"The County"?

According to the actors/actresses in the show, you mean "Banger," Maine.

Stray observations: If you're from Lisbon, Maine (setting of the show), you know Bangor is pronounced "Bang-gor" not "Banger." As a Mainer, that's just lazy production.

"The Draper’s marriage looks positively solid by comparison."

If you haven't watched all the episodes, you might not pick up on a lot of why people may view this. The one glaring problem with the show and the character arcs was ultimately Don's unfortunately.

I'm late, but you passed over the most telling piece of this entire episode.

"I have never been clear, and I have always been able to live with ambiguities. In the abstract, I did think, why not end this show with the greatest commercial ever made? In terms of what it means to people and everything, I am not ambiguity for ambiguity's sake. But it was nice to have your cake and eat it too, in…

How does it not? That's the problem. No one can dispute the evidence that the ribbon lady is the inspiration for the lady in the ad. What is the rebuttal to the writers' clear connection between the two? In face, most people in the Coke ad appear as members of the retreat if you look at EVERYONE there.

I agree. The most disconnecting part of the second half of season 7 was that Don was the least sympathetic character on the show. He wasn't much of a father anymore, no longer married, only woman he connected with was Penny (not in a sexual sense). If they show had gone on, he wouldn't have anyone really to talk or…

Well, as much as you distain the idea, it pretty well implied by the writers that he did. If you want proof, the lady with the ribbons at the front desk of the retreat is the spitting image of the lady with ribbons in the coke ad.

A.V. Club has been my go to for Mad Men analysis. It gave me such deeper understanding and appreciation of the writing of this show.

I have to agree, I felt the Stan and Peggy closure did just the same. A lot of forced acting to create a false conclusion that the fans wanted. It went completely away from who Peggy's character actual was.

I agree. It felt like repetition on character endings. A lot of wasted scenes and air time to loop back around and reclose characters departures (probably just so each character could have air time on the finale.) It just seemed each character already had their ending, and the alternate endings just created newer…

I'm speaking more on the idea of the show's climax. The episode "New Business" was the climax. Don lost everything. Now it's just dragging its heels to a slow death of show. There is no artistic value in prolonging the evitable. The end is coming, we know its coming now, just kill it.

I think it all comes to a head when Don decides to jump out the window (as the opening credits suggest) but instead of him falling to his death, it pans to your conclusion where he wakes up as Dick Whitman.

I don't quite remember them revealing anything like that. He always played the role Roger took on after Bert's passing as the voice of reason and making business decisions. He never really sat in on client meetings or creative meetings.

As much as I enjoy the show sticking to it's metaphoric roots, and creative genius, they should have condensed the amount of episodes. We really got no where with this episode.