The central metaphor of the Mad Man finale is its title, “Person to Person,” the phrase which introduces most of the very significant phone calls. The series climaxes with Don Draper finally exposing himself to direct human contact, whether across distance (via phone call) or intensely close (his weeping embrace of the weeping man at the retreat) or both (his phone conversations with Betty and Peggy).
In his westward odyssey Don continues to live his reduced spare life — no car, his only luggage a paper bag (which makes implausible his change in clothes), and an envelop of cash he saves from a call girl but taps to fund a speed trial. If the former suggest his withdrawal from his old life the latter show him still hungry for the expensive thrill. He’s now going by his real name, Dick Whitman, but still living his old Draper.
When the cancer-stricken Betty refuses to let Don come visit he’s reminded of Anna Draper, whom he fled at news of her fatal cancer. Thwarted of his desire to help his own wife he goes to amend his neglect of the real Don Draper’s wife. Her troubled hippie niece Stephanie takes him to a retreat. There another woman’s testimony reawakens her guilt at having given up her son. Stephanie’s abrupt departure leaves Don stranded at the camp. Though he has been immune to all its New Agery, he makes a profound connection to the bald man who sobs at his own nothingness.
The man is aware his wife and kids pay him no attention, whether they love him or not. He identifies himself as a non-entity. He feels like food in a refrigerator, cut off from the life outside, only briefly noticed then abandoned again. Don crosses to the man, kneels, hugs him and they cry together. The nonentity is only apparently antithetical to the handsome, successful ad executive and playboy. But that’s the Draper image, not the real Whitman. The real Dick feels as cut off from connection as the weeping witness. In that embrace Don/Dick makes his first profound person to person connection. He abandons his surface slick and embraces his true but neglected self.
Several phone calls — all person to person — have in this episode brought Don to this self-awareness. In each he reaches out from his chilled isolation to try to connect. In the first Sally shows a new maturity when — betraying her mother’s confidence — she informs him of Betty’s cancer and insists he honour her wishes he stay away. When Betty also insists that, he crumbles, calls her “Birdie,” and starts to cry. Betty’s reminder of his neglect of their children anticipates the weeping loser at the retreat. From the retreat Don phones Peggy to say a proper goodbye. To her he implicitly confesses his false life: “I broke all my vows, I scandalized my child, took another man’s name, and made nothing of it.” In each call his mask drops further, until the weeping man compels Dick’s naked expression of empathic pain.
A new serenity appears in Don’s closing smile, at yoga. But the smile ends in thoughtfulness, not ecstasy. The leap to the famous Coke commercial suggests that Don followed Peggy’s temptation he return to McCann to do the Coke account. Sure, he has found a way to commodify the New Age spirit and his new open soulfulness. That may be the ironic undertow to the ad ending the series. In effect, the yogi's ting gives way the adman's Ka-ching. After all, as the show’s success prompted several advertisers to run Mad Man style ads, why shouldn’t its life conclude with one. But it’s a new Don who’s playing the old game and promoting new values through the old product. So complex and ambivalent is this ending that Don reads as both a sellout and a growing sense of self-awareness. In any case, he's recovered his self-respect and purpose.
The other characters provide lower key replays of that central thrust. Pete has a touching goodbye scene with Peggy, whom he long ago exploited and unknowingly impregnated, before taking his recovered family off on a flight that’s a perk of his amazing new airline job. The Learjet at his disposal is a paradoxical image of his new grounding. The shallow twit achieves a shallow version of Don’s self-discovery and family connection.
Roger achieves his own solid grounding at last. As his teasing her at a Paris lunch suggests, he is happily settling into his solid and sexy relationship with Marie (Don’s latest mother-in-law). He also met his responsibility by settling half his estate upon the little boy he had with Joan.
Joan and Peggy find opposite resolutions. Having tasted — and snorted — the life of idle hedonism Joan prefers the challenge of establishing her own production company. That comes at the cost of her latest lover, who loves her but won’t allow her to pursue her own design. He walks out when she’s on a business phone call.
Peggy rejects Joan’s offer of a professional partnership to stay at McCann, where she will build her career doing what she does best, eschewing the executive plaque. Peggy also finds love in a phone call — with Stan, her longtime colleague. Unlike Joan’s suitor, Stan accepts Peggy for what she is. As a bonus for the new woman, Stan loves the woman he’s working for and Peggy doesn’t have to sacrifice her love for the job.
Their connection encapsulates the person to person theme. Over drinks in her office Stan and Peggy quarrel over her leaving and his supposed lack of ambition. But on the phone Stan admits his love for her and the awkwardness that attends their physical meetings. For them the talk across physical separation finds a new intimacy. Peggy is jolted by his admission and babbles into realizing her love for him — all of which he misses because he’s left the phone to join her. Their connection begins with the remoteness of the phone call but ends in their physical union. They move from “person to person” — aka voice to voice, image to image — to the real person to real person. That -- in a song -- is The Real Thing.
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