I’ve read a few intelligent takes on the Mad Men finale that have highlighted an optimistic vs. pessimistic take on the final scene, but I have to say that I disagree with both of these interpretations, however interesting and compelling I find them both to be.  Ultimately, I think the Coke commercial insert is about a man regaining touch with his era and therefore his art.

When we meet him, Don Draper is very much a man of his time: broad shouldered, square jawed, resplendent in his dark suit and laundered white shirt with his perfectly-lacquered hair.  He’s a 50s movie icon, literally (as we come to find out) a product of the Korean War and the post-World War II generation that was raised on consumerism and the promise of a better life.  The Kodak Carousel ad that he creates in the first season perfectly captures the nostalgia that embodied the 1950s.  He is a man of his time, creating beautiful art that reflects the period in which he lives.  As with other great art of the 20th century, his creation is both inspired by his era and yet still timeless in the manner of Picasso and Dali and similarly transcendent artists.

Over the course of the show, however, we see Don progressively lose touch with the times in which he lives.  He is not a man of the 60s and stubbornly clings to the era he knows.  His boozing and philandering is reminiscent of the darker side of the 50s, a dichotomy that Matt Weiner represents beautifully, if often tragically for Don.  He can’t reconcile the changes around him and his art suffers for it.  Advertising, at its best, is undeniably art, but it’s an art born of creating a shared vision with the greater society.  If you don’t understand the cultural zeitgeist of your era, it’s impossible to create art that resonates.  Don loses his ability to create moving art because he loses touch with his times.  It’s why Weiner doesn’t change Don’s wardrobe or look throughout the entire decade, in marked contrast to characters like Stan (with his floppy hair, beard, and foppish threads), or even Roger, with his wider lapels and swanky mustache.  Don can’t relate and therefore can’t create.

We see the gradual deterioration of the character and his façade throughout the series as his self-image slowly crumbles.  At the beginning of the show, Don philanders because it is a visceral validation of the fact that he is not only handsome but also excellent at his craft.  When his art suffers, his assuredness wanes, and he loses that sense of self and fulfillment that many of us get from being proficient at our work.  He loses the confidence that characterizes him at the beginning of the show, and the doubts begin to creep in.  Time is passing him by and people like Peggy Olson (reflective of a time when women are in the ascendant) who was once his secretary are now also passing him by.

The controversial Coke ad ending brings the series full circle because Don’s epiphany on the California coast brings him back in touch with his times.  He may not be a child of the 70s but he understands his era again, and this insight allows him to create the beautiful, transcendent Coke ad that again perfectly captures the spirit of peace and togetherness that the world was ready to embrace after the slog and the cynicism of Vietnam.

In digesting it for a few days, the conclusion that I have reached is not of an optimistic or pessimistic narrative for Don—I think that’s a misinterpretation of the ending and the show.  I think Mad Men was always an artistic show (possibly the purest vision of art we have seen on series TV) about creative people struggling to reconcile their consumerist and artistic sensibilities.  Some critics have augured a bleak future for Don in which he returns to New York only to continue to sell his soul.  I have trouble believing this if only because he left McCann after seeing the cookie-cutter model into which he couldn’t fit.  Others have offered a more optimistic vision in which he comes back, still works in advertising but becomes the devoted father we always hoped he would be.  I like to think that he comes back to create the kind of art of which he was capable at his peak in the beginning of the show.

In the opening credits, we see a man, initially at ease smoking in a lounge chair, falling from a skyscraper.  What if the series was essentially about a man falling through time, a decade in which he lost touch with society, only to finally right himself at the end to get back to the place where he felt comfortable and secure?  That’s the poetic end that I care to imagine for one of the most beautiful pieces of art that I have had the pleasure to enjoy for the last seven years.