However you feel about the finale itself - and, without the benefit of time to add perspective, I am very mixed (see No. It certainly was a show that inspired its fans to know an inordinate number of episode titles: There will be fights. So to rank them is an exercise in the relativity of excellence an excuse to rewatch them in a compressed period of time (as opposed to the years over which I had originally seen them) a new way for me to see all seven seasons as one whole story with strengths (and sometimes tiny weaknesses) and callbacks a personal exorcism that evoked laughter and tears and, as someone said to me recently, something that could be perceived as trolling. If you watched Mad Men for seven seasons, then you may think, like I do, that there were no bad episodes. And there are plenty of people who loved Mad Men's beginnings more than its later developments - those who watched it for period kitsch or jokes about how kids used to put dry cleaning bags on their heads would soon be disappointed, as Weiner drilled down into his characters and story and began to veer from gimmicks.

Of course, it was never the most fun show of television's second Golden Age. For fans, Mad Men's visual beauty, its attention to history, and its rigorous narrative complexities were their own rewards. For the TV business, the quality of dramas on basic cable was about to hit its apex, and Mad Men would soon start collecting the Emmys to prove it. No one knew Matthew Weiner's Mad Men was going to change television forever when it premiered on AMC on July 19, 2007. To have an ending that some people will worship, and others will hate feels right for Mad Men, a historically important show that was never a mass hit, unlike its AMC brethren The Walking Dead or, as the years went on, Breaking Bad.

The Mad Men series finale was polarizing, with its wild tonal swings, its too-pat closure of some stories, the disappearance of Don as an active participant in his life, and its seemingly ambiguous ending - until you realize that it's not ambiguous at all, at which point it might seem too cute.

Quit or Die Trying by Alison Beard