Last month Warner Bros. Discovery announced Mad Men was not only coming to HBO Max, the series would stream for the first-time ever in glorious 4K. You don’t have to work on Madison Avenue to know why that sounded like a winning pitch for viewers. But a good sales pitch can only go so far. Eventually the product has to deliver on that promise, and on day one the 4K restoration of Mad Men did not. That is unless you like enjoy seeing a crew member with a vomit hose on your screen.
It didn’t take long to find out HBO Max’s launch of Mad Men in 4K was not what we hoped it would be. On. Bluesky Paul Haine showed a screengrab that makes Daenerys’ coffee cup seem reasonable. It’s from the show’s seventh ever episode, where Don Draper gets his revenge on Roger Sterling by making his boss get nauseous after too many oysters. That leads to Roger throwing up in the office.
Originally that scene did NOT show the crew member operating a hose to clean up the fake vomit. But the 4K restoration forgot to CGI both him and his equipment out.
Yeah! Turns out that scene involved CGI originally. Who woulda guessed!?!
As others noted, the 4K version also completely ruined the color saturation. The “updated” version looks like it takes place on a ’60s sitcom, a far cry from the aesthetics of the original AMC version.
Just in case that wasn’t bad enough, HBO Max’s Mad Men rollout also featured misnamed episodes (including this one!). WBD has since fixed the episode titles, but vomit hose guy is still there.
He’s still there. In 4K. With his vomit hose. 4K vomit hose.
This is both funny and infuriating. (And maybe triggering for those who remember the disastrous Buffy the Vampire remaster.) Did Warner Bros. Discovery rely on AI for its 4K upscaling? Or did it not take the time and care needed to do it right? Either way, not great, Bob! Post-production is very important. A lot of what makes the best shows look great is the result of difficult work done by talented people after filming is over.
This 4K restoration? This makes us want to throw up. But at least now we know who to hire to clean it up.