Completing the challenges and struggles where the last season stops that follows the daily activity and struggle of Donald Draper, a young talented and smart advertising executive, who works for one of the most well-known firms during the 1960s. In this new season, Peggy is so happy and excited after receiving flowers at the office.
We won't be able to fully appreciate it from moment to moment, because we're so eager to learn what's coming next, to get to whatever the future holds. But that future is a world without Mad Men, so let's not get there too fast.
It's the fetishizing of the visual, not lack of action, that leaves me impatient. But for now, we're on a plane and Weiner's in the cockpit... I don't know where we're going and neither do you. Might as well sit back and enjoy what's left of the ride.
On a show all about advertising and projecting a certain image, it's very entertaining when the show can actually play with the idea of how the media can sell us something.
There are peaks and valleys, but mostly there's a lot of flat, ugly middle. The victories that you spend forever building end up being as ephemeral as fireworks, sparkling briefly before quickly fading back into the endless blackness of the nighttime sky.
Gone are the days of "Zou Bisou Bisou" and Don's Hawaiian mortality freak-out. Nope. This season premiere, all we got was a cold pastrami sandwich with coleslaw smeared on the bread.
The hour delivers a series of lovely closing scenes that find Don feeling more honest intimacy than he has felt since the death of Anna, culminating in the kind of image and song choice that Mad Men fans find so powerful and moving.
Mad Men is beautifully shot as always, with the dialogue flowing naturally and meaningfully over alcohol... The pace hasn't quickened. Nor does the storyline congeal. Instead, Sunday's re-opener builds to a terrifically poignant finish.
