Mad Men Will be Remembered as a Television Milestone

With the Mad Men series finale behind us, there isn't much for me to add. I've been on the record as stating that Matt Weiner's two TV epics, The Sopranos and Mad Men, were the best things on TV. Mad Men, considering the incredible depth of its characters, its acclaim, its historical accuracy, etc. make it a TV milestone. In the near future, people will speak of television series in terms of "before Mad Men" or "after Mad Men." Talk about setting a "high water mark!"

The New York Times ran a pretty good recap of the finale. I know you'll want to give it a look, think about all those great characters, and smile. Not a broad smile, just a little one, like the one expressed by Don Draper on that hillside.

For a while, I suspect those of us who came to love that show, and its brilliantly developed characters, will feel a kind of emptiness not unlike the kind expressed by the man in Draper's second seminar - like we're sitting on the refrigerator shelf, waiting for someone to open the door.