How and why Mad Men won me over

I'll be the 2 millionth person to weigh in today on the conclusion of Mad Men, and I've scrupulously today avoided reading what others had to say so I don't know if I'm w/ the mainstream or on my own but I found the final episode to be pretty much a success: yes, there were too many strands to untangle and too many plot lines that were just a check-in, and no I cannot buy the relationship between Peggy and Rizzo - and maybe we're not supposed to imagine it could last more than a few hours? - and yes it was hard to keep in mind the complexities of Don's switched identities and his obligations and loyalties to the family left behind in LA - but overall I think the final episode had a suitable balance of mystery, resolution, surprise, and inevitability. I love that we see Don change at the end - maybe not permanently, maybe not forever, but the scene in which the "ordinary man" whom everyone ignores tells his life story in the group session - he's a guy completely the opposite of Don, Mr. Anonymous, Mr. Nerd - and he breaks down into tears about his life and Don comes to embrace him and he, too breaks down - wonderful - it's not that Don saw himself in the man (as he did w/ the hustler to whom he left his Cadillac), as that he sees everything he isn't, he sees that he's the one everyone envies and he, too, feels hollow and insignificant. But it's also great that he doesn't disappear or die - rather, we see very subtly that he gets back into advertising - the Coke commercial closeout - but perhaps with new responsibilities and insights. His teach-choked farewell to Betsy was also quite painful and beautiful - he offered to take their children, and we kind of know he won't, but the very nice family scene in which his daughter is very sweet to Bobby, the now growing up kid brother, reassures us about that family without being saccharine. I know that many viewers were put off by the whole series, but if you stayed with it and began to care about the characters and to forgive them their trespasses, I think the journey was worth the candle so to speak: we really got to see characters, and actors, grow and evolve over a long course of time - in weird way it reminds me of that movie Boyhood - and, unlike other weaker series they may have started w/ strong characters or a great premise and then just lost stem and interest (Damages, The Killing) Mad Men continued to improve and grow (cf Breaking Bad) and it felt always in control, as if Weiner knew if not exactly what would happen episode by episode how he wanted to build the grand arc of his story: women coming of age and becoming themselves, men looking into their past and beginning to be held accountable for their bad behavior, with a few unrepentant scamps thrown in there as well. It's a show that was always on the verge of being cynical and immoral, but ends up being neither. It's a show about people I never thought I would follow or care about or care to know but it won me over - one of the best.