You turn on the T.V. You wait patiently. You stare at the listings.
Where is he? Where is Don? Where is Mad Men?
Well, friends, they aren’t coming back this summer. No! Don’t cry!
The show isn’t gone forever, it hasn’t been canceled. What happened here is what always happens in Hollywood: it’s called “negotiating.”
Whenever a show is up for renewal, all the contractual obligations have to be hammered out again. Usually, everyone gets this done in time for the season to start shooting again (most shows go on hiatus March through June/July and pick back up for the fall season during the end of the summer; Mad Men shoots in the earlyish spring through the beginning of summer and has its long hiatus through the year). But this year, Mad Men executives and producers could not reach a proper deal with AMC in time.
So the bottom line is: the show HAS been renewed (the contracts go all the way to seven seasons!) with the cast and Matthew Weiner (the creator) returning, but because negotiations took so long, they aren’t filming until the fall. We’ll start to see episodes in March 2012. I know. It’s a long wait, but them’s the breaks in ol’ Hollywoodtown.
Now the big question is: what are they doing with January Jones’ pregnancy?
