It Was a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Weekend

Yes. The only connection between Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Men is the word mad. But, flimsy as the connection may be, I’m using it to justify a post about both the film and the series finale of one of the best television dramas of all time.

I joined fellow Okie Geek Podcast panelist Devon and her husband Kevin at a screening of Mad Max: Fury Road; the long-awaited fourth entry in Director George Miller’s post-apocalyptic franchise.

I’m not going to spoil the plot, because you should invest two hours of your life and see this film in a real-live theater — preferably in 3-D — but its sparse dialogue, punk rock world-building and action packed chase scenes were so beautifully bizarre I can't wait to see it again. George Miller must be a student of silent film because the first third of his movie features a soundscape reminiscent of the fast-paced music associated with movies of that era. Plus, the action scenes have the same stylized herky-jerky sped-up look of an early Laurel and Hardy film. Charlize Theron steals the show. Tom Hardy was absolutely fine in the role, but I was surprised to see how marginalized his Max became as the story progressed.

Fury Road is everything I’ve hoped a big-budget blockbuster summer action movie could be. Thank goodness this movie exists in the world.

As a viewer who had been with the series since the very beginning, Sunday’s Mad Men finale had me feeling all the feels. In marketing/advertising speak, the finale "successfully leveraged content to create maximum impactful engagement”. In non-buzzword speak, it hit all the right notes and had a good mix of happy and ambiguous endings.

Again, no spoilers, but I felt the finale was ultimately true to the series while being somewhat optimistic about the potential for people to change for the better. Unlike many series enders, it didn’t exist solely to service the viewership with happy endings and neat tidy conclusions. My one quibble (and honestly, it’s so minor I worry I’m diminishing the greatness of the episode by mentioning it) was the scene where Joan and beau Richard try cocaine on vacation in Florida. It seemed to exist only as a cultural signpost that screamed, “WE’RE IN THE 1970s NOW!” and served no real purpose to the greater plot.

Don Draper, the main protagonist, the “good guy”, is a serial cheater, an identity thief, a drunk, a negligent father, an unreliably employee/boss and a bad friend. The fact that so many viewers (myself included) still want to see this seemingly terrible person succeed and thrive after seven seasons of two steps forward, two steps back character development is a testament to the acting ability of Jon Hamm and the storytelling genius of creator Matt Weiner. I said on an earlier podcast that Mad Men has done for television what The Great Gatsby did for literature.

I don’t believe the world will ever again see a show as complex and challenging as Mad Men or a series that so acutely captures the inherent contradictions of the American dream.