Mad Men – An Ending to Discuss

IF you have not watched the series finale of Mad Men, and still plan to, do not read this! Seriously, spoilers ahoy!
Mad Men Finale
In our storytelling workshops – for corporations or for individuals – we discuss structure at length. Structure, of course, is the basis, the foundation, of any type of storytelling. Often, we reference pop culture to illustrate the style of structure we are discussing.

Television, unlike the stories in our monthly storytelling shows, is long form storytelling. Sometimes, at its best. My favorite shows are the ones that do actually develop characters over time, as opposed to just throwing in loopholes and drama and babies and other life changes willy-nilly, as so many shows seem to. The best writers, working on the best shows, keep the characters’ development on a realistic trajectory from the start of the show until the very last episode. Of course, we, the audience, often don’t know that trajectory until the very end. Better Said Than Done storytelling teachers discuss character development quite a lot in our storytelling workshops too, and both character development and structure are integral to great storytelling.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I put Mad Men in the category of great writing. Matthew Weiner, the creator and head writer, had a very clear path for each of his characters to follow from the start of the show until the end. If you watched the entire series, you can see, not only how each character developed, changed, grew, or regressed, but also the structure their storyline followed.

Betty Draper Mad Men FinaleIn our workshops, for example, we often discuss circular structure. Storytellers make ample use of this type of structure as it works really well in a nine minute story. Mad Men used it for the character of Betty Draper. When we first met Betty, her mom has just died after an illness. That sets her character on a path, which impacts herself and her family, and comes full circle at the end when Betty is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The way she responds to that prognosis directly reflects on the way her character was first introduced, not to mention the cycle of her mom dying and then her impending death.

Peggy Mad Men FinalePeggy and Joan’s characters followed a slightly more straightforward, or linear, structure. Interestingly, their two paths ran in parallel and opposite directions. Peggy started out looking to grow as a career woman, ignoring love, and even childbirth, along the way. Peggy got probably the happiest of all endings, finding love, along with a successful career. But love was the final message on her character, the final say on her character’s resolution.

Joan, on the other Joan Mad Men Finalehand, was very clearly a woman looking for love, having to work, at the start of the show. Even in this most recent season, love was her main goal. But faced with a choice, between love and career, she ultimately chose her career, finding it too important to give up. Her happy ending was fulfillment in an entirely different way than what she had started out wanting.

 

Don’s path is more windy than the rest. His wants as a character were harder to discern from day one. What would make him happy? What would he consider success? In a way, he was an unreliable narrator. He didn’t know what he wanted. Don Draper Mad Men FinaleFor the audience, we went along on the journey trying to discover the key along with him. He’d grow, develop, have a catharsis, and heal, and then fall back into his old ways, lose it, and need to go on another vision quest. His character’s structure followed more of a tree – heading out on one branch, then back to the trunk to follow a different branch – than a straight road. This style of structure would be hard to pull off in a storytelling show. It could and did work with a longer format, like a TV series, but only because there was time to follow and develop those different paths, to see where they led.

In the end, Don is once again recovering, having a catharsis after a breakdown. Will this one be it? Is he all fixed and better? Considering the Coca-Cola commercial he devised, one would think so. Yes, he is better. He has found what he needed, what he wanted. Don found his happiness, again, for now.

In our Better Said Than Done storytelling shows, storytellers generally have about eight minutes to develop a character, show us his wants and needs, and lead us down a structure to his resolution. In many ways, having such a short amount of time to work with makes it easier. We don’t have the choice to follow many roads in one story. We must choose a more narrow structure, and our main character, usually ourselves, needs to focus on one or maybe two of so many possible wants and needs that could potentially be developed given more time. We are also somewhat limited by the storytelling format in that we only have words and speech at our disposal. We can’t dissolve from an enigmatic but peaceful smile into a widely popular Coca-Cola commercial as the final ending to our story.

Thanks to great writing, the characters and stories of Mad Men will stick with me, and will be useful for future storytelling workshops. Sadly, however, I don’t know if I will ever be able to reference Don Draper again without getting that darn song stuck in my head!

“I’d like to buy the world a Coke…”

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