'Mad Men' Returns April 7th, Creator Matthew Weiner Confirms It Will Be The Second To Last Season

You have to wonder if AMC might be getting slightly worried. This summer will see "Breaking Bad" say goodbye as the second half of the final season airs bringing a conclusion to the adventures of Walt and Jesse, and in the spring "Mad Men" beings to roll to its finale too. Creator Matthew Weiner has confirmed that season six will be the penultimate batch of episodes until he wraps things up with season seven. As devoted fans of the show know, intense negotiations took place between Weiner, AMC and Lionsgate to get him back for season five, and it was already rumored the show was headed to a conclusion, and indeed our time with Don Draper is now nearing an end. But don't think that Weiner is going to hold all the good stuff until season seven.

“I came in with my plan for the season,” he told The Daily Beast. “I was like, ‘I want to save that for the last season, I want to save that; I want to wait on that’ and I was pulled aside by Maria and Andre Jacquemetton, my executive producers, who said, ‘Don’t do that. You’ve never done that before. Let’s just use all the story that we have and we’ll deal with it on the other side of it.’ It really helped. Because I don’t want to change—part of it is superstition and part of it is the only way I know how to do it.”

As always, Weiner is playing it very, very close to the chest and isn't dropping even the hint of spoilers, but he does reveal that there will be another time jump between seasons. “I am going to skip ahead in time,” he said. “I won’t say how long, but the first two episodes are a movie unto themselves. And they do foreshadow what’s going to happen in the season. They do tell a story of the period and root you where you are in these people’s lives. But a lot has changed when the season opens up. A lot has changed.”

So, what can you do to prepare before "Mad Men" is back on April 7th? Weiner suggests watching the very final moments of season five. "I would love for people to just watch the last 10 minutes of Season 5 right before Season 6 starts," he said. "I think you’ll have a really incredible experience as we get there.”

With lots of questions to answer, there is no doubt we're eager to five into season six when it gets here....just don't expect Weiner to follow the Netflix trend of dropping all the episodes at the same time, which they will be doing for "House Of Cards" and "Arrested Development." “I’m kind of old-fashioned,” he explained. “I have a TiVo, but I like watching things live…I like entertainment to be an event. I don’t like the phone on, I don’t like the computer going, I don’t like people texting me during it. I’m interested in the Netflix [model] because it’s just so completely new. But my commercial instincts tell me, ‘Why wouldn’t you do it a few at a time, or something, or three in a week or whatever?’ But I am not going to argue with them because they obviously know what they’re doing…I still have a fantasy of everybody watching the show at the same time. Finding out what it is at the same time and then talking about it the next morning. I think there are very few things in our world that we share on that schedule any more.”

So turn off your cell phone, dim the lights and put the kids to bed when "Mad Men" returns on April 7th.