Don dreams up the latest Geico Humpday ad. Image via Quartz

“You don’t want to run away with me, you just want to run away” -Rachel Menken

“Are you alone?” -Random girl at bar

No matter where Don Draper is, no matter who he is with, he will always be alone. He has to be: that’s what makes him so damn good at his job.

After eight amazing years of peaks and (some) valleys, “Mad Men” drew to a close this past weekend. Just like with any revered show, the finale was up for some serious debate. But unlike “The Sopranos,” there was no debate that the creator didn’t even intend for us to have over life and death.

At the end of the episode, Don, thousands of miles from Madison Avenue, meditates on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Don lets out a big “ohm” and smiles. He looks happier than he ever has. Then suddenly, where there would be a cut to black, there is a cut to the famous “Hilltop” Coca-Cola ad from 1971.

Woah.

This quick cutaway has turned into a hell of a debate: did Don create this ad? Or did Matthew Weiner simply put it in to convey Don’s emotional state? The stakes are low, and there is no wrong answer here. If I were to choose, I would say I lean strongly towards the former category.

Let me say it for the record: “Mad Men” pulled an “Inglourious Basterds” and altered history. It was Don Draper who created the Coke ad. I lean towards this explanation because even if it isn’t true, it represents what Don is really like as a person.

If Don did come up with the ad, then there is a direct link between his meditative experience and creation of the ad. Don has been on a voyage of self-discovery since the series started. He is a man who switched identities with somebody in order to become the man he is today. He has done a lot of running away, usually to California, in order to do so. And as he sits on that hill, it looks like he has finally found himself.

Well, if Don’s “aha!” moment was a Coke commercial, then he might just be some kind of sociopath. Or, to be a little nicer and put it in the words of Jon Hamm he is an “advertising man.” He might not have grown up amongst the WASPs. He might not have come out of the womb wearing boat shoes. But Don, truly, was meant to be in advertising.

And it just makes so much sense that Don’s big epiphany would involve the creation of an advertisement. He is a creator of consumerism, but also taken much comfort in it; he always seems to inject his own life experiences into ad campaigns he works on. The pitch he comes up with that moves executives to tears in “The Wheel” (the season one finale) stemmed off issues he was having with his family at the time. He spent much of season five working on an ad that involved a couple fighting over ice cream. Then, at the end of season six, Don has a meltdown in front of Hershey over an idea that doesn’t accurately reflect Don’s childhood.

It might sound weird to call advertising an art, but Don certainly has an artist’s need to recycle real life and turn it into a product that can be analyzed and somehow understood. Coming up with ads is a form of meditation for Don; it is how he gets closer and closer to achieving enlightenment.

This is why Don is a tragic figure. His need to be an ad man will always conflict with the people who are close to him. It is in this episode that he realized that Betty, Sally, and Peggy didn’t need him anymore. Megan, meanwhile, didn’t seem to fit into the life plan that he wanted for her.

Don has lived a life unlike anybody else’s. Even when he looked so suave and so cool, he was always a misfit. He will always accidentally push people away. He is a tragic figure. And that is what makes him so damn good at his job.

Long Side Note: I will miss “Mad Men” a lot. That barely describes it. This is a show I have spent nearly one third of my life trying to figure out, and I will no doubt spend the rest of my life wrestling with him. Maybe some nice person will let me write a book about it one day. Not the book, but a book would be nice.

I relate to this show in a strange way. Sure, it is about middle aged alcoholics who were around years before I was born. But what makes “Mad Men” stand out as a period piece is that it is mostly about feelings that are timeless. Existential dread? Check. Suburban ennui? You betcha. It is like “American Beauty,” but it doesn’t shove the themes right in your face. It actually makes you think.

As a commuter, I walk out of Grand Central every morning and walk through Midtown Manhattan. I take a train that Pete Campbell would take back to his home in Cos Cob. I get into a station that Don would use to get back home to Ossining. Sure, these people aren’t real, but they feel real to me.

This era sometimes feels more alive than the present. And sure, it was a terrible and backwards time for human thought. But with the music and the fashion, it was a time that was also very beautiful. “Mad Men” fully embraces the split of the luxury some people lived which blocked them from reality.

So next time you happen to be in New York City, wander around Madison Avenue. Go down to Park Avenue and look up at the MetLife Building. Hum some Don Cherry or maybe some Nancy Sinatra. You’ll feel like you’re walking in the footsteps of the utter debauchery that once took place here.

The college freshman dorm room poster of the future. Image via Business Insider

It’s the beginning of the end as we know it.

Tonight marks the first episode of the seventh season of Mad Men. While this is the last season of Mad Men, it will go on a little longer than expected, given that this season has been split in two halves. Splitting final chapters in two is a popular trend now, and it is the only thing that Breaking Bad, Nymphomaniac, and Divergent have in common.

The sixth season of Mad Men was a bit of a creative letdown that ended with a finale that promised a very important season to come. I am interested to see how these next two seasons will be structured. Either way, each episode will be incredibly important. Now that there is an end in sight, that means that each episode will be building to something bigger. Expect some important decisions, emotional revelations, and internet fan theories that prove to be completely wrong.

You still have a few more hours until the new season of Mad Men premieres. I decided to spend that time thinking about which episodes mattered to me the most. This show’s very best episodes prove that Mad Men is more than just a show about an ad agency in the 1960s. 

Maybe it is premature to be choosing the best episodes of Mad Men already, but I like racking up Internet points, people. Here are what I consider to be the five best episodes of Mad Men to date:

5. Shoot (Season One)

Betty Draper gets a lot of crap for being Mad Men‘s most boring, typically grating characters. Those criticisms aren’t necessarily wrong, but they overlook what a different character she was in season one, and how much of her downfall has to do with Don’s infidelity. Anyway, “Shoot” showed that Betty still has a spark of life left in her. It’s hard to forget how awesome Betty looks with a gun in hand and a cigarette in mouth. Images like this are probably the reason why America is so obsessed with guns and cigarettes. Plus, this episode has Pete Campbell making a good decision for once. It’s fun when a TV show lets its characters do something against type every once in a while.

4. Signal 30 (Season Five)

Once again, Connecticut is portrayed as “the land where white people move to the suburbs and then get sad that they don’t live in Manhattan anymore.” Okay, so that’s fairly accurate. In some ways, “Signal 30″ is one of the least eventful episodes of Mad Men ever, yet it feels like the whole world has come crashing down once it ends. Mad Men has always been about the fear of not knowing what will happen next, but “Signal 30″ is about the fear that nothing better is yet to come. Plus, this is the episode where Lane punches Pete in the face. While this was a long time coming, you will end up feeling bad for Pete. Leave it to Mad Men to make you feel bad about something that should have been cathartic.

All of those GIFs of Pete being punched in the face are fun, but they strip the moment of its context and OH GOD I’M POSTING IT I’M POSTING IT HELP ME

3. The Suitcase (Season Four)

Much has been said about “The Suitcase,” and most of that stuff is much deeper and better than anything I can ever come up with. Quite simply, “The Suitcase” contains the best writing of any Mad Men episode to date. This is the episode where all of the wounds in Don and Peggy’s contentious relationship finally opened. It is the episode where Don finally exposed some of his deepest insecurities. It’s the episode where Duck Phillips tries to poop in Roger’s chair. In short, “The Suitcase” contains everything I love about Mad Men.

2. Far Away Places (Season Five)

Season five was the best season of Mad Men yet, as it took the show to places well beyond what anybody could have imagined from its original premise. “Far Away Places” feels more like David Lynch than Matthew Weiner, with a majority of it feeling like it could have taken place in Don’s head. This episode is told in vignettes, and earns “legendary” status from Peggy’s movie theater encounter and Don and Megan’s fight over ice cream in a Howard Johnson’s. However, what truly makes “Far Away Places” a series best is Roger’s acid trip. You know, the one where Roger hears opera coming out of a bottle of whiskey as “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” also plays in the background. It might seem unfair to rank one episode off of one scene alone, but the scene really is that good.

1. Shut the Door. Have a Seat (Season Three)

This was the finale to season three, a season that was only occasionally good. To me, this is still the best episode of Mad Men. This is the one in which Don finally decides to jump the sinking ship that is Sterling Cooper in favor of a new company that will finally have his name on it. It is an episode filled with the kind of bold business decisions that might have been boring in other circumstances, but are so compelling here. But of course, no good thing happens on Mad Men without a bad thing happening first, and this exciting new chapter in Don’s life is marked by the complete disintegration of his marriage. As the show was beginning to get a little stale, “Shut the Door. Have a Seat” saw Mad Men tinker with its own formula with thrilling results. Again, Mad Men is about the uncertainty of the future. Yet, this is the first time Mad Men tried to embrace blind optimism, and it worked.