It's the end of an era as everyone's been saying or an end to an elaborate binge watching session, which is what I faced these past few weeks when I got swept up by the Mad Men series (amongst questionably balancing my finals schedule). You could say that I am very well seasoned in the binge watching culture, but I must say that Mad Men is a show that I wished I watched at the start of the show. Although I believe that if I did, I may have been too young to understand the complexity of the characters and the historical story line. With somehow catching up to the series finale only 3 days after it aired, I couldn't help but have both a sense of happiness that I had finished and a melancholy that it was over.

What was so great about Mad Men wasn't just the story line or the setting. It was its ability to capture audiences without focusing too much on theatrical action or high risk situations. The characters themselves were able to keep you intent and entertained while making you feel compelled to care about their lives. Mad Men showed how we could relate to the people of the 1960s even though their lives were so different than the lives we have now in the 21st century.

And with such an unprecedented show, Mad Men's **spoiler alert** happy ending didn't deflate my expectations. It showed that the main characters' lives at the series finale were at a new start, not an ending. Yes, at times, the content seemed a little corny, but did these characters really need more tragedy and heartache in their lives to be more believable? I don't think so.

So, as the series draws to a close, here are some of the characters that transformed the most from the very beginning to the very end:

** SPOILER ALERT**

Joan Harris

When the show premiered, we hardly thought that Joan would end up being a main character, given her role as the Office Manager and a promiscuous one at that. But, we watched as the buxom red-head fought for what she deserved, giving 15+ years of her life at Sterling Cooper while remaining (mostly) single throughout her adulthood. Joan reflected one of the typical "fast girls" of the 1960s through her striking similarity to Marilyn Monroe. However, Joan did also face her own tough times following her difficult marriage to the surgeon Greg, which was supposed to be her happy ending. We find out though that Joan's true love was for her work, as she dedicated years of her time while being a single mother to her young son and living with her mom. In the end, we find Joan at the start of a new beginning for her and her family. We last see Joan start up a production company in the series finale with the rest of the money she gained from her settlement from McCann and all of her dignity.

Betty Francis

We thought that when Mad Men commenced, Betty Draper would remain oblivious and innocent to the lies and constant betrayals led by her husband. Besides her sometimes childish and wayward tendencies, we learn that Betty is in fact a dime a dozen when it comes to the "trophy wife" persona. By mid-series, Betty truly proved that there was more than what meets the eye to this ice-blond beauty. You couldn't help but be proud of Betty when she finally chose to divorce Don and marry someone who was loyal and true to her. However, the biggest heartbreak of the Mad Men series was finding out that Betty was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. This can most likely be linked back to her daily chain-smoking at the dinner table, but in the 60s, this obvious link between an evening cigarette and death was not yet common knowledge. But even in the midst of this tragic news, Betty made us proud once again when she recognized that the end was near for her and the only way she should live her life was the way she wanted to.

Sally Draper

I bet no one could predict how important of a character Don and Betty's oldest child would turn out to be in the Mad Men series. But by the series finale, I for one had grown to love how spunky and different she was from her parents and the facade they held to guard their lives. There was something so raw about Sally's character. The way she understood the events of history in the 1960s without the charade that her parents often put up to detach themselves. She also displayed how the picturesque nuclear family easily fell apart once true identities were revealed. Watching her parents get divorced, seeing her father sleep with woman when he was married to another, and also figuring out she was among girls who only tried to please others, all contributed to the character that Sally would be come by the end of the series. In the series finale, we find Sally to be Betty's confidante of her illness and the one she trusts to take control of the family following her death. In the final scenes of the show, we see Sally starting to take the place of her mother and showing the strength of her character after all that has occurred through the course of the show.

Peggy Olson

Peggy was by far my favorite character to see on screen, not to be biased. We didn't expect anything from Peggy in the first episode, where she first started working as Don's new secretary. But there is something to admire about Peggy. Her character was one that cannot ever be replicated in a better representation than it was in the Mad Men series. She portrayed the "working career woman" that hardly existed in the 1960s. An independent woman was rare and only lived until she was married and started having children. Peggy, however, broke all the boundaries that were put in front of her. She saw that the only way for her to be treated with the respect of the men in the Sterling Cooper office was to be treated just as one of the boys. One of the most poignant things that Peggy did to date was give up her newborn baby, after finding out she was pregnant out of wedlock from a married man. Only brought up later on in the series, Peggy mentions how it is so easy for men to walk away from their babies they didn't know about, why couldn't she? However, we could see that by the end of the series, although Peggy was proud of her work, she still felt as if she was left out of the crowd without someone who loved her too. Not to worry though, as we finally find Peggy falling in love with someone in the office who actually valued her as his boss. From the series finale, we can say that Peggy did end up doing everything right.

Don Draper

Our series protagonist, no one will forget his suave hairdo, his Clark Kent looks, and his confident voice. We loved how he became a success story. How he ran away from his terrible childhood to become a king on Madison Avenue. We also hated how much he got away with: all the women, all the lies, and all the harm he caused others due to his insatiable need to be loved and valued by others. I am not saying that he was one that was eager to please, but we can see that there was something missing from Don's life that he constantly was on the search for. It was a constant love-hate relationship to watch Don Draper on Mad Men. We could see that his prime and luck was in the 1960s era, where he could be whoever he wanted to be without people performing a background check on his life or even having to produce a college diploma. But despite Don's ability to succeed so often, it was sometimes hard to watch him succeed and at the same time put other people down, like Peggy or Betty or Joan. But it was even harder to watch him fail, which started to occur more often in the later seasons. From watching Mad Men, we felt the same ache for Don to just find what he was looking for, even though we did not now what it was. He would leave everything he knew behind and travel across the country in search of something. We were sometimes even left confused and dissatisfied because we almost forgot that we were watching Mad Men and not a show about a man on the road.

However, the series finale brought together what we finally know that Don was looking for: peace and acceptance. When he tearfully hugs 'Leonard' at the retreat, it is as if we truly understand what Don was missing. His lack of the understanding of love and the sheer acceptance from others. We see that Don finds his solace in Leonard, as he finally meets someone who shared the same sentiment of detachment from others. And then we fell in love with Mad Men all over again.

This is why we saw the ending that we did: the 1970s Coca-Cola ad which united people from all over the world. It wasn't to just put a corny ending to the series. It was to show that people who are very different from each other can still share the same feelings and emotions just as Don felt with Leonard. And just as any other advertisement that Don came up with in the series, those shared feelings can be found from sharing a Coke.