You Can Now See A Barf Machine In This Episode Of 'Mad Men'

Now that the Emmy Award-winning AMC series Mad Men is streaming on HBO Max in glorious 4K, audiences are getting an even clearer look at all those elegant 1960s fashions, as well as the constant haze of cigarette smoke and Don Draper’s day-drinking sweats. What people may not have expected to see is Sterling Cooper’s resident barf machine technician.

As you may recall, back in the seventh episode of Season One, “Red in the Face,” Don decides to get back at Roger for drunkenly hitting on his wife Betty by embarrassing him in front of representatives from Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign.

First, Don takes Roger out for a lunch consisting of oysters and multiple martinis, which was presumably considered health food at the time.  

Don also bribes the elevator operator to pretend that the elevator’s out of service upon their return to the office, forcing them to take the stairs – all the way up to the twenty-third floor. When the pair finally arrive back at Sterling Cooper, Roger immediately ruins any chance of working for the GOP by treating the Nixon reps to his Mr. Creosote impression. 

While the episode’s original cut maintained the vomitous illusion, as fans pointed out on social media, HBO Max’s new 4K version inadvertently gave us a peek at the Hollywood magic behind the spewing scene. Two crew guys are clearly visible, kneeling on the carpet behind Roger, operating some sort of puke machine that is connected via hose to actor John Slattery.

I mean, the Game of Thrones coffee cup was bad, but at least we never saw any randos manning bodily fluid pumps in King’s Landing. 

Presumably, this gaffe simply slipped through the cracks during the 4K remastering process. As some fans pointed out, if the remaster involved going back to the original negative (early seasons of Mad Men were shot on 35 mm film) then someone clearly forgot to replicate whatever visual effect originally hid the crew members.

To be fair, randos popping up in TV remasters isn’t that uncommon, as was the case with Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s awkward HD conversion.

Mad Men viewers also complained that some of HBO Max’s episode titles are mixed up as well. But that issue seems to be getting far less attention than the Barf-O-Matic 3000 reveal.