MAD MEN (Season Four)

(AMC, Sunday, July 25, 10 p.m.)

By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 7/26/2010 12:01:00 AM

At the end of season three, Matt Weiner’s world of Madison Avenue Mad Men was unwinding.

The principal players of Sterling Cooper had branched out on their own, beating the shop’s British parent company’s sale to McCann-Erickson to the punch. The exodus left the crew operating out of a hotel room at the Pierre.

Meanwhile, creative director Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) secrets and serial infidelities were discovered by wife Betty (January Jones) and she was depicted flying to Reno to get a divorce.

Flash forward to the premiere of season four and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is set up in a one-floor office. A walk of the corridors reveals that Joan Harris (Christine Hendricks) and Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) are back, the latter with a new copywriting partner.

Other familiar faces from the first three seasons are absent, though. The lack of a conference room is a regretful running joke.

Business isn’t booming as the firm tries to retain its dwindling client base and is involved en masse in pitches for long-shot new business. Peggy and loathsome account exec Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) stage a stunt aimed at turning a small account into something much larger.

For his part, Draper — misguided and duplicitous in so many ways in his personal life — finally takes one on the chin professionally. The slick one doesn’t come off well in a trade article, of all things, and is properly chided by partners Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and Bert Cooper (Robert Morse).

Away from the office, Draper’s making do in a Greenwich Village apartment, where his maid demands that he eat something and he’s left shining his shoes after his day of toil. Although Don informs Roger he hasn’t been a monk — a point underlined by a lovely who sates the creative genius’ penchant for playing rough — Draper agrees to go out with a 25-year-old actress friend of his partner’s young wife. The encounter, at least in the first episode, doesn’t have a happy ending.

Still, most of the action occurs in the office, the place where the show has always been its most interesting. Let’s hope most of the plots continue to unspool in the agency’s space in the Time-Life Building.

Indeed, Draper’s ex-wife Betty doesn’t appear with new hubby and Nelson Rockefeller aide Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) until almost halfway through the episode. The newlywed’s life appears complicated, with improper behavior from daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka) and a less-than-receptive mother-in-law. Then, there’s the bit about Betty not wanting to move out of the Drapers’ Ossining abode.

Add it all up and creator Matt Weiner has new layers and worlds to explore with his cast of characters positioned in new circumstances and situations, against the backdrop of the exploding Sixties. But as Peggy — now more independent and a player in her own write, so to speak — notes to Draper, “We’re all trying to please you.”

That’s why many fans have been interested all along.