Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is up to his old tricks, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) is channeling her ex-boss at her new job, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) is a bit more introspective and a tumultuous new year is about to unfold. As Mad Men's sixth season (which premiered Sunday on AMC) opens, a lot has changed for the folks in and around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce — and a lot hasn't. TV Guide Magazine caught up with series creator Matthew Weiner to dissect a few things from the season opener.
read more
[WARNING: The following story contains spoilers from the Season 6 premiere of Mad Men. Read at your own risk.]
As the old adage goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Mad Men's fifth season ended with a disillusioned Don Draper (Jon Hamm) sitting on a barstool pondering both his future with Megan (Jessica Paré) and his answer to an attractive young woman's question: "Are you alone?" And although Season 6 of the AMC drama picked up the action ...
read more
Grab your fedora and pour yourself an Old Fashioned — Mad Men is back.
After weeks of speculation over the meaning of teaser trailers and (possibly) Easter egg-filled posters, the AMC drama launches its sixth — and likely penultimate — season with a two-hour premiere (Sunday, 9/8c). Season 5 ended with Don (Jon Hamm) giving in to the acting desires of his new bride Megan (Jessica Paré) and helping her get a part in one of the agency's commercials. As Don literally and figuratively left Megan behind at the soundstage to seek solace in a whiskey glass, he was approached by a woman at the bar who asked, "Are you alone?"
Exclusive Mad Men Season 6 trailer: "The next thing will be better"
While we've pondered Don's response to that query in the intervening months, we've also crafted a few more burning questions about what might be ahead for the men and women of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (and Peggy!) this season. After the jump, creator Matthew Weiner and the cast give us their best answers...
read more
It's only natural for AMC's Mad Men to be consumed with thoughts of mortality as it heads further into the turbulent late '60s in its sixth and reportedly next-to-last season of existence. A year ago, the central set piece in the premiere was a surprise birthday party. This time, it's a similarly eventful wake. And that's not the only way in which Sunday's two-hour opener (9/8c), written by series creator Matthew Weiner, drives the death-comes-to-us-all theme home with such sledgehammer relentlessness and obviousness that for the first time, I began to think maybe it is time for this beautifully crafted series to start thinking about giving up the ghost. There's no denying the importance of a show that manages to win four well-deserved best-drama Emmys in its first four times at bat — I didn't hesitate to include Mad Men among the Top 10 in a recent "60 Greatest Dramas of All Time" package in TV Guide Magazine. But does it have to be this self-important?
read more
In our very first issue, TV Guide Magazine polled the top names in TV — including Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason and Sid Caesar — on what the new medium had taught them. "TV is a great way to reach millions of people — who, luckily, can't reach me," Berle quipped. For 60 years, this publication has chronicled the evolution of what remains the world's most dominant source of entertainment. And while viewers now have hundreds of channels at their fingertips and can watch whatever they want, whenever they want, on a multitude of platforms, one thing hasn't changed: Audiences are hungry for great fare, from I Love Lucy to Modern Family and Playhouse 90 to Homeland.
We spoke to 13 titans of TV and asked them a few questions about where TV has been, what it looks like now and where it's headed.
read more