Matthew Weiner Anticipates ‘Mixed Review’ for ‘Mad Men’ Finale
There are still seven more episodes of Mad Men left before AMC bids goodbye to Don Draper, Roger Sterling and whatever the advertising agency is called now following yet another merger. The first half of the series’ final season ended on a satisfying note, with Draper and Sterling surviving a power struggle and Bert Cooper closing out the May 2014 finale with a song-and-dance number. However, series creator Matthew Weiner is already preparing himself for negative feedback when Mad Men‘s series finale arrives in Spring 2015.
“The road has been paved for a mixed review, no matter what. I do what I’ve always done on the show and rely on the people around me. The actors, the writers, and my wife all liked it, so that’s all I can go on at this point. I hate to say this — obviously ending the entire series is significantly more pressure — but it’s been that way every year,” Weiner told the Wall Street Journal. “I never knew if the show was coming back for most of the series, so we treated every episode 13 like it was the end. It’s very bittersweet and high-pressure.”
Fan conspiracy theories have Mad Men ending with everything from a Charlie Manson-like massacre to the series going dark at the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve 1970. While Weiner didn’t offer up any clues on how it all ends, he did reveal that he’s spoken with people involved with a pair of much anticipated series finales, perhaps for some insight. “The people at Breaking Bad, Lost, everybody told us this, too, what a safety net it is to not be off the air yet,” Weiner told WSJ. “We all know that, whatever splitting the season meant, the true ending of the show hasn’t happened yet.”
While we’re still months away from Mad Men‘s conclusion, the show itself finished filming earlier this summer. Weiner admitted that one prop he took home was Roger Sterling’s bar. “Roger’s bar is the happiest bar on the show, so I always thought that would be nice,” he said. One thing we do know about the series’ final episodes: Sally Draper will not go to Woodstock.