By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY  After winning two best-drama Emmys, turning an exotic past decade into a contemporary style statement and establishing yourself as summer's must-see series, what can you do for an encore?  If you're AMC's Mad Men, you rip out the main moorings — ending ad man Don Draper's marriage and breaking up his Madison Avenue agency — to see where things go. It's the kind of risk the creative executive might love — if he weren't the one set adrift heading into Season 4, which premieres July 25 (10 ET/PT).  As Season 3 ended in December 1963, Don (Jon Hamm) was on his own, apart from his family. Wife Betty (January Jones), who had discovered his earlier identity as Dick Whitman, among other indiscretions, was flying to Nevada to get a divorce.  And his new advertising partnership, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, a select crew of Sterling Cooper alumni, was operating out of Room 435 at The Pierre hotel, surviving almost entirely on one cigarette account.  The new season is "kind of about taking things away from people, things that have defined them for the majority of their adult lives, and what are the consequences," Hamm says. "I think it's about reinventing in many ways, and, as we know, Don is pretty good at reinventing himself."  How the characters — especially Don — adjust to changed circumstances intrigues the series' creator, Matthew Weiner.  "For Don, most notably, he has lost his coordinates. He fought very hard for an identity that was defined by wealth, marriage, children, location, a certain kind of job, and that has been stripped away," Weiner says. "He might start looking inward, I think. I felt the theme of, 'Who am I?' ... I thought this man might have to confront what that means, especially someone who has constructed who they are."  Don's identity issues don't just relate to his marriage troubles, either. "Part of that is dealing with his success, because his success was always limited by the secret he has," Weiner says. "He could never put his name on the building for fear of being caught, and now, somehow, he's going to have to sidestep that. He wanted to create a business and be front and center, and now he's going to have to deal with that."  Weiner promises that last season's changes are for real.  "I would like (viewers) to know we're going to be investigating the consequences of the end of last season, and that I took that very seriously, and they shouldn't expect it to be undone and all back the way it was," he says. "I did not find some way to bring all of Sterling Cooper into a painted version of the old set."  Will viewers continue to go along for the ride? Last year, initial airings of Mad Men episodes averaged 1.8 million viewers, a modest number even by cable standards, but a 20% jump over Season 2.  With seven-day DVR playback factored in, the number grew to 2.5 million, an even larger (39%) increase over the previous season. The audience also appeals to advertisers, with the highest percentage of $100,000-plus households of any TV show.  The cast applauds Weiner for not resting on Mad Men's laurels. (The series picked up 17 Emmy nominations last week, including best drama again, plus acting nods for Hamm, Jones, Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss.)  "I thought it was really gutsy to do something so different and to create this massive change, especially because we didn't need it. The show was doing really well," says Moss, who plays copywriter Peggy Olson, one of the new Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce employees. "I think it was an incredible Don Draper move of Matt Weiner's, to turn the tables and do something unexpected. It's a wide open field for us now. You can really go anywhere."  This being Mad Men, however, it's all hush-hush about where — and even when — it will go. The creator and cast won't talk about particulars, from what the new agency's quarters look like to how much time has elapsed since the end of Season 3, just that it's a world "a little bit further in the future," Weiner says.  He won't discuss the fates of characters left at the old Sterling Cooper, including Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) and Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton, who remains a cast regular), noting only that people come and go, as they do in life. Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt), a popular character, was fired last season.  Weiner says only: "I wouldexpect changes that look permanent to be permanent."  Change, of course, remains at Mad Men's core, whether it relates to the roiling '60s or the inner lives of the characters.  "Part of what I wanted to do from the beginning of the show," Weiner says, "was to establish these characters and carry them through this radical social change coming and show how much of them stays the same and how much of their changes are based on their personal life, on the world, on politics.  "It's always part of the show and certainly was a big theme last year — How will you deal with change? — because it was really starting to happen in 1963," he says.  "There's always change going on, and it's a thrill for me to see the characters get older, and the actors get older, and say, 'What is the next stage in your life?' "  You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference.
From Don Draper's divorce to the new agency, AMC's series hits the reset button in a big way for the fourth season.