"The Last Days of Mad Men" (I'll Just Be Over Here Crying)
Thursday, March 27, 2014 at 1:00PM In 17 days the final season of Mad Men begins.
Time Magazine is already prepping us for the end though the final season will be annoyingly severed at the center and stretching well into 2015. We live in such extreme pop culture times, right? Movies and televison both are now in the habit of splitting endings into two parts. On the other side we have binge-watching. Sensible pacing, somewhere inbetween, may well soon be extinct.
I'll just be over here in the corner crying when the show wraps up whenever it does. Generally speaking when a successful show wraps up we should be happy to say goodbye. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example, was part of my soul but it was time for Sunnydale to crater. Too many shows overstay their welcome (shows that maintain their quality past season 4 or 5 are as rare as unicorns) but Mad Men. Are you ready? I am not. Maybe by 2015?
Which shows were hardest for you to say goodbye to?
Reader Comments (18)
I was happy they stretched it because I love all the actors and I want to see them around for another year and not just fading out.
Instead of really dating myself, I'll just say I was bummed to say goodbye to Absolutely Fabulous, Treme, Terriers and Queer as Folk (UK).
30 Rock. I was oddly emotional its last two weeks on the air, and I even with some "must sees" still on the air, I don't seem to enjoy watching TV as much now that it's gone. Without a doubt my favorite show of all time, and I can't even imagine how great/odd another would have to be in order to take its place.
I hated the everybody dismissed the 6th season because it was so strong on secong viewing, specially the last 4 episodes. It was still way better than Breaking and should have won Best Drama for all its seasons!
Breaking Bad, Freaks And Geeks, Queer As Folk (UK), and Smash.
I was very sad to see Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica go off the air, and miss them to this day. Angel too, if only because I *really* wanted to see what the other side of its (unintentional) series finale cliffhanger looked like. But you're right, most shows overstay their welcome - even the great ones.
Mad Men is not one of the overstayers. Season six was a tough, frequently unsatisfying experience, but intentionally so. It brought Don Draper to his knees - finally - and that shouldn't have been fun to watch. I can't wait to see how things wrap up.
Smash hurt me because in spite of the ridiculousness, i legitimately loved watching it and Megan Hilty made me smile every week. Pushing Daisies was rough because I loved the little doses of unabashed romance between Ned and Chuck...and the last one,
The O.C.
It was the first show I ever obsessed over. Don't judge. haha. But it was a staple of my teenage years.
With Mad Men, after an AMAZING season 5 (Christina Hendricks got robbed so, so hard), season 6 was mostly disappointing and felt pretty mundane. I just didn't care. The split of the final season isn't really endearing to me either.
Six Feet Under!! Not only because it was fantastic through its five seasons, but because that last episode just ripped everyone souls apart, making it impossible to let it go. It's probably one of the best finales a show has ever had, but because it's so good and so... "final"!, it just makes us miss it even more.
I expect Mad Men to be equally soul-crushing.
It's freaking fantastic that they released Veronica Mars two weeks ago, but the sting of The CW cancelling the show in 2007 still hurts :)
"breaking bad" and "smash" (this one with mixed feelings of course lol).
I've already said goodbye to "mad men", after season 5 I believe.
Two different things: a show that has reached its logical end and goes out on its own terms, and a show that's gets yanked because the "ratings" aren't there.
For the first, Damages (completely underrated and completely mesmerized me)
For the second type: tie between Picket Fences and Firefly
I think splitting the final seasons is a bad move; Breaking Bad had some weird pacing issues in the final season(s), I think because they were trying to do both two satisfying 8 episode arcs and a satisfying overall 16 episode arc rather than the 12 episodes they were used to. Also, maybe I'm being a curmudgeon, but if you're calling it a 'final season' it should only be eligible for emmy consideration once.
'Arrested Development' (pre-netflix end) and 'The Wire' were hard to lose, although both sting less in retrospect because they actually had decent runs and were able to wrap up in a satisfying way.
Also, I wasn't around when it actually ended, but the finale to M*A*S*H is heartbreaking to watch. Perfectly captured the conflicting emotions of getting out of a hellish situation but losing so many relationships that got them through that situation.
And I will be so sad when 'It's Always Sunny' ends.
I'm SO not ready.
LOST, Angel and 24. LOST because it was announced three years before it happened and the three years came too quick; and the other two because they were cancelled and didn't get a chance to properly wrap things up (although, to be fair, 24 is coming back and Angel's ending was great anyway). I haven't seen more than one episode of Mad Men but maybe one day I'll get around to watching the series.
you know what would be really groovy? a spinoff following sally draper through the 70s
I was around for the end of MASH, and it was all kinds of emotions, powerful and disturbing and funny and heartbreaking, like saying goodbye to old friends.
I've felt the same way with the end of Cheers and LOST, and will bizarrely feel that way when Survivor goes, especially if they don't let me play the damn game!
Smash is like The Walking Dead. For all the faults, there is nothing else currently on television like them.
Roark -- you're totally right. in a way Mad Men followed the Buffy pattern on Season 6. A lot of people hate it but if you can get around the fact that it's meant to be a buzzkill, you'll see how smart it is. That said, i'm praying to whatever gods there are that Mad Men has a brilliant last season. Buffy, alas, had its worst.
Lost