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Reality bites for Mad Men

Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway and Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men. Picture: Supplied

For Mad Men creator and show runner Matthew Weiner, the reality is beginning to sink in. The series returns for the first half of its seventh and final season on Monday, and Weiner is toiling away on episode nine, leaving just five episodes until the story of elusive adman Don Draper reaches its conclusion.

"There is a weird psychology to saying 'OK, there's five episodes left, three stories an episode. That's 15 stories left to tell in the entire show'. That's pretty overwhelming," Weiner said in a telephone interview.

In a calculated move by American network AMC, the final season of Mad Men will be split in half: seven episodes to air this year, followed by seven more in 2015. The first batch of episodes has already been filmed, and production was set to begin on the back half of the season last month.

Although Weiner said it was not his idea to divide the season in two, he "really didn't fight" the network on it because he had seen how well this approach worked for the final season of Breaking Bad, and simply accepted it as a writing challenge.

"The interesting thing is the show is always kind of structured in halves, whether the audience notices or not," he said, noting the tendency for major plot points to emerge around the halfway point of a given season; think the lawnmower incident in season three, or last year's merger between Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and rival agency Cutler, Gleason & Chaough.

The last season of Mad Men was set in 1968, with the tumultuous events of that infamous year driving the show's narrative in a way they hadn't since the assassination of JFK near the end of season three. In one episode an advertising awards banquet was interrupted by news of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination.

This upheaval was reflected in the life of the series' protagonist, who found himself at his lowest point ever: alienated from his wife, Megan, suspended indefinitely from his job and caught (literally) with his pants down by his daughter, Sally.

"It was a catastrophic year for the United States and for Don Draper as well," Weiner said.

Though some fans, sick of Don's selfishness and womanising, turned on him last season, just as many were encouraged by the closing scene of the finale, in which the protagonist revealed his true identity to his three children.

But just because Don came clean to his family doesn't mean that he has completely turned over a new leaf, Weiner said.

"I definitely think that affected him, but there are a lot of other consequences that are hanging in the balance. You can say he's a survivor, he's going to start over, but what does that mean?"

Though Weiner did not disclose an exact start date for season seven, he is willing to confirm that by the end of the final, 14-episode season, Mad Men will have reached the conclusion of the 60s, meaning the final season will take place in 1969 - another year marked by era-defining events ,including the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

It's a neat way to wrap up a series that, on one level, has always been about the country's precipitous transformation from the Eisenhower era to the chaos and discord of the Vietnam age.

"That was the intention for the show all along," Weiner said.

He promises the plot of the new season will be extremely dense, at least by Mad Men standards, and will be focused on the series' central characters. As usual, the infamously secretive show runner provides few specifics, speaking in broad terms about the season ahead.

It is believed the season will go bi-coastal, with Ted Chaough and Pete Campbell opening a West Coast branch of Sterling Cooper in Los Angeles.

"I wanted to investigate the consequences of actions and how they stick with you, which is kind of a great topic for the end of the show. I also wanted to talk about the material world and the immaterial world," he said.

If that sounds like an awful lot of material to explore in just 14 episodes, Weiner promises the final season is indeed ambitious. "But I believe in risk and I'm not just going to limp out with Don in a Nehru jacket."