Mad Men will return April 7th with a two hour premiere for the penultimate season

While AMC announced the official premiere date for the sixth season of MAD MEN as April 7th, bringing cries of joy from fans like me, creator Matthew Weiner had to go and shit on my happiness by confirming this will be the second to last season. I knew it was going to end someday, but like BREAKING BAD, it is bittersweet.

The two hour premiere of MAD MEN will be directed by Jon Hamm and will have a lot of loose ends to tie up from last year’s excellent run. While I don’t want to give away any spoilers for those of you who wait to watch the show on Blu-ray, Matthew Weiner did share some tidbits about the new season with The Daily Beast. Here are some highlights.

What year does the sixth season start in? Weiner, however, was coy about just how much time elapses between Season 5 and Season 6. “I am going to skip ahead in time,” he said. “I won’t say how long, but the first two episodes are a movie unto themselves. And they do foreshadow what’s going to happen in the season. They do tell a story of the period and root you where you are in these people’s lives. But a lot has changed when the season opens up. A lot has changed.”

What will become of Pete Campbell? “Pete’s story was that he was switching places with Don, and he had reached an emptiness in that suburban world that was very hard on him and very numbing. It was as much of a midlife crisis as you could have. But his response to it as he explained in that last scene with Alexis Bledel [as Beth] was that he wanted an adventure and he wanted to feel better about himself. But in the end he just realized that there was something really wrong with his life.”

What does Matthew Weiner think of those fans who wait to watch the whole season at once? “I have a TiVo, but I like watching things live…I like entertainment to be an event. I don’t like the phone on, I don’t like the computer going, I don’t like people texting me during it. I’m interested in the Netflix [model] because it’s just so completely new. But my commercial instincts tell me, ‘Why wouldn’t you do it a few at a time, or something, or three in a week or whatever?’ But I am not going to argue with them because they obviously know what they’re doing…I still have a fantasy of everybody watching the show at the same time. Finding out what it is at the same time and then talking about it the next morning. I think there are very few things in our world that we share on that schedule anymore.”

How will this season differ from prior seasons? “What’s great about doing this show is every season is different and you never know what you’re going to get when you watch it,” Weiner said. “The actors will be the same, the characters are consistent, but the period is changing and the world is changing and the story is changing. They have different tones, they have different flavors, different colors, and week to week you don’t know what the show’s going to be. That means that there’s going to be a conversation about it.”

However you look at it, MAN MEN is a brilliant show and will go down in history right alongside AMC-mate BREAKING BAD as a pair of the best shows in the history of television. I am not looking for this year or next to top what came before, just keep giving us the excellence we have come to expect.