5 Questions For 'Mad Men' Season 7

Mad Men season 7 and the return of Don Draper & Co. is barreling our way. Or at the very least slowly swaggering. In celebration, and because he really likes to give entire interviews wherein he somehow reveals literally no new pieces of lit, Matthew Weiner talked Mad Men season 7 with Buzzfeed. It brought up some questions that will be brewing throughout this season, or at the very least leading into that last hurrah.

So let's do our Mad Men homework, shall we? Here are some tidbits from what Weiner said, accompanied by the Big Questions they pose or answer (mostly pose).

What Does It Mean That This Half Of The Season Is Subtitled "The Beginning"?

I’d like to think that every season is the beginning of something new. Sometimes it takes a while for the audience to get used to that. But this was the beginning of the end. These are the last 14 hours of the show [...] But it is a new story, as we do every season, but that story is our life story.

And What Does It Mean That This Final Season's Split In Two?

This has required a little bit more focus. What it really comes down to is the responsibility of where we’re going to leave everybody, and what we have to say — not just about these people’s lives, but about the entire experience of the show on some level.

Will Don Draper Ever Be Able To Repair His Relationships?

Last season his daughter walked in on him having sex with a woman who was not his wife, and that's not even bringing up his current status with said wife or former protege Peggy Olson. Oh, and that little thing where he confessed big parts of his backstory to a lot of people, including his children and his colleagues.

Weiner did not so much answer these questions, but he did speak to where Don is and waht that might mean:

A lot of what we’re writing about in this final season is about consequences. That was a dire circumstance for Don professionally, a drastic situation for him personally, and it seemed that perhaps, that is the beginning of something. Or perhaps that’s just an event, but it is a kind of reconciliation. And one of things that I’ve been interested in this whole time is, OK, so what are the consequences of that? Not just, What happens next, but just because you feel different doesn’t mean that change is going to happen to everyone else.

And What About His Psyche?

The other thing to look forward to, I think, is a new story, which is about our relationship with the material and the immaterial world. There is the reality of ambition, money, these things in our life that are material, and then the other part of our life: the internal world and the immaterial world. We’ve sort of investigated that on some level in the past, but this last season is really, really about that. We’ve seen the world through Don Draper’s eyes and we’ve watched Don Draper and that tension is something that we are really investigating in this last season.

Will Don Draper do LSD With Roger This Season?Ok, fine, the show is not asking this. But I am. And I demand answers.

You should really read the whole interview over at Buzzfeed. There's a lot more stuff thataway (Peggy!), and if I've learned anything from my Mad Men viewing it's that Matthew Weiner's opaque teasers are best poured over in their entirety. And we need to do everything we can to prepare ourselves for this coming slow burn of a finale.

Image: AMC