‘Mad Men’ Arrives on HBO Max With Mistakes, Puke Machine Operators

On Monday, Dec. 1, HBO Max bolstered its library with one of the greatest television shows of all time: Mad Men. Not only would all seven seasons of the celebrated series be available to stream, but as HBO touted in a press release last month, this would mark the first time that Mad Men would be available to stream in 4k, giving fans “the opportunity to enjoy the series’ authentically-crafted elements with crisp detail and enhanced visual clarity.” 

And it’s true, you really can see the “series’ authentically-crafted elements with crisp detail” — though maybe not exactly in the way HBO had intended. On X, one fan shared a screen grab from the Season One episode, “Red in the Face,” in which Roger Sterling (John Slattery) is seen barfing all over the Sterling Cooper carpet after a broken elevator forces him and Don Draper (Jon Hamm) to walk 23 flights of stairs to their office following a heavy lunch of martinis and oysters. 

What’s notable about the screen grab is that in the far right-hand side you can clearly see two crew members operating the vomit machine behind Slattery. How this got past quality control and onto HBO Max remains a mystery, though to be fair, you could consider it evidence of Mad Men’s “authentically-crafted elements.” And you sure can see it in “crisp detail.”

On top of this mistake, it appears that at least several episodes of Season One have been mislabeled and released out of order. For instance, if you want to see the puke machine guys operating in real time before HBO takes it down (as of publication, it’s still up) don’t click on the episode titled “Red in the Face”; it’s accidentally been labeled “Babylon” instead. 

A source with knowledge of the situation tells Rolling Stone that “incorrect files were delivered” to HBO Max. The source added that the errors were being corrected and that the proper files would be uploaded “as soon as possible.”