[SPOILER ALERT: a minor one, but if you haven't seen the last episode of this season of Mad Men, I discuss the last scene.]

Whatever you thought of this season of Mad Men (it was not my favorite, it seemed to drift sideways a lot despite having so many of those oddly paced moments I love) , I loved the final shot of the final episode: Don and his children looking at the whorehouse he grew up in. It felt like the series ending shot, in a way.

This is where America comes from. This is where advertising comes from. This is where I was born. From vulgarity and nothingness and human relationship as commerce, I constructed this beautiful self, and maybe it's an illusion, or maybe it's the truth, or maybe they're one and the same.