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?"
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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...
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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?
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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.
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Oh, how Mad Men loves to tease us.
After releasing a trailer inviting viewers to "the 'affair' of the year" and a Season 6 poster rife with possible clues about Don Draper's dual identity crisis, AMC has released a new 30-second trailer — and we've got your exclusive first look.
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Although the trailer doesn't feature any footage from the new season (did you really think it would?), it does...
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Pour yourself an Old Fashioned: Don Draper is back. AMC is set to announce this morning that Mad Men will return for its sixth season on Sunday, April 7 at 9/8c with a two-hour season premiere. The show will then move to its regular time, 10/9c, the following week.
Creator Matthew Weiner confirms to TV Guide Magazine that the show (last seen in 1967) will make another jump in time, putting Mad Men straight in the middle of the tumultuous late 1960s. The time jump "at this point has been such a great story engine for the show," he says. "I love writing that first episode as if the audience knows everything that has happened, and watching them piece it in their head. It's an elliptical experience."
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Weiner also reiterates the promise...
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