You can’t please all of the people all of the time, and that’s the attitude being taken by Mad Men creator Matt Weiner when it comes to how he expects viewers to respond to the series finale when it airs next year.
“The road has been paved for a mixed review, no matter what,”; he says in an interview with Esquire, but admits this is hardly a new feeling — since he’s felt like every season he’s done could be the last. “I hate to say this — obviously ending the entire series is significantly more pressure — but it’s been that way every year,”; he says. “I never knew if the show was coming back for most of the series, so we treated every episode 13 like it was the end. It’s very bittersweet and high pressure. “Did we stick the landing?'”;
For Weiner, bringing the story of Don Draper and his cohorts at Sterling Cooper & Partners to its conclusion has been an emotional journey, and he admits he’s glad that it was him behind the camera to direct the series’ final two episodes.
“There was a lot of the [feeling of a] family sort of being torn apart in a terrible way and at the same time, you’re trying to make the schedule, shoot a script, tell the story, not let the emotions of reality get in,”; he says. “When somebody says “goodbye’ in a scene, it’s not just “goodbye’ when it’s the last day of shooting.”;
The second half of Mad Men“s final season airs in 2015.