Fans of excellent television can rejoice today. This is no April Fools’ joke. AMC and Lionsgate have announced to the world that seasons five and six of everyone’s favorite Madison Avenue soap opera (circa 1960) are a go, and series creator/beating heart Matthew Weiner is on board. After extensive negotiations that were reportedly slowed by Weiner’s desire for a bit more “credit” (read: payola), things have finally been smoothed out and the partnership can move forward on the thing that matters most: showing us what the hell happens to Don Draper next. You can read the entire press release after the jump, if you’d like. In it you will find a very cool bit about a possible option for a seventh season. Yes, you read that right. Seven seasons of Mad Men. Drool.

I really love Mad Men. I talk about it a lot. Since The Wire ended in 2008, and I haven’t seen any episodes of Boardwalk Empire yet, then as far as my knowledge takes me it’s the best damn show currently on television. Nothing I’m saying here is necessarily new, but Mad Men effectively does a great many things I’ve never seen television do before in that it 1) delivers is an incredibly entertaining and engaging media object while it uses its protagonists to criticize and reveal the potentially manipulative processes of media itself, 2) interrogates any continuous notion of the ever-interpretationally-oscillating “good old days” by showing how they were neither that good nor that long ago, thereby criticizing our culture’s all-too-convenient rotating manufacture of nostalgia, 3) utilizes the past to criticize white male heteronormative hegemony and reveal a systematic culture of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and all the while 4) creates compelling drama as manifested by ambiguous, layered characters with the combination of beautiful cinematography and impeccable production design. Mad Men, in short, is an engrossing, enjoyable, and thought-provoking series in unprecedented ways. But for a show to engage in such a rare criticism of a cultural moment, a bit of negotiation is required. And it is in this respect that some major problems with the show have arisen recently.

The Kennedy Assassination affects everyone at Sterling/Cooper and in the Draper household; Ken and Pete’s competition for Head of Accounts comes to an end; Roger’s daughter gets married.