Welcome to a Mad New World. Season Four of Mad Men, 3-time Emmy® winner for Outstanding Drama Series and winner of 3 consecutive Golden Globes®, returns for a new year rife with possibilities. Last season stunned fans with its cliffhanger finale, as Don Draper’s professional and personal lives unexpectedly imploded. In Season 4, Jon Hamm and the rest of the breakout ensemble continue to captivate us as they grapple with an uncertain new reality.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1753 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 2011-03-29
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Formats: AC-3, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 3
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 611 minutes

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Mad Men took a daring turn at the end of the third season by rebooting itself (the principals at Sterling Cooper left to form their own upstart agency in the face of a corporate takeover), and it pays off big time in season four. Set a year after that season finale, the brand-new agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is struggling to make a name for itself and sign on new clients; Roger (John Slattery) finds himself at the beck and call of the firm's largest account, Lucky Strike; Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) faces impending fatherhood; Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) asserts herself in a position of power among her sexist fellow copywriters; Joan (Christina Hendricks) sees her husband off to Vietnam and finds herself in a compromising predicament. Then there's Don (Jon Hamm, doing his finest acting yet), who brazenly gambles the firm's success on his impulses, lives alone except for a string of one-night stands, and exchanges curt phone calls with his ex-wife, Betty (January Jones), over parenting the kids. Don's rock bottom midway through the season (which hits somewhere around his career high) collides with the shattering loss of a loved one, and his attempts to improve himself include forging a new romance with a confident, intelligent marketing researcher (Cara Buono). But the woman with whom he's most deeply linked--platonically--is Peggy, and the two of them have a terrific episode all to themselves entitled "The Suitcase."

The season's 13 episodes are a perfect suite of politics (Joan vs. the male establishment, the rivalry between Ken and Pete); humor (the firm competes for a Honda account and trips over itself trying to read their Japanese clients); hope (Don and Betty's daughter Sally's cry for help finally falls on receptive ears); and growth (Pete, so weaselly in season one, has become the show's most matured cast member). Each one comes with full commentary by creator Matthew Weiner and various cast and crew members. Also included are documentaries on the historical landscape of the period Mad Men covers: divorce, the Ford Mustang, and the 1964 presidential campaign. All are informative enough, but for a show that's very serious and buttoned up, one can't help but feel a little disappointed there aren't more lighthearted behind-the-scenes extras that could have been included. But perhaps Weiner & Co. feel it's better to keep it all behind the curtain. --Ellen A. Kim

Most helpful customer reviews

146 of 158 people found the following review helpful.
What happens to a dream blown to pieces?
By J. A Bowen
When I think about Season 4, one word comes to mind -- "dark". This is the season of Don's discontent -- indeed, his comeuppance, if you will -- and as the season opens we find him living in a seedy Greenwich Village apartment, where his rendevous with the ladies end all too often in rebuffs rather than ravishings. On the work front, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has all the trappings of success. They have nice offices, a corral of secretaries, and a big client list. Don is being interviewed by a magazine asking the question "Who is Don Draper?" and further on into the season, we see him accepting a Cleo for his talents. The only problem is, he's drunk when he's accepting it. In fact, he's drunk most of the time. Dead drunk, and his decisions and fine-honed genius with words suffer for it.

Of course, being Don, he looks good. Hard to believe a man can drink that much and still not show the wages of sin. But as the season progresses, we see him losing his grip more and more, on the business as well as the personal front. He blows up at clients, neglects his children, and uses his women to get what he thinks he wants. At the same time, he is watching himself, from a distance, deconstruct. He starts keeping a journal and swims every day to clear his mind. You keep thinking he's going to get a grip on it. He has to. He's Don Draper.

The supporting staff is suffering too, all the with exception of Peggy, who seems to have really come into her own this season. She is confident, perky, and looks great. She's even dressing the part. Joan Holloway is given more to do this season, thankfully, and her character only gets more intriguing. There's really no telling what Joan can pull off, because no matter what happens to her, she keeps on going. As for Betty Draper, she isn't present too often, but when she is, she is still very much the Mom you love to hate, and she doesn't seem to have learned a thing.

I can't reveal too much more without spoiling the season. In fact, I probably should have put spoiler alerts in the beginning of this, but I don't think I've ruined anything for anybody. This is great stuff, amazing stuff for television, and no matter how painful the journey, you've just got to watch Season Four. All of it.

54 of 62 people found the following review helpful.
Best Show on Tv, Bar None
By carol irvin
The excellence continues with this fourth season of MAD MEN. Matthew Weiner, its creator, was one of the writers on the SOPRANOS. He hovers over every detail of MAD MEN, getting it absolutely right, just as creator David Chase did for the SOPRANOS. The first choice he made was absolutely insisting that Jon Hamm had to play the lead. Everyone thought Weiner was crazy insisting on an unknown. Result? Jon Hamm is now a major tv star and probably going to be a major star period. Next bit of historical marvel was that HBO turned this show down so that Weiner took it to an upstart cable channel, AMC, and ended up putting AMC on the map. For those of you who don't know it, this show IS Weiner and this was nowhere more evident than at the 2010 Emmy Awards show where he walked up to the stage to receive Emmy after Emmy including the best drama show one, the big one. I am dwelling on this point because often viewers do not realize that it is one person off camera who is making the whole thing happen. That is certainly the case here.

Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm) continues to be the fulcrum for the show; everything pivots around him. However, it is a very rich band of characters indeed who do that pivoting. In season four, everyone is coming into his or her own, whether for good or ill. Draper himself goes through a huge melting down crisis post divorce, flailing around now that what little identity he had seems gone. His entire identity now comes down to his job, which is finding a way to brilliantly project falsity, which is a metaphor for his entire life.

Betty, his ex, is becoming more of what she has been in the prior three seasons. More brittle, more vicious, more intent on achieving her ever elusive goal of perfection. This becomes so paramount that one scarcely notices her Grace Kelly like appearance anymore. Her new husband belatedly realizes what a morass he has gotten himself into by marrying her. Her relationship with Sally becomes one of the best of the show. There is a boiling point coming between the two of them which I am awaiting more eagerly than any other plot development,

Don Draper's secretary also becomes a pivotal force. For half of the show it is an old battleaxe who is just fantastic and then we get a very attractive, very maternal young French Canadian woman. As the show gathers steam towards its end, it becomes apparent that this is a very important character to watch.

Peggy and Joan also remain big characters. Rounding them out as the women of the mid 60s in the work force, is a woman who is the harbinger of things to come. She has her doctorate in psychology and is using it to measure and predict consumer acts in the advertising world. She begins dating Don and Peggy sees her as a role model for herself, a woman much further up in the business world model. Joan is still mired in the head secretarial world and also is stuck with unfinished business with her major weasel of a boss, Roger Sterling.

Don Draper's nemesis Peter becomes no longer his nemesis but now a comrade in arms. Where once these two were at odds, they now need one another, more than even they realize as Roger Sterling gives them only half the tale of a major crisis. Pete Campbell has changed a great deal as a character and is now a force for stability that once seemed impossible.

The only bad thing about season four is that it ended. For those of us who are in its thrall, that we have to wait until next summer to delve into season five, is a very sad state of affairs indeed.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Best Season Yet
By Luz M. Garcia
While I cannot rate the packaging/full product itself (though if it is anything like its predecessors, I can at least say it will be good), I can say that this is undoubtedly the best season of Mad Men yet. This season is the most enticing from its queezy beginning, to an earth-shattering end. You will see most complex character development in this seasons then others and bigger dilemmas, dramas and setbacks...this is a must have for Mad Men lovers, and a must see willing to give Mad Men a second (or fourth) chance