I finished "Mad Men"...

...last night, and unless I missed a lot -- and I probably did -- I can still only give the show a solid B or B+. It's not as good as, say, Breaking Bad or Seinfeld, but more on the level of The Sopranos.

(I would say Breaking Bad is the best drama I've ever seen, Seinfeld the best sit-com -- although Curb Your Enthusiasm has to be right up there too -- whereas The Sopranos just had too many scenes and episodes that left me thinking, It wouldn't happen that way. I may not be an expert on organized crime but I do consider myself a bit of an expert on life and human behavior. And much of The Sopranos just wasn't believable to me.)

But, like The Sopranos, Mad Men passed the acid test of a good show: I looked forward to watching it. And I liked talking about it and reading about it.

So why do I give Mad Men only a B or a B+? Even though I would read what Alan Sepinwall had to say about each episode after watching it, I either didn't catch enough of what was actually going on or there just wasn't as much going on as Mad Men's greatest fans thought. I'll concede that I probably missed a lot but it's worth remembering that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I don't think it's uncommon for a viewer to see something that a writer never intended. Also, like most television shows Mad Men struck me as a glorified soap opera. Rather than having a clear arc -- a beginning, a middle and an end -- I imagined the writers getting together during the off-season and asking each other, "Okay, now what do we do?" After a while it seemed like everyone was just jumping into bed with new characters without any progression to the plot. They ended it up nicely -- too nicely, I would say -- but I could imagine it going on and on, or ending after Season Three or Four or . . . take your pick.

As for that final episode, I'm glad Joan started her own business (she seemed to be the one character who experienced true personal growth throughout the series and actually became the person she always had the potential to be), but I found Roger's, Pete's and Peggy's stories either implausible (are we supposed to think that Roger and Pete will take their new relationships any more seriously than their old ones? Is Roger done being a womanizer? Why would we think so?) or just downright odd (am I the only person in America who thinks Peggy and Stan are an unlikely couple? Could they possibly survive?). I would have much preferred to remember the swaggering Peggy in that gif above. That should have been her last scene in the show.

And Don? I think he found some measure of peace at that retreat, returned to McCann and his kids, wrote that new Coke ad and led a more or less happy rest of his life. (As my wife said, he was at heart an adman.) But did he stop chasing women and drinking? I see no reason for that.

As for Jon Hamm, despite that scene near the end where he's talking to Betty on the phone and crying which I found almost embarrassingly bad, I was impressed with what a good actor he is. I am admittedly no expert on this subject as I must be the only person in the universe who doesn't think Meryl Streep is a good actress. (Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.) I can't help it -- every time I see her on the screen I think to myself, Oh, there's Meryl Streep and she's acting. There's her signature laugh, her signature this-or-that, etc. I never see past her to the character. And isn't that what a good actor is supposed to do, lose themselves in the character? Now, having said that, I will contradict myself completely and say that in what was probably my favorite scene -- I can't upload it for some reason -- in all of Mad Men (Season 6, episode 10: "A Tale of Two Cities"), I thought to myself, Wow, Don really looks stoned -- good job! Most actors, I find, overact when it comes to being drunk or stoned or when crying. (That last one is one of my pet peeves. Watch somebody cry sometime: they wipe at their tears furiously; they don't just let them roll down their face. We get it: you're crying -- you don't have to knock us over the head with it.)

So there it is: my first, "hot" take on Mad Men. Subject to change, of course.

Now what should I watch?