Eighteen More Days

It's almost that time again: Mad Men returns on April 13th with the first half of its final season. I'm not happy about the split season because it's clearly being done for monetary reasons, but it's beyond our control.

The promotional engines have been revving for a couple of weeks already, so I'm not showing you anything new; I chose to highlight these images simply because I like them.

The poster was released first, and I love the vibrant colors; the posters for all the other seasons were pretty subdued. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I learned that there was a different, horizontal version of it:

I saw a story on BuzzFeed that mentioned it, then a couple of hours later I saw it full-size, on the side of a T bus.

I have an 11" x 17" version of the poster for season two that I bought on eBay several years ago. I don't know why I didn't try to get any of the others, but it would be nice to assemble a complete set of them at some point.

Then came the promo photos, which were taken at Los Angeles International Airport. The Mrs. grew up in southern California and recognized this tiled wall from passing through LAX.

Matthew Weiner stated in recent interviews that people should not attempt to read too much into these images, but we've been conditioned over the past seven years to read into every aspect of the show, so it's difficult not to do so here. What I noticed right away about this shot is that Roger (John Slattery, far left) is the only one who does not have some sort of briefcase or carry-on bag. Does that mean anything? Also, Joan (Christina Hendricks) is standing next to Roger. Does that mean they end up together? We probably won't know for sure until next spring.