Mad Men Game Goes Down to The Wire

Quickly to the break given the spoiler-ific episode:


We are so going to miss this show.  So very good.  And Weiner does whatever he wants, including a bit of fan service by giving us more Alison Brie than we could have reasonably expected.

Turns out our players kind of suck, as Betty is the closest to death and yet no one picked her.  Someone had to buy it for all of the smoking in the series, for the cursed Lucky Strike account that cost us Sal, and because  we used all want Betty to die in the first several seasons.  At least Betty will look great as a corpse with the instructions she gave Sally.

Yowza.  Betty's reactions all along were tremendous, and it gave us some very good Henry and then some very great Sally scenes.  Any fear that we would not see much of Sally in the endgame was misplaced.  Kiernan Shipka is rocking this show.

If I had set up a wager of who gets married, would anyone have had Pete and Trudy?  No.  Oh my, Pete bails on McCann, Duck gets one last win, and Trudy forgives Pete?  Well, she probably only knows about the philandering and not the rape.  Yep, Mathew Weiner gives the rapist a happy ending, while killing the woman who seemed to finally develop some real empathy and self-awareness. 

Don?  Oh my.  He gives up his car to a junior con man who robbed not just the Veterans but Don, as Don had a great evening, was actually honest about some key stuff, and then lost the joy in a late night beating.  We can all guess that the bus is going to California.  All we know for sure is that Don put advertising in past tense.

Anyhow, of our players:

• Wendy had one character appear but not die: Duck.
• Noah had not a single character appear, continuing his streak.  Indeed, Jim Cutler, Mona Sterling and Bob Benson have not been seen at all in this last half of the last season.  As Pete would say, "Not great, Bob!"
• Rob had two of his characters play central roles: Henry and Pete.  But neither are at risk since Henry has to either raise Don's kids or tussle with Don about the kids and Pete is getting the happy ending.  No Ginsberg, Crane may have been seen for the last time last week, and no daughter of Sterling.
• Chip still has Don as his best bet.  Don busing west?  Hmmm, dangerous?  Not so much, but very interesting.  Ted may still crash his plane, Bobby is out of risk since only his mother is the member of his household slated to die.  Megan is gone and Sal is gone gone.  

So, at this point, everyone loses but the house since the house, of course, picked Betty.

Good times.  But sad times since we have only one episode of this awesome, awesome show.