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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.
