Mad Men fans have unleashed a wave of fury towards Netflix after the series landed on the streaming platform – but with one controversial episode removed.
The acclaimed program focused on the advertising industry in the 1960s, following charming creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) as he wows brands, along with the other staff at a New York-based agency.
The show ran on AMC for seven seasons between 2007 and 2015, with John Slattery, Elisabeth Moss, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, Kiernan Shipka and Robert Morse rounding out the cast.
Mad Men landed on Netflix in Canada at the beginning of August and, while viewers were initially thrilled at having the Sterling Cooper gang back on their screens, this very quickly turned when they realized that one instalment was missing.
The third episode of season three, titled My Old Kentucky Home, first aired in 2009 and showed Roger Sterling (John) throwing a party at a country club where he donned blackface and sang an anti-slavery song.
During the scene, he grinned while telling his guests, including partner Jane Siegel (Peyton List): ‘I did this at home for her with a little shoe polish. She thought it was a scream.’
Don was visibly disgusted and walked away, while Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) winced throughout the performance.
While the episode appears on other streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime, with a warning message at the very beginning, it is not currently visible on Netflix in Canada – instead, the series goes straight from the second episode to the fourth, with no explanation.
Flocking to Reddit to unpack the omission, many viewers were outraged by the decision to ‘censor’ the program 15 years after the instalment first aired.
Bringing the gap to light on the dedicated Mad Men page, Loginheremahn fumed: ‘I actually can’t believe they did this, how f**king stupid do you have to be to make that decision?
‘Sure, just remove a whole entire episode, a pivotal one at that. Racism existed, pretending it never did is not only dumb but it’s insensitive and dangerous. Goddamn do I hate Netflix. I’m in Canada, it came back August 1st.’
Mother_village9831 agreed: ‘It’s ridiculous because Roger was shown to be pretty much an idiot by doing that.
‘But hey, can’t trust audiences to think for themselves.’
‘Pretty s**t because the clear message there is that Roger is doing dumb s**t & acting like an idiot,’ GabaoolGandalf penned.
‘This show has shown blatant racism many times. And never had to explicitly say that it’s f**ked up. This scene works the same way.’
Plumsfromyouricebox posted: ‘That’s so dumb. Like just put a warning card at the start like prime did if it’s such a big deal.’
As Valuesandnorms ranted: ‘Insane. We are not supposed to watch this scene and think “wow that’s rad”. The writers were trying to convey just how racist and out of touch these people were.
‘And we even see Pete, who for all his faults at least understood something about racism, look repulsed.’
Over the years, many other programs have been edited or removed from streaming platforms altogether over the use of blackface – including 30 Rock, Scrubs, the Office and Little Britain.
My Old Kentucky Home is included on Amazon Prime at the time of writing, but includes a disclaimer before it starts.
‘This episode contains disturbing images related to race in America,’ it reads. ‘One of the characters is shown in blackface as part of an episode that shows how commonplace racism was in America in 1963.
‘In its reliance on historical authenticity, the series producers are committed to exposing the injustices and inequities within our society that continue to this day so we can examine even the most painful parts of our history in order to reflect on who we are today and who we want to become.
‘We are therefore presenting the original episode in its entirety.’
John reflected on his performance in the episode during an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2015, and confessed that he initially didn’t want to be involved in the scene.
Speaking to the outlet ahead of the finale, he admitted that he reached out to Jon to see if there was a way he could get out of it.
He said: ‘I remember calling Jon Hamm. I said, “Is there a way to say I don’t want to do this?” Because I didn’t really want to do it. But then I thought, you can’t really draw the line. You can’t say, “OK, I’ll ride the girl in in her underwear singing cowboy songs, but I draw the line at blackface.”
‘The day comes, and we were on location in Pasadena at this big mansion doubling for this country club. We jump in the van and shoot over to the set, the van door opens and the first person I see is a very large African-American LA motorcycle cop.
‘He looks at me like “What the?” He doesn’t know what to make of me. And I’m like, “Hey! How you doing?” I walk right past him and then up onto this stage.
‘I wish that they had shot the other side first or simultaneously because there were 200 extras and all our people watching as I belt through the first version of this song.
‘There was a sea of mouths hanging open. I particularly remember Rich Sommer‘s [Harry Crane] face looking like, “What the hell am I watching?”’
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Metro.co.uk has contacted Netflix reps for a comment.
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