It's the beginning of the end for "Mad Men." As the second half of the series' final season begins at 10 p.m. EDT on AMC, here's a refresher on how previous seasons ended:
—Season 1 Finale (aired October 2007): Shocking! Peggy Olson gave birth to a child fathered by her married colleague Pete Campbell — never having realized she was pregnant. Don Draper learned of the suicide of the brother he had cruelly turned away. And he delivered one of his all-time most affecting advertising pitches, for Kodak's Carousel slide projector — which Don dubs "a time machine" — as he rhapsodizes about consumers creating a deep, sentimental bond with this product. Not a dry eye in the conference room.
—Season 2 Finale (aired October 2008):
Don returned from a long and emotionally taxing trip to California with the Cuban Missile Crisis keeping everyone from coast to coast on edge. Pete, despite being wed, told Peggy that he loved her, whereupon she let him know about his having fathered a child with her and that she had given it away: "I could have had you in my life forever if I wanted to," she told him crushingly. "But I didn't want to." Then Don's wife Betty told him she was pregnant. Neither looked happy at the news.
—Season 3 Finale (aired November 2009): Sterling Cooper was about to be sold from under them, but Don, Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper and Lane Pryce roared back with a plan to make a fast exit and form their own new agency, initially basing their new shop — Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce — in a hotel suite. Meanwhile, Betty and Don began divorce proceedings, and Betty, along with their new baby and about-to-be-new-husband Henry Francis, were seen on board a plane for Reno, Nevada.
—Season 4 Finale (aired October 2010): Don invited Megan, his sexy secretary, to accompany him and his children to California where she would take care of the kids. Romance bloomed in the Golden State, and before the episode was over they were engaged. Back in New York, Peggy signed an important new client, but that good news was one-upped by Don and Megan's announcement. And there was one unpleasant loose end for Don: breaking the news to Faye Miller, on whom he had been cheating. Referring to Don's betrothed, Faye snapped at him, "I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things."
—Season 5 Finale (aired June 2012): Pete was trying to end his affair with a mentally troubled woman who, like him, was married and miserable in the suburbs. And Megan, trying to make inroads in her fledgling acting career, asked Don to assist her in getting an audition for a TV commercial the agency was producing for one of its clients. When filming began, Don, unaccustomed to being upstaged by his women, retired to a bar where, as "You Only Live Twice" filled the soundtrack, he was approached by a beautiful woman who asked the key question: "Are you alone?"
—Season 6 Finale (aired June 2013): Don told Megan he wanted them to make a fresh start in California, where she could better pursue her acting career. But then, as he continued to spiral downward, he torpedoed his heartwarming pitch to Hershey executives (and put his own career in jeopardy) by divulging his grim childhood as an orphan in a brothel, and advised them that Hershey bars need no advertising. His colleagues swiftly demanded he "take some time off and regroup." And when he reversed himself on his plans for California and told Megan they would be staying in New York, she walked out on him.
—Season 7, first half finale (aired May 2014): Megan, living out in California, let Don know she wanted to end the marriage. Bert died watching TV coverage of the first moon landing. And in a last-minute power play to save SC&P, Roger brokered a deal to sell 51 percent of the agency as an independent subsidiary to McCann Erickson, with him, Don and Ted receiving a windfall as part owners. Thus was life set to go on, richly. But in the closing scene, Don had a vision of Bert, in sock feet, posthumously performing a song-and-dance number, "The Best Things in Life Are Free" — foreshadowing the final seven episodes, which will find these mad men much wealthier, but not necessarily content.
