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Note: This column is, shall we say, filled with as many spoilers as the number of women Don Draper has been inside of. If you’re an avid Mad Men devotee, proceed as planned. If, however, you’ve yet to see one of the best things on television or, gulp, have no immediate plans to start it – shame on you? – click the back arrow on your browser.

Still with me? Good. Do yourself a favor and whip up an Old Fashioned – or better yet, train your kids to do so a la Don’s little ones – and let’s get things going.

Two of my favorite dramas on television ended things last year with game changing episodes. And yet, dubbing their respective finales “game changers” feels cheap. It doesn’t do justice.

For Dexter, it was the kind of finale that in its lingering moments dropped a bomb, leaving me paralyzed in my chair and too stunned to worry what to do about the jaw that had up to that point in my life been hinged in my mouth. It was the kind of finale that would require a good amount of pondering, a lot of feel-good food intake and, maybe, a lot of therapy.

For Mad Men, its “oh shit!” moments unspooled over the course of an hour. So, by the time the show made its final fade to black of the year, I had an irrepressible urge to find out what would happen next. Me at 11:01 EDT: “Oh hey, thanks for the fun, Matt. But let’s get season four going… stat.”

With Dexter I could wait. With Mad Men, I needed to know. And I needed to know now (Or, I guess, then).

Fortunately, we’re only days away from Mad Men’s most anticipated season premiere to date. Here are the things that have been gnawing at my mind, and what I think their outcomes could be:

What will Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce be like?

When we last saw Don and Co., it wasn’t of them within the lush, expansive offices of Sterling Cooper but from the condensed and very crowded workspace of a measly hotel room. Their decision to collectively get fired from their employer was swift, but carefully planned. It was the most exhilarating chain of events in all of season three. (And, probably, the show).

That final episode brought with it the birth of a new advertising agency – that of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. An agency, of course, with less space, people and resources than the one we’d been accustomed to.

Even so, SCDP matches its pratfalls with unyielding amounts of character and determination. It exists because all eight of its members want it to. Had they had doubts on that idea, any one of them would have rejected an offer to start from scratch and either remained at Sterling Cooper, aligned with Duck or, maybe, something else.

From the start, SCDP will be little more than a do-it-yourself agency. Even though its principal members brought with them some high-profile accounts, you’d sooner see Bert wear shoes inside than you would anything approaching the well-oiled machine that was Sterling Cooper.

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