Carin Baer/AMC(NEW YORK) — SPOILER ALERT!
A lot has been said about the way Mad Men ended on Sunday night. However, Jon Hamm, who starred in the AMC series as Don Draper, has his own interpretation of what happened to his character.
After being adrift for some time, Draper found himself at a commune on the West coast, and, after finally achieving inner peace by connecting with another lonely man, he seemingly created Coca-Cola’s iconic “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” commercial.
“My take is that, the next day, he wakes up in this beautiful place, and has this serene moment of understanding, and realizes who he is. And who he is, is an advertising man. And so, this thing comes to him,” Hamm told The New York Times. “There’s a way to see it in a completely cynical way, and say, ‘Wow, that’s awful.’ But I think that for Don, it represents some kind of understanding and comfort in this incredibly unquiet, uncomfortable life that he has led.”
Hamm has played Draper since the show’s premiere in 2007. He told the newspaper that Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, had the final image of the Coke ad in mind for some time, and that the cast had a table read of the finale last summer, so that they all knew what was coming.
And while he knows that some people found the characters’ endings hokey, he said that he doesn’t agree with those criticisms.
“There’s people saying, ‘Oh, it’s so pat, and it’s rom-com-y, or whatever it is.’ But it’s not the end of anything,” he said. “The world doesn’t blow up right after the Coke commercial ends. No one is suggesting that Stan and Peggy live happily ever after, or that Joan’s business is a rousing success, or that Roger and Marie come back from Paris together. None of it is done.”
“These aren’t the last moments of any of these characters’ lives, including Betty. She doesn’t have much time left, but damn if she’s not going to spend it the way she wants to spend it,” he continued. “Matt had said at one point, ‘I just want my characters to be a little more happy than they were in the beginning,’ and I think that’s pretty much true.”
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