After six seasons of sex, lies, booze, drugs and misogyny, Don Draper's journey of brilliance and destruction is coming to an end.
The serial adulterer, Madison Avenue advertising genius and central character of the landmark TV series Mad Men is about to cut a swathe through the seventh, and final, season.
For the man who portrayed Draper through the carnage, Jon Hamm, it is an emotional time.
When the show's creator Matt Weiner brings the cast and crew together later this year to shoot the final episode of Mad Men at their longtime home, the Los Angeles Center Studios in downtown LA, Hamm will have a couple of boxes of tissues just off camera.
"I'm going to be a mess, honestly," St Louis-born Hamm, 43, admitted during a recent interview.
Mad Men, with its launch in 2007, changed TV.
It transformed the US pay TV channel AMC from a place you went to watch Humphrey Bogart and Gene Kelly movies, to the home of great series, beginning with Mad Men, followed by Breaking Bad and then The Walking Dead.
The show also transformed Hamm from a struggling actor, picking up jobs here and there, to a sex symbol, Golden Globe winner, one of the most influential figures in TV and a sought-after actor for Hollywood movies.
"This show has taken up essentially a decade of my life and it's been a great decade," Hamm said.
"I've had a lot of amazing experiences.
"I've gotten to go to award shows and just experience these things that when you start down the road of being an actor, you think, `that's never going to happen' and yet it did to me.
"So, it's been an emotional roller coaster ride for me.
"When it's time to get off the ride, I'm going to be like, 'I don't want to get off, man, I want to stay on the ride. Come on, the ride's over?'."
Hamm is secretive about what fans will see in the final season.
The series began in 1960s New York and, while Hamm refused to give much away, the seventh season, set in the 1970s, is rumoured to take Draper to Los Angeles.
"If you've seen the teaser for the new season, you know that he's getting off an airplane," Hamm laughed.
"So, without saying anything, I'll let you infer what that means."
When the sixth season ended, Draper's personal and professional lives were crumbling.
"It was a big deal for Don to be, essentially, fired and I think that's a bit of a wake-up call," he said.
"Will it have the intended effect? I don't know.
"But I think that the one pattern we've established with Mr Draper is that he tends to rise to challenges and I think that that's a fairly real, established pattern in Don's life."
As for the challenge of saying goodbye to Don Draper, Hamm has received advice from friends on the recently departed series Breaking Bad and 30 Rock.
"Tina Fey was the funniest in sort of describing their (30 Rock's) last day," Hamm said.
"Basically no-one wanted it to end, so it turned into this long overtime epic day because everyone was kind of dragging their feet thinking, 'Well, if we just go really slowly then maybe it won't end'."
Mad Men season seven premieres on Foxtel's showcase channel on April 14.
