It seems as if the series will end sometime in 1969. Did you always foresee Mad Men wrapping up before 1970?

MW: No, and I'm not going to say when it ends — you have to watch — but in my fantasy of the show going on this long, which I did not believe it would when I started it, I did want to cover a long period in these characters' lives, and unlike a lot of TV, not make it an abstract… and keep doing stories and never have it move on. The intention of the show starting in 1960 was to reframe or revise people's concept of what it was like to live then, and show how similar it was to now, or how different it was — and all of the sex and all of the reframing of that, and not being Leave It to Beaver. Still, I would hope we would look back on the show and look back on the people with nostalgia. And that is kind of satisfying to me, to have a long journey in the characters' lives where all these things happen to them. Their lives are very dramatic, granted, but there is an accumulative effect to it. That was my hope, to ask, What is life? I'm interested in the entire passage of time in these people's lives. When we started the show in April of 1960, it was clearly the height of the '50s. Growing up, I graduated high school in the mid-'80s, and drastic differences between the late '70s and the early '80s are not apparent until much later.

You've spoken before about the Beatles' Abbey Road and specifically the song "The End." What do that album and that song — besides the title in that overt sense — potentially signify here?

MW: Well, I mean, the Beatles are just an incredible story, one that will be told over and over again, and we're not really telling that story. But to think about them, all the work they did before they came to the United States, and that they are gone by the end of this period. The leaps and bounds of creative expression that went on is pretty impressive. Looking at that last album, even though it's not the last album released, there is something about that medley that is, to me, the apex of the collaborative experience that they had as a band, the differences that they had as a band, and I just always loved that the album actually ends, almost like The Sopranos did, in the middle of a song. It's just, "Cut!" You know, that last note of "Her Majesty"? So I just admire it in artistic expressionism, looking at wrapping up the show. I'm writing an ending, and it will, whether I like it or not, frame the entire 92-hour experience of the show in some way. So, I was impressed with how the Beatles dealt with that responsibility.