I agree with basically everything you write here, and yet I am enjoying the final season a lot, including these final episodes. I think it's because of what you say about denying them any real growth. I get the feeling I see a little more evolution in the characters than you do, but it is incremental at most. Their…

I think the storytelling is actually better because Shosh is both insightful and shallow here. All of the main characters have changed over the run of the series, but in believably small increments, and they are still fundamentally the same people as we met in S1E1.

To all the viewers who, especially early in the series, wondered if Dunham/Konner -meant- for the core characters to come across as, among other things, "exhausting and narcissistic and ultimately boring," here's your answer. Awesome that it was Shosh speaking for the audience here.

I don't think you're fairly characterizing what McKinnon said. What he said is that the algorithm to please -everyone- is impossible. I think you are conflating that with the algorithm to please -you-, which, yes, is obviously not as complicated. I got all the meaningful closure I needed from the finale, including to…

This episode finally felt like the beginnings of catharsis. Or if not the absolute beginnings, then signs that catharsis may be taking hold for a few characters. "Hope for hope," as Daniel nicely put it.

Just me or did the title "yolk" make you think not just of eggs, but of the way these characters are yoked together in profound ways, whether they want to be or not? Like Janet and Trey, for example.

I kind of expect Matthew to pass along Paige's tidbit about thinking her dad was having an affair. I could see Stan getting that information, remembering William's description of P & E, and then getting that little facial tic he gets when he thinks something's off.

S1 had the unreliable-narrator angle and the extremely-competent-at-the-job angle. Primarily via Rust. Those two elements papered over a great many deficiencies. I'm enjoying S2, but this bunch's damage is more sad sack than live wire, which isn't quite as much fun.

"You think you're going to begin your life over and do it right. But what if you never get past the beginning again?"

Show sounds a bit like Scooby Doo.

Hey girl, I'm pretty sure we're meant to mistake Generic Psychopath Killer for Ryan Gosling… with psycho eyes.

Joan's partnership entitles her to money, but confers only "legitimate power." And I think Mad Men does a pretty consistently awesome job of showing what that is worth, by itself.

I actually found myself wondering if I was hearing them right or had forgotten some key events from the earlier trip. Otherwise, yeah, it is really hard to read that exchange another way besides a passive aggressive manifestation of their true feelings. This exchange, along with the scene where we see their clearly…

Ah, the cipher that is Bob Benson.

Makes you wonder how the kids (and Don) would be doing now if Don had gone a different direction and ended up with Faye Miller. She was superficially not as good with the kids as Megan, but if you jump the story to now…

Good stuff there.

I get the aversion to the flashbacks and the sense that this episode was generally pretty heavy-handed in its weird artiness, but in the end, that all worked for me here. In the past, we've gotten dribs and drabs of what makes Don tick…peeks into his strange past and all the associated issues he so relentlessly keeps…

The "Tomorrow Never Knows" closing is one of my favorite "Don in a nutshell" scenes. Here comes the revolution and Don's response is to take the needle off the record. How's that working out, eh, Don?

This is right, Mad Men is first and foremost about power. By extension, Don Draper is first and foremost about power. Here's one of the best things I've read about the series, which makes the same point:

"At so many junctures of his life, Don’s greatest failing has been not understanding that the people around him are just that: people with their own drives and motivations and goals. Of course, this is largely true of everybody on the show."