Hasta La Gadget!

Scroll through Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and you will be bombarded by tons of news, status updates, announcements, and more, so trying to keep your focus on one thing can be hard as it would feel like you’re being overwhelmed with information. In fact this is why it does not come as a surprise to learn that thanks to technology, our attention spans are getting shorter.

This is according to a recent study conducted by Microsoft on how technology impacts the attention spans of its users. Now the study seems to be more specific towards Canadians and while it might vary from country to country, perhaps there might be parts of the study that you might agree with even if you aren’t Canadian.

That being said the study found that back in 2000, the average human attention span was at 12 seconds. However fast forward to 2013, the study found that the average human attention span has greatly reduced to a mere 8 seconds and if you’re wondering if this is good or bad, apparently it is just a second lesser than that of a goldfish. Yes, you read that right, our attention spans have become much worse since more than a decade ago.

However despite this rather alarming finding, it’s not all doom and gloom. The study has also found that despite our shorter attention spans, we have improved in other areas such as multitasking. It also found that we can prioritize things better, like discovering what needs our attention the most, but if this really worries you, perhaps reducing how addicted you are to your gadgets might be a good idea.

Microsoft Study Finds Technology Shortens Our Attention Span , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

2016 Gaffe Edition

One of last week’s most prominent stories of the 2016 presidential campaign featured former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush trying and trying and trying and trying to answer a simple question about hindsight and the invasion of Iraq that his brother ordered the last time a member of the Bush dynasty sat in the Oval Office. It took five attempts for Bush to arrive at the position adopted by the other GOP contenders: “Knowing what we know now, I would have not engaged. I would have not gone into Iraq.”

For this week at least, Bush’s torment defined his candidacy as passive, disaffected and out of touch. But he can take solace in one thing: Sometime soon, someone else on the campaign trail — more like campaign trial — is going to slip up and give the media some more grist for the “Did he really say that?” mill. It won’t always be fair, and it won’t always matter, but it is inevitable.

So this seems a good moment to talk about gaffes — a term that we in the media have taken to using all too promiscuously in recent years. Gaffes come in all shapes and sizes. The famous “Kinsley gaffe” — a wry distillation named after the term’s inventor, Michael Kinsley — is an instance in which a pol accidentally tells the truth. But these days, politicians can commit all sorts of gaffes.

A tired candidate, delivering a stump speech for the 11th time in 36 hours, might misplace a pronoun or elide sentences together and enunciate something unintended. Or, they may say something in a joking mood that someone else takes way too seriously, or which lands badly. (Google “We begin bombing in five minutes.”)

Sometimes, a politician might get through an oration without a single goof. But in an age of well-funded opposition research, including armies of trackers and meme-generators, there are plenty of ways to read a candidate’s words unfairly. And there are plenty of reporters willing to pick up the phone when these campaign dark-artists call.

There are ongoing arguments, of course, on whether gaffes matter. A lot of research suggests that the public simply tunes out the gaffe melodrama. A lot of evidence suggests the media are the real clowns, every time a gaffe story breaks. But every so often, someone says something that has real, unexpected, substantive impact on their candidacy and the conversation. It falls to the media to discern the serious from the frivolous.

Fortunately, in this young election cycle, just about every candidate has said something that the chattering class has deemed to be dumb. We’ve taken on the task of listing the most memorable of these, ranking them here from the most serious, to the most frivolous. How did we do? Feel free to check our work and make your own argument! It will only make us better at giving you less hype, and more substance.

RANK		CANDIDATE	PARTY
1	<img src="http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/JebBush2014_TTTC.png"	JEB BUSH ON IRAQ It wasn’t just what he said, it was how many circumlocutions he went through to arrive we’re still not sure where. We all mocked George W. when he called himself the decider — now we know what an indecisive Bush looks like.	Republican
2		HILLARY CLINTON: ‘WE WERE DEAD BROKE’ The oblivious chutzpah is a classic sort of gaffe: the one where a politician inadvertently confirms their critics’ narrative. The GOP plans to counter Clinton’s populist economic moves by tagging her as elitist, out-of-touch and entitled. When she insisted that she and Bill were “broke,” after his White House tenure ended, she sure sounded that way. And she knows it.	Democrat
3		SCOTT WALKER ON LEGAL IMMIGRATION Nearly every GOP candidate is going to speak out against illegal immigration. But Walker took things a step too far when he suggested that something needs to be done about legal immigration. A fearmongering appeal (in an interview with Glenn Beck, natch!) to tea party xenophobes that misjudged where the GOP is now, and is headed. A classic Kinsley gaffe, in which he apparently said what he really thinks. Bad move.	Republican
4		RAND PAUL ON BALTIMORE “I came through the train on Baltimore,” Rand Paul said to Laura Ingraham, “I’m glad it didn’t stop.” First, the train always stops in Baltimore. Second, this is not the right thing for a guy who is staking a large part of his candidacy on reforming the criminal justice system to say. Finally, isn’t Paul supposed to be self-styled “anti-elite?” If so, the image of him pearl-clutching his way through Baltimore while traveling to more esteemed locales is not a good look.	Republican
5		BEN CARSON COMPARING OBAMACARE TO SLAVERY Just some general rules. Don’t compare things to slavery. Don’t compare them to the Holocaust. Don’t compare them to 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, or Nazi Germany. If you want to stay on the safe side, leave the My Lai massacre, the Rwandan genocide, and the movie “Ishtar” alone, too. No matter how bad Obamacare is, it can be repealed legislatively. Would that slavery had been the same!	Republican
6		CHRIS CHRISTIE KNOWS BETTER THAN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS In an attempt to convey his preference for a New Jersey citizen referendum on marriage equality, Christie quipped, “I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South. ” Which, no. Think about how that referendum would have gone. Hey dude, you may know South Orange, but ditch the sweeping historical rhetoric about race and the South. We know it’s not the Jersey way, but don’t talk about something you don’t know anything about.	Republican
7		RICK SANTORUM ON GAY WEDDINGS Asked if he’d attend the same-sex wedding of a dear friend, Santorum said, “I would love them and support them, but I would not participate in that ceremony.” Has he not been to a wedding? The most important function of the ceremony is to allow those gathered to proclaim that they will “love and support” the couple. Clever Rick is, essentially, just cheating himself of some canapes and dancing.	Republican
8		LINDSEY GRAHAM’S NONEXISTENT COUP GAFFE Pour some Twitter on an innocent, tongue-in-cheek statement, and you have yourself a gaffe. In this case, Graham was victimized after he quipped, “I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to. We’re not leaving town until we restore these defense cuts.” It was meant to be a ha-ha, but all it took was one crank taking it way too seriously to turn it into a thing.	Republican
9		BERNIE SANDERS’ LOVE FOR SCANDINAVIA Bernie Sanders has fair points to make about the Scandinavian nations and their high level of voter participation and low levels of economic inequities. But when you’re running for president of the United States, you’re sort of required to hew to a comic book notion of “American exceptionalism.”	Democrat
10		TED CRUZ: ‘MARK HALPERIN IS A SERIOUS AND FAIR-MINDED JOURNALIST’ Probably the worst of all, to be honest.	Republican

Candidate Photos: Getty, Associated Press

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BAGHDAD (AP) — Islamic State militants likely killed up to 500 people — both Iraqi civilians and soldiers — and forced 8,000 to flee from their homes as they captured the city of Ramadi, a provincial official said Monday, while the government-backed Shiite militias vowed to mount a counter-offensive and reclaim the Anbar provincial capital.

The statements followed Sunday’s shocking defeat of Iraq’s security and military forces as the militants swiftly took control of Ramadi, sending government forces there fleeing in a major loss despite the support of U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the extremists. Bodies, some burned, littered the city’s streets as local officials reported the militants carried out mass killings of Iraqi security forces and civilians. Online video showed Humvees, trucks and other equipment speeding out of Ramadi, with soldiers desperate to reach safety gripping onto their sides.

“We do not have an accurate count yet,” said an Anbar spokesman, Muhannad Haimour. “We estimate that 500 people have been killed, both civilians and military, and approximately 8,000 have fled the city.” The figures could not be independently confirmed, but Islamic State militants have in the past killed hundreds of civilians and soldiers in the aftermath of their major victories.

The estimates given by Haimour are for the past three days, since Friday, when the battle for the city entered its final stages. The 8,000 figure is in addition to the enormous exodus in April, Haimour said, when the U.N. said as many as 114,000 residents fled Ramadi and surrounding villages at the height of the violence.

Sunday’s defeat recalled the collapse of Iraqi forces last summer in the face of a blitz by the extremist group across much of northern and western Iraq. Later, IS declared a caliphate in areas under its control in Iraq and neighboring Syria. Backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition since August, Iraqi forces and allied militias have recaptured some of the areas seized by the Islamic State over the past year, but the latest defeat in Anbar calls into question the Obama administration’s hopes of relying solely on air power to support Iraqi forces in the battle against IS as well as whether these forces have sufficiently recovered from last year’s stunning defeats.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, said he remained confident about the fight against the Islamic State group, despite the setbacks like the loss of Ramadi. Kerry, traveling through South Korea, said that he’s long said the fight against the militant group would be a long one, and that it would be tough in the Anbar province of western Iraq where Iraqi security forces are not built up.

With defeat looming over the weekend, Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered security forces not to abandon their posts across Anbar, apparently fearing the extremists could capture the entire desert region that saw some of the most intense fighting after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple dictator Saddam Hussein. The militants are believed to be in control of some 60-plus percent of Anbar, which stretches from the western edge of Baghdad all the way to Syria and Jordan.

Al-Abadi also ordered Shiite militias to prepare to go into the mostly Sunni province, ignoring U.S. concerns their presence could spark sectarian bloodshed. By late Sunday, a large number of Shiite militiamen had arrived at a military base near Ramadi, apparently to participate in a possible counter-offensive, said the head of the Anbar provincial council, Sabah Karhout.

Youssef al-Kilabi, a spokesman for the Shiite militias fighting alongside government forces, told The Associated Press on Monday that the Iranian-backed paramilitary forces have drawn up plans for a Ramadi counter-offensive in cooperation with government forces.

We will “eliminate this barbaric enemy,” al-Kilabi vowed. “God willing, we will achieve this triumph and we will not accept anything less than that.” He did not elaborate on the plans or the timing of a counter-offensive.

Since IS blitzed through northern and western Iraq last June, thousands of Shiites militiamen have answered the call from the country’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to take up the fight against the militants. However, the Shiite militias have been widely criticized in Iraq and abroad over charges of extrajudicial killings of Sunnis, as well as of looting and torching of Sunni property.

Militia leaders deny these charges and al-Abadi has come to their defense, insisting that their fighting spirit has helped government forces recapture territory from the Islamic State north and northeast of Baghdad.

“We welcome any group, including Shiite militias, to come and help us in liberating the city from the militants,” said a Sunni tribal leader, Naeem al-Gauoud. He said many tribal fighters died trying to defend the city, and bodies, some charred, were strewn in the streets, while others had been thrown in the Euphrates River.

The final IS push to take Ramadi began early Sunday with four nearly simultaneous bombings that targeted police officers defending the Malaab district in southern Ramadi, a pocket of the city still under Iraqi government control, killing at least 10 policemen and wounding 15, officials said. Among the dead was Col. Muthana al-Jabri, the chief of the Malaab police station. Later, three suicide bombers drove their explosive-laden cars into the gate of the military headquarters for the province, killing at least five soldiers and wounding 12, the officials said.

The extremists later seized Malaab after government forces withdrew, with the militants saying they controlled the military headquarters. A police officer who was stationed at the headquarters said retreating Iraqi forces left behind about 30 army vehicles and weapons that included artillery and assault rifles. He said some two dozen police officers went missing during the fighting. The officer and the other officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

On a militant website frequented by Islamic State members, a message from the group claimed its fighters held the 8th Brigade army base, as well as tanks and missile launchers left behind by fleeing soldiers. The message could not be independently verified by the AP, but it was similar to others released by the group and was spread online by known supporters of the extremists.

___

Associated Press writers Vivian Salama in Dahuk, Iraq, and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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When women ask me as a 52-year-old male why I’ve never been married, it’s always insinuated that there’s something wrong with me, or I must be a swinging bachelor who just needs a good woman to show him the way.

Well, there may be plenty “wrong” with me, but that’s not why I’ve never gotten married. As for the swinging bachelor part, I do enjoy living in Las Vegas and the lifestyle I lead here, but it’s probably more like half a swing.

Instead, my career and family responsibilities are the biggest reasons why I never married. My dad died when I was 18, and my mom was the stay-at-home type who raised six kids and didn’t have a work career.

When your mom lives with you most of your life and needs to do so financially, it’s not conducive to getting married. My mom and girlfriends never mixed as it was – I can’t imagine how it would have been if I had married.

Mom’s no longer here. We just celebrated what would have been her 84^th birthday on May 2. After she died in 2004, I met someone and talked marriage but couldn’t pull the trigger. By then, I’d grown accustomed to the freedom of doing what I wanted to do and also didn’t want to upend my life by moving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. It’s hard to give up a job at my age and take a worse one with less pay, all while not knowing if a relationship will work out in a few years.

When you’ve had several friends from your childhood and college who’ve already married and divorced and don’t have any pleasant memories of the experience, it seemed like a lesson for me. I’m also at the age my dad was when he died, and I don’t want to bring kids into the world now.

That’s why a new study put out by Pew Research caught my attention. (Any study on marriage for adults over 50 gets my attention.) It shows that outside my circle of friends, in fact many people who were married before are tying the knot again. The latest numbers show that four in 10 new marriages include one partner who was married before. Drawing from the US Census, Pew says that about 42 million American adults have gone for a second marriage — or third, or fourth…

I guess someone has to pull the slack for my absence in that category. That number is up from 22 million in 1980 and has tripled since 1960 when 14 million people fit the category, according to Pew.

Since I’m (clearly) no expert on marriage and divorce, I will have to go by what the Pew researchers say. The numbers seem to be up because of the rise in divorce, which has become more socially acceptable over the decades. A lot of us as kids knew plenty of people who should have probably never stayed married but did so anyway because that’s not what people did back then.

But the other reason for more second marriages has to do with the aging of the population, which increases the number of widows and widowers, according to Pew.

And I always thought that getting married would shorten my lifespan.

Of the adults who are married currently, Pew says that about 23 percent have been married before, much higher than 13 percent of the total in 1960.

Overall, Pew talks about how marriage overall is in decline, but those who were previously married are “as willing as ever to jump back into wedlock.” I always say there are some people who aren’t happy unless they’re married, even if they were miserable and ended up getting a divorce.

Pew says about 57 percent of divorced or widowed adults are likely to remarry even though the share of adults who are getting married has fallen from 85 percent in 1960 to 70 percent in the most recent Census data. Despite that interest in marriage, there are 45 percent who say that because of their previous experience they never want to marry again.

And it’s the men who are more open to getting remarried! I guess it’s just the nature of some men to have a steady woman in their lives, and if a guy can’t cook, he wants someone who does. The study shows that 65 percent of previously married men want to remarry, but only 43 percent of women say so. That’s a big difference and likely reflects the experience those women had with their ex-husbands.

The numbers show that 64 percent of divorced or widowed men have remarried and 52 percent of women have. In 1960, some 70 percent of men and 48 percent of women who were previously married did so again.

Causing the difference in the numbers: yup, us baby boomers. There are way more adults over 50 these days.

It’s understandable to want a fulfilling relationship in one’s golden years. As people age, it’s nice to have companionship and someone to do things with and travel abroad. Finding love after 50 has also become much easier with online dating. The younger generation don’t seem to share our desire to partner up – Pew says that 50 percent of those previously married older adults had remarried, up from 34 percent in 1960. But the younger generation, between 25 and 34, aren’t getting remarried. Only 43 percent remarried compared to 75 percent in 1960.

Some of the more interesting stats of the study include the fact that 8 percent of those newly married have been married at least three or more times. And for those who are remarried, there tends to be a wider age gap compared to those in their first marriage.

Meaning: The man left for a younger woman — or she found an older husband.

So has this study changed my own viewpoint on marriage? I always tell people that the only way I would get married is looking down the barrel of a farmer’s shotgun.

Even then, I’m not sure of the decision I would make.

Share us your thoughts on who didn’t make the list (and why) at NowItCounts.com, the new destination for Americans 50+ covering financial, health, beauty, style, travel, news, entertainment and sports.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

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Do not read on unless you’ve seen “Person to Person,” the series finale of “Mad Men.”

“People just come and go and no one says goodbye.” – Don Draper/Dick Whitman

Well. It’s hard to write about series finales, because whatever I say here might be taken as the final word regarding my assessment of the show in question.

So let me say up front: I absolutely love “Mad Men.” It has supplied me not just with many hours of pleasure and contemplation, but it’s been one of the most enjoyable and enlightening shows I’ve ever been lucky enough to write about. Since it premiered eight years ago, I could count on several things where “Mad Men” was concerned: The show would surprise me, it would confound me, it would make me laugh and make me think, it would frequently look amazing and it would experiment with storytelling and have top-notch aesthetic elements. I always knew it would force me to raise my game as a critic — and it did, I hope. You get to be the judge of that, but regardless, having conversations via email and Twitter and in real life with fans and fellow critics has been one of the best parts of engaging with this drama. I’m going to miss writing these reviews and having those conversations a lot. But I’ll miss the show even more. It’s a classic.

But that finale … well, there were three main character threads to it: Joan, Peggy and Don. One of them was satisfying, but two of them, for various reasons, ended up being frustrating. I didn’t expect “Mad Men” to tie everything up neatly — far from it, given what the show has been about for the past seven seasons. But let’s just say that some past season finales were more satisfying and resonant than the series finale was.

The thing is, big chunks of “Person to Person” would have made a pretty good second-to-last episode of “Mad Men.” As the series finale, certainly as far as Don was concerned, it left a fair amount to be desired.

Let’s start with the story line that was most satisfying: Stan and Peggy. Hot damn, that was great.

For several seasons now, “Mad Men” has built up the fabulousness of the phone relationship between those two characters. Of course, their in-person relationship has had many terrific moments too, but on the phone, Stan and Peggy both let down their guards, or maybe it’s more accurate to say they let down their hair (and in Stan’s case, that is a lot of hair). Peggy’s more relaxed and open when she’s half-distracted by the work on her desk, and she never felt pressured or tense during her phone chats with Stan. She never realized a relationship with a guy could be so easy, because all of hers have just been so damned difficult. With Stan it was easy, and that can be one sign that it’s love, but Peggy — so smart about so many other things — didn’t know that. When she did begin to understand the depth of her feelings, wow.

Elisabeth Moss has done so much amazing work as Peggy that we’re used to it by now, but she was just incredible in that phone scene. All by herself, she had to sell the idea of Peggy finding out that she was in love with her best friend. Moss absolutely conveyed that realization with incredible conviction and wonder (and humor: I need a gif of the second time she said, “What?”). All of the Emmys for Elisabeth Moss now, please and thank you.

I don’t mean to slight Jay R. Ferguson; since he arrived on the show, he’s made Stan’s bear-like charisma and down-to-earth persistence seem eminently appealing. Peggy can be pretty waspish in person, and she needs to be with someone who is willing to call her on that behavior, but who also knows that her mean moments spring from a deep well of fear and anxiety. Peggy has a lot of barriers up to the world, and for good reason. No doubt she’ll need to keep those walls up to survive in a harsh environment like McCann, as we saw in an early finale scene, in which she had to fight to keep an account. But Stan has her back in every possible scenario, and with him at her side, there is literally nothing Peggy won’t be able to do. (I can’t help but think Freddie Rumsen would be so happy for her and proud of his protegee — his “ballerina.”)

I especially love that my Twitter mentions lit up like a Christmas tree the minute Stan and Peggy kissed, and some Twitter folk went so far as to wonder whether that scene had been written by me. Ha, nope! But it was absolutely wonderful and I give it top marks. Steggy forever!

The second of the three main story lines: Joan. Here’s one of my problems with the Joan situation: We haven’t known Richard all that long, not long enough for any issues that couple might have to seem believably complex. The one problem we know he had in the beginning was her other commitments — to her child, especially. Richard wanted Joan all to himself, and, early on, he had a tantrum when she made it clear that her son was a priority in her life. He realized what an ass he had been in that situation, and he has been nothing but supportive and kind since then.

So why did he suddenly reject her when she decided to become an entrepreneur? Not only does that not track with what we know of him — earlier, he’d realized that he’d do anything to keep a great woman like Joan in his life — it does not track with what he said in this episode. He was excited about Joan’s prospects and called her entire life “undeveloped property,” and he didn’t say that in any way that indicated that he expected her to join the country club, enjoy her windfall and leave it at that. Sure, his excitement might have partly been the cocaine talking, but his comments were in line with his previous behavior: Richard has been generally supportive of her career and has always prized Joan’s intelligence and drive. But suddenly, he didn’t want to share this new adventure with her, and because she showed some ambition, he shut down the entire relationship? Just like that?

Eh, I’m not going to burst a blood vessel over it, but that development felt as though it almost came out of nowhere. Again, if we knew more about Richard and if we had more evidence by which to judge his actions, maybe that heel turn would make more sense. But it didn’t quite track for me; honestly, it felt as though creator Matthew Weiner wanted Joan to have a sad ending, so he jury-rigged one at the last minute.

Why? Did too many other characters get relatively happy endings and someone had to draw the short straw? In any event, why did Joan have to face another major betrayal from a man? It felt a bit tired, honestly — this again? We’ve been down this road plenty with Joan, and for her to have a functional relationship with a solid, kind man would have felt like a new and fresh thing for her. All things considered, from a writing standpoint, Richard’s sudden exit just felt half-baked. With more set-up, it might not have felt so rushed and forced. If only some of the real estate given to Glen freaking Bishop had gone to Joan and Richard, arrrrgh.

I know, I know — you can make the argument that Joan got a happy ending, sort of. She was well on her way to setting up a thriving new business and I have no doubt that she would be very good at what she did. Holloway Harris was clearly off to a great start (especially because someone named Maureen was helping out, heh). And no matter what, Kevin would be taken care of, thanks to Roger’s largesse. Joan would soldier on, because that’s what Joan does, but I won’t lie and say I didn’t want more for her.

Speaking of Roger, how great is it that he did not actually die, but was last seen in the finale ordering lobster and Champagne? Never change, you magnificent bastard! The one person we all expected to keel over from all kinds of excess was smoking, drinking and eating rich food right up until the end. May the rest of us be half as lucky as that man.

All right, I’ve danced around this long enough. Time to make my big pitch. And Marie Calvet actually supplies me with some of the ammunition I need. We got two scenes of her with Roger — but not one Don-Sally or Don-Peggy scene? In person, that is. Phone calls just aren’t the same — not for me, anyway.

If you liked Don’s storyline and thought it worked well, more power to you. On an intellectual level, I understand the logic of what we we saw Don go though. He once again felt the pain of his failures, a disgust at his deceptions and the deep wound caused by the rejections he endured as a child. This time, however, he was moved to reach beyond his pain to comfort someone else. Yep, I understand all that.

But my response to the episode is not about logic. It’s about having spent eight years with these people, and it’s about the show’s ferocious ability to get me invested in their lives. On the latter score, “Mad Men” was incredibly effective. It’s because the show made me so very interested in their fates that how things actually worked out in some arenas was, frankly, irritating.

“Mad Men” boasts plenty of intellectual firepower, aesthetic ambition and shiny structural experimentation. But, if you will, “there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product.” I have a sentimental bond with the men and women who inhabit the world of “Mad Men.” I don’t love them all the time — sometimes they’re real jerks — but I am always interested in them (well, most of them). I say all that to make it clear that I can’t be logic-ed out of the reaction I had to Don’s storyline. I get what happened intellectually, but it all felt a bit hollow emotionally. Don was off in Don-land, but a whole continent separated him from the heart and the soul of the show.

Of course, Matt Weiner is free to make the show he wants to make. But I have to say that certain things felt off to me. Some of those elements felt decidedly off.

Less than a quarter of the way into the episode, Don found out Betty was dying and he didn’t go straight home? I know that Sally didn’t ask him to return and Betty asked him not to, and I know that his old pattern is to drink and flee, but still. In every scene, I expected Don to get in a car or flag down a cab or hop on a rail car or commission a Learjet or whatever. I kept expecting him to go back to New York, or to at least try to head east, at some point, and the fact that he did not left me in a state of suspended animation.

It’s one thing for an episode to thrum with a secret that the audience knows but certain characters don’t — that’s a tension-building strategy “Mad Men” has employed very well in the past. What I felt during parts of the finale was a skittering sense of frustration. That tipped into irritation once I realized that Don was going to keep on hobo-ing, even as his neglected children risked a fire in an attempt to cook dinner. Go home, Don. If hugs are being doled out, go hug your kids. I was so distracted by thoughts of that nature that at times, it wasn’t easy to focus on what did occur.

Overall, the fact that certain relationships ended where and when they did — over the phone, instead of in person — well, that just felt off.

Don and Sally have one of the key relationships on the show, and the last we saw of them was a difficult phone call that Sally cut off at an awkward moment. For those two characters, for that to be the end of their association on screen — it just felt odd.

What’s even more jarring is the way things were left between Peggy and Don. Here are some characters groups we got to see together in the series finale: Pete and Peggy; Pete, Harry and Peggy; Joan and Roger; Pete and Trudy; Betty and Sally; Roger and Marie Calvet. An in-person scene we didn’t get in the finale: Don and Peggy. We got multiple scenes of Don and Stephanie, but the last time we saw Don and Peggy have a real conversation, it was a few episodes ago, and Peggy was mad at Don for dumping all over her dreams. That was the last time they spoke in person.

In the series finale, the last Peggy knows of Don is that he sounds suicidal and he’s calling her collect from California. That’s it. She doesn’t know where he is or how to help him. So much of the foundation of “Mad Men” has been built on the complicated bond between those two characters — professionally and personally, each one looms large in the other’s life. The series premiere was all about Peggy’s first day at work as Don’s secretary. Their relationship during the ensuing decade formed, in a very real sense, the spine of the show. For those two characters, for that phone call to be the end— well, I can’t convince myself that that felt satisfying.

Before you send me a long email, I can already think of a million reasons why I should just accept how those relationships ended — starting with the fact that they didn’t end. We’re supposed to accept the ambiguity because life will go on for those characters, and they will circle back into each other’s lives. Especially since Don went back to New York and came up with Coke’s famous “Hilltop” ad.

Or did he? That’s what the end of the episode strongly implies. But the episode doesn’t actually say so because … reasons? I do know one thing about that final scene and the Coke ad: Matt Weiner has ensured that he will probably be asked about whether Don created that ad in every interview he does for the next decade of his life. Maybe he will enjoy that as much as I enjoyed being asked, for three solid years, whether Peggy’s sister took her baby (no, she did not).

In all seriousness, I absolutely get that “Mad Men” loves to play around with ambiguity, grey areas and doubt — and I’ve reveled in that fact for eight years. Really, I have! But the vagueness about the ad wasn’t the good kind of ambiguity, it was just a knowable piece of information that the show chose to exclude. It created confusion, not pleasant or thought-provoking ambiguity.

That said, the clues embedded in the episode make it relatively easy to believe that, within the universe of the show, Don created that iconic Coca-Cola ad. The show has been dropping hints about Coke since Season 1, and the Coke references have come thick and fast in the last stretch of episodes (Peggy even mentioned it in her phone call with Don). Also, if you look at the similarities between the words of the meditation instructor said and the lyrics of the song, and add to that the gong-like tone at the start of meditation — which perfectly matched the note at the start of the ad — I think it’s a pretty open-and-shut case, myself. One inspired the other. The kicker is the smirk that broke out on Don’s face, right before the commercial began. Don Draper had clearly thought of a great idea for an ad, one that would get him out of the massive trouble he was in at work and would win a shelf of awards as well.

In seven seasons, “What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons” had evolved into “What you call enlightenment was invented by guys like me to sell cola.” That feels like the show at its most cynical, rather than at its most open-hearted, but Stan and Peggy kissed so I’m just going to let it go.

By the way, I do believe Weiner would be fine with attributing a real ad campaign to a fictional character. In Season 1, we saw Don get the credit for Lucky Strike’s “It’s Toasted,” which was an actual slogan that company used for years. Another note: The timing works. The song and the commercial came out in 1971, and this episode was set around Halloween in 1970.

So sure, the ad makes sense in terms of being something Don could have done. The bigger problem was that various gaps, repetitions and dislocations led to an overall sense of dissatisfaction with Don’s story. One or two gaps we have to fill in? Fine. Five or six big gaps? Eh, that’s more of a problem. We’re meant to assume that, at some point, Don left California and went back to New York, attended to his children, reconnected with Sally, had more dealings with Peggy, dealt with the death of his ex-wife, got back in the saddle at work, and eventually created the ad. Again, as far as Don’s story line is concerned, if this had been the second-to-last episode — great. As a series finale, “Person to Person” felt more than a bit disjointed; it left some important things out and left a lot of characters far apart.

And truth be told, it’s a little deflating to realize that Don’s big revelation led to him to the creation of a memorable jingle. I know that that’s how the show operates — the revelations Don encounters in his personal life often inform his work, which is really the only way he can consistently communicate with the world. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I hoped that, wherever he was in his life or his career at the end of the series, if Don was in a place where he could feel, give and receive love, that would be progress for him. I am glad he got to that place. I just wish the finale had shown him sharing some of that love with his real family and his work wife.

Leonard’s big group-therapy scene was finely acted (excellent work by Evan Arnold), and I know that Don’s heartfelt hug of a total stranger — followed by deep sobs — was meant to be the big emotional payoff of the hour. However, Evan is a total stranger. That moment could not have the resonance of something like “The Suitcase,” or even the impact of a moment like the one in which, some time back, Sally impulsively told her father she loved him. Even Stephanie wondered why Don was with her, not with his actual family. There were a lot of references to mothers and children and abandonment, and obviously Don/Dick is the original sad orphan. But knowing his family needed him so much made it hard for me to invest in what the beaded and bearded folk in California were seeking.

It used to feel like a big deal for Don to confess, but this half season opened with Don regaling a couple of good-time girls with stories of his poverty-stricken upbringing. Don’s phone confession to Peggy was by no means his first confession. He’s been in the process of shedding his lies and sharing his truths for years now, and that process has been especially prominent in the last few seasons. I’m all for Don learning to accept himself and embracing his past, but the Don-Dick revelations don’t have much force any more (partly because there have been a lot of them, partly because this final season should not have been dragged out over two years).

Don’s last encounters with the three major women in his life — Betty, Sally and Peggy — were on the phone. Who knows where Gene and Bobby ended up (maybe they will get lost in transit between the homes of various caregivers and nobody will notice for months). Don hugged a man named Leonard and he never did get rid of Anna’s ring. Don got a tan, shed some healing tears, and went on to create a cool ad (probably). Much of it felt like a prelude or a repetition, but maybe it was supposed to evoke the wheel, if not “The Wheel.” You often end up where you started. That makes sense from a symbolic standpoint, but I felt, in “Person to Person,” Don was re-learning things he had already learned many times.

Don once counseled Peggy to forget the hardest thing she’d ever done — giving up her child. Talking to a distraught Stephanie, he still clung to that belief — that the past can be shed and its pain minimized — but we in the audience know it’s not true and I can’t quite bring myself to believe that the man who worked so hard to embrace his past truly believed that anymore. He has only made progress when he has realized admitted that the pain of the past still has a hold on him. As Don/Dick knew before he arrived in California, the only way out is through.

Ah well. I got one more hour with these people, whom I miss already. What can I say — my relationship with “Mad Men” might be a little like Stan’s relationship with Peggy. When I don’t want to strangle it, I love it, and vice versa.

The truth is, I can’t stay mad at “Mad Men,” and as frustrating as parts of this finale were, I don’t even know if it truly made me mad. My reaction involved more irritation than anything else. But I’ll deal.

Of course, it was always going to sting to lose this show, and the show has confounded me so many times in the past — why not go out on that note? Go ahead and be your idiosyncratic self, “Mad Men.” “Person to Person” has some good moments and some lovely grace notes, but it’s not a great series finale, nor is it an episode I’ll eagerly look forward to revisiting (except for the Stan-Peggy parts). But so what? I knew this wasn’t a show that would go the expected way; I half expected the finale to troll me, and it kind of did. “Person to Person” was messy in some ways that caused me to grit my teeth, but I’ll get over it.

I am still grateful to “Mad Men,” and I’m sad, not just because that frequently amazing journey is over, but because this moment feels like the end of an era. When I got into the TV critic game more than a decade ago, back in the Elder Days, “The Sopranos,” “Deadwood,” “Lost,” “Battlestar Galactica” were on the air. Giants roamed the earth. My sentimentality about the early aughts is not so blinding that I fail see how amazing the TV scene is now — I truly love where the evolution of the medium has brought us. But now that “Mad Men” is over, an era is truly finished; the anti-heroes that once dominated the landscape have exited stage left, whiskey in hand, pursued by various demons.

It might be tied with “Lost” or “Battlestar Galactica,” but the truth is, I have probably expended more words, more mental energy and more time on “Mad Men” than any other show I’ve ever written about. I don’t consider a minute of that time wasted — far from it. It’s been a joy.

As Marie Calvet might say: Je ne regrette rien.

A final hail of bullets:

• Jon Hamm finishes strong by ripping my heart out again during his phone call with Betty. The way he said, “Birdie” was so epically sad. Terrific work by both actors in that scene. January Jones has also been really wonderful in these final two episodes.
• Meredith will be just fine. In all seriousness, yay for Meredith.
• “Keep it up and you’ll be a creative director by 1980!” Way to make a compliment sound incredibly depressing, which is such a Pete Campbell thing to do. Clearly, I was grumpy about the in-person final scenes we didn’t get, but there were some bonus final meetings that I really didn’t expect. It was nice to seek Ken and even Harry again, and I did enjoy the lyrical montage near the end, in which the show checked in on several main characters. Even so, the meeting I liked best was the final scene between Pete and Peggy, even though he once again left her with something she didn’t truly want. And that was a lovely last line from Peggy, echoing a favorite line of Pete’s: “A thing like that.”
• “This way, you’ll see them exactly as much as you do now — weekends and, well, wait — when was the last time you saw them?” Even with her dying breaths, Betty Hofstadt Draper Francis can still slay with the sick burns. Respect.
• I do not understand how Roger and Joan had a blonde child.
• I had a theory before the finale that we’d see Don Draper working under the name Dick Whitman as a mechanic somewhere out west, and his grease-monkey racing antics partly fulfilled that prediction, sort of. I didn’t necessarily predict he’d get rolled by a working girl again, but I can’t say I was surprised at that either.
• “All I got was ‘suitcase’ — yell at me slower or in English!” I’m so glad we got one more classic Roger Sterling quip. And the way he angrily swept out of the bedroom with the blanket arrayed around him was completely hilarious.
• Another reference to a suitcase — look at the scene in which Peggy and Don are on the phone. The poster behind Peggy depicts a stylized suitcase.
• Speaking of the decor in Peggy’s office, the fact that Halloween decorations were carefully positioned on the print of octopus erotica to make it look like the black cat and the skeleton were all part of that disturbing sex scene made me love Peggy even more, which I didn’t think was possible.
• I love that we got a final Joan-Roger scene. Joan’s laugh and her reaction to Roger’s news of his marriage was perfect. “That’s spectacular! What a mess!” And the final word on her awful ex-husband: “So he knows?” “No, he’s just a terrible person.” Yep.
• If Don really gets into the self-help scene and goes to a lot of Est meetings in the early ‘80s, maybe he’ll come across Philip Jennings from “The Americans”!
• We got a final Joan-Peggy scene, which was another bonus. “The partnership is just for you.” I knew Peggy would never take it, but I love that their friendship had come that far.
• Caity Lotz was so good as Stephanie in this episode. And it didn’t escape my notice that Helen Slater was the caring woman who appeared several times in this episode (she came to Don’s aid in a pay-phone scene). So I am going to treat “Person to Person” as an original “Supergirl”-Black Canary from “Arrow” crossover.
• It was fun to see Brett Gelman pop up in this episode. He also frequently appeared in group-therapy scenes in “Go On,” but he didn’t wear a bright red jumpsuit on that cancelled ABC show, so “Mad Men” gets the win in that department.
• The best part of the Stan-Peggy scene was when they kissed, but the second best part was the goony smile she got when she truly realized she was in love. I love Peggy’s goony, in-love smile.
• Betty was smoking until the end. At that point, why the hell not?
• The outfit Trudy wore to her first ride in a Learjet was amazing. 100 fire emojis!!
• If you want more “Mad Men” talk, I was on WDCB Public Radio last week talking for a full hour about the show’s history and context, and I thought that conversation turned out really well. I enjoyed it a lot and hope you do too.
• Speaking of conversations, Ryan McGee and I will have a new Talking TV podcast on “Mad Men” Monday or Tuesday, check the podcast page for that this week. And I will appear later in the week on Tom and Lorenzo’s podcast.
• The last thing I have to say is thank you, from the bottom of my heart. It has been a joy and a pleasure to talk “Mad Men” with you every week. I will miss the show, I will miss writing about the show, and I will miss the “Mad Men” fans that I’ve gotten to interact with over the years. Thanks so very much for reading my words — it means a lot to me. Always has.

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