I Finally Understand Madmen

It took me a while to get it, but I have a good excuse-- I was distracted by all the outfits: Meghan's beautiful outfits and Peggy's atrocious outfits and Pete's silly outfits, Joan's voluptuous outfits and Betty's evolving outfits-- ironically, I share the same blindness as the men on the show . . . but I can't be blamed because of the "curse of testosterone"; anyway, better late than never, and so here it is: the show's theme is essentially the title of Hanna Rosin's candid book The End of Men and the Rise of Women; Don's infinite fall during the theme song is more than a tragic symbol of his own career arc . . . it's a symbol of the decline of all men in America; as the show grinds to a close, the women are gaining power and thinking for themselves-- Joan as a partner and Peggy as a talented executive and Meghan as an actress and Betty as an assertive and intelligent housewife who realizes her talents were wasted-- while the men are dinosaurs (Lou) or hipsters (Roger doing acid, Stan and his beard) or insane (Michael cuts his nipple off!)-- and when Don and Harry Crane leave the hip L.A. party and head out to sip whiskey at the old man restaurant with the paneled decor and a stone hearth, you can sense that the good times are over . . . maybe Don will regain some tiny shred of relevance, or achieve sobriety, but that's hardly a happy ending to the show, and I'm assuming it will end far worse than that.