Mad Men: 10 Greatest Episodes

It’s the “twinge in your heart” that causes the season 1 finale to linger long in the memory, 10 years later, like the nostalgic ache for years slipping further and further away.

Matthew Weiner’s first season climax tackles themes deeply personal and internal, comparing the precariousness of the present to the infinite possibilities of the future, and our grasp on the past.

Don’s iconic Kodak presentation, turning the Wheel into the Carousel, is the hard-hitting lightning bolt of emotion that everyone remembers, for the rolling thunder in the heart that inevitably follows. It touches on the universal human longing to go back to the past, the only thing in this life set in stone, and the nostalgic magic that sparkles when we hear a tune or see an image we thought we’d forgotten.

All episode, we’d seen characters discover their tenuous grips on their own realities, from Betty’s spurred urge to peek behind the curtain of her marriage, to the sudden thud of Don’s discovery of his brother’s suicide, and even to Peggy’s decision to leave a path forever untravelled by rejecting her newborn baby, whose very existence was revealed to her own shock.

Yet it’s the final scene that ties everything together; time and hope are fleeting, and in no more than a moment, the future you’d desired, the future that should be, is gone. Though the past is relegated to memory, machines like the Carousel are capable of freezing these memories in time forever.

Of course, we can only look back, in pain and in pleasure, but that’s better than moments that never came to pass, like Don accompanying his family for Thanksgiving, that exist only as intangible fantasies. The Wheel is a real stunner.