‘Mad Men’ season 7, episode 14 (series finale) preview: John Slattery’s take

We have said many times over that Roger Sterling is right up there with Peggy, Don, and Pete as our favorite characters on “Mad Men.” He is a smarmy, despicable guy in many ways, but he also owns it in a way that few others do. Throughout the series you got a sense that many other characters had a cloud of insecurity hovering over them, but Roger never did. He was not exactly the most likable man in the world, but we loved watching his interactions and relationships with the other characters.

Given that Sunday marks the series finale, we do hope that we get some more closure when it comes to Roger’s personal life … but John Slattery is still not saying too much one way or another. Speaking on the subject of the last episode to Deadline, he mostly just gave us a feeling that most everything in the last episode is pieced together perfectly:

“It’s both unpredictable and I think totally organic to the story that’s come before. It’s remarkably well connected to the beginning of the series and the whole series as an arc. It just connects the dots of all of it. It’s pretty remarkably structured.”

We don’t think that “connecting the dots” necessarily means that every character has a definitive ending, but more that you could almost create a spin-off surrounding any one person, and it could still be interesting. For example, why not see a little bit about Joan’s life now with Richard, or about Pete actually giving life with Trudy another go in a different part of the world? There can be a story after the story, and we like to think sometimes of great finales as a foundation for that … pending of course that a character is not killed off.