I wrote the following this morning to the Paleyfest publicists, with whom I corresponded yesterday about attending last night’s Mad Men event at Hollywood’s Dolby theatre:

“Hi, guys. I took your advice and shelled out $42 for a seat at last night’s Paleyfest/Mad Men thing at the Dolby. Last year at this time (actually around April 1, 2013) I was given the two-hour season opener for Mad Men‘s season #6, and so I naturally assumed — silly me! — that episode #1 of the final season would be screened last night before the q & a with the Mad Men cast. Why haul yourself all the way down to the tourist inferno of Hollywood Blvd. and pay good money to see a Mad Men episode that aired last summer, right? Along with the q & a, I mean.

“To repeat, last year around this time the first episode (two hours long) of Mad Men‘s sixth season was handed out to press so there was no rational basis, in my mind, for last night’s event to not follow suit. How could they be intending to show anything but the opening episode of season #7? If I was series creator Matthew Weiner, who delivered some opening remarks last night, I would never

“Imagine the frown on my face and the moisture on my leg when I realized I’d paid $42 for a shitty balcony seat so I could see the final episode of season #6. Which I’d watched twice last summer and then a third time a week or two ago.

“If Weiner had been honest he would have said the following last night: ‘Thank you for your support and loyalty, Mad Men fans, but I won’t be showing the Season #7 opener because I don’t want any leaks in the press about even the smallest particulars, even though Mad Men openers never dump significant revelations of any kind, ever. What can I say? It’s my basic nature to be covert.’

“I’m presuming that Weiner felt burned by a couple of journalists leaking something about last year’s two-hour opener (I think I may have mentioned the year in which it takes place, which was, I think, 1967, but I dropped no spoilers) and decided to reveal nothing at the Paley screening, but what kind of diseased, diabolical mind believes that screening a series finale from the year before, an episode that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD SAW NINE MONTHS AGO, was a cool thing to show when the final season of Weiner’s new, much-talked-about series is about to begin in three weeks?

“I’m presuming the intention to show the finale of season #6 was revealed somewhere within the Paleyfest website program, and that I was too rushed or scatter-brained to notice it. Or, you know, that I’m just too dumb or something. Can you please tell me where that information was posted on Paleyfest, or send me a screen capture of that information? Again — I’m definitely presuming the information was there and it was my own damn fault for not noticing. Because I work too hard and am always pushing myself and running around in a tizzy.

“But if this wasn’t indicated or revealed, that’s a problem.

“Yesterday I wrote [an AMC publicist] about wanting to see a new episode or two via an AMC screener, just like last year. That was my stated intention in writing her — i.e., to see the first episode or two of season #7 — but for whatever reason it never occured to [her] to politely mention in her reply that the Paleyfest event would not screen the Season # 7 opener. In what perverse realm would I pay $42 to watch Jon Hamm and the others talk about how they’re getting all misty-eyed about the show coming to an end?

“I have this idea, in short, that I might have been misinformed, or was certainly under-informed, about last night’s event. Or that I’m an idiot.”