Mad Men | Season 4 Tidbits

Okay. So, I have finished mourning Breaking Bad. I've gone through the five stages of grief, from denial to anger to depression, and have finally come to accept that there will be no new episodes for MORE THAN A YEAR. Ahem. Really, I'm fine. And with exactly a month to go until the return of Mad Men, I'm finally equipped to move on.

Fortunately, AMC have eased the process this week by releasing a few snapshots from fourth season opener Public Relations. There's also a rather snazzy new poster image for the season, pictured above.

In typically tight-lipped fashion, Matthew Weiner & co have revealed next to nothing else about the season so far. In typically over-analytical fashion, I'm going to see what scraps of speculation I can wring from these photos.

Let's start with That Poster.

It's not quite up there with last season's image of Don in a water-filled office, but it's striking and emotive and feels almost like a still from the credit sequence. What's interesting is that Don appears to be standing in a very upmarket, several-storeys-high office, very much along the lines of Sterling Cooper's - definitely a far cry from the hotel suite set-up where we left the newly-formed Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Does this mean we're in for a significant jump forwards in time, enough to allow SCDP to have moved up in the world into an office of this type?

Personally I'm still hoping we pick up relatively soon after Shut The Door, Have A Seat, because I'd be super sad not to see the fledgling company's early days, and see how the new group dynamic begin to take shape. Not to mention the dramatic potential of watching these characters thrust together in such an enclosed space - Pete and Peggy sharing a desk? Too good to pass up, surely. 

But most of all, I keep recalling this exchange between Don and Roger:
R: "How long do you think it'll take us to be in a place like this again?"
D: "I never saw myself working in a place like this."
I don't think that line was tossed out casually, and as such I have to think
that the empty office shown in the poster is a figurative space that's meant to reflect the imagery of the credit sequence, rather than an actual set used in the show. SCDP won't be in a place like that again for a good while, I'm thinking, which makes the fact that they used such a place for the season's defining image sort of interesting. 

Moving on, then, to These Photos.

Again the setting here is very Sterling Cooper-esque, although this looks a little smaller than their office's board room. Joan was very specific in Shut The Door... about not wanting to hold meetings at the Pierre, though, so again this doesn't necessarily mean we won't be seeing the hotel set-up.

I also just need to take a moment to admire the Pete/Don/Roger lineup. I am very, VERY excited for these three guys to share more screen time, and for Pete and Roger to be on screen more in general.

And there they are again. This looks like the end of a lunch between Don and Roger (glad to see that bridge has stayed rebuilt), of which Pete clearly was not a part. Heh. Pete's also wearing a fairly heavy coat, which given the show's attention to wardrobe details makes me think this episode may be set in the winter months. Season 3 ended right before Christmas. Maybe the time jump won't be so huge after all...or else an entire year has passed. Or two. Or Pete just likes wearing his coat all year round, and I'm grasping at increasingly flimsy straws.

Don Draper looking fiiine. Not much else to say here. Finally, though...

Oh. Peggy. Wow.

This seems to be the strongest evidence for a HUGE time jump. Say, fifteen or so years, into a time when Peggy is nearing forty. Not really, since none of the other characters seem to have gone through this traumatic aging process, but SERIOUSLY. WHAT is on her head? She's channeling Margaret Thatcher circa 1979, and that is literally not ever a good thing. Poor Elisabeth Moss just can't catch a break in the hair department, can she? I'll be interested to see what mention (if any) is made of this atrocity in the show. Hopefully Joan at least will have something devastatingly snarky yet helpful to say about it.

And that's it for photos. No sign of Joan, which makes me sad. No sign of Betty, which does not make me sad. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the character, but not when she and her issues are shoved down my throat at the expense of other characters (i.e. everybody on the show not named Draper). I don't want Betty gone, but I'd definitely like her to be absent for a few episodes, and for the office dynamics to be the focus with basically no distractions from the home front. That being said, Trudy Campbell can show up anytime she wants to.

Speaking of domestics, it strikes me that both Betty and Joan were left somewhat up in the air last season with regard to their marital situations. We assume Betty will marry Henry Francis, but she hadn't yet done so. Similarly, Joan's rapey husband Greg was headed off to Vietnam, but hadn't yet gone. Maybe the reason there's no photos of these two is that that photos would give away too much about their new circumstances. God, though, how great would it be if it transpired Greg had met some terrible fate in Vietnam? I can dream.


And that's about all I can eke from these. I'll be recapping the series weekly once it returns, so be sure to check back in if you're a Sterling Cooper devotee.