10 things that made us cheer on the ‘Mad Men’ Season 7 premiere

Sunday night’s Season 7 premiere of “Mad Men” offered a feast of visual delights as well as casting surprises and nifty late-1960s pop culture references.
Here are the moments that made us cheer — and cringe.

1. Neve Campbell

We gasped when Don (Jon Hamm) took his flight home to New York after a mildly successful reunion with his estranged wife, Megan (Jessica Paré), sat down next to an attractive female passenger and saw that it was none other than Neve Campbell! The “Party of Five” actress is all grown up now. She played a lonely widow and had a hairdo very similar to Don’s last mistress, Sylvia Rosen. Though the widow offered Don a ride home in her car, he wisely resisted because, as he confessed, “I’m a terrible husband.”

2. Pete’s outfit

Don meets Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) in an LA coffee shop for lunch. When Pete walks in, wearing a blue polo shirt and plaid pants ensemble, with a sweater tied around his neck, we just about died laughing. Good old buttoned-up Pete goes casual. In no time, he goes all California on Don, hugging him and talking about the city’s good “vibrations.” He orders a huge pastrami sandwich (called the Brooklyn Avenue) for lunch and confesses to Don, “The bagels are terrible.”

3. Peggy’s suit

In Peggy’s (Elisabeth Moss) scene with Freddie Rumsen, she wears a butterscotch plaid suit with an ugly turtleneck. Awful.

4. Megan’s sports car

Megan picks Don up at the airport in a swanky green Austin-Healey convertible that made us want to hitch a ride.

5. Freddie Rumsen

It was great to see the disgraced former ad executive, played by actor Joel Murray, back in the game, freelancing for Sterling Cooper & Partners, rehearsing an Accutron pitch with Peggy that was secretly written by the deposed Don Draper.

6. ‘I’m a Man’

When Don arrives at the airport to meet his wife, the soundtrack pumps the Spencer Davis Group hit “I’m a man/yes, I am/and I can’t help but love you so,” a song which captures Don’s attitude about himself.

7. Vanilla Fudge

The episode closed with the long-forgotten cover of The Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by the one-hit wonder the Vanilla Fudge. Keep those retro ’60s hits coming.

8. ‘Bracken’s World’

Megan got a callback for the pilot for the real-life NBC drama about a Hollywood studio and the starlets who tried to advance their careers there. It only ran for two seasons, from 1969 to 1970 — starring a young(er) Leslie Nielsen in Season 2 — but was a perfect choice for the ambitious Megan to launch her own career.

9. Megan’s outfit

When she steps out of the green sports car, she is wearing a diaphanous blue Pucci-inspired minidress that is completely fabulous.

10. Sharon Tate reference

Megan rents a house in one of the canyons, where the coyotes cry at night. When Don arrives in January 1969, he calls the place “Dracula’s castle” and is concerned that she is living in such a deserted area. Sharon Tate moved into record producer Terry Melcher’s Benedict Canyon house in February 1969, and was murdered that August by the Charles Manson gang. Last season, Megan wore a T-shirt that was identical to one Tate wore in 1967. Let the conspiracy theories begin.