Apparently, nobody died wishing they'd spent more time at the office. Who said that? Nobody ever at Sterling Cooper, even if it does sound like something Don Draper might have conjured up to sell us a holiday on Mohawk Airlines.
For seven seasons, the office has been where Mad Men's characters feel most alive, and let's face it, it's also the viewers' happy place.
The previous three episodes focused on life after hours. There's been loads of lonely sex but almost no frisson.
"Time & Life" was the first great episode of the final, final season precisely because it kept calling everyone back to the office. We were finally reminded that this is an ensemble, not a string of monologues.
The episode benefited enormously from an actual plot. OK, it was all very deja vu as the agency was threatened with a merger by their new owners at McCann Erickson. Naturally, Don and Roger and Peter scrambled to salvage a new agency from the wreckage… "California, I'm coming home", as Joni Mitchell might have sung on the soundtrack if Matthew Weiner wasn't such a stickler for accuracy (it came out a year later, 1971).
But this season, Don's honeyed pitch didn't work on wizened overlord Jim Hobart. In 30 days, he says, they will all die and go to "advertising heaven… Buick, Nabisco, Co-ca Co-la."
Sure, the partners are all sworn to secrecy about the firm's imminent demise, but like all office secrets, this one leaks out.
Did I say all office secrets? This episode included satisfying reminders of two of the biggest, the SECRET LOVE CHILDREN.
While Joan and Roger have a couple of gentle moments, the true paternity of her son Kevin appears to be so under wraps that even Daddy's forgotten. Why else, roaring drunk with Don, would Roger get maudlin about his only child being a daughter, and how his name will die with him?
Far more satisfying was the moment between Peggy and Pete. It started when he looked over his shoulder at Peggy, awkward in the embrace of a little girl. Then he calls her into his office to share the news that the firm will be shut down, and we remember the full stretch of their shared history. Those first season trysts in his office, captured in silhouette. That revelation on the couch, end of season two, that she'd had his baby and given it away. Now, almost light years later, they certainly don't discuss that - have they ever? But there's a familiarity in the way Pete confesses his fears that reminds us how profoundly these two know each other.
Yes, this episode was a long time coming for those of us on Team Pete. He's had so little so far, frustrating admirers of this ridiculous, complex character as served up by Vincent Kartheiser, the best actor in a team lousy with talent.
Pete has always been one of the three most important characters on the show. Peggy is the future, the one evolving to embrace all the ambiguities and ambitions of the next century to come. Don Draper remains trapped in the past, a character drunk on nostalgia and regret. He's never been exactly relatable - unless you too are devastatingly handsome with a tragic past, in which case, you should totally milk it.
Pete has always been the one whose flaws are both appalling and identifiable: arrogance, insecurity, failure, embarrassment. He makes fashion mistakes and terrible strategic calls and is petty and cruel and slimy. At times, Weiner has pushed his character into terrible places - like that rape episode - but mostly Pete's flaws come from folly. Pete is us.
Maybe that's why the fans love to hate him so much. There are fan videos devoted to the scene where Pete gets punched. But I cheered when Pete punched the private school principal who rejects his daughter and insults ex-wife Trudy. Turns out, the hostility was really about the ancient feud between the Scottish clans of the McDonalds and the Campbells.
"The king ordered it!" Pure Pete magic.
I know, we've gathered here to talk about Peggy and Stan, right? That's the scene that has everyone gaga on Twitter. I understand the desire to have these two run off together, but no. Just no. It's even dumber than Peggy's previous-season affair with Ted, now unmasked as a dull sheep (and by none other than Pete).
Peggy and Stan are the classic office couple; like Peggy and Don, they get their chemistry from the way they work together, not from what they'd be like between the sheets. Yes, Stan has made a pass at Peggy, but as we've come to know, he's not that discriminating, and she was right not to take it personally.
Now the scenes where they tried to cast children for an ad make sense. Stan gets to be everyone's groovy uncle. Peggy is uncomfortable, especially when she's stuck with one little girl whose mother needed to take another child to another audition.
And it is Peggy who is judged by the reappearing mother when things go wrong and the girl under her care staples her finger and is whisked off to Emergency. If you ask me, the kid got off lightly as accidents go at Sterling Cooper, as she hasn't lost a foot (remember that?) or an eye (ask Ken).
But then it's just Stan and Peggy working late, talking about that stage mother, or as Stan finally realises, not about that mother at all.
"No one should be able to make a mistake and not move on," says Peggy. "She should be able to live the rest of her life. Just like a man does."
So for the third time in the series, Peggy shares her secret, and it's as sad and tough as it needs to be, especially when she gets up and says she's got to get back to work.
When Stan and Peggy talk again the next day, cradling phones in separate offices on the same floor, you know the bond is stronger. I hope they blow McCann Erickson out of the water with all their great work.
As for Roger, Joan and Don, I don't know.
Joan obviously fears the future, because she knows the neanderthals at the next firm don't see her in it. She may have to fall back on her rich suitor, an ambition she'd long ago outgrown.
For all his evolving taste in neckties and moustaches, Roger's always been a man of the past. There are some signs he'll finally grow old semi-gracefully, if only because he's seeing someone almost his own age, albeit crazy Marie Calvert.
And Don? Meh. When he tries to drop in on the sordid flat of his misery muse, she has moved on, replaced by a gay couple who invite him in for a drink. For a couple of seconds, I thought he was about to evolve in unexpected ways but no.
Instead, we get the five partners calling the office together for the big announcement, long after most of the staff have heard the word anyway. There's serious audience satisfaction in the way the crowd start talking amongst themselves as soon as it's clear that Don and company have surrendered any authority.
Who will listen to Don's honeyed reassurances anymore? Anyone?
"This is the beginning of something, not the end!" Don cries out across the mezzanine. But he can't sell that pitch again.
