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HBO Max added new 4K versions of the series Mad Men on Monday after promoting the series, which was previously available on Netflix. But if you decided to dig in for a rewatch and made it to episode seven of the first season you probably noticed something extremely weird.
During the scene where Roger Sterling (played by John Slattery) throws up some oysters, there are a couple of people on the right side of the screen who shouldn’t be there.
The vomit scene plus visible crew in all its 4k glory:
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— Paul Haine (@paulhaine.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 3:34 AM
Yep, that’s two members of the crew operating a machine to make it look like Slattery is vomiting. Needless to say, those folks aren’t supposed to be visible in the final product of the show.
When viewers watched the show during its original run in the summer of 2007, this is what it looked like:
People on social media had plenty of jokes about the flub breaking the realism that Mad Men prided itself on—immersing people into the aesthetic world of the 1960s during its run from 2007-2015.
incredibly unprofessional of the vomit hose operator to wear jeans and a t-shirt. completely breaks the 1960’s immersion for me
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— ceej (@ceej.online) December 2, 2025 at 9:35 AM
HBO Max hasn’t issued a public statement addressing what happened with the new 4K mistakes. But a person familiar with the matter tells Gizmodo that incorrect files were delivered to HBO. The episode has been pulled. Lionsgate Television is apparently working on getting HBO the right files, but it’s unclear when the show will be fully restored and available on the platform in its entirety in 4K.
As the Hollywood Reporter notes, this wasn’t the only flub in the HBO Max rollout of the 4K transfer of Mad Men. Many episodes were also incorrectly labeled and out of order. But the most glaring error was those two members of the crew showing up in the seventh episode.
It’s always funny to see elements of the production appear in the final product. Arrested Development and The Larry Sanders Show frequently show the boom mics that weren’t supposed to be visible. I used to have a Tumblr account pointing out the funniest instances when I spotted them. But including an entire crew member in the shot is pretty egregious.
It’s unclear if there were other elements of the 4K transfers that were incorrectly delivered to HBO Max. Gizmodo will update this article if we hear back from the streamer.
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Source: Gizmodo