Mad Men (TV Series) Tomorrowland (2010) User Reviews

Season Four

[zkonedog · 9/10 · 4 July 2019]

After the incredible strong finish to Season Three, I expected Season Four of "Mad Men" to get back to its storytelling perfection. That being said, even I was surprised how quickly I gobbled up each of these episodes, watching them at a pace not experienced since the first campaign!

Some highlights from this season include (some spoilers here):

-The new ad company (so hastily conceived towards the end of the previous season) struggling with all the things that a new business typically struggles with (overhead, payroll, keeping clients happy, etc.). -Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the lynchpin of the show's character drama, goes on more of an emotional rollercoaster than perhaps any other season, from drinking problems to marital issues (and solutions?) to child-raising quandaries. -Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss) really finding her place in a "man's world". She isn't the sheepish wallflower of seasons past in this season. -The former Betty Draper (January Jones) trying to control her home life while her personal life is going the other direction.

This season is so good because it also works concurrently on two different levels. The micro-level sees great individual episodes, including an office Christmas party, a long night at the office from Don & Peggy, a rekindling of romance between Joan (Christina Hendricks) & Roger (John Slattery) and a bombshell announcement that changes the entire landscape of the advertising culture.

On the macro-level, the Don/Betty dynamic is utterly fascinating, primarily embodied via daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka). Whereas in earlier seasons Don was set up as the "hopeless womanizer" with Betty "holding everything together", viewers now begin to understand that those characterizations are not as black-and-white as they seem. Like I've said in other reviews about this series, the show is always at its peak when Don is the major focus. He doesn't "do it alone", but any means, but it is his journey that gets the most attention (and thus is what us as viewers want the most resolution too).

Basically, this fourth season of "Mad Men" cemented the series as one of my favorite shows of all-time. Can it get a bit soapy at times? Yes...no way around it. But the characters are so interesting and feel so "alive" that one almost can't help but be sucked into the drama.

It Was A Great Season

[DKosty123 · 8/10 · 15 June 2011]

After setting such a high standard all season, this one as a finale is a bit of a let down. I understand it is hard to stay on such a high level. This one does more of a set up for next season than a finale.

Don Draper goes completely crazy here as he gets a sentimental present from the now deceased first wife of the real Draper he divorced years ago. After her death from cancer, she leaves her engagement ring for Don. After enjoying Bachelorhood to the extreme this season doing more women this year than any other year, he immediately takes the ring and proposes engagement with Megan.

This sets up next season with lots going on. Don's second ex-wife, Betts, decides it is time to move out of their house to Rye, New York as her daughter is being friend ed by the same boy she used to baby sit in a earlier season. Considering his crush on her then, she suspects his motives with her daughter are not what they should be.

Drapers office is starting to settle into a new routine following the loss of the Lucky Strike account with Peggy & Pete driving new business. To me the biggest let down is Draper. When is Don (or Dick) going to realize that he is not happy in a stable relationship. Like Peggy, he is driven by work. When they were alone together this season, that drive is so much the same that Peggy does not give in to the Draper seduction rush.

Most of this show is up to the others, but to me Don's announcement is not a surprise, but the set up for yet another stupid blunder in the next season. The announcement is a let down from an otherwise great year.

The proposal

[jotix100 · 9/10 · 7 August 2011]

The 2010 season came to an end with an episode that tries to tie different loose ends presented in all the preceding chapters. As series go, something is left unresolved to be taken, no doubt, on the now announced 2012 season.

The agency is experiencing hard times due to the lack of new businesses. The opportunity to get Topaz is of importance if SCDP is to survive. Don's meeting with the board of the Cancer Society goes well. There are a lot of influential people that can be beneficial to the agency, but nothing concrete really comes out.

Don's plan for a vacation trip to California is suddenly imperiled when he finds out Carla, his children's nanny, was fired by Betty. What is he supposed to do now, with an impending trip and no one to entrust the care of his family. Don's clear thinking results in interesting Megan to accompany them as a glorified nanny. In fact, that turn of events results in Don taking a different look at his own secretary. He will end proposing marriage to her.

Betty has so much anger in her that it comes to a boil when she arrives home and finds Glen Bishop upstairs. The boy has come to say good bye to Sally. As Glen passes her in the kitchen, she lets him have it. Glen is not shy in giving it back to her. Carla is the escape goat in the situation thus created as she fires her housekeeper in a fit that does not take into consideration Carla's hard work all these years. Her relationship with Henry is also strained. The move to Rye does not change things.

At the office, Joan has a new title, but no salary increase. Joan offers her view of the impending marriage of Megan and Don: he is in between marriages! Peggy is not sure whether to celebrate or pity the man that made her a rising star in the agency. Earlier, thanks to her good work, she is the influence which brings Topaz hosiery to SCDP with its worth of a quarter million dollars in billing. Later, we watch Joan talking to her husband who is in Viet Nam. The abortion did not take place; she is carrying Roger's baby! She is living a lie that might backfire on her.

Don tries to tell Faye about the news of his engagement to Megan, something he has been postponing. Reaching her on the phone, he proposes a face to face meeting, without the desired effect. Faye is too clever not to realize she is being dumped. Don also has another not too pleasant encounter with Betty at the old house, where he has gone to meet a real estate agent. As they reminisce, it becomes quite clear their regrets at a failed marriage they have lo live with.

The final chapter was directed by Matthew Weiner, the creator of "Mad Men". He co-wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Igla. The sense of failure lingers in the air, for as much as the executives of the agency had tried to make a go of the new enterprise, it has not been the success they obviously expected. At the same time, there is hope SCDP might be able to pull it off in a second rebirth as all the indicators seem to be pointing to. One can only hope the new season will keep this award winning show delighting its fans.

The Destruction of Morality

[Red_Identity · 17 October 2010]

Whenever one is about to watch the season finale of Mad Men, one cannot even begin to predict what is going to happen. Mad Men is such a one-way show that every episode is completely unpredictable, and this season especially has shown that. Tomorrowland was another excellent end to another great season.

Over the course of the season, we have been forced to really watch and understand these characters and their flaws, and this episode particularly wanted us to do that with the Don and Betty. Betty has become unlikeable and cold-hearted over the series, and this season especially enforced that. The reasons were because of her disturbed relationship with her own mother, and because of the events that Don put her through. Again here, Betty shows us just how evil she can truly be, but it also shows us just how sullen she is. She is unhappy, and her husband is too. She wonders if she will be left again, or cheated on, and for now this is where she is. We will have to wait until we see where she is and in what progress she has made in the next season.

Don Draper. The show's lead, and while he is certainly more charming with his kids than Betty is, his root flaw is the fact that he cannot keep himself away from women. He has had at least one affair in each season, and again in this episode he sees himself 'falling' for his secretary, despite having a girlfriend back home. The reason? Because he is in another city, he feels the love and passion and... well, not much. One would like to be as happy as Don is right now with his fiancée, but how can we? We say to ourselves 'Maybe this IS Don's true love, just maybe', yet we know underneath that he is doing what he does best. His girlfriend back home said it best, Faye, 'You only like the beginning of things'. She got this one spot on. Pity too, since I really liked Faye, and along with being a well rounded character, she also accepted Don's most personal secret. We can hope for the best in Don, but despite having high hopes earlier in the season that he was finally going to realize his past mistakes, it is so heartbreaking to see him once again step into his own trap. The sad thing is, he also knows it. In a scene with him and his new love, he says that while sometimes people try to change, it is not enough. That line right there pretty much sums up the whole season.

The great thing about the episode is that while Don and Megan may be as happy as can be, others know best, particularly Joan and Peggy. In a great scene in Joan's office, both talk about how pointless their engagement is, and it roots back to how both of their jobs will be affected, which points back to another point of the season. Throughout the season, we have seen how Peggy is successfully breaking herself out from the majority of women in jobs like these, and how Joan is much more old-fashioned in her approach. Whereas Joan tries to be successful in her persona life, Peggy has focused primarily on her business life, which comes back to her problem here. She is now worried about how this new relationship will cause Megan's job to be elevated, and how she might be decreased in importance, which in turn is when Joan tells her that's why she finds other things to be happy about. Who knows, in this case maybe Joan is right.

Overall, there are many wonderful things in this episode, and it already seems like I am missing Mad Men. The continuing wheel in Don's life also seems to never stop, and one can wonder when will the wheel finally come to a stop.

Slowburn Anti-Finale Finale

[TheFearmakers · 7/10 · 8 September 2023]

The scenes with Megan right after the proposal back at the office from the Disneyland trip... it's eerie, like in a horror movie when an innocent girl walks into a house she doesn't know is haunted, and that will eventually kill her... well, not literally, but...

Good episode, and personally I think Megan is a good choice for the next wife... she has the innocence and vulnerability down, and what's weird is she's a dead-ringer for a character who went nowhere, that being Roger's own trophy wife... god, I even forget her name... Jane, that's it...

The best scene takes place between Peggy and Joan, finally bonding and sharing a moment after all these seasons, and jealous about the secretary that married the boss, very realistic...

Betty goes through changes that makes fans hate her like they hated Skylar from Breaking Bad, but I totally am behind her for doing anything possible to keep Sally away from the bad-acting freak-boy, Glen, who simply stops time whenever he's on screen... almost ruins the show...

Anyhow, a great season, this one, but I still think the first was the best.

The chosen path doesn't seem right.

[dhjxnddhixjcjjs · 1/10 · 22 April 2020]

Don shouldn't have engaged with his secretary. This just ruined the whole season for me. It doesn't suit the character and it doesn't do us the justice. If he was to be engaged with someone, it should've been Faye. This stunt they pulled is not a surprise, it's a disaster, fron my view at least. Shananigans?No :(

Season 4: Another very strong and enjoyable season

[bob the moo · 26 December 2011]

A few episodes into this season I had to wonder to myself why I had taken so long to get around to watching it. It had been on the BBC months prior and had sat waiting for me to watch my recordings but yet I always found a different show to watch when it came time to pick one. I don't know if it is season 1's impressions lingering in my mind but the show was in my head as dry, a little slow and perhaps a bit stiff – this was the feeling I had even though the previous two seasons have been nothing of the sort. Anyway, when I eventually did start the show it took almost no time for this lingering doubt to be dispelled and to be replaced by a season that is yet again engaging, interesting, character-driven, comedic and entertaining.

We pick up some time after the end of the third season and the new company, although still in infancy, is in proper offices, mostly off the back of the Lucky Strike business. Don's marriage has long been dissolved and while his focus is on getting business good, his personal life is full of messy interactions, frustrations and poor judgement. The decision to skip forward a year (give or take) is a good one as I had worried that the fourth season would be focused on the business as they struggled to get off the ground, the skip forward means that the firm is still a focal point but it is not so overpowering that it pushes out other aspects. As with the third season the show does a really good job of spreading out the plots to have lots going on with the other characters – and not just lots going on, but lots going on that is of interest and value. I never really felt that there were threads where I was longing for it to move back to the characters I prefer, everything seemed to work pretty much as well as everything else.

Of course Don is still the lead character and he is really well written – all at once sharp, desirable and professional while also demonstrating terrible judgement, nagging demons and frankly a real inability to build a relationship that goes beyond the "new" stage. He is fascinating this season and he has grown on me as a character very much over the last few seasons. He is not alone though and indeed almost everyone has more meat on them in terms of character and, in some cases, plot threads. This also helps the show develop a sense of time and place – I'm not old enough (or American enough) to say whether it is accurate or not but everyone seems to say it is, but where real or not, it works for me because the show gives you a feeling of time/place but without ramming it down your throat. Likewise this fourth season is for me the one that handles cultural change the best because it doesn't wear it on its sleeve but rather shows it through its characters. OK we have people and places and events that are part of times changing but they are no more important than behaviour and interactions that say the same (eg the final exchange between Joan and Peggy).

The cast respond well to the material and are yet again excellent throughout. Hamm leads well but support is just as good from Moss, Kartheiser, Jones and others. The one thing I struggled with a little was the reintroduction of Staton to the cast; I had no problem with his performance but having his work in LA Noire so fresh in my mind I did find that I was constantly waiting for him to suddenly and erratically shout and threaten during normal conversation! As always the design is great – from sets to costumes it is a retro-design head's dream come true.

Overall I may have come to this season with an unjustified reluctance but the season quickly puts me right on that, delivering an engaging and entertaining show that mixes social change with personal plots and comedy with drama. Very well done and very much worth watching. Unfortunately this is the last season that will be available in the UK without subscribing to Sky to get access to the new channel they created.