The cable channel AMC ended a protracted contract battle with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, signing him and the show to a long-term deal late Thursday, according to The New York Times.

According to the Times, Weiner will continue to run the show for two more seasons, with an option for a third. The deal is said to be worth $30 million, one of the largest in television.

AMC is still planning to begin the fifth season of Mad Men in 2012, skipping the summer date the show has premiered on in past seasons.

By MELISSA MAERZ

Due to continuing contract negotiations between Mad Men creator Matt Weiner and AMC, the series will not return until early 2012, the network said on Tuesday. AMC announced that it has officially authorized production of the show’s fifth season, triggering its option with Mad Men‘s production company, Lionsgate, but confirmed that the show won’t be back until next year. “While we are getting a later start than in years past due to ongoing, key non-cast negotiations, Mad Men will be back for a fifth season in early 2012,” the network said in a statement.

But according to The Daily and Deadline Hollywood, many issues have yet to be resolved between the parties, including AMC’s desire to integrate more product placement into the series, add more commercials and trim the running time by two minutes. Two years ago, Weiner had a similar dispute with AMC over those two minutes, and both sides eventually agreed to let the episodes run over into the 11 p.m. time slot so that extra commerical time could be added without making the scripts any shorter. AMC has been using product placement in the series since its first season.
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Don (Jon Hamm) proposes to Megan (Jessica Pare) in the season finale. (AMC)

OK, anyone else think, at first, that Don’s proposal to Megan was going to be part of a dream sequence?

The stunner of Mad Men‘s season finale, which felt like a certainty (Don cheating on Faye with Megan when they’re out in California) taken way too far, had more than a measure of abruptness to it. I’ll explain.

The scene before the proposal was in California, in a diner, with Megan calmly cleaning up after Sally spilled her milkshake. Bang! Suddenly we’re back in Manhattan, with Don giddily proposing to Megan. No scene of the family coming back. No conversations leading up to the proposal. Just “Hey! Let’s get married!”

I was envisioning that Don or Megan would wake up, with the seed of marriage in their heads. But no. It really happened.
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Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) and Bert Cooper (Robert Morse), prior to Don's bold move. (AMC)

Bert Cooper took his shoes and went home.

That move, in response to Don Draper’s open letter about ending his firm’s dependence on tobacco advertising he decided to run in The New York Times, seemed to almost serve as a final passing of the torch between old-school ad men (like Cooper and Roger Sterling) and the new school (Don, Peggy Olsen, Harry Crane, etc.).

Of course, given the twists and turns that Mad Men takes, there’s no guarantee that Cooper won’t return in some way. But it’s an easy leap across this bridge into a new age of advertising, which includes a heavier lean on television, less so on published ads.
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Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) with his newborn. (AMC)

The 11th episode of Mad Men has an early scene with Ken Cosgrove dining with his fiancee’s family, and the future Mrs. Cosgrove’s father is played by Ray Wise. Immediately, I’m thinking to myself, “Oh man. It’s Leland Palmer. Someone’s gonna be found dead by the railroad tracks now.”

Thankfully, no one has literally died since Mrs. Blankenship in Episode 9 (You are still missed!), but with Roger delaying the announcement that Lucky Strike was leaving Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and taking much of the revenue stream with them, there might be a few careers on life support.

Roger continues to deceive his partners by claiming to travel to Raleigh to talk Lee Garner Jr. out of pulling the plug, but the die has been cast, and Roger heads as far as a hotel to “call from reception” at American Tobacco.
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Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) and Robert Pryce (W. Morgan Sheppard) spend time at the Playboy Club. (AMC)

After all that happened in this most recent episode of Mad Men, I was checking my temple for blood too. The whole episode played like an hour-long “thwack” from the cane of Robert Pryce, Lane’s civil-in-public, brutal-in-private father.

There wasn’t a primary character who saw more than a couple of scenes in “Hands and Knees” that didn’t have some sort of life-shaking crisis heaped on them (with the possible exception of Pete, though even he could see some fallout for taking the fall for Don).

Joan has to deal with a pregnancy scare right away (and “THWACK!”, this one hit right after the opening credits). This was also the least surprising turn of events of the episode — you just had the feeling Roger and Joan’s moment of passion in the alley after they were mugged would turn out really badly.

After a particularly shaming scene in Roger’s doctor’s office (“At your age!” — seriously, like age is going to stop Roger Sterling), Joan ends up in an abortion clinic in New Jersey, but we end up with a “Did she or didn’t she?” scenario hanging over things, as it’s never actually resolved. We should however know fairly quickly if Joan went through with her third abortion (particularly heartbreaking for Joan as she does actually want kids) — with some exception, Mad Men tends to resolve its secrets in quick order.
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Joan (Christina Hendricks), Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Faye (Cara Buono) ride the elevator in this episode's final shot of 'Mad Men'. (AMC)

One piece of the Mad Men puzzle that I haven’t really explored until this season is the case of the “real-life Don Draper”, aka Draper Daniels, the Chicago-based ad man who came up with the Marlboro Man campaign.

Unlike Don, Daniels — whom Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner said he based Don Draper on, somewhat — didn’t change his name after a fellow soldier died in Korea, but there are similarities. Like Don, Daniels went from working on a farm to working in the ad game. Similarly, both men smoked and drank to excess, and according to Myra Janco Daniels, the colleague who ended up marrying Draper Daniels, both were brilliant when it came to advertising.

So those who’ve discovered Draper Daniels have, of course, been trying to figure out who’ll be the next Mrs. Draper, In other words, who’d play Myra — who married Daniels in 1967.
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Don Draper (Jon Hamm) takes a swim in the New York Athletic Club pool on 'Mad Men'. (AMC)

After watching this past week’s episode of Mad Men, “The Summer Man”, my immediate thought was “I wonder how many people will mention John Cheever this week?”

For those unfamiliar with Cheever, he was an author best known for his short stories about suburban life and human nature, basically about how a well-defined outer persona can mask a painful inner existence.

Sound like someone we all know?

Anyway, Mad Men‘s connection with Cheever was never more apparent to me than it was when Don Draper swam in the pool at the New York Athletic Club, emerging coughing at one end, finally showing some signs of how his drinking and smoking have adversely affected his health, at least somewhat.

(And yet, seconds later, he appears in front of the NYAC, sunglasses on, pressed shirt, tie, smoking a cigarette with the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” playing. I don’t think he’s ever looked that cool.)
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Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Don (Jon Hamm) fall asleep on Don's couch. (AMC)

There have been some comments already floating around out there about how “The Suitcase”, the seventh episode of Mad Men‘s fourth season, might just be its best.

I may not be willing to lean that far — the pilot got things off at a very high level, and that episode, Season 3′s “A Man Walks Into An Advertising Agency” (aka the one where Lane Pryce’s replacement has his foot run over by a lawnmower) and Season 2′s “Meditations on an Emergency” (aka the one where Sterling Cooper is being taken over by the British as Don Draper’s in California) are my top three of the moment.

But the chemistry between Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss has never been better than it was in “The Suitcase”. While it clearly wouldn’t be the same without the history both of the characters and between the characters, the episode is pretty much the first to seem almost a perfect, self-contained story.
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Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) and Roger Sterling (John Slattery) wait to see if their agency won a Clio.

By the time this season of Mad Men ends, the fifth episode, where Don maneuvers his agency into an account with Honda with the ability of the first three seasons, will seem like the exception rather than the rule.

With the sixth episode under its belt, clearly this season is about the hard fall of Don Draper.

In fact, contrasting the fifth-episode Draper with this one is pretty startling. In the last episode, Don was back in master-of-the-universe mode. He faked out a competitor while putting aside the alcohol and understanding his firm’s Japanese suitor.
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