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The final season of 'Mad Men' will premiere in April

The final season of 'Mad Men' will premiere in April

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Mad Men Don Draper Jon Hamm Press
Mad Men Don Draper Jon Hamm Press

Fans of AMC's acclaimed period drama Mad Men can start counting the days to Don Draper's return: the first half of the show's final season will start airing on April 13 of this year, according to an announcement from the network covered by the Hollywood Reporter.

AMC had earlier announced that Mad Men's seventh and last season would be split into two halves, each one consisting of seven episodes and airing around a year apart. That decision mimics the network's approach to its other acclaimed series, Breaking Bad, which bowed out with a record high of 10.3 million viewers last September. "This approach has worked well [...] for us with Breaking Bad, which attracted nearly double the number of viewers to its second-half premiere than had watched any previous episode," AMC President Charlie Collier said last year. "We are determined to bring Mad Men a similar showcase."

That showcase will, with any luck, avoid one controversial pitfall of Breaking Bad's season split: users buying the show online found themselves paying twice for season-long bundles that only included eight episodes. To avoid that fracas this time around, AMC has given each half of Mad Men's final season a distinct title.

AMC's announcement also offered a vague premiere date for Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off focusing on the life of murky lawyer Saul Goodman before he got tangled up in Walter White's meth misadventures. The highly anticipated show will debut sometime in November of 2014 and is expected to air internationally on Netflix as well.