Most Mad Men maniacs (including yours truly) have been waiting on pins and needles to find out if Don and Megan will make it or not. Did Joan keep the baby? Did her husband find out it was Roger’s? Is Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce going to stay afloat? And most of us thought we would be finally finding out the answers to these pressing questions in July when the fifth season was due to resume. We thought wrong.

The good news is that Mad Men is coming back, but not until March 2012. A whole eleven months from now. Meaning we’re not even halfway into our Mad Men hiatus. On the one hand, this really sucks. But, there’s a silver lining. Creator and main writer Matthew Weiner says that the show will continue for at least two more seasons and possibly a third. Best of all, the show will not be required to eliminate some of the principal characters (as had been rumored). So we’ll be getting our Don Draper fix…we just have to wait longer than usual to get it.

In other Mad Men news, Netflix has recently purchased the rights to stream reruns of Mad Men instantly to its subscribers. All four of the previous seasons will become available on July 27 and future seasons will be transferred to Netflix as they are completed. Since we have so long to wait for the new season, we’ll just have to make do with meeting Don, Betty, Roger, Joan and Pete all over again in reruns.

Image c/o: fimoculous

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner seems to be especially fond of symbolism and he gave us some great examples during season four. Here are a couple of my favorites from this year:

1. Betty at the child psychologist’s office – Betty Draper, who is not known for her self-awareness, decides that Sally, her 10-year-old daughter, should go to a psychologist. Sally has been showing signs of aggression and rebellion, but she’s a child of divorce and her grandpa (the only person that really spent time with her) died last year, so her behavior is pretty normal considering the circumstances.

Betty, though, is concerned about Sally fitting into her new little family, including her stepfather, Henry. After the psychologist agrees to see Sally four times a week, she leaves the office and Betty sits there looking admiringly into a dollhouse with a perfect little family and perfect little furniture. That’s what makes Betty tick – the “look” of a happy family. Because she’s so obsessed with appearing perfect, she’s completely out of touch with her daughter’s, and her own, feelings.

2. Don and the elephant in the room – Now that Don and Betty are divorced, the child visitation situation is sticky. This is especially complicated by the fact that baby Gene is being raised to think that Henry is his father. When Betty plans his one year birthday party, she tells Don that he can’t see the kids that weekend because of the party, making it clear that he is not invited to the occasion. Henry, who is irritated that Betty is still not over Don, asks Don to come and get his things out of the house (his house, that they’re still living in, by the way). Don agrees to come over the day before the party to avoid any drama.

After a talk with Dr. Faye, Don decides to go to the party and bring a present, since it is his son, after all. He walks in the door, carrying a stuffed elephant toy. He brought an actual elephant into the room – ironic, because Don is the “elephant in the room” when it comes to Betty and Henry’s marriage. They’re really together because of him, but they don’t talk about it, so in a sense, he’s always there as a reminder.

Image c/o: AMC

Compared to previous Mad Men seasons, season four was a window into a somewhat kinder Don. After his divorce from Betty, he seemed to have become a little more aware of others’ feelings, especially his children and his own. He even began keeping a journal to try to sort out his own thoughts. Unfortunately, he still has some growing to do and, along the way, he hurts others, even though it’s unintentional.

The most frequent target of Don’s abuse has been Peggy, but as the years go on, they’re becoming more like equals. She even comforts him when he learns of the death of his good friend and “the only person who ever really knew” him, Anna Draper. Instead, the person who was treated the worst by Don this year was the person who probably loved him the most, Dr. Faye Miller.

Dr. Faye worked as an occasional consultant to the agency, performing focus group sessions and providing psychological insight on proposed campaigns. She made it very clear to everyone that she was not open to a relationship when she arrived, even wearing a wedding ring despite being single. Don asked her out repeatedly before she finally agreed to go on a date with him. She was instrumental in helping him open up about his feelings and he eventually told her about his past life as Dick Whitman.

Later in the season, Faye was consulting for Heinz and she learned they were looking for a new ad agency. Don asked her to get him a meeting with the company, since Sterling Cooper Draper Price was in sore need for new business. Faye was initially offended (as she should have been), but later relented and arranged for Don to have lunch with one of the company’s executives. Don seemed taken aback that she would risk her ethical standards for him and in that moment, we saw him lose his interest in her. She fell hard for him and it scared him, so he ran away, like he seems to do over and over again.

When he finally broke up with her, it was a terrible moment. He did it over the phone by telling her that he had gotten engaged to his secretary. Ouch. In one last fighting moment, she hit him with a one-sentence summation of his personality, telling him “You only like the beginnings of things.” That’s Dr. Faye, psychologist to the end.

The season ended happily enough with Don getting engaged to Megan, but we’ll have to wait for season 5 to see if she becomes yet another one of Don’s victims.

Image c/o: JRibaX

Joan (played by Christina Hendricks, left) had quite a year on the show during season four. She ended last season as the secretary in the newly-formed Sterling Cooper Draper Price, but was promoted this past year to Director of Agency Operations and received her own office. Long overdue, because that agency would not function without her, but anyway… At the beginning of the season, Joan visited her gynecologist and expressed her desire to conceive a child with her husband, Greg. Her doctor reminds her that she has had two “procedures”, but that they have not caused any damage.

Back in the office, Joan is dealing with a new crop of young writers who have decidedly chauvinistic views. Despite her title and office, they still treat her as their assistant and when Peggy tries to stick up for her, Joan rebuffs her, saying that Peggy’s efforts made her look like a “meaningless secretary“. After Joan’s husband is deployed to Vietnam, Roger Sterling begins wooing her once again. Apparently, he’s getting tired of Jane Siegel Sterling already. Joan turns down Sterling’s advances several times before agreeing to go out with him. On the way home, the two are robbed at gunpoint and in the emotion of the moment, Joan kisses him. They then have sex in an alley, but in the office the next day, they agree not to resume seeing each other.

In the next episode, she finds out that she’s pregnant by Roger. She tells him about it, but says that she will “handle it” and visits an abortion clinic. The scenes cut from showing her in the waiting room to her riding home on the bus, leaving it unclear as to whether she had the procedure or not. But she’s back at work the next day, looking the same way she did the day before. Roger stops to ask her if she should be back on her feet so quickly, but she says she’s fine. During a phone call with her husband in the last episode of the season, it’s revealed that she has told him she IS pregnant and he clearly thinks it’s his baby. She has yet to reveal it to her workmates, though.

Joan has had one of the most tumultuous story arcs on the show so far.  Hopefully, things will finally settle down for her next season, but somehow, I doubt it.

Image c/o: watchwithkristin

Season four was a dramatic shift in the direction of Mad Men. The show, which had up until then, focused on Don Draper’s slow descent into drunkenness and the crumbling of his marriage to wife Betty, started this season by looking at Don’s newly-single life. He tries to get back into the dating scene, but he ends up finding love in the office, of all places. He begins by dating psychologist, Dr. Faye Miller (played by Cara Buono), who consults the agency on upcoming campaigns.

While she falls head over heels for him, to the point of compromising her ethics to help him land a new client, Don begins to connect with his secretary, Megan. And yes, he eventually dumps Faye for pretty Megan who he proposes to (!) at the end of the season. But, Don also lost his good friend and first official wife, Anna, to cancer this season and her death served as a form of closure to the person that was Dick Whitman. Maybe that freed him up to start a new life.

Peggy, Don’s Girl Friday, also has an awakening during season four. She discovers that she doesn’t want to be the “good Catholic” girl that her mother wants her to become, displaying it clearly when she blows off a special dinner with her boyfriend Mark (who had invited her mother and sister without Peggy’s knowledge) to pull an all-nighter in the office with Don. During this year, Peggy made it clear that she is choosing career over motherhood, but she admitted to Don that she still has thoughts of the child she gave up.

Joan was getting adjusted to life with a military man at the beginning of the season, but found herself rekindling her romance with Roger Sterling, who is growing tired of his wife nee’ secretary, Jane. The two have a tryst in a back alley after they were held up by robbers and Joan discovers that she is pregnant by Roger. He suggests that she “take care of it”, a euphemism for an abortion and she does go to the clinic, but she appears to reconsider and keep the baby. At season’s end, she has told her husband that she’s pregnant and he seems to think it is his child.

So there are a lot of strings left untied at the end of season four. But, that just makes me all the more excited for season five!

Image c/o: Jimmy via AMC

In case you’re not caught up and you want to get the basics leading up to this final episode of Season 4 of Mad Men, here are is a quick recap.

During this season, Don has taken a turn in his life. He still seems hopelessly out of control (yet seemingly even more creative). This year, Don starts to slow down his fast-paced life, picks up swimming, and almost stops having affairs with his receptionists.

Ironically, during the last episode, he stunned the partners with an open letter to the NY Times about how he’s “Quitting Tobacco”. Cooper walks out after the letter airs and it seems the agency is left teetering.

Season 4 Finale - here too soon!

Will Don turn the firm around, turn over a new leaf and emerge victoriously, man triumphing over himself? Will his true identity come out, or will he return to Betty?

What will we find out as the plot thickens? The word on the blogosphere is that both Don and Peggy have live-changing decisions to make. Can’t wait to tune in.

I can’t remember when Season 3 of Mad Men ended. I know I sort of filled my time with episodes of Breaking Bad, but beyond that it has been a relatively long summer, devoid of the painfully cool episodes depicting 1960′s admen drinking, smoking and screwing around.

The good news, season 4 starts Sunday, July 25 at 10/9c on AMC.

Don and his team have left to start their own firm, and his wife Betty is running off with a new lover.

I recoded Mad Men for a couple weeks. I had gotten behind at work…couldn’t keep up.

Or maybe, I couldn’t face the truth – Don Draper is that man falling in the opening credits.

Perhaps, somehow, he rises from the ashes.

Oh, and Betty out in Reno? Have you been to Reno???

This is probably one of the most unexpected scenes I’ve witnessed in tv. It was so great, even laugh out loud-a-ble. This link is from a YouTube post. I could not get the feed from the original AMC Madmen post. 5 stars and so glad that now days we have all those safety guidelines at work!