By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Monday, May 18, 2015
I wasn't planning to write anything on the series finale of "Mad Men," but the show last night gave a major shout out to Atlanta's most famous beverage company Coca Cola.
Mid-way through the episode, a broken Don Draper called Peggy Olsen, his friend still at McCann Erickson, the company Draper just abandoned for a quixotic journey.
Peggy was perplexed but not surprised by his disappearance. She was wondering why he wasn't back in New York and why he wasn't excited about working on the Coca Cola account, an account he has aspired to for years given that Coke is the Big Whale of ad accounts.
He didn't bother to answer Petty because at that point, he didn't care. He just wanted to say goodbye in a sense. He figured he had already torched that ad man life. Given his distraught nature, she was worried he might be suicidal but she couldn't do anything about it after he hung up.
With Draper now at some sort of spiritual communal retreat that was very very 1970, he ended his last scene doing yoga and humming "ohmmmmm..." Maybe he was about to find a new path, a more meaningful one than advertising, a world he can connect with people in a way that went beyond himself.
And that led to creator Matthew Weiner to finish his series with an advertisement, perhaps the most iconic Coke ad in history from 1971 featuring people from around the world singing a song "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing." It's oddly inspiring for a song that was centered around the commonality of drinking Coca Cola, a act which was supposed to engender peace and harmony. The song touched people's hearts so much at the time, it was one of the few times I can recall where an ad jingle actually became a top 40 hit as well. (In this case, it was a top 15 song in 1972 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart by two different acts: The New Seekers and The Hillside Singers.)
Forty-five years later, the song still pulls at the heartstrings. And the ad was actually created by McCann Erickson in 1971. Did Draper create the ad in this fictional world? Probably.
And Coca Cola on its Twitter page smartly reacted - as any good marketing company should:
If you're not 100% sure Draper came up with the ad, check out what the woman at checkout was wearing at the retreat and what one of the women in the ad was wearing, ahem:
In a way, it was an apropos way to end a show like "Mad Men," focused around the men and women of the advertising world, united by the commonality of creating feelings, words and images that unite us to buy stuff.
Yet many of the other key "Mad Men" characters were seeking their own happiness in their own way. Pete grew up and reunited with his wife. Roger, accepting his own fate in the final chapter of his life, found love himself with, of all people, Don Draper's ex-wife's mom. Betty Draper found peace in impending death as Sally was forced to grow up. Joan may have lost the man of her life but found independence in her new job where she had control, working out of her house in an early version of a home business.
And possibly the happiest moment of all came when Peggy realized she was in love with her long-time colleague Stan. It felt very rom-com when they kissed, but it worked nonetheless. If anybody deserved a true happy ending, it was Peggy.
Will this series finale satisfy "Mad Men" fans? Certainly not the most cynical viewers who probably found Draper's spiritual awakening hard to swallow and Peggy's connection with Stan a wee bit pat. Weiner said before it aired that he was not going to sit around and answer to all the second guessing that was inevitably going to happen. So as the Beatles sang in 1970, let it be. It's a TV series. We can all move forward without being outraged. Accept and seek new climes.
Here's the New Seekers version of "I'd Like to Taech the World to Sing" stripped of Coke references:
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