I binge-watched Mad Men in it's entirety several years ago. Wow. What a truly superb & amazing series (I had started watching the show years before, but stopped after several seasons). And, I can't believe how good this series was. One of my top ten (and maybe top five) favorite TV dramas of all time. I feel like each episode is a work of art, literally. And, there are no bad episodes - all are equally exceptional.

-The roughly 1960 - 1970 time period seems to be captured perfectly on the show. Though the series takes place before my time (I was born in the early '70's) they did a thorough & painstaking job of re-creating this era. You can really empathize with what people were going through re: the various national tragedies (the deaths of JFK, MLK, and BK), & the obvious cultural changes - i.e., the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, etc.

-Going along with the above, the use of music on the show (especially over the closing sequences/credits) is fantastic. I like how the earlier episodes featured the fluffy 1950's/early 1960's music, and then as the show progressed through the 1960's you had much harder/edgier rock, such as songs from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, etc. There was obviously a huge disparity in the American Culture from the early-mid 1960's vs. the later 1960's - and, I felt this was reflected extremely well on MM. It's interesting that you can see the first hints/shades of this in S1's scenes when Don Draper is "partying" with those bohemians in NYC; this made me think of what will happen in the later 1960's with the hippies, the counterculture movement, etc.

-Prior to watching the show, I knew very little about the world of advertising - other than what I've experienced as a consumer. So, it's very interesting to see what goes on behind-the-scenes in this world. This may sound naïve, but I don't know why a lot of these companies that go to the Sterling/Cooper/Draper company (and companies like them) didn't instead establish an in-house branch at their own company to service their advertising needs - you would think that would be practical/cheaper. It's just interesting that they're relying on a company that may know nothing about their product to advertise said product. That being said, obviously advertising works. Hell, after watching certain episodes of MM I felt like going out and buying some Life cereal and/or a Hershey's chocolate bar ;)

-As an aside & going along with the above, it's obvious that the world of advertising has changed quite a bit over the years. During the era that the show takes place, people got exposed through advertising through TV, billboards, magazines/newspapers, etc. Now, I'm not sure who reads magazines/newspapers anymore (I don't), and I personally don't watch regular broadcast TV, and haven't for years. Though, many (like me) stream TV shows/movies online. I get exposed to a lot of advertising online re: all of the ads.

Some of the most memorable episodes/sequences of MM (in no particular order):

-The storyline of Don Draper's father in law coming to live with them was very poignant. I was especially impressed by the scene when he opened the box with all of his WW I memorabilia and showed it to his grandson - very moving. The episode when he passed away was sad, but you saw it coming. And, the playing of the famous patriotic WW I song Over There! over the closing credits of that episode was brilliant and appropriate - obviously in homage to him.

-The scene in S03, E6 when the secretary accidentally ran over the British liaison with the lawnmower was shocking and horrific - I was actually really bothered by that scene, and when you found out he was going to lose the foot that made everything that much worse. It was also both horrible and funny when Draper & co. were laughing about it.

-The entire Dick Whitman "stolen identity" storyline. One of the most poignant/disturbing moments in this series occurred when Don Draper's younger brother (the janitor) confronted him & Draper rejected him - since Don wanted to leave that part of his life behind him. This really displayed the lengths one will go to to escape their past. It's obvious that this was a lot easier to do in the 1960's than it would be these days. This whole "stolen identity" sequence pretty much culminated at the end of S03 when Betty Draper confronted Don about his previous life. You almost felt like everything that had gone on in the series beforehand was leading up to this one event. When Don broke down and confessed everything (especially when he talked about his brother) you really felt sorry for him at that point, even though he was normally such an arrogant jerk.

I also saw the whole Whitman/Draper storyline as a kind of metaphor for the U.S. after WW II & through the 1950's/1960's. I.e., after WW II the U.S. basically re-invented itself as a superpower & an economic powerhouse. By the same token - after coming back from the Korean war, Dick Whitman left his impoverished existence & identity behind & reinvented himself as Don Draper, a completely different & ultimately much more successful person.

-Though Draper was obviously a horn-dog, it's interesting that his "best" relationship was with a woman he never actually slept with - i.e., the wife of the actual Dick Whitman. Very touching, and the episode when he found out she had passed on (from cancer) was quite sad.

-Don's relationship with Peggy was also very interesting. It's obvious he had huge respect for her, which is possibly why he never tried to hit on her either, and/or because he wasn't that attracted to her.

-The sequence when Mr. Pryce's father beat him up with the cane when Pryce told him he wanted to divorce his wife & marry that woman in NY was quite sad. Also disturbing was when Pryce later killed himself in the offices - however, I didn't feel that sorry for the character at that point - especially since he had tried to make it look like Don had written a bad check. This was especially heinous, considering Don had been so nice to him in earlier episodes.

-One of my favorite song placements was during the Season 5 final scene, when Don left the set where his wife Meghan was acting, and walked to a bar near the set - where he was hit on by a couple of women. During this scene, the classic James Bond theme song to You only Live Twice (sung by Nancy Sinatra) started playing - which reflected not only the 1967 time period, but that particular scene, which may as well have been straight out of a Bond film...very nice.

-One of my all-time favorite scenes was when Draper was presenting to the Hershey folks, and after telling that B.S. & completely untrue story about his father getting him Hershey bars, he then very unexpectedly & honestly told the story about growing up in the brothel, & enjoying Hershey bars as his only "escape" from a dismal existence. I laughed out loud when one of the Hershey guys, very concerned, then said something like, "Do you want us to use that in the ad?" - LOL. This was another turning point in the series, since Don had to temporarily leave the job, then come back with his tail between his legs & work for Peggy to some extent.

-I was shocked when Don casually wrote a check for a million dollars to Meghan for the divorce in this last season. WTF?! A million in 1970 is extremely significant; even today it's extremely significant. I guess he felt guilty re: the way he treated her.

Part 2 of my MM review:

-Sally Draper was an interesting character. I liked how we saw her grow up from a little kid into a young adult on the series. One of my favorite later scenes was when Don took her & her friends out to dinner while they were on the summer bus tour. Sally was shooting daggers @ Don when she realized one of her friends was flirting with him, and then right before she got on the bus to leave, she verbally attacked Don & bad-mouthed him & her mother, saying that they used their looks to get what they wanted. Don then said to her that she was more like them than she realized, and that she would have to make sure that she depended on more than just her looks to get ahead in life. This was one of the few heart-to-heart scenes he had with her throughout the series (since he was typically absent from her life), and I found it quite a significant scene - for both characters.

And, even though Sally bad-mouthed both her parents throughout the series, she ended up being there for her mother after she got cancer. The final scene of her washing dishes in the kitchen (while her mother sat at the table, smoking) strongly implied that she had left the boarding school & had transferred to a school near her parents - so she could help her mother at home. I found the letter that Betty wrote Sally (in a previous scene) very poignant, and when she was reading this it was a nice - if sad - ending/finale for these characters.

-Conversely, Don's other two children never got too developed as characters, primarily because they were little kids throughout the series.

-The scenes after Don fled NYC & his job, was staying at the motel, & was temporarily taken in by the others there because he was a veteran went along with previous sequences in the series, i.e. when he would just temporarily "take off" from work & his life to go "find himself". I was initially surprised by the subsequent scenes when he got falsely accused of taking the money from the fund-raising benefit. When I first saw this I wasn't sure what the point was of these scenes. However, after analyzing this it seems to me that after he was falsely accused, he had a kind of epiphany - which led to his giving his car up to the kid who had taken the money, and starting out fresh.

-I also half-expected Glenn Bishop (Sally's childhood friend) to die in Vietnam - however, we never heard from him after his final scene with Betty Draper in the family's kitchen. Which is just as well - some things are better left to the imagination. I.e., we didn't really need to know what happened to him. Maybe he survived, and maybe he didn't.

-Re: the last five minutes of the Season 7 series finale:

I still can't get over how brilliant that final scene was - Don smiling/smirking with his eyes close while 'meditating', and the immediate segue into the Coke ad. Prior to this, we had seen Don as having "lost his identity" when he was talking to Peggy Olsen on the phone and complaining about not knowing what he was doing, being a bad person, etc. However, shortly afterwards in the finale Don was taking his experience and would use it to do what he did best, making ads that made a lot of $. He is & always would be an "ad man".

From another stand-point, I always felt that these "self-help gurus" and "spiritual retreats" were a bunch of B.S. & were just designed to scam people out of their hard earned cash. So, it's very appropriate when we see Don Draper smile in this last scene as he's "meditating" at one of these retreats & then it perfectly segues into the iconic '71 Coke commercial. I.e., the commercial - like the retreat - were both designed to make people feel like they're participating in some huge communal worldwide spiritual experience - when, in reality, they're both just designed to get people to be consumers & spend $. In reality, the Coke ad was created by McCann Erickson.

BTW, as a kid growing up in the late '70's, I loved that commercial (which played on TV throughout the '70's). As I've gotten older, I've realized that the ad is obviously intended to manipulate viewers into wanting to buy Coke so they can "feel good" - which is obviously a pile of B.S. But, hell, despite this the ad worked for many people - including me. And, since I hadn't seen the ad in years there was definitely a strong sense of nostalgia associated with seeing this again in the finale.

Some more thoughts on the brilliance of the series finale, and the episodes leading up to this:

- I'm of the opinion that the whole "zen meditation retreat" that Don & his niece?! were attending (where he got the inspiration for the Coke ad) was as much about commercialism as the coke ad itself was. Sure, these so-called "self-help" gurus that started sprouting up in the late '60's & '70's were definitely a reaction to the "hippy" ideology of the time period. However, the guys that ran these "programs" didn't really care about what they were espousing - they were just in it for the money. So, it's actually quite fitting that Don took something that essentially had consumerism at it's core anyway & used it to create an ad - whose sole purpose was to make money.

The 1973 Coke ad must have run on TV throughout the '70's; I would have been too young to have seen it on TV when it first aired, but I do somewhat remember this from the latter part of the '70's. Even though I was a little kid at the time, it was very iconic & powerful - despite it being crass commercialism at it's best

-Shifting gears, I also wanted to mention that the almost-breakdown that Don was experiencing towards the end of the series (when he dropped everything & took that road trip - initially to track down the waitress he had briefly gotten involved with in NYC) probably had a lot to do with the deaths that were happening around him. IIRC, in the year leading up to the series finale, the following passed: Dick Whitman's wife (one of the few women on the show Don never slept with, but still had a deep emotional attachment to), Bert Cooper, and the woman who ran that department store in NYC. I'm sure all of these deaths hit Don fairly hard, and it's also obvious that he started to feel a sense of his own mortality at that point. To add to this, Don's finding out that Betty had incurable lung cancer must have shaken him up quite a bit as well.