Mad Men creator won't let series "end in a fart"

Matthew Weiner has lofty goals for the series finale of Mad Men. At a Q&A session in L.A. last Friday, Weiner told Jeff Garlin about the seventh season finale, "I just want it to be entertaining and I want people to remember it fondly and not think it ended in a fart," adding, "I always felt like it would be the experience of human life. And human life has a destination." 

Although the "destination" of human life sounds an awful lot like, um, death, Weiner insists that Draper will not buy the farm by the time the series ends. "It doesn't mean Don's gonna die," he said. "What I'm looking for, and how I hope to end the show, is like... it's 2011. Don Draper would be 84 right now. I want to leave the show in a place where you have an idea of what it meant and how it's related to you." Which sounds to me like Don will be in a nursing home in Boca, smoking Lucky Strikes out of a hole in his neck and playing grab-ass with the water-sports instructor, but that's probably why they don't pay me to write for television.

Weiner has high hopes for the series end, comparing his prospects for the finale to the Beatles' Abbey Road. Considering the level of excellence that he and his staff have reached over the show's soon-to-be five-season run, "not ending in a fart" seems like a reasonable goal. Either way, Weiner, who previously worked on The Sopranos, should be encouraged to know that his critically acclaimed series couldn't possibly have a more fart-tastic ending than that show did.