With the season premiere of “Mad Men” nearly upon us, we wanted to check in on the styles of actress January Jones (Betty Draper) — as she’s been busy in New York, shopping at Yves Saint Laurent. What do you think of January’s flared, cropped flood jeans? Comment below!
We can’t wait for the return of Don Draper… Mad Men returns with a 2 hour season premiere on Sunday, March 25 at 9PM/8C. The Mad Men Season 5 poster is revealed below:
What can fans of Mad Men expect from Season 5? According to Jon Hamm, “some significant surprises.” Series creator Matthew Weiner calls the new season an “incredible new chapter” of Mad Men. We can’t wait…
Clearly Hamm isn’t too concerned with upsetting powerful people, as evidenced by his latest appearance on “Late Show.” When asked by David Letterman to explain what he could about the lengthy break between the fourth and fifths seasons of “Mad Men,” Hamm said, “I’ve described it thusly, and I got in trouble, so I’ll do it again the same way.”
According to Hamm, “When billionaires fight it takes a lot longer to settle. So we had some very wealthy people determining how long we would be off the air.”
When Letterman asked if the scheduled premiere date for Season 5 was indicative of production being under way again with all problems solved, Hamm gave him one better. “We are back, finished with production,” he said. “Season 5 is in the books.”
After all the fags and booze, it’s little wonder Mad Men needed to go away, have a lie-down and think about what it had done. Last year passed without a new series. We were warned by Matthew Weiner that this would be the case, but every now and then there was a sharp reminder of its absence. It was missed when the shows that were compared to it inevitably fell short (Pan Am and The Hour, in particular); when films like The Adjustment Bureau tried to cash in on the suave-men-in-suits idea by peppering the cast with the show’s actors; and when Jon Hamm’s scenery-chomping performance in Bridesmaids suggested for one terrifying moment that there was life outside Don Draper.
But now comes the delightful news that the best show on television is returning, and soon. Jon Hamm let slip that it’s due on AMC in the States on 25 March – and, like many of its recent imports, Sky Atlantic looks set to show it days later. This is small comfort for non-subscribers still smarting that the show has been poached from the BBC, but it does at the very least mean we won’t have the kind of frustrating delay we had with season four, which aired here six months after its US debut. There’s plenty to look forward to, not least the fact that the opening episode marks Hamm’s directorial debut, following John Slattery’s cast-to-clapperboard trajectory – though you get the impression that Hamm will be considerably more stretched, since he’s got the series to carry.
Season four finished on a strange note. At first, I thought Don’s proposal to secretary Megan might have been part of a Sopranos-style dream episode, though it transpired not, and it remains to be seen whether the picture-postcard family man Don, made sentimental by grief and loss, will survive. But Megan doesn’t know Don in the way that Faye, the woman he rejected for what looks like a more simple life, does. Betty and Pete discovered it, but Don actually told Faye about his Dick Whitman past. I hope she comes back. The unravelling of Don’s protective armour was fascinating.
The other big reveal, though perhaps less surprising, was that Joan didn’t go through with aborting Roger’s baby after all, and will pretend it’s her thug doctor husband’s child instead. In the season four finale, Joan featured in one of my favourite ever Mad Men scenes, when, post-engagement news, Peggy storms into her office, for Joan to enquire: “Whatever could be on your mind?” It was the moment they really became friends and I hope that’s something the writers continue to develop, along with Peggy’s increasingly Don-like but inevitably more hard-won career.
Someone in accelerated decline, on the other hand, is Betty, who grew more monstrous with every disappointment. Her bleak relationship with Sally made for outstanding and unusual drama. Compare it to the mother-daughter histrionics of a series like Mildred Pierce and it shows this storyline to be a master class in perfect, awful cruelty.
Presumably season five will take place in 1966, which opens up multiple historical possibilities: civil rights, the space race and anti-Vietnam protests, to cover the main headlines, while in culture, Star Trek begins, In Cold Blood is published and Sally Draper may be asking her father for tickets to see the Beach Boys. But of course, these could be big news, or barely even acknowledged. Tantalisingly, brilliantly, details are scarce to non-existent. But what do you want to see happen on Madison Avenue when March finally arrives?
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