Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, spoke at length about the show for the first time since the finale aired on Sunday. On Wednesday, Weiner sat down with novelist A.M. Homes at the New York Public Library.
Weiner insinuated that it was Don Draper (Jon Hamm) who created the iconic Coca-Cola ad that played at the end of thes how, not Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) as some might have thought. According to TVLine, Weiner said that the ad could only come from “some enlightened state,” which Don had clearly reached at the California retreat. However, offscreen, Don does go back to McCann-Erickson to create the commercial (which was made by Bill Backer in real life).
He also doesn’t want viewers to have a cynical take on the use of the ad at the end. We’re not supposed to think that Don was just using the whole experience to get the idea for his commercial.
“I did hear rumblings of people talking about the ad being corny. It's a little bit disturbing to me, that cynicism,” Weiner explained, notes The Hollywood Reporter. “I'm not saying advertising's not corny, but I'm saying that the people who find that ad corny, they're probably experiencing a lot of life that way, and they're missing out on something. Five years before that, black people and white people couldn't even be in an ad together!”
In addition, Leonard - the man Don hugs at the end, played by Evan Arnold - has a more important role in the overall series than we might think. After all, this is the seemingly random man who gets Don to finally show his emotions.
“I hope the audience would feel either that he was embracing a part of himself, or maybe them, and that they were heard,” Weiner said of Don’s embrace with Leonard. “I don't want to put it into words more than that.”
During other parts of the discussion, Weiner explained that he had an idea of where Don was going to end up while writing season four. He also knew what Betty’s (January Jones) fate would be, but some other characters were still up in the air. Another interesting tid-bit was that Weiner had wanted to hold back the ends of Pete’s (Vincent Kartheiser) and Betty’s stories for the last episode, but decided to get them over with in the penultimate show so the finale wasn’t overloaded.
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