Mad Men Returns

The fifth season of Mad Men airs tonight after an 18-month-long hiatus. Creator Matthew Weiner ’87 has done a good job of keeping the details of the new season under wraps, but it’s easy to predict what may go down.
The last season ended in 1965, so the fifth will take us into the following year. The Civil Rights Movement will be a prominent backdrop for the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce men, as will Vietnam and Women’s rights. As phrased in the Washington Post:

The contrast is sharper now — the psychological gloom within Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce clashes with the verging sense of psychedelia just beyond Madison Avenue.

***Spoiler Alert for those of you who aren’t caught up, but there are fun links at the end of the post.

Peggy has her underground art world friends who care about things like equality and have the idealism of young folk. Don Draper  may have had a magic touch in the advertising world a few years back, but now new clients are looking for edgy ideas tinted with tangerine, pink, and green curtains. Also, he’s married to his ex-secretary now, so that’s probably not going to work, right?

During the hiatus, there were unsuccessful “Mad Men”-esque shows on network television, like NBC’s The Playboy Club and ABC’s Pan Am, a “Mad Men” Banana Republic fashion line,  and “Mad Men” drinking tours in Manhattan. There were and continue to be lots of articles published about how clichéd the Mad Men series has become because of these imitation experiences.

If you’re excited about the return of Mad Men and don’t want to read anymore TV critics lamenting, “It’s my least favorite TV series that I never miss an episode of. If that makes sense,” then get pumped with these gratuitous, potentially time-intensive links:

• Mad Men Party Guide
• Mad Men Character Face Masks
• Mad Men Wiki
• When will Don Draper Die? (probably an accurate estimation)
• What if Don Draper was Deeply in Love with Roger Sterling?
• Pairing up Downton Abbey Characters with their Mad Men Soul Mates 
• Christina Hendricks pre-Mad Men
• Who said it: Mad Men Character or GOP Candidate?

The season premiere is two hours long and airs at 9 p.m. on AMC. Including this fifth season, there are three seasons left for Mad Men. What will the future hold?