‘Mad Men’ season 7, episode 14 (finale) review: Don Draper’s story comes to an end

We are at the end of the journey for Don Draper on “Mad Men” and while we are disappointed that we won’t have anymore episodes to watch him struggle with life, we are excited to see how it all comes to an end tonight with the series finale. It has been a long road over many years and Don has not really grown much from when we first met him. We hope to see him leave our TV world with some sort of growth or hope before the last episode ends.

Roger: We have been waiting for more Roger since we haven’t had enough on him this season. We were surprised that Roger was still dating with Marie, but it seems that it’s getting pretty serious: She’s leaving her husband to marry Roger. The other thing we were happy to see was Roger sitting down to talk with Joan saying that he’s revising his will and he wants to leave a part of his estate to Kevin. Roger is finally getting his life together and we are thrilled.

Peggy: We were worried that we weren’t going to see how Peggy is doing at McCann, but we did and it looks like she’s making sure her voice is heard. She is also moonlighting as a writer working with Ken and Joan and after they make the client happy, they are offered more work and Joan suggests to Peggy that they start a production company as partners. After thinking about it Peggy decides she’s going to stay at McCann and this news makes Stan very happy to hear because he’s in love with her and tells her he wants to be with her. Peggy is in shock by what he said (as were we), but she says that she’s in love with him too. This romantic confession kind of came out of no where as they seemed to be all about their friendship and there was never really any romantic chemistry there… even their kiss felt weird. Hopefully she can get him to shave that beard off.

Joan: Richard is pushing Joan to move in with him and she was thinking about it until she starts pushing to build her new production company. He’s unhappy about this decision, because he knows that all of her time will go into the company and that their relationship will suffer for it… so he leaves her, but Joan is happy being her own boss.

Don: He’s still doing all kinds of crazy things, but when he calls in to talk to Sally she tells him about Betty’s cancer. Betty wants the kids to all go and live with their uncle William, but Don insists that they will all live with him. Sally asks Don to push Betty to let the kids stay with Henry. After hanging up with Sally, Don calls Betty and says that he’s coming home and that he wants the kids to live with him, but she tries to convince him that living with her brother and his wife is a more stable choice since Don never sees them anyways. Ouch…. but true. She wants to keep things as normal as possible and Don not being around for the kids is part of that. We thought that Don was going to head home right away to be with his kids, but instead he heads to LA to see Stephanie and he ends up at some weird spiritual retreat including group therapy.

When Stephanie leaves him stranded at the retreat he calls Peggy for help and we love that she was the person he reached out to since their relationship has always been so special. This conversation was a very important one as Don basically has a confessional to Peggy over the phone about all of his life’s failures and that he never had a chance to say good bye to her. Afterwards he is brought to a group therapy session where he has a break through when he hears another man describe everything that he’s been feeling and he is finally able to let go of everything inside and start to feel some inner peace. and we get to see him smile for the first time in forever.

We were worried that Don was going to end up dead by the end of the episode, and were happy to see that while he may not be there yet, he seems to be on his way to being the type of man he wants to be and not so self destructive. After watching Don hurt himself and everyone he loves for years, we wanted to leave this journey with a little bit of hope for his future and we got that. Episode grade: A-

What did you think of the series finale of “Mad Men” and were you happy with how Don Draper’s story was tied up? Leave us a comment below and tell us your opinion.