad that we see before the credits, as it's inspired by the flower power love culture of the era, and it's the account he received on McCaan Erikson.
Jose Bennett
As much as I'd love to think otherwise, I think Don ended up in his same old situation. To me the irony is that everyone is shown getting a happy ending and then that shot pulling in on Don smiling makes you think he finally found happiness, but then Weiner pulls the rug out from under you and it turns out Don was just happy cause he got another good idea.
Liam Parker
this, if you want to rise in creative you have to pitch ideas and the game's AI (playing Don) decides whether they are shit or not and whether you advance vs Peggy and Ginsburg, if you play as an accounts guy you have to compete against Ken and Pete to coddle clients, and no matter what you better not piss off the "Joan", and you lose points if you forget to take your shoes of when you enter Bert's office, oh, and you get to pick your secretary and if you chose a bad match she fucks you up instead of helping you succeed.
he was giving the American consumer what they wanted though, I don't fault him, he indulged in all those things too like we all did
Luke Anderson
>it turns out Don was just happy cause he got another good idea. a zebra can't change its stripes, Don was born to make taglines and this was his masterpiece, he did find some inner peace though from his time at the retreat and I hope it lasted
Michael Walker
Maybe, I just think the show demonstrated that even when Don's career is going well he isn't satisfied. I have a friend who works in advertising who thinks that Don got a good ending.
Nolan Wilson
This reading is valid, but it’s too narrow and cheap for Mad Men. The better interpretation is one where Don makes lasting personal progress but then just becomes a stronger advocate for big business (rather than a better parent, an activist, or a marketing expert working on behalf of good causes). This is a much more Weiner-y encapsulation of the 70s.
Henry Gonzalez
OP here, thanks for the great discussion guys, I love to just muse about this stuff and see where it leads, sometimes in these long and winding threads somebody even says something profound that sticks with me, again, thanks for the effort
also, do you think Don ever made it to the Catalina Wine Mixer?
Thanks to you OP, this has been the only good thread on Yea Forums in the last several weeks
Parker Diaz
Not that I wanna be a party pooper, but Jon Hamm has said in interviews that he doesn't think Don is going to radically change his lifestyle. Matt Weiner has said that Don will probably marry once or twice again, and that he'll be dead by 52.
Camden Walker
>he
Robert Watson
I thought one of Weiner's original ideas for the show to end was Don voting for Obama in 2008
Charles Carter
10 years ago David Chase straight up lied about Tony not dying at the end of the Sopranos and then admitted the truth this year. You can’t take those interviews even a little bit seriously
Jack Scott
Top Grier that
James Nguyen
it has been pretty shitty lately and if I see one more thread with Brie Larson's mug I'm gonna go postal
now what are you on about?
I'm glad they never showed him old and senile
Parker Howard
But can you really not take them seriously? Do you imagine Don not cheating ever again? Or quitting liquor all of a sudden? Or not getting depressed ever again? Not even after Betty finally dies?
Juan Williams
>now what are you on about? Jon Hamm is trans FtM
Elijah Price
I don't believe Don became a saint (or was capable of being one) but I do like to think he drank less, smoked less, was nicer to underlings, paid more attention to his kids, and tried as best he could to stay faithful to whoever he was with after the final episode, he was still far from perfect but was a little better than he had been.
I just want you all to know that I appreciate this thread. I only finished seeing the complete series a few days ago, as I had postponed seeing the last five episodes for years. It was great, although some of the foreshadowing was a little obvious, such as Betty's death after Sally making that joke at boarding school. Looking into the future Glen either dies or is severely incapacitated in Nam. After Betty's death and Don's subsequent enlightenment, his relationship with his children becomes, much stronger, to the point where he and Henry become, if not friends, something close to it. Roger dies in the arms Marie after making love, Joan is devastated. Peggy and Stan have two kids and a somewhat stormy albeit passionate relationship. Pete and Trudy live happily ever after and have a couple of more kids, Pete is a surprisingly good father, but can never completely curb his asshole tendencies. Ken and Cynthia have one child and live relatively happily, he obviously becomes a well regarded author, and enjoys moderate commercial success. Harry dies alone of a coke overdose at an LA shindig after getting his divorce papers.
