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From the earliest beginnings of the Mad Men phenomenon, some fans have wondered if superstar '60s and '70s-era adman Don Draper was destined to write one of the iconic advertising catchphrases of the time.

So it's kind of a testament to the misdirectional skills of show creator Matt Weiner that some regular viewers were surprised by the show's series finale Sunday – in which Don is shown to have concluded a long, soul searching trip through America with a trip to a California yoga retreat, which inspired him to invent the classic 1971 Coca Cola campaign "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke."

Like much of the developments in Mad Men's finale episode, "Person to Person," that conclusion – that Draper shrugged off all the self-discovery he'd achieved to go back to being his old self in his old job – is a presumed one. Because show creator Matt Weiner isn't one to spoon feed the audience key plot points; even one that puts a button on eight years of tortured self-examination by one of the most compelling lead characters in modern TV.

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As a fan, I was a little heartened by the show's finale. Weiner resolved nearly every character's story in a mostly positive fashion that close watchers of the show will likely love. Joan Harris finally got to start her company and be her own boss after getting pushed out of McCann Erickson; frumpy, repressed copywriter Peggy Olson found love with her longtime art director Stan Rizzo; weasely striver Pete Campbell got to be a big shot as a top executive at Lear jet and Draper did what we all expected – crafting one of modern advertising's most iconic campaigns.

But as a critic, I was a bit underwhelmed by much in these this final spate of seven episodes which closed out Mad Men's seventh season (the last season was stretched over last year and this year). Whole characters and storylines seemed unnecessary, like Elizabeth Reaser's tragically damaged waitress who briefly romanced Don. And Don's cross-country sojourn felt suspiciously like a Weiner-generated head fake to keep us from guessing that he might still wind up back in the ad business – this time, with his finger firmly on the pulse of the '70s zeitgeist.

Fittingly for an episode titled after a long distance phone connection, the best elements of this finale were the phone conversations. Don gets a scolding from his daughter Sally by telephone after she tells him his ex-wife Betty has terminal cancer; turns out, he's such a bad dad, the kids wouldn't be better off with him even after their mother is dead.

When Don calls Betty to confirm the news, he is again told that she would rather go to her grave not seeing him again and he realizes how much they have lost. And when Don calls former protg Olson to say goodbye to her, he's so broken up, we actually think he's never again coming east of the Mississippi (once more, great head fake, Weiner).

Because this is Mad Men, few characters get everything they want. Joan loses another self-centered clueless boyfriend when she reveals she wants to build a business instead of spend every waking hour with him; Peggy may have to wait a decade before she gets a shot at a creative director job; and fans don't get to see Peggy and Joan team up to run their own business as partners.

Still, it was good to see Weiner actually end the series, because he worked on another show – HBO's The Sopranos – which didn't really end. In a move which sparked one of the biggest series finale controversies in recent TV history, Sopranos creator David Chase simply cut to black in the middle of the show's final scene, not so much ending the series as stopping it cold. In Mad Men's case, Weiner left viewers with a good sense of where every major character was headed in their life as the show closed out. That's important when you're ending a show that people have obsessed over for so long. And I think when a series ends, that close attention has to be rewarded with a finale that gives fans some closure and yet lets them connect the dots a little bit themselves.

Mad Men will be remembered as a show which challenged audiences with its attention to detail and subtlety; it helped spark a rush of great cable series which include sibling AMC series Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Thanks to its stylish look and note-perfect casting, the show also moved into the pop culture conversation, touching lots of people who may know Don Draper's name but have never watched moment of the series itself.

The show's biggest blind spot, curiously, has always been centered on race. It still mystifies me that a cable channel could spend eight years exploring the lives of characters throughout the 1960s and mostly disregard events that involved the civil rights movements, the end of segregation, the establishments of voting rights for black people or the end of laws against interracial marriage.

Weiner has said that the characters he focuses on in Mad Men are the type of people who wouldn't be closely connected to black people or those issues. But several writers have pointed out there were black people involved in advertising in New York during the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, a black man, Billy Davis, is credited as co-writer on the song "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," which provided the soundtrack for the Coke campaign Don is supposed to have invented.

I concluded a long time ago that Weiner simply didn't want to write about race much on Mad Men Which is a shame, because it makes the show feel a little less real and a little less relevant than it could have been.

It's truism that period pieces are often as much about the time in which they are made. And what Mad Men really did well was communicate our modern discomfort with the future, our continuing struggles with sexism and how difficult it can be to change, even when you know you must (e.g. global warming; wearing crocs)..

That last point was exemplified by Don Draper, who couldn't help using his midlife crisis as research for his next big idea in the finale – the same way he chatted up a black waiter in the show's pilot to figure out how to sell Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Even with all the great dramas now on TV, I think Mad Men will be missed.

NPR's Julie McCarthy, reporting from New Delhi, says the remains of all eight people aboard a U.S. Marine helicopter that went down in Nepal east of the capital, Kathmandu, have been recovered.

"Nepali special forces along with U.S. Marines and Air Force personnel were inserted into the crash site early Saturday. The Joint Task Force coordinating the U.S. military's disaster relief in Nepal said they are investigation why the [UH-1 ] Huey helicopter went down."

The aircraft went missing while delivering aid in the district of Dolakha on Tuesday. Contact with the chopper was lost shortly after a second quake hit the area.

The first of the bodies, including six Marines and two Nepalis, were recovered on Friday.

Lt. Gen. John Wissler, commander of the Marine-led joint task force, was quoted by The Associated Press as telling reporters in Kathmandu on Friday that his team could not immediately determine the cause of the crash or identify the bodies found.

"He described the crash as 'severe,' and said the recovery team at the site encountered extreme weather and difficult terrain," the AP says.

U.S. Marine Corps

Nepal

After the Republican presidential candidates finish their first debate this summer, many will head to Atlanta for a summit hosted by Erick Erickson, conservative activist and editor-in-chief of RedState.com.

This year, Erickson's RedState Gathering is scheduled for the same weekend as the Iowa Straw Poll.

Jeb Bush has already indicated he will go to the RedState Gathering rather than Iowa. Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Rick Perry are also going. Most will try to attend both events, Erickson says.

Erickson has asked his guests this year to not just criticize President Obama as they make their case to be president.

"I would rather [have] them talk about where they want the country to be, should they get elected," he told NPR's Scott Simon. "What do they actually want to do as president? How do they think the country needs to be changed, and what should it look like by the end of their four years?"

Erickson objects to the media's — and the public's — fixation on candidate squabbles and "gotcha" moments.

"I'm not doing the RedState Gathering for the media or even the public at large," he says. "I'm doing it for the Conservative grassroots who are going to play an outsized role in picking the next presidential candidate for the Republicans."

Interview Highlights

Erickson's argument against Democrat-bashing — including Obama and Hillary Clinton

I think we should be judging them based on what they want to accomplish, as opposed to a 50-point plan no one's going to read or the latest red meat they can throw about the president ...

They're going to govern differently than Hillary Clinton, but when we're in the primary season, it is how these candidates are different from each other, not how they're different from the Democrats. Oftentimes, we get through several primaries before we kind of figure out how they're actually different from each other.

On promoting campaigns of substance

I'm very critical of a lot of people on both sides at the base level who've developed cults of personality. They don't know what candidate X thinks, but they just love candidate X. I think we need to figure out what candidate X thinks.

On his hopes that the politics of substance will catch on

I would like to see this done in the presidential debates. Instead of really trying to do gotcha moments between the candidates, there should be a discussion about the future of the country. There are a lot of people — not just Republicans, Democrats alike, liberals, conservatives, non-partisans — who get the sense that a lot of the leaders in Washington feel like they're just managing the decline of the country, as opposed to trying to revitalize the country. Hearing their views on that, and probing to see which sides they fall on, I think should be important for picking the president.

By the end of July during last summer's war in the Gaza Strip, more than 3,000 Palestinians crowded into a United Nations-run elementary school in Jabaliya, a northern Gaza town. They had moved there for temporary shelter after the Israeli military warned them to leave their homes.

An hour before dawn on July 30, explosions shook the classrooms and the courtyard, all packed with people.

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Palestinians collect human remains from a classroom inside Jabaliya school after it was hit by shelling on July 30, 2014. Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

Palestinians collect human remains from a classroom inside Jabaliya school after it was hit by shelling on July 30, 2014.

Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

Mahmoud Jaser was camped outside with his sons.

"We were sleeping when the attack started. As we woke up, it got worse," he said.

Shrapnel hit Jaser in the back. Three of his sons were also hurt. About 100 people were injured overall. Almost 20 were killed.

Jaser still plays those minutes over in his mind.

"My neighbor told me his children were killed," he remembers. "I saw people without legs or heads. Then I lost consciousness. I woke up in the hospital."

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Mahmoud Jaser was hit with shrapnel in the July 2014 attack. In this April photo he is surrounded by four of his sons: clockwise from upper left, Adham, Odai, Abdel Razik and Saqir. Emily Harris/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Harris/NPR

Mahmoud Jaser was hit with shrapnel in the July 2014 attack. In this April photo he is surrounded by four of his sons: clockwise from upper left, Adham, Odai, Abdel Razik and Saqir.

Emily Harris/NPR

An investigation commissioned by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon recently concluded that Israeli soldiers hit the Jabaliya school with four high-explosive artillery shells.

It holds the Israeli military responsible for that attack and two others. Together, nearly 50 Palestinians were killed in the three attacks.

The U.N. inquiry found that in nearby Beit Hanoun on July 24, at least two high explosive mortars landed in a school courtyard as people gathered to evacuate to a safer shelter. Between 12 and 14 Gazans were killed, the public summary of the commission's inquiry says, and 93 people were injured.

In Rafah, bordering Egypt in the southern Gaza strip, the U.N. inquiry says a precision-guided missile targeting three men on a motorcycle struck the street outside the school gates mid-morning on Aug. 3. Fifteen people were killed, including a U.N. guard inside the school compound.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in the seven weeks of fighting in Gaza. In general, Israel says that the Islamist group Hamas was storing weapons and firing from densely packed civilian areas. Israel says it targeted Hamas and that civilian deaths were not intentional.

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Israel initially denied wrongdoing in the Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun attacks. But after further examination of evidence, military prosecutors decided there is "reasonable suspicion" that soldiers may have not followed all the rules.

Prosecutors have opened criminal investigations into both attacks.

The drone attack in Rafah is still under investigation, according to Israeli deputy military attorney general Col. Eli Baron.

Israel told the U.N. board of inquiry, according to its report, that by the time it became clear the missile would strike the motorcycle outside a school, it was too late to redirect.

Baron says there is a range of possible outcomes in any of the scores of incidents under review.

"There could be a criminal indictment," he said, during an interview in his office at the Kirya, Israel's military headquarters in central Tel Aviv. "There could be disciplinary measures."

He also said military prosecutors use these investigations to examine whether battlefield guidance given to soldiers could be improved.

Even when criminal investigations are opened, as has happened regarding Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun schools, indictments are far from certain, Baron said.

"Many people think the mere fact that you launch a criminal investigation means you have, you know, a war criminal at the end of the road. And it doesn't necessarily mean that."

After a similar war in late 2008, dubbed Operation Cast Lead by the military, Israel's internal investigations led to a few convictions. According to news reports at the time, the longest sentence was seven months in prison, for credit card theft.

The U.N inquiry after that war openly called for compensation, specifically for damaged U.N. property. Israel paid the U.N. more than $10 million.

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In April, the courtyard of Jabaliya elementary school was full of materials to rebuild the destroyed classrooms. Emily Harris/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Harris/NPR

In April, the courtyard of Jabaliya elementary school was full of materials to rebuild the destroyed classrooms.

Emily Harris/NPR

Jaser, who now walks with pain and takes medication to calm his nerves, says he'd like Israel's investigation to result in financial help for survivors now too injured to make a living.

But a neighbor, Tala Abu Ghnaim, who was also at the school when it was hit, dismisses the notion that it's even possible to compensate for the damage done.

"What, they can kill us then 'compensate' us?" he asked. "We want safety."

Asked whether Israel would consider compensation this time, Col. Baron said he didn't know.

"Obviously that's a political decision," he said. "The [U.N.] secretary general said nothing about compensation in his [recent] report."

That doesn't mean it won't come up, says Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Moon.

"If there is a need to pursue the issue of compensation, we'll pursue it," he says.

But he said the real priority is a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Fatiyeh abu Gamar, far left, stands with her 11 children. Their father — her husband — was killed while working as a guard at the school in Jabaliya. Emily Harris/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Harris/NPR

Fatiyeh abu Gamar, far left, stands with her 11 children. Their father — her husband — was killed while working as a guard at the school in Jabaliya.

Emily Harris/NPR

Meanwhile, the Beit Hanoun school is back up and running, with two shifts of students daily, as is usual in crowded Gaza schools. The badly damaged classrooms of the Jabaliya school are being completely rebuilt.

Eleven children who lost their father in that attack are struggling to rebuild their lives. Their mother, Fatiyeh Abu Gamar, now a widow, says she simply misses her husband being around to take care of the family.

He was often unemployed she said, but "when he was alive nobody dared to interfere in our family life. It's different now," she says.

Now male relatives are trying to tell her what to do, including take her daughters out of university.

Her youngest, a 9-year-old boy, says when he grows up he wants to kill Israelis in revenge for killing his father. Abu Gamar says she told him no — we don't know exactly who did it. Israeli prosecutors say they don't know either yet, and they may never.

Gaza Strip

Israel