How do you think MAD MEN should end?

Don Draper and DB Cooper:
One in the same?

How the TV series ‘Mad Men’ should end

by Johnny Dee

Don Draper is the star of the TV throwback series Mad Men which takes viewers on a journey through time to the advertising world of 1960’s Manhattan. Its TV debut (July 2007) was set in March 1960. By the end of Season 4 (October 2010), the storyline had reached late 1965. (Season 5 is scheduled for early 2012).
DB Cooper is the infamous Boeing 727 skyjacker who in 1971 bailed out with $200,000 ransom cash somewhere over southern Washington state and was never heard from again.
Don Draper, Jon Hamm’s character in Mad Men, works for an ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. He often calls his now ex-wife Elizabeth ‘Betts’. Draper has always been a man of mystery having assumed a new name following his Korean War days (his actual name is Dick Whitman) and among other recurring idiosyncrasies surrounding him are his debonair and adventuresome ‘man in the gray flannel suit’ persona which appears to be not unlike that of skyjacker DB Cooper.
A three-season contract deal was recently penned between the shows producer Matthew Weiner and AMC-TV which should bring the conclusion of Mad Men upon us sometime in 2014. This also puts the projected last season directly in the wheelhouse of the early 70’s.
The striking similarity between ‘Don Draper’ and DB Cooper first hit me after having seen Draper wearing sunglasses. It was then that I noticed he bore a distinct likeness to the police artist’s sketch of DB Cooper. Other parallels could be drawn from the symbolic image of Draper falling (or skydiving?) from the roof of the ad agency’s building at the start of every Mad Men episode.
With these similarities, how difficult would it be to imagine when the Mad Men series comes to its projected end in 2014 aka 1971, that Draper actually is in fact portrayed as the elusive DB Cooper? It certainly seems logical that D.B. Cooper (“Don” “Betts” “Cooper”) would have one last wild idea up his sleeve – to again run away and leave yet another life behind, this time as a skyjacking thief with a bundle of ‘startover’ money as he, Dick Whitman, aka Don Draper aka DB Cooper, makes a last ditch effort for his ultimate escape from reality and a new unblemished future of which he seems always in pursuit.
Mad Men ought to end its series on that sky-high note. Any other way would be … groundless.

PS: In the last scene of the last episode, my concept has Draper working as a car salesman in California leaving work for the day and tossing his tie and sport jacket in the open window of his yellow 1934 Ford coupe and the very last shot shows him cruising down the PCH sunset to his left. A Beach Boys song would be too predictable. Any ideas of what the final song should be as he inserts an 8-track into the lower part of the dash of his no-nonsense hot-rod? Some songs that might fit the closing scene: I Feel the Earth Move, It Don't Come Easy, and my favorite ... When You're Hot, You're Hot.