Spoiler alert: Don Draper is up to his old tricks as he beds a woman who's NOT his wife, while Betty goes brunette in Mad Men season six opener

PUBLISHED: 01:53 EST, 8 April 2013 | UPDATED: 09:25 EST, 8 April 2013

The hotly anticipated Mad Men season six opener aired Sunday night and was as dark, slow-moving and brooding as the show's protagonist Don Draper - and his favourite tipple, an old fashioned.

It's been ten long months since we last saw the boys and girls from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and when we left them behind in the Spring of 1967, there was a hint that Don (Jon Hamm) was about to be resurrected as the philanderer we all love.

In the final episode of season five he swaggered James Bond-style into a bar leaving his young wife
Megan (Jessica Pare) far behind in the distance.

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Up to his old tricks: Don Draper (Jon Hamm) ended up bedding the wife of a friend on New Year's Eve, in the season six opener of Mad Men

An attractive woman asks 'Are you alone?' And although we didn't hear the answer that twinkle in his eye said it all. Cut to black.

But we had to wait until the last few minutes of the thoughtful opening two-hour episode until we saw Don up to his old tricks, bedding a pretty brunette.

As the penultimate season of the hit drama began with the two hour special The Doorway, it was half expected we would see Don picking through the remnants of his second marriage.

Philandering ways: The womanising bad boy of the advertising world was up to his old tricks in the season opener

There may be trouble ahead: Don Draper looked a little uneasy after being monogamous in his marriage to Megan

Cheating: The character became well known for his philandering during his marriage to Betty

Back to his marital bed: Don looked riddled with guilt after cheating on wife Megan

But the debut began with the couple together on a beach vacation in Hawaii, Megan now an emerging soap star having finally broken into acting.

Bare-chested Don has a cocktail in one hand a copy of Dante's Inferno in the other - a tale of death
and sin which is expected to be the theme that weaves through the series.

While Megan is riding a wave of success - even fighting off autograph hunters - her husband often has that same look on his face as we saw last season with his wife's excruciating birthday performance of Zou Bisou Bisou.

Sex, drugs and advertising: Megan smokes a joint while showing off her enviable curves in a white lacy bra

Amorous: Don and Megan enjoy some bedroom action in the episode

He looked like he wished he was elsewhere - anywhere else - and it's eight minutes in before he gets a word of dialogue. Yet his face says it all. Megan, meanwhile, can't seem to shut up.

You get the uneasy feeling that there's bad news in store for the lovely gap-toothed French Canadian who seems as happy as can be.

As for Don's never-ending search for happiness it seems as far away as ever.

It's fair to say not much happens in these first two hours. Creator Matthew Weiner, in typical fashion
gives little away as to the direction of the season.

New do: Berry Draper (January Jones) showed off her new brunette hairstyle during the opening episode

A little bigger: Betty was still looking a little larger than life after struggling with her weight last season

Blonde on blonde: Betty, before she changed her hair colour, visiting a shelter to attempt to find a friend of the family

More of a scene setter and a catch-up than a giant leap forward, you turn off the TV feeling somewhat unsatisfied, cheated even by the lack of action...until the very last moment that is.

But then you wouldn't be the only one to feel a sense of disatisfaction. Don, Roger Sterling, (John
Slattery) Betty Francis (January Jones) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) all seem struck down by ennui.

For Don, that manifests itself in a drunken appearance at Roger's mother's funeral.

Sunshine break: The episode opened with Don Draper and wife Megan (Jessica Paré) on holiday in Hawaii

Shapes of the sixties: Megan sported the bright colours of the swinging decade

Tropical getaway: Megan may have looked cheerful during the couple's vacation, but all was not what it seemed for the twosome

Smiling through it: Don looked like he was trying his best to have a good time but not quite managing it

VIDEO Draper back to his old tricks in Mad Men season six teaser clip...

Mad Men Season 6 Episode 1. SNEAK PEEK

He throws up in the middle of a eulogy and is taken home with a smile on his face - pretty much the
first and last time during the two hours he looks happy.

Perhaps it's his descent into middle age and the chasm between him and not just a younger wife but
younger colleagues that is making him question his own mortality.

While Megan is experimenting with cannabis, Don seems uncomfortable and looks like he would be happier if the sixties had never happened.

Pouting in purple: Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) looked striking in a purple suit as she posed for a company photograph

Too close for comfort? Joan attracts the attentions of the photographer

Impressive: Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) showed her prowess in her new job

New role: Peggy left Sterling, Cooper, Draper Pryce at the end of season five

You just know that no matter hard he tries to convince himself that domestic bliss will be the cure
for all his issues, he's just not the marrying kind. And let's face it he's a far more interesting
when he's fooling around.

Does he still love his wife? Hamm was asked recently during an interview with the New York Post.
'I think he does,' he said.

But his on-screen wife is wise to have her doubts.

'People want to see the Bad Don come back,' said Pare. 'As an audience member, I get it. As the
woman who plays Megan Draper, I’m terrified.

Break down: Roger Sterling (John Slattery) is distraught in the wake of his mother's death

So alone: Roger sits alone and with his head in his hands as he attempts to deal with his grief

I don't know what to say: Earlier, on the therapist's chair, Roger had confessed he felt numb

Even at work where he has always been king of the castle, Don appears disconnected

Asked by a colleague how his trip to Waikiki was, he replied: 'I had an experience, I don't know how
to put it into words.'

Maybe he should take a leaf out of Roger's book and give LSD a try - not that it seems to have helped him a great deal.

Unable to grieve at the shock death of his mother from a stroke, Roger's monologues in the
psychiatrist chair showed the writers still have what it takes to wow.

'My mother is dead, I don't feel anything,' he says.

Old fashioned: Don enjoyed rather too much of his favourite tipple at the funeral of Roger Sterling's mother

Embarrassing lapse: Don vomits in the midst of the funeral and has to be taken home

Escorted to safety: Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) is forced to intervene to take the drunk Don home

Sozzled: The executive looked the worse for wear when he arrived at his apartment building

'It turns out the experiences are nothing,' he adds. 'You open the doors and after a while you realise
it’s just more doors.'

The female characters remain intriguing. Peggy is proving herself over her subordinates at her new job at a rival advertising firm.

Struggling with a creative block on a campaign for headphones, she employs tactics picked up from her old boss Don to break through.

Megan is fast becoming a TV star and Betty - still batting the bulge - takes a walk on the wild side
spending an evening in the company of druggie drop-outs in Manhattan's seedy East Village as she
searches out Sandy, a missing teen who has befriended the family.

Adolescence: Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) was beginning to prove to be the troubled teenager she had always promised to be

Trouble in paradise? Megan and Don's marriage looks like it will come under scrutiny like never before

Back to work: This is the penultimate season of the hit AMC series which will end after the seventh season

Larger than life: Betty still looked a little bigger than normal after battling the bulge for much of last season

Still got glamour: January Jones's Betty Draper appeared in a series of striking outfits

And Sally is becoming the difficult teen she was always destined to become.

Throughout the opener Don can't seem to shake off his fascination with death, questioning his new surgeon friend about what it's like to have someone's life in their hands.

He seems haunted by the engraving on the back of his Zippo lighter which reads; 'In life we often have to do things that are not our bag.'

'I just want you to be yourself,' a photographer taking staff portraits at the office tells him; unaware of the irony that his subject matter has no idea who he really is.

Food for thought: Don is handed a lighter with a poignant inscription engraved in it

Time for a change: The lighter inscription gave a subtle hint as to Don's state of mind

Then an existential pitch to Waikiki hoteliers goes awry when Don presents them with a storyboard showing a suit abandoned on a pristine beach which to the advertising genius suggests a pathway to heaven - his clients think of suicide.

'Hawaii - the jumping off point,' the copy reads.

But just as we are starting to feel cheated that the most exciting moment in the entire opener is Betty turning brunette, the final scenes show Don in bed with the wife of a friend on New Year's Eve before returning to his marital bed and his wife.

Pondering: Hamm's Don Drper appeared more brooding and troubled than ever in the episode

In real life: Jon Hamm was seen taking his dog for a walk with his long-time girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt in Los Feliz on Sunday

Mad Men: What the critics said

Critics gave an almost unanimous thumbs-up to the two-hour season opener enthusiastically describing The Doorway as dazzling, terrific and triumphant.

If creator Matthew Weiner had been nervous beforehand, he needn't have worried. Negative reviews are about as rare as Don Draper with a soft drink.

'A terrific start to the 6th'
- Newsday

'A beautifully realized and dazzling re-creation of our collective past and a glimpse of the infinite and unknowable. Triumphant, Lyrical, and Way Existential.'
- The Daily Beast

'The sumptuous two-hour opener to Season 6 is a remarkable piece of work--beautiful, provocative, and deep. It's an unexpectedly exquisite distillation of the show's themes and aspirations.'
- Philadelphia Inquirer

'Mad Men itself has two seasons left, and while 26 episodes offers a lot of real estate, it’s fair to say the show is feeling some mortality itself. But while many shows that have reached this point in the road have left their creative peak behind, Mad Men shows no such erosion. It still has things it wants to say and it still has the poetry to say them well.'
- New York Daily News

'AMC’s Mad Men returns for season 6 with two hours that are as rich and as deftly literary as anything in the history of the show. The premiere operates like a series of exquisitely written theatrical set pieces, one after another that add up to a moving, ironic, and often comic group portrait.'
- Boston Globe

'If last season was about growing old and losing touch with a rapidly changing mid-’60s American culture, this will be the one to address in earnest a theme that’s haunted Mad Men since the beginning: mortality, and what we humans (especially the stylish, wealthy types who have time to worry about such things) make for ourselves in the short time we have on this planet.'
- Flavorwire

* 'It’s a sumptuous pleasure to go through one doorway and another, feeling all the while the dawning knowledge that someday we will turn a corner, and come to the last.'
- Time

'As always, a new season of MAD MEN is always worth the wait and Season 6 doesn’t disappoint. The award-winning, 1960s period drama returns this Sunday night with a stunning, beautifully nuanced two-hour premiere.'
- TV Tango

'Mad Men remains a brilliant, perfectly designed and visually exciting series - one of the very best the medium has to offer--whether you take it at face value or find the experience of watching the TV series enriched by tracing the modern echoes.'
- Denver Post

'The ultimate style show is still so fascinating that I couldn’t stop watching, all the while thinking, “Why is this so good?”
-New York Post

...But Hollywood industry bible Entertainment Weekly were a little harder to please offering a rare negative write-up.

'Like Betty's frumpy frocks, Mad Men's supersize episodes aren't flattering. Weiner should stick with tighter, denser storytelling packages. I hope he also delivers the season of change that the premiere seems to promise.'

And the respected Washington Post gave it a lukewarm welcome.

'Mad Men is that rare thing that can be as infuriating as it is perfect. I’ve gone back and forth (and hot and cold) on it as much as a critic can; I warmed to it last season but feel a familiar chill this time.

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Is Jon Hamm going to be the next James Bond? His appearance is as Fleming conceived the character. He reminds me of Sean Connery in Dr. No and From Russia with Love.

- RalphSmith , San Francisco, 09/4/2013 05:27

Click to rate Rating 5

One of the most eye-bleedingly boring episodes they've aired to date. An evening of clock watching. I do hope things improve.

- Texas Girl , Dallas, United States, 09/4/2013 03:17

Click to rate Rating 6

@ Michael Hebert. From other reviewers that I have read their take is that when Don returns to NYC, he remembers the doorman's heart attack which happened before their Hawaiian trip. Then it instantly cuts to their return from Hawaii and the doorman has recovered. Don and Megan are wearing different clothes during the two scenes. Unfortunately, I found that scene unclear due to the editing.

- Jason , Washington, 09/4/2013 02:51

Click to rate Rating 4

I watch this show and cannot believe tha people actually act and talk like this in real life.

- Farrah , allana, Bahamas, 09/4/2013 01:34

Click to rate Rating 3

I love this show. It has great writing and subtle and sarcastic humor that is sadly missing from today's scripted series. However they need to push Don off that cliff or he will become mundane and boring and that would be the death of this terrific series.

- Randy T , Anywhere USA, 08/4/2013 23:05

Click to rate Rating 5

Could someone explain the continuity problems: Don and Megan return from Hawaii only to witness their doorman collapse, apparently a heart attack. Their downstairs neighbor Dr. Rosen saves him. Next scene is Don & Megan returning from somewhere else (dinner? next night?) and doorman is now fine. Then we see Don return to work and someone comments on how good he looks after a 10 hour flight!!?? So when did doorman's heart attack occur? When did Don begin relationship with Dr. Rosen's wife and how is that related to their apparent friendship over doorman' s collapse? Otherwise i did think the episode conintued to raise questions of life and death and why are we here? for Don and others. Also, I believe the ddath of Roger's mother didn't really hit him until hewas told of death of his shoe shine man. And that death brought his to the realization that he is alone now. But the continuity did seem screwed up.

- Michael Hebert , South Grafton, United States, 08/4/2013 21:36

Click to rate Rating (0)

Roger Sterling had some good moments, but the opener to this season was just too unfocused.

- hadrons , New York City, United States, 08/4/2013 17:24

Click to rate Rating 26

Saw it in America using our DVR machine which allows FF at about 100mph through the adverts. But they STILL were horrendous on the 4x speed!. Each advert (as clicked off on our dvr box) was 5 minutes long. I cannot imagine anybody watching this with the adverts along the way--no show is good enough to stay with it with this kind of butchering of the narrative going on. It's like AMC is determined to make an own goal! These networks are begging people to elsewhere for online viewing that dodgy. Without a DVR box I'd not have lasted beyond the first advert break. It's a waste of a life you never get back. Without adverts, FF on fastest speed, we knocked off the "2 hours" in 1:20.

- London , Fiona, 08/4/2013 16:40

Click to rate Rating 8

DM: I watched "Mad Men" last night. Roger was NOT 'distraught in the wake of his mother's death.' For some strange reason, he was unable to shed a tear - even at her funeral. Then, upon hearing the news that his shoe shine man had passed away . . . . Roger suddenly broke down and was overwhelmed with grief and emotion.

- Ree Ree , Houston, United States, 08/4/2013 16:19

Click to rate Rating 33

Every time I see Jon Hamm I just think about his incredible bulge.

- lovinglife , New York, United States, 08/4/2013 15:17

Click to rate Rating 76

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