Mad Men has always been a show that sparks conversations about darkness and death. Online discussions of the series often get reduced to questions like: When will Don Draper die? Or: Is Pete Campbell going to die this season? Or: Since Megan Draper has been dressing so much like Sharon Tate, she'll totally wind up murdered eventually, right?

Viewers' minds have often turned to such shadowy, macabre places for understandable reasons. With all its symbols of death, disturbingly homicidal dream sequences, and moments when characters actually have met their demises, in ways unexpected and acidly funny (Ida Blankenship) as well as surprisingly brutal and sad (Adam Whitman, Lane Pryce), it's not exactly a leap to associate the sight of Don Draper with the Grim Reaper. After all, this is a drama centered on a man who assumed the identity of a dead man.

Given all that, some Mad Men fans may have approached Sunday's finale of season seven, part one, with the expectation that some buckets would definitely be kicked. But while one notable member of the agency — the last of Sterling Cooper's founding partners, Bert Cooper — did indeed pass away, the overall focus of this audacious, big-hearted, and occasionally zany episode was not on death. It was on renewal and hope, the kind of existence-affirming emotions that bubble up when men take their first steps on the moon, women make their first major presentations in important meetings with key clients, and the ghost of Bertram Cooper does a soft shoe while wearing an extra-ridiculous pair of his signature socks. It was as if Matthew Weiner had finally gotten fed up with all the expiration prognostication that's been rattling around the series for so long and responded by saying: "Forget all the death. Actually, this show — at least tonight, anyway — is about life." It was an episode called "Waterloo" in which Bert Cooper referenced Napoleon's famously disastrous Battle of Waterloo, but then, metaphorically speaking, followed up on those comments by belting out Abba's "Waterloo." (Actually, the song he performed was "The Best Things in Life Are Free." But more on that momentarily.)

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The hour opened with the liftoff of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, a launch that immediately sparked concern that the spacecraft would not reach its lunar destination safely. "What if it's quicksand?" Stan said of the moon's surface during one conversation. "The astronauts may not make it," Peggy told little Julio, expressing her anxiety about the journey and its potential impact on the Burger Chef campaign, "and then what are we going to say?" But by Sunday, July 20, 1969, there they were: the men on the moon. And there was everyone on Mad Men, transfixed by the TV coverage and watching the seemingly impossible happen before their eyes.

There was something beautiful and evocative about the shared Apollo 11 experience that Weiner, who directed this episode, captured, complete with the awed looks on all those faces — Peggy's, Don's, Roger's, Bert's — and the faint sound of cheers bleeding through the walls of the Indiana hotel where Peggy, Don, Pete, and Harry were staying. On previous occasions, shared cultural moments on Mad Men, like the assassinations of JFK or MLK, usually involved communal moments of shock and grief. But that giant step for mankind caused something rare in our beloved self-involved cigarette-smokers of the ad world: pure wonder. "We can still feel the pleasure of that connection, because I realize now, we were starved for it," Peggy later said during her Burger Chef presentation. All the concern about that rocket ship meeting a fiery end gave way to feelings of inspiration and unity, to Don advising his daughter — all dolled up and repeating the Apollo 11-naysaying words of the disaffected teen hunk in her presence — not to be cynical. It was life, winning out over death. And there was more of it where that came from.

There was Don, being threatened with termination from the firm because he had violated his contract by bursting in on that Philip Morris meeting and costing SC&P the Commander Cigarettes business. But then there was Roger, figuring out a way for McCann Erickson — the same agency that almost acquired Sterling Cooper in season three — to buy out SC&P for real this time, in a deal that put Roger in control, got all the partners rich (not counting Harry, who missed the boat and confirmed that he is, officially, the Mad Men equivalent of Jerry/Larry from Parks and Recreation), and resuscitated Don's career.

There was Sally, sporting a hair helmet so epic that it may have been able to pick up its own signals from Apollo 11, opting to kiss the nerdy Neil, whose arms weren't so strong, instead of his hunky brother. With that romantic moment by the telescope, she seemed to be taking her father's advice about rejecting cynicism and embracing the stars, as well as a kid who sees something profound in the way they shine.

In a scene that echoed the shaky Don-and-Ted flight from last season's seventh episode, there was Ted Chaough — who suddenly shifted from season-seven non-entity to unhinged liability — threatening to crash a plane containing two Sunkist representatives and, later, announcing his plans to quit advertising. But when confronted with the McCann Erickson money Roger so skillfully brokered and, more importantly, Don's weighty, cautionary words about leaving the business — "You don't want to see what happens when it's really gone" — Ted found the oxygen to continue. As Pete so eloquently put it: "The clients want to live, too, Ted!" Well, Ted Chaough wants to live, too, Pete! So does everyone in this episode.

That's why Megan confirmed that her marriage to Don is over, in a manner as quick and unceremonious as the way the two decided to wed back in season four. Don promised that he would take care of Megan, post-divorce. But sitting in the L.A. sunshine with a script in her hand and a bikini on her bod, a teary Megan insisted she'd be fine, because, in fact, she has been fine living on her own this whole time. She never needed Don, which is what made the marriage work initially and, inevitably, made it unnecessary when each found sustenance on opposite coasts. Narratively, the show didn't wallow in the sadness of that marriage's end. Instead, Mad Men gave us one slightly sad conversation, then swiftly moved on with another classic Pete Campbell quip: "Marriage is a racket."

The positive-beats-negative theme was also evident in the way Peggy Olson reached inside herself and found a way to comfort Julio when he told her he was moving to Newark. At first she looked uncomfortable in the role of nurturer, but then Peggy did something amazing: She turned into a mom at precisely the moment she came to terms with the fact that she had decided almost a decade ago not to be one. "She doesn't care about me!" Julio said of his mother. "Yes, she does," Peggy insisted. "That's why she's moving." Then she quickly caught the one tear that threatened to run down her face, and reassured that little boy, who was almost the same age as Peggy's own little boy would be, wherever he is, that everything would be fine. Later, during the Burger Chef presentation, she referred to that 10-year-old kid who's perpetually sitting in front of her TV set as if he were her own, eliciting a puzzled look from Don and a positively strained one from Pete. In that moment, Peggy was doing what Don's always done so well: modifying the truth of her story in a way that made it fit the moment. (In a related story: GIVE ELISABETH MOSS AN EMMY ALREADY.)

Peggy also made the truth of the moon landing fit her presentation, which, my God, was just a thing of beauty, wasn't it? The fact that Don handed the reins over to her using the same words Peggy had reserved for him — "Every great ad tells a story. Here to tell that story is Peggy Olson" — was like a continuation of the dance those two did in "The Strategy." The way Peggy spoke of connection and of family, the way she essentially summarized the entirety of the late-1960s — "There may be chaos at home, but there's family supper at Burger Chef" — made it clear what this was: This was her Kodak carousel moment. It was the passing of a generational torch. It was one small step for Peggy Olson and a giant leap for womankind. It was the most hopeful scene in an episode filled with them.

Or at least it was until a dead man started to dance. When Bert Cooper broke out into his episode-closing Broadway number from beyond the grave, it felt bizarrely incongruous for a second, but then wholly, weirdly right, perfectly in keeping with a show in which Ken Cosgrove once did a time step while declaring "That's my job!"

The song Bert sang, as was noted almost immediately on social media, was "The Best Things in Life Are Free," a tune that first appeared in the 1930 musical Good News. Its lyrics, about how "the moon belongs to everyone," obviously slid in nicely with the Apollo 11 theme. But Bert's message — one that, notably, Don only heard when he decided to walk away from Roger's company-wide delivery of the sad news of Bert's death — was exactly what the title of the song suggests: that money doesn't matter and that life's true joy is derived from things that are not material. That's an ironic message for a lifelong ad guy to deliver, but it confirmed everything that Don had said to Ted in that partners' meeting: that he was really in this business not for the money or the ego-stroking, but because he loves it, loves it enough to write taglines and coupons if that's what it takes to stay in it.

Yet it wasn't the words to "The Best Things in Life Are Free" that best summarized the tenor of this episode, but the lyrics to another 1930s song, the one Roger quoted during his final conversation with Bert. "Let's have another cup of coffee, let's have another piece of pie," Roger had said bitterly about Bert's attitude toward moving forward with Cutler's plan to assume control and dismiss Don. Those lines come from Irving Berlin's "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," a tune that would eventually become a jingle for Maxwell House. And when uttered without irony by a member of SC&P's old guard, its lyrics convey what Weiner and his fellow writers seemed to be saying throughout this wild, weird, happy, instant-classic pseudo-finale of Mad Men:

Why worry when skies are gray

Why should we complain

Let's laugh at the cloudy day

Let's sing in the rain

Songwriters say the storm quickly passes

That's their philosophy

They see the world through rose-colored glasses

Why shouldn't we?

Just around the corner

There's a rainbow in the sky

So let's have another cup o' coffee

And let's have another piece o' pie!

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