• TVHowl, Friday, March 23, 2012 2:42 PM

Two days from Season 5's premiere episode, the barrage of media coverage of "Mad Men" continues: from thoughtful pieces in Fortune and the New York TimesSunday magazine about women's "love-hate relationship" with the show, to, yes, reviews of the first episode that attempt to keep within showrunner Matthew Weiner's too-strict no-spoiler strictures. Thus, these reviews don't say very much -- and of course, there will be a whole 'nother review, chockfull of spoilers, each critic will write once the audience has actually seen the episode.

"I think there's a point at which Weiner's spoiler phobia actually undersells the show he's making," writes Hitfix's Alan Sepinwall in his review. "While there are certainly 'Mad Men twists I'm glad I didn't know about in advance, the genius of the show resides much less in the 'what' than the 'how."

We kinda liked Adam Buckman's review, just because it's so contrarian. Positioning himself as a fan, he nonetheless uses words like "terrible," "boring" and "disaster" to describe the season premiere. "The last thing an arty TV series like this needs is to come back on the air after an 18-plus-month absence and then bore its core audience to death.  However, that outcome is a distinct possibility," he writes. 

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