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The Best Show of the 2010s Is Finally Streaming Again (But Its Return Has Been a Nightmare)
There has been a lot of hype about the return of Mad Men to streaming, with HBO Max announcing last month that it would be the new home of the iconic AMC drama beginning December 1st. Not only that, but the streamer announced and advertised that Mad Men would be available to stream in 4K for the first time when it landed on the service’s lineup. Given the production design and cinematography the show is so well known for, that was incredible news to fans. Unfortunately, Mad Men‘s arrival on HBO Max earlier this week brought more issues than anything.
The regular version of Mad Men that you stream on the lower, non-4K editions of HBO Max is just fine. But the 4K “upgrade” is absolutely riddled with errors that were totally overlooked for the digital restoration. And we’re not talking simple color or audio issues here. There are several scenes where post-production work is just missing entirely.
Arguably the biggest blunder of this rollout — the one everyone is talking about — is the crew member assisting with a vomiting scene in the seventh episode of Season 1. In the episode, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) pukes in the office in front of clients, and the new “4K” version shows viewers just how that sausage was made.
A crew member is present in the shot, operating a barf hose to create the Roger’s vomit. You can even see a second crew member next to him watching it all go down. This was obviously edited out of the scene in the version that aired on TV, but it’s front-and-center for this new streaming restoration.
It would be one thing if a single moment like this slipped through the cracks, but there are a bunch of these moments throughout the first couple seasons of the show on HBO Max. There’s one scene in Season 2 where Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) is walking through what is supposed to be New York City in the 1960s. But she passes buildings with signs advertising electronic SIM cards and “the best burritos in L.A.”
To make things even more confusing, many of the episodes have the incorrect titles and have sometimes been listed out of order. This rollout has been nothing short of chaotic, to say the least.
Fortunately, it does at least appear as though a fix is in the works. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate apparently “delivered the wrong 4K file” to the folks at HBO Max. The story from THR this week noted that Lionsgate is working on “getting HBO Max the correct file(s)” and they were in the process of being swapped out.
We’ll see how the rollout for the replacement files goes over the next few days. Hopefully it all gets sorted out and HBO Max does have a true 4K upgrade of Mad Men to show subscribers. What would be even better, though, is if that finished 4K edition gets a physical release sometime in 2026.
Have you found any other issues with Mad Men on HBO Max? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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