Reason.tv Replay: A Preview of Mad Men Season 4

The upcoming season of President Obama's favorite TV show will take place in '64, the year of the Civil Rights Act, Meet the Beatles!, the Stone's debut, Johnson's trouncing of Goldwater, and the Surgeon General's "revelation" that smoking causes cancer.

What will become of the men and women of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce who came of age in the staid '50s?

The producers of AMC's hit show are touting a season packed with "surprises." We think we have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Here's Reason.tv's guide to what Season 4 of Mad Men will get right—and wrong—about the mid-60s.

"Mad Men Season 4: A Reason.tv Preview" is written and produced by Jim Epstein and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts.

Approximately 5 minutes.

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Comments

[lull]

Anybody seen Adbot? I kinda miss him.

[In Time Of War]

I have a dream...a dream that sometime before I die people will STFU about the '60s.

[In Time Of War]

Oh, and stop playing "Hotel California". If I never hear that song again it'll be too damned soon.

[Chris]

You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.

[Suki]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! I agree with ITOW.

[60s Vigilante]

I can help you with that. What's your name and address?

[Rhywun]

I only caught the tail end of 1969 myself, and yet I too have had enough of that decade. And it's interesting that the 70s have happily remained largely ignored, innit?

[BakedPenguin]

Same age. Same sentiment.

As for the 1970's, it's hard to be nostalgic about disco.

[Butts Wagner]

What about all of the 70s nostalgia in the 90s?

[Pro Libertate]

Hey, at least they could send men to the Moon in the 60s.

[Roberto]

I do recall returning stateside in the late 60's following threes years off-shore with the military. I didn't particularly like the 60's and I've never watched this "AMC hit show." Certainly there's something of more meaningful going on in USA land?

[Jordan]

To be fair though, Christina Hendricks's knockers are pretty damn meaningful.

[Ska]

I said it yesterday, but I have no problem repeating that she is one sexy broad.

[sunny_black]

Buxom.

[Brian Sorgatz]

I never watch Mad Men, but the Crista Flanagan pictorial in the August Playboy pays magnificent tribute to the magazine's glory days in the 1960s.

[Enough About Palin]

Ronald McDonaldesque:

http://www.dailymakeover.com/a.....4_2009.jpg

[AlmightyJB]

Me like

[zoltan]

Yeah, I'm watching the first season of Prison Break right now...a little behind.

[R C Dean]

The producers of AMC's hit show are touting a season packed with "surprises."

The surprise I want to see begins with "Christina Hendricks" and ends with "completely naked".

There. I said it.

[Franklin Harris]

The rest of us were thinking it.

[Shepherd Book]

If you take sexual advantage of her, you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

[Butts Wagner]

after enjoying some christina hendricks photos, I see that she is married to the "snozzberries taste like snozzberries" guy from Supertroopers.

[Jason]

Close...

[James Anderson Merritt]

Possible "surprise": Mad Men is actually parallel universe science fiction. Among the recurring props, behold the IBM Selectric II, which didn't enter the office until the 1970s in our reality (I know; I leased one in 1976 -- maybe IBM had a beta-test program for this model, but certainly not until the late 1960s or early 1970s). This is a hint that there will someday be a crossover with "Fringe." Clearly, the Mad Men universe is the more technologically advanced reality of Walternate and Fauxlivia.

Or not.

[Suki]

Maybe it was the oldest impact type machine the set design people could find?

[The Art-P.O.G.]

:::The More You Know

[BakedPenguin]

I'm sure you could get a few Remington or Royal typewriters if you know the right place to go.

I worked for an insurance company that had a few Selectrics. In 2003. I created a few modified Word and Excel apps to finally replace those fucking dinosaurs.

[BakedPenguin]

I'd like to add, I apologize for not talking about Christina Hendricks' rack, but I've never seen the show, so I can't really comment.

[rustedangel]

You could have caught her rack in Firefly.

[joshua corning]

Oh wow you are right that is her...

I never put two and two together on that one.

She was hotter in Firefly....but i think mostly becosue 60's clothing is a huge turn off for me.

[Some dude]

I tried to watch that show. Epic boring.

[Franklin Harris]

I watched the first disc of the season 1 DVD set, and I can't say I was moved to Netflix the rest. I was, however, moved to rewatch Christina Hendricks' guest spot on "Firefly."

[Dagny T.]

If the Sterling Cooper gang stops smoking in the office all the time, I will be sorely disappointed.

And how about Don hiring a prostitute to slap him on Thanksgiving? Now that he has stopped sneaking around, he just seems old, alone, and pathetic.

OK, Reason, you have made me happy with the Mad Men post. Next up, the politics of True Blood?

[?]

And how about Don hiring a prostitute to slap him on Thanksgiving?

Behold our cultural heroes. Don will be rewarded with an Emmy?. Take a bow, America, and keep apologizing for your greatness. The world eats it up.

[dbcooper]

KULTUR WAR!

[dbcooper]

Even Don Draper gets bored.

[dbcooper]

He does look like he's put on a bit of chub though.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

I've never seen this show. I've already got a bad attitude about it. I don't need to know anymore about the 1960's. Plus the whole SWPL "oh my god the Wire is the best show ever" vibe to it that makes me really want to hate it. Seems like I can tell just from the stills and the SNL skits that the basic premise is that everything from the 60's that was "square" was also soul-less, hollow and/or sterile ..... yay, sounds like a blast. If I want some existential angst, the present day works just fine. Does the leave it to beaver strawman really need anymore beating?

[dbcooper]

Actually one of the best things about the show is that it leaves out a lot of the lame shit like "phony beatles mania."

Don't make me eat my words season 4.

[zoltan]

the basic premise is that everything from the 60's that was "square" was also soul-less, hollow and/or sterile

Have you watched shows set in present day? The Sopranos, Entourage, Breaking Bad feature a world just like that.

[joshua corning]

I've never seen this show. I've already got a bad attitude about it. I don't need to know anymore about the 1960's.

I watch it for the flashbacks of the 30s....the one or two flashbacks to the korean war were not to bad as well.

[rustedangel]

I don't get the disdain a lot of H&R folks seem to have for this show. I look at it as a case study in TV show form. Of course reality is sometimes stretched, but in the end to me the show is about people wanting to win in business, and the strategies they employ to get there. I'm also not a terribly sophisticated media critic I suppose, I tend to be easy to please.

[DanD]

Completely off topic, but has anyone noticed that Obama looks really pissed off in all of his photos lately?

If I got to take that much vacation, I'd forget how to frown.

[rustedangel]

That's racist

[Sean Healy]

Genius! Please keep making this funny joke!

[Jet]

I don't have HBO. In fact, I don't have cable. Do I really need to be reminded multiple times per day about this and other "recently" videos on Reason. I'll watch the damn things if I feel like it, and no amount of nagging will change my mind!