Adieu To Don And Mad Men And Women We Love

"Mad Men" ends tonight and so will the closest I will ever experience a fetish in my lifetime.  I'm willing to succumb to the most self-indulgent continuing confection ever captured on film. I ask for no mercy relieving me from "Mad Mens" creator, master storyteller, satirist, and magician.  

How did the world of "Mad Men" collide with present times? For starters, it changed the landscape of the internet. 

It kick started the birth of the fan-obsessed blogs examining every trivial historic reference.The Weiner cruel teases, clues, and conspiracy theories. I always loved the bloggers who would notice that the neckties worn in the show were not historically accurate for that time period. They weren't nearly as thin as you can see in a Brooks Brothers ad from 1962.

A giant esoteric hole will be left where the loyal fan base once existed. Gone will be the thousands of iTunes podcasts. The thousands of Google searches for the "roly poly tumbler" or the "fat Betty."

No one should be sadder than AMC. This once pathetic excuse for a cable station took the bait, Weiner's six-year-old script, where HBO and Showtime stupidly did not. $2 million per show was a big risk when "original content" was a dirty word. 

That was back in 2007. It didn't take the world long to figure out and fall in love with "Mad Men" -  it won the Emmy in 2008. If it had run on network TV it would have been cancelled three shows into the season. "Mad Men" never garnered the audience of "Walking Dead" or "House of Cards." But that remains its singular appeal. It is in the pantheon of a mass-merchandised vehicle, but at the same time maintains an air of elitism.

It also did something else. 

It gave birth to the binge-watcher. It captured the zeitgeist of a new phenomenon, ignited by the plethora of new technology more than willing to "feed the beast."

By 2008, iTunes sold more than 200 million Mad Men episodes. The AMC licensing fees are $3 million an episode.

AMC did not make money from "Mad Men" initially, but stands to make $100 million off iTunes alone. Talk about a revenue stream they never saw coming. Draper would have been proud.

AMCX was spun-off as a public company and with a $2.5 billion war chest, it was a whole new ballgame. 

As Don would say "the future is something you haven't even thought of."

But for me, "Mad Men" is simply remembering a time when my mother's hair was Betty Draper's Clairol Blond Creme Toner #5409. Where she baked, in a Betty Crocker apron, drove a Buick station wagon, and watched Perry Como every Sunday night from our suburban home in Williamsville, New York. When my father was still young, strong, and successfully running Stanley Greens, a wholesale floral business, I would wait for him to come home every night and tell me stories about how he nailed another account. Much the same way Pete Campbell did as he poured his Glenlivet neat. 

Where I would sit on the edge of my parents' bed and with saddle shoes dangling,and watch them get dressed-up for a cocktail party where ladies in sleeveless Lily Pulitzers would mingle with men in Brooks Brothers madras blazers, holding Marlboros and martinis. 

"Mad Men" allowed me to go back to that time when my parents were young and I was loved.

Thank you "Mad Men" for making me ten-years-old again.