The last seven episodes of Mad Men Season 7, the show’s final season, will begin airing sometime this spring on AMC, as the network decided to air the first half of the series’ final season in 2014 and then the back half of in 2015, a move that it also pulled with the fifth and final season of Breaking Bad. It’ll be interesting to see if Mad Men‘s final stretch of episodes will be able to match the brilliance of Breaking Bad‘s, and even though I’m very excited that we still have several more hours left to spend with Don, Peggy, Pete, Joan, Roger, Betty, and the rest of the show’s colorful cast of characters, I wonder if we’ve already seen the perfect ending to Mad Men Season 7, and the series as a whole, with that last scene of Bert Cooper dancing and singing in “Waterloo.”
So what made Bert’s rendition of “The Best Things in Life Are Free” so special? Well, it wasn’t so much theatrics of the scene itself but everything that led up to it, and everything it was said about Don and Mad Men itself in one simple song (although having Robert Morse get to flex his Broadway chops was definitely an added bonus). Really, though, what that final scene feels like to me is closure, closure on Don’s story–the one that Mad Men has been telling for all these years–and it’s all expressed by Jon Hamm’s face.
As you can see from the video above, Don is initially confused but then quickly thrilled to see Bert return to him alive, even if it’s through some type of hallucination. The song-and-dance number that his recently deceased boss puts on makes Don smile, as Bert promises that things like the “moon and stars” are “free” and that they’re “for everyone.” Essentially, the musical number is reaffirming the fact happiness is found not in the how much money you make or how hard you work but in the relationships you forge with family and friends, with the people that you connect to and surround yourself with.
And that’s why (and this is just my interpretation of it, which could be completely wrong) you begin to see Don’s happy smile slowly fade away and become replaced by sadness. He realizes how far away he’s drifted away from things that have actually mattered, with his marriage to Megan essentially over, a fractured relationship with his two children, and a just recently reconciled friendship with Peggy (honestly, the re-connection between the two of them is pretty much the only thing that Don has to be thankful for in Mad Men Season 7). Don, a man who always had the right pitch, who always knew what to say to customers to get them to trust him or to women to get them to sleep with him, comes to the realization that it’s all for nothing, and that it may be too late for him to somehow repair the damage he’s done to his life. For a character as deceptive, ruthless, and immoral as Don Draper can be, that’s probably where his story should end, but instead we get seven more episodes to see if he can fully redeem himself (the first half of Mad Men Season 7 began that process).
Furthermore, “Waterloo” doesn’t only satisfyingly end Don’s journey but Peggy’s as well. After finally proving how good she is to not only her mentor but herself, Peggy is able to deliver a sensational pitch to BurgerChef, essentially becoming the newer, better version of Don that she had aspired to be since Mad Men first began. Peggy had always been a character that wanted to be the best and be recognized for it; “Waterloo” not only reconfirms Peggy’s talents again (which we’ve known about for a while) but has the rest of Mad Men‘s characters acknowledge them, too–the BurgerChef pitch is her “Carousel” moment.
But there’s another moment that is just as important to Peggy’s story, and Don’s as well, but it doesn’t happen in “Waterloo.” It takes place in the episode before, entitled “The Strategy,” as the two of them, working late at the office on ideas for BurgerChef partake in a dance to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” right after Peggy figures out what the pitch will be.
The way that both Hamm and Elisabeth Moss play the scene instills it with an almost healing-like quality. These are two individuals who have hurt each other over the years, who have drifted apart, but this dance allows them to become not just physically but emotionally close again. There’s nothing romantic or sensual about it; it’s tender and loving and effortlessly beautiful–a way both of them can sum up what they mean to each other without needing any words.
With all these highlights from the first half of Mad Men Season 7, moments that will rank as some of the series’ best and could have easily closed the show out, it will be hard for Matthew Weiner to top them. Like when the characters in the show know that a pitch is solid and doesn’t need anymore tweaking, I truly believe that, however Mad Men ends, it won’t be better than Bert’s rendition of “The Best Things in Life Are Free” in the final scene of “Waterloo” or Don and Peggy’s dance in “The Strategy.” Then again, just like Don Draper, Weiner’s not a guy you should ever bet against. Here’s hoping he proves me wrong.
Photos via AMC
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