I am going with my first impression from the first minute on the first episode as my wife watched it.
I bet he jumps off a building.
I don;t think he will end up being D.B. Cooper because that would be stupid.
If [Mad Men creator Matt] Weiner learned that he got found out—that his legendary ending was spoiled by a particularly clever PR person in New York City — would he ever think of changing the ending?
A better question would be, would Weiner trolley the audience by throwing in Don looking at a plane in a late episode, years after the D.B. Cooper theory became popular? A theory he’s been asked about many, many times. For the lulz? (The answer being… yeah, probably.)
An even better question would be, isn’t staring out a window at a plane a perfectly reasonable, even trite, foreshadowing of Don’s dissatisfaction with where he is in his life, indicating his desire to make a change? Doesn’t need a theory to explain it. It fits the story as is.
Although–an ending that has Don on a plane, handing a stewardess a note, then a fade to credits with some appropriate music, would be cool. Could be seen as a typical Don move of giving her his phone number and indicating he’s back to being his old self… or… just maybe… the famous bomb note.
Hmmm… the series is set to end around 1971. And those glasses. And he is heading west. And Cooper’s ghost visit.
OK, maybe.
If Draper turned out to be DB Cooper, it would be the most exciting thing on the show that has happened by a factor of 100, eclipsing the previous most exciting thing to happen, which was Cosgrove getting his eye shot out with a BB gun. I expect the show will end with a whimper not a bang.
It does feel like there’s no huge confrontation brewing, with only 2 episodes left.
Though I do see Roger going out a window before it’s all over. (Too obvious and out of character for Don to do that).
Pedantic point of order: the hijacker actually used the alias “Dan Cooper.” The “D.B.” part came into popular lore due to a media miscommunication (those were the initials of one person the F.B.I. looked into after the hijacking on the off chance that he was foolhardy enough to buy a ticket under his real name).
Correct. Also, from what I read it happened in 1971, not '72.
Also, this would be a terrible ending.
Yeah, sorry but I don’t think so.
10 seconds of research on wikipedia shows that the man in question didn’t even call himself D.B. Cooper… he called himself Dan Cooper and a mistake on the news lead to the adoption of the moniker D.B. That’s not to disprove or disprove the idea, but once you start poking holes in this already far-fetched theory it looks even more flimsy.
It doesn’t really work with Don’s character either. Unless something happens to leave Don penniless it’s hard to imagine that he would be so desperate he is motivated to extort a load of money on a plane before jumping to a likely death.
Except that the man commonly referred to as D.B. Cooper never actually used that name. He called himself Dan Cooper, with no middle initial ever given.
This is just the prediction de jour, now that the timeline has blown out the whole Charles Manson murder plot.
My favorite theory is that the FBI gave Cooper fake parachutes, both times, too bad so sad for the hostages. And the hijacker plummeted to his death, suddenly realizing the flaw in his plan. Had the body (bodies) been quickly found, they’d be just as quick to claim that every jump has risks, nothings foolproof, this was an unavoidable tragedy, yadda yadda. Because they’ve made similarly lame stupid excuses for dozens of worse fuck ups in the decades since.
And if Mad Men were to put Draper in that role, it would be really lame.
Edit: what kind of jerk finds it easier to smuggle a bomb onto a plane, than their own parachute?
Not Don Draper.
The show does feature as much whimpering as it does banging (see what I did there). But I’d peg the lawnmower incident as the most exciting thing. Some one lost a foot!
I dunno. I thought that one when Don cheated on his wife was pretty exciting.
I wouldn’t mind a happy open-ending, full of promise: it’s high time Don/Dick dropped some LSD and confronted his demons. His spirit guide/angel should be the vision of Anna Draper, who loves him exactly for who he is.
How about a final shot similar to Peter Fonda’s in “The Trip”, staring in wonder at the ocean, basking in the afterglow, aspects of his psyche healed after obtaining some crucial insights into himself.
Goddam, I’m gonna miss this show, best I’ve ever seen, just slightly above Sopranos and Deadwood.
Why did Boing Boing never do an episode recap of Mad Men? They do for almost every other freakin’ show on cable.
“I’m supposed to tell you you missed your flight” seems like a pretty telling line from this season, no?
By the end someone gets defenstrated, I still think Don(though Rodger and his jumping from the WW-II cruiser story). The pushing on the SCP window last ep seemed to back up what we see in every intro credits from the first.
Or maybe Don meets up with Bert, and real Lt. Don, and his brother, and all of the other Mad Men dead in a chapel where they all go to hang with the Lost cast.
Yeah, the WWII story sealed it for me. With all the moping he’s doing about the family name being lost, he seems about to go off the deep end–Roger always had a pretty miserable under current anyway. I predict a final, desperate attempt at getting Joan (who is in some ways the most constant woman in his life, and the mother, of course, of his son, and therefore his last chance of family and continuance of the Sterling name). When that fails because-- she’s got this new guy–out the window he goes.
I also predict some moving guys carrying an easy chair down Madison avenue when he jumps, and he slams right into it, in a seated position, after tumbling past a bunch of billboards inexplicably plastered on the building, drink still in hand (Roger’s never without his drink). While above, a plane flies overhead, with an almost too tiny to see parachute descending below it. And then it all fades away, and Ken Cosgrove is seen at a typewriter, pulling the final page out with a satisfied flourish. The end.
I think he turns out to be Alfred E Neuman.
No wait, I mean Radar O’Reilly.
Edited to add
Keith Jarett.
Also: the opening credits.
