Don Draper was supposed to be watching hockey, not football, on Saturday night

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In Sunday’s season premiere of AMC’s drama “Mad Men,” attentive fans (are there any other kind) may have been wondering how Don Draper could have been watching a football game in his old living room Saturday night while he was waiting for his ex-wife to come home with her new husband.

Of course, he couldn’t have been watching a night football game because that was not the norm in 1964, which was when Sunday’s episode was set. While “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner and his team are incredibly detail-oriented, this is one time where a little less attention to detail would have been helpful.

It’s not that the producers didn’t know there wasn’t a night football game for Don to be watching. It’s that they couldn’t get the rights to the hockey game they wanted Don to be watching. Sunday’s episode took place on Saturday, Nov. 28, 1964. That night, the New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-1.

Unfortunately, “Mad Men” was unable to secure any rights for audio or video of that game. The producers wanted some background noise from the television and instead went with audio of a football game. The audio was not supposed to be discernible, but obsessed viewers (like this one) could pick up the play-by-play of a football game.

Although it was a slip-up on the part of the producers, maybe it’s for the best. Does smooth-talking Don Draper seem like a hockey fan?

-- Joe Flint

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