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{{quote|''"Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car... It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is okay... You are okay."''|'''Don Draper'''}}
''Mad Men''
The series, while an ensemble,
As the show
The series was originally pitched to [[HBO]], which turned it down. It ended up on [[AMC]], which has run with the ball as far as ''Mad Men'' being to AMC as ''[[The Shield]]'' is to FX Network. The series has received much critical acclaim and positive press, even though most critics tend to downplay the show's [[Deconstruction]] of the entire idea of the innocent, ideal "good old days" of [[The Fifties|America's past]] (and up-play [[Christina Hendricks]]' considerable advertising assets...)
The show ran from 2007 to 2015.
A character sheet is currently under construction, show it some love.
{{tropelist}}
== Tropes A-C ==
* [[Abusive Parents]]:
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** Freddy Rumsen, who joined AA and seems to have sobered up.
** Roger Sterling, who can drink the table under the table.
*** Although Roger casually reveals to Lane in Season 5 that he only ever drinks about half of any drink he orders when he's out with a client before ordering another
** Don teeters on the edge of this in Season 4.
* [[Alcohol Is Poison]]: Averted by Betty and other pregnant women. Accurate for the time period.
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* [[Ambiguously Gay]]: Harry Crane gives off vibes of this. On at least two separate occasions he's talked about how a different character is "queer". His crass jokes about what he'd do to Megan reek of [[Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?]]. And in "Tea Leaves" he talks about how good Charlton Heston looks naked.
** And then there's Joey's reaction to Harry's attempts to befriend him by telling him he could get him on Peyton Place:
{{quote|
* [[Ambiguously Jewish]]: [[Word of God]] says Jimmy and Bobbie Barrett are supposed to be assimilated Jews.
{{quote|
'''Jimmy Barrett:''' What "people?" You mean comedians?! }}
** Joan's doctor husband's last name is Harris, which (like Miller and Siegel) is sometimes but not always a Jewish name; Joan says he's not Jewish, but Roger thinks he "used to be."
* [[Anachronism Stew]]: Largely averted on a show where the writers have [[Shown Their Work]], but not always.
** The first episode, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", has Don coining the Lucky Strike slogan "it's toasted" in 1960. It actually dates back to 1917.
** Episode 2.8 "A Night to Remember" involved Sterling-Cooper wooing Heineken, and when Don and Betty are having The Sterlings over for dinner, Don points out Betty's choice of beers: a box filled with Heineken bottles... with a logo that was not introduced until 1968, on a type of bottle designed in the 1980s. In 1963, the bottles would have been brown, and the Heineken logo was a red star on a yellow background.
*** To be fair, there are other possible explanations (although failure to do research is probably the most likely), among them not being able to get the props and simple [[Product Placement]] (who today would recognize that Heineken bottle and logo?)
** The show is generally good at avoiding anachronistic vehicles, but in episode 2.11 "The Jet Set", Joy is driving a 1968 Mercedes-Benz convertible in 1962.
** In several episodes, modern packaging for ink is seen. The characters are also obviously unfamiliar with fountain pen use -- in one scene Don nearly springs the nib. However, the pens themselves are almost all period-accurate; Cross and an independent pen collector donated fountain pens and ballpoints.
* [[Animated Credits Opening]]
* [[Anti-Hero]]: Arguably the whole cast but Don especially.
* [[Anvilicious]]: Paul's ''[[Star Trek:
* [[Arc Words]]: ''This never happened.'' In Season 4 Don's secretary challenges him with "''this actually happened''" when he dismisses the issue of {{spoiler|them sleeping together}} as unimportant. It does not go down well.
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: "You're fired for costing this company millions of pounds, you're fired for insubordination, you're fired for '''lack of character!!!'''"
* [[Babies Make Everything Better]]:
** Cruelly but elegantly subverted. Having exiled Don to the couch earlier on, Betty Draper finds out that she's pregnant again at the end of the second season. Their marriage does seem to improve for a while, but eventually things fall apart.
** Subverted by {{spoiler|Roger getting Joan pregnant in "Hands and Knees". They're married to other people, Joan isn't willing to leave her husband, Roger isn't willing to acknowledge the child as his. We - and Roger - are lead to believe Joan had an abortion, but we find out in "Tomorrowland" that she's kept it and is passing it off as her husband's.}}
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* [[Backstory]]: Hoo boy.
* [[Badass Decay]]: Don, and not YMMV because Peggy references it in-universe in Season 5 premiere "A Little Kiss".
{{quote|
* [[Badass Grandpa]]: Robert Pryce. It comes as quite a shock when it happens.
* [[Badass Israeli]]: Referenced in an episode where executives of the company try to learn about Israel while considering how to pitch it as a tourist destination. All they can figure out on their own is that the women are attractive and have machine guns. When asked for her opinion on Israelis, a New York Jew can only advise Don Draper not to cross them.
* [[Bad Bad Acting]]: The SC crew act out Paul Kinsey's play in the Season 1 finale, "Nixon vs. Kennedy".
** Also, Don and Megan impress the representative for Cool Whip by acting out their pitch for him, so much so that he asks them to do it again for the Head of Dessert. Except that by the time they meet with him, Megan {{spoiler|has quit}}, so Peggy subs in for her. The result is this trope.
* [[The Barnum]]: Madison Avenue and the ad industry in general; specific examples would be Roger, Don, and Pete.
* [[Batman Gambit]]: Don runs a [[Kansas City Shuffle]] against Chaough's firm to get them to make a really high-quality but budget-busting spec ad for Honda (which was against the rules), then resigns the account when asked to meet with the Honda execs, saying that since they had broken their rules, he could not honorably do business with them. Honda decides in the end to remain for the moment at Grey, but allowed SCDP to develop the advertising for their new automotive division.
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** In "Lady Lazarus" a client wants SCDP to come up with a jingle with a sound like the Beatles. At the end of the episode Megan gives Don their latest album "Revolver" and tells him to play a certain track. It's the psychedelic song "Tomorrow Never Knows" and it plays over a montage of Megan taking doing exercises in her acting class, Peggy and Stan sharing a joint at work. After listening a while Don abruptly takes the needle off before the song ends and goes to bed. The song continues in the closing credits. In the episode they mention how difficult and expensive it is to acquire a Beatles song. In [[Real Life]] Matt Weiner reportedly got Lionsgate to pay $250,000 to use "Tomorrow Never Knows".
* [[Beatnik]]: Midge and her circle of friends. Paul Kinsey is kind of a wannabe.
* [[Berserk Button]]:
** Peggy hates it when people imply that she became a copywriter by sleeping with Don.
** Don't expect Roger to react rationally around the Japanese.
* [[Big Applesauce]]: The show makes frequent use of its setting and NYC's history. Pete Campbell's New York blue blood ancestry gets him an apartment. The destruction of the old Penn Station in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden (which opened five years later) is a plot point in an episode, and SCDP moves into offices in the then-new Time-Life Building. Lane Pryce has a New York Mets pennant in his office (the baseball team began play in 1962).
* [[Big "What?"]]: Lane Pryce upon hearing of the Kennedy assassination.
* [[Birth-Death Juxtaposition]]:
** Betty's father, Eugene, dies in one episode; the next, she gives birth to a son. [[Dead Guy, Junior|She names him Eugene]].
** In 4x11, David Montgomery dies and Pete Campbell's daughter is born.
* [[Black Bra and Panties]]: Megan in "A Little Kiss"--to clean house, oddly enough, although it turns into something different.
* [[Black Comedy]]:
** On occasion and most definitely in "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency".
** Anything having to do with Miss Blankenship in "The Beautiful Girls".
* [[Blackface]] / [[Uncle Tomfoolery]]: Holy [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]] [[Batman (TV series)|Batman]], Roger Sterling's singing while in blackface! Pete is shown to disapprove of this as one of his socially conscious, forward-thinking moments, but Don is the only other person who seems bothered by it, and that's almost certainly just because Roger's acting like a moron.
* [[Blackmail]]: Pete's intent when he learns about Don's past; of course, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|this backfires as Bert Cooper makes it clear he doesn't give a damn]]. Cooper later uses this secret to force Don to sign a contract.
* [[Blonde, Brunette, Redhead]]: Betty (blonde), Peggy (brunette), and Joan (redhead). As illustrated by this [https://web.archive.org/web/20140208171232/http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/RollingStone_mad_men_cover.jpg Rolling Stone cover] with [[Tall, Dark and Handsome]] Don Draper. "The Beautiful Girls" ends with a shot of Joan (redhead), Peggy (brunette), and Faye (blonde) in the elevator together. It's [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|very symbolic]].
* [[Bloody Hilarious]]: The lawnmower incident.
* [[Bondage Is Bad]]: Don doesn't really get the concept of "Safe, Sane and Consensual" with Bobbi Barrett. In contrast, most of the sex he's shown having that doesn't involve kink is seen as "good".
** Further supported by Don having Candace, the hooker he begins seeing regularly after the divorce, slap him repeatedly in bed. It's depicted as one of Don's darkest and least glamorous sexual encounters.
* [[Bottle Episode]]: "The Suitcase," which mostly focuses on Don and Peggy becoming more intimate while pulling an all-nighter to come up with a commercial for Samsonite.
* [[Break the Cutie]]: Betty and, initially, Peggy. Sally Draper might get it even worse in season four, though.
* [[Break the Haughty]]:
** Joan. See [[Character Development]] for the full version, but believe us, she's the preeminent example.
** Pete pretty much gets this when he's fired and rehired in the first season, and spends the rest of the show trying to catch up to where he thought he was.
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* [[Bungled Suicide]]: In "Commissions and Fees", {{spoiler|this is subverted. Although Lane's attempt to use his Jaguar to asphyxiate himself fails, it is revealed at the end of the episode that he successfully hanged himself.}}
* [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]]: Bert Cooper.
* [[The Bus Came Back]] / [[Long Bus Trip]]:
** Ken Cosgrove rejoined the rest of the team at SCDP midway through Season 4 after being left behind by the mutiny that ends Season 3.
** Smitty Smith resurfaces at a rival ad agency in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword".
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** Freddy Rumsen (rehabbed and sober) returned to join SCDP two seasons after he was loaded into a taxi and shoved off for being a hopeless drunk.
** Midge, Don's Bohemian lover in the beginning of the first season, shows up in Season Four's "Blowing Smoke" after encountering him outside his office. She's fallen on hard times.
** Nearly two seasons after the SCDP mutineers did not take him along at the end of Season 3, Paul Kinsey pops up in "Christmas Waltz". He's a Hare Krishna and a wannabe writer for ''[[Star Trek:
* [[But Not Too Gay]]: Sal, the only major gay character (on a show where the straight characters are seen banging each other all the time and in various combinations), is deeply closeted due to the time and place the show is set, so his gay love life mostly consists of resisting the advances of other men.
* [[But Not Too Black]]: Averted with the woman Lane dates in "Hands and Knees," who is very dark-skinned.
** Also with Paul's girlfriend in season two, before she dumps him because she has, y'know, self respect.
* [[Butt Monkey]]:
** Pete in season 1. Harry Crane most of the time, and Paul Kinsey in Season Three.
** Lane Pryce's bosses at PPL treat him this way in Season 3. He [[Who's Laughing Now?|takes his revenge]] in the season finale.
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*** This episode answers Joan's speculation from season 1's "5G" as to why Don always ignored her - "You scared the shit out of me."
*** Megan waiting at home for Don is reminiscent of scenes of Betty in earlier seasons brooding at home alone with a glass of wine while waiting for Don.
* [[Call Forward]]: A staple of the show. References are frequently made toward future real-life events.
** In one of the first, there's a discussion of the virtues of one of the 1960 presidential candidates, describing him as a "young, handsome, Navy hero". Most of the audience think they're talking about [[John F. Kennedy]] -- then it's revealed they're actually discussing [[Richard Nixon]]. This being Corporate America, they're all Republicans.
** Roger's daughter has her wedding scheduled for [[John F. Kennedy|November 23, 1963]].
** In "Six Month Leave," Don, Roger and Freddy Rumsen go to a casino, whereupon Freddy notices "the champ" being in attendance. Roger replies, "For another couple of months." The three are forced to leave after Don sucker-punches {{spoiler|Jimmy Barrett}}, knocking him to the floor with a single blow. Upon getting up, {{spoiler|Jimmy}} asks the champ, "Hey Floyd. How'd I do?" The Floyd in question is [[wikipedia:Floyd Patterson|Floyd Patterson]]. The irony of this is that the episode takes place in August 1962: Patterson's next two fights, in September 1962 and July 1963, were both brutal first-round knockout losses to Sonny Liston.
** The clueless call forwards to Vietnam are possibly the saddest, for instance with {{spoiler|Joan's husband Greg deciding to become an Army surgeon and citing that he'll have job security in years to come, especially if this Vietnam thing is "still going on."}} Don, writing in his journal, hopes that Vietnam won't become another Korea.
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* [[Cannot Keep a Secret]]: In "Dark Shadows" Roger asks Ginsberg if he can keep a secret and Ginsberg says "Nope." Sure enough, later in the episode he tells Peggy the secret.
* [[Captain Ersatz]]: In-universe, the title song and scene from the 1963 film version of [[Bye Bye Birdie]] is duplicated, frame for frame, and re-purposed as an ad for diet cola.
{{quote|
'''Roger:''' It's not Ann-Margaret. }}
* [[The Casanova]]: Don Draper, 'nuff said. His middle name should be this trope. He's so good actually, that he has to make excuses to the point of being apologetic when NOT hitting on a woman (with Peggy for example)
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20140607064209/http://seductionism.com/blog/01/10/how-to-pick-up-women-like-don-draper/ This video] sums it up pretty well.
* [[Caught
* [[Chained to
* [[Character Development]], some more than others.
** Peggy might be the new poster child. She's gone from a secretary to copywriter with an office when the head of television doesn't even have an office. She went from being cowed by the men in her life to one who can call them out when they're not showing her enough respect (Don) or even shake them down when necessary (Roger). She goes from being nearly pushed to tears over being treated as dessert in 1x02 "Ladies Room" to winning a battle of wills of chauvinist pig Rizzo by stripping down naked in 4x06 "Waldorf Stories" to the aforementioned shakedown in 5x04 "Mystery Date."
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*** And socially, he turns from a naive, ignorant WASP kid in a suit who cheats on his wife into a savvy businessman, a genuine liberal, and a devoted husband.
*** However, in season 5 he takes a giant step backward, becoming profoundly unhappy with life with his gorgeous wife and new baby, patronizing hookers, screwing neighborhood housewives, getting his ass beat by Lane Pryce, etc.
** Joan starts off as a Libby-like figure, and becomes much more sympathetic later on when we find out that she's wasted the prime of her life as a mistress for her boss and ended up being {{spoiler|raped by her fiance right before their wedding}}. She later finds out that her "big catch" is an incompetent surgeon who ends up getting unofficially blacklisted from working as a surgeon in New York. He then joins the Army right as the Vietnam War is about to heat up in order to continue pursuing his career dream, even though Joan would be content if he would just become a regular doctor.
*** In "Mystery Date" {{spoiler|Joan dumps her husband and makes it clear to him that she remembers the rape and that it was a mistake to marry him. It's a huge growth moment for the character.}}
* [[The Character Died
* [[Characterization Marches On]]: In Season 1, Paul Kinsey, Harry Crane, and Ken Cosgrove had little personality beyond being sexist friends of Pete.
* [[Chekhov's Boomerang]]: {{spoiler|Don's desertion/identity switch in Korea}}.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]:
** You introduce a lawn mower in Act I, {{spoiler|1=be prepared for someone's foot to be mowed over in [http://www.amctv.com/videos/mad-men/?bcpid=8803972001&bclid=34804835001&bctid=40899841001 Act III]}}. ''Right when he got it in the door.''
** Roger Sterling's daughter spent some time planning a date for her wedding. She settled for [[John F. Kennedy|November 23, 1963]].
** Roger's memoirs, dictated to his secretary and spoken into a tape recorder. Sure enough, Don finds the tapes, and boy, are they hilarious.
** Spectacularly in season two, {{spoiler|Don's lack of a contract.}}
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* [[Cool Car]]: Don's Cadillac Coupe DeVille, Gene's (later Betty's) 1961 Lincoln Continental, Betty's '57 Ford wagon from the first season... practically every outdoor shot is chock-full of Gorgeous Period Cars.
** Don even goes as far as replacing his first Coupe DeVille with a newer one in season 5.
** All of the Jaguars in season five, especially the cherry red one Joan and Don buy in "Christmas Waltz", and the [[Chekhov's Gun]] green one Lane's wife buys for him in "Commissions and Fees".
* [[Crap Saccharine World]]: 1960s New York.
* [[Creepy Child]]: Glen Bishop, who's escalated from crushing on Betty Draper to crushing on Sally Draper to breaking and entering (while sparing Sally's room alone in the Draper home).
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** Played entirely straight with Sally, who loves Don and seems to take after him, and hates Betty. You'd hate your mother too if she hated your best friend and threatened to cut off your fingers.
* [[Dark and Troubled Past]]: Don's seemed like the darkest (son of a prostitute, abusive parents, desertion in Korea) - until we met Ginsberg, who was born in a concentration camp.
* [[A Date
** It's heavily implied in "The Color Blue" that Paul does this with the Jackie & Marilyn artwork while alone late at night in his office.
** {{spoiler|Sally gets caught masturbating to [[The Man
** This happens twice in "Indian Summer". Betty gets off ''with a washing machine''. Peggy for her part is asked to test a vibrating weight-loss apparatus, which turns out to have other benefits. She discreetly mentions this to her bosses, who realize the hidden potential in marketing it to women.
* [[Dead Guy, Junior]]: Eugene Scott Draper, named after his maternal grandfather. Don doesn't much care for the name (having hated the original) and Sally is freaked out (having loved her Grampa Gene and now having to deal with a "replacement" with the same name living in the same room).
* [[Dead Little Sister|Dead Little Brother]]: Adam.
* [[Dead Person Impersonation]]: {{spoiler|Don}}
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]:
** Roger.
{{quote|
'''Roger:''' Yes, yes we are. [[Crowning Moment of Funny|Happy birthday.]] }}
** Don, Peggy, Kinsey, Joan . . . nearly everyone has their moments.
* [[Death
* [[Death
* [[Defictionalization]]: Grove/Atlantic published "Sterling's Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man", the memoir that Roger wrote during the fourth season.
* [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]]: ''The whole damn point of the show''.
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* [[Depraved Homosexual]]: Lee Garner Jr., unfortunately for Sal.
* [[Development Gag]]: In the fourth season opener Harry says he wished the new offices had a second floor so he could jump off of it; Harry was slated to commit suicide at the end of the first season.
* [[Directed
** "The Rejected," which makes for a lovely bit of irony in Slattery's first episode: Roger is repeating Lee Garner's instructions on smoking ads - "No
*** As well as "Blowing Smoke" and "Signal 30".
** Jon Hamm directed Season 5 episode "Tea Leaves".
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* [[Double Standard]]: The series!
* [[Downer Ending]]: While plenty of episodes are downers, Matthew Weiner seems to have an allergy to leaving the agency hanging at the end of the season; the prospects for Sterling Cooper and then SCDP are always looking up with the season finale. This might be his attempt to avert the [[Tethercat Principle]].
* [[Dream Sequence]]:
** Betty has a pretty funky one in "The Fog" when she gets drugged up while giving birth.
** And another in "Tea Leaves" during her cancer scare.
** Those are topped by "Mystery Date", wherein Don Draper dreams of murdering an old flame.
* [[Dress Hits Floor]]: Happens to Betty a few times in seasons 1 and 2, and in "Waldorf Stories", {{spoiler|Joan's mink}} hits the floor.
* [[Drink Order]]: Don will have an Old Fashioned, made with Canadian rye (he keeps a bottle of Canadian Club in his office). Betty seems to like gimlets.
** Roger seems to drink whatever's handy, but ever since he got his super-modern office in Season 4, it seems that there's always a bottle of Smirnoff around. Although as a clear liquor it goes with the white/black/clear decor...ProductPlacement, anyone?
*** There's actually a scene in Season One of Roger pouring Smirnoff into a glass of milk.
** In Season 5 Sally orders coffee in a restaurant, prompting Megan's friend to say they won't bring it to her. When they do, Megan suggests she try to order a drink while Sally starts ''pouring'' sugar into it.
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: Don's brother Adam.
** {{spoiler|Lane Pryce.}}
* [[Driving a Desk]]: Don and Megan not really driving through upstate New York in "Far Away Places".
* [[Drugs Are Bad]]: Subverted. Kinsey claims to get [[Artistic Stimulation]] from "Mary Jane." He never shows it, however; the one time we see him smoking anything (besides cigarettes or his pipe), it's ''Peggy'' who gets the idea. She also has a wonderful time.
{{quote|
** Peggy smokes up again in "The Rejected", and isn't caught by the police when they raid the party.
** Played entirely straight with Midge, a heroin addict by the time she reappears in Season 4.
** Subverted again when Roger drops acid in "Far Away Places", has an important realization about his life, and is telling Mona in the next episode that LSD is awesome and she has to try it.
* [[Drunk Driver]]: Don rolls his car while tooling around with Bobbi Barrett.
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** Conrad Hilton, who demands advertising for a hotel on the moon.
* [[Empty Promise]]: Don's decision to offer these to Betty after Kennedy was assassinated rather than genuine comfort and emotion {{spoiler|catalyzing the dissolution of their marriage}}.
* [[Entitled to Have You]]: Peter Campbell does Type B with a German au pair that his neighbors hired. He goes through some trouble to fix a dress with red wine or some such spilled on it, but it's only after he returns it that she tells him she already has a boyfriend. Her reactions indicate that it was naivety about his intentions rather than an attempt to use him, but he still forces himself on her a bit later. This comes back to bite him when the neighbor finds out.
* [[Establishing Character Moment]]: In addition to the examples on the page itself, Dr. Greg Harris's rape of his then-fiancee Joan has colored every scene we've seen with the character since.
* [[Everybody Smokes]]: to the point of [[Lampshade Hanging]] when the first season's DVD packaging looked like a giant Zippo lighter.
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** In season four, Peggy gets hit on by Joyce, a female ''Life'' editor at a Warhol-esque art show. Though Peggy blocks the flirtation, she not only handles it very casually, but the two of them go on to be such close friends that Joyce regularly comes to visit the SCDP offices; by season five, they even kiss each other on the cheek as a greeting.
* [[Executive Meddling]]: Resulted in a six-month delay to Season Five. Contentious negotiations between AMC and Matthew Weiner eventually led to a deal which included shortening episodes by two minutes, increased product placement, and possibly trimming the cast.
* [[Exiled to
** Betty does this to Don for much of Season 2.
** Harry Crane is exiled in season one after a drunken one-night stand with Hildy (a secretary) after the Election Day office party. His wife forgives him, though.
* [[Expy]]: This show is basically if someone took the characters of ''[[How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying]]'' and gave them some real dramatic development rather then sticking them in a musical comedy. Say if the boss's affairs were taken seriously, what if the [[Hello, Nurse!]] [[Sexy Secretary]] had actual [[Hidden Depths]], etc. This is especially highlighted in the casting of Robert Morse, who is best known for playing the lead in ''How to Succeed...''.
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* [[Fauxlosophic Narration]]: Don's voiceover of his memoirs in "The Summer Man".
* [[Fauxreigner]]/ObfuscatingStupidity: Kurt, probably. He seems to play up his foreignness in order to get away with saying subversive things.
* [[The Fifties]]: Technically it's [[The Sixties|The (very early) Sixties]], but attitudes haven't shifted yet. Also, the Beatles don't break America until December 1963, with the stateside release of the single "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
* [[Fingore]]: In Season 4 Joan gives her own finger a nasty slice while cutting oranges.
* [[Flash Back]]: This is how we learn Don's whole backstory.
* [[Foreshadowing]]:
** In season three, Sterling Cooper successfully woos the city of New York for the Madison Square Garden project, only to be shot down by Putnam, Powell, & Lowe. Because of "a conflict", followed up with a monetary explanation. It turns out that {{spoiler|PPL only wanted SC to strip and sell to an American company, and long term plans with MSG would have conflicted. Pryce is also a sacrificial lamb}}.
{{quote|
'''Pryce:''' ... I don't know. }}
** When the British overseers from Putnam, Powell, & Lowe visit Sterling Cooper in "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency," Joan suggests to them that they see ''Oliver!'' on Broadway while they're in New York. One of the British men replies by calling it "a tragedy with a happy ending," which is certainly an apropos summary of the episode's events.
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** An earlier example in "Ladies Room" - Don is discussing the possibility of working on the Nixon campaign with Sterling and Cooper, and through the window to his office you can see a fireball as Cosgrove and some of the other guys in the office set a spray of the deodorant they're playing with aflame.
** Roger casually offering Don a ride home while junior executives brawl in the background in "Shoot".
* [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!]]: When Roger almost goes [[Out
* [[The Ghost]]: Harry Crane's much-hated rival Mitch. Mrs. Blankenship is one for the first three seasons as Cooper's secretary. She then becomes Don's secretary and plays a much-loved recurring role in Season 4. {{spoiler|Then she dies, and becomes a literal ghost.}}
* [[Girl Watching]]: When the men of SC watch the secretaries through a one-way mirror in "Babylon" as the secretaries sample lipstick.
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* [[Good Adultery, Bad Adultery]]: Adultery is all over this show, with different characters treated differently.
** Don's cheating is seen as bad pretty much across the board. His relationships with his mistresses are unsympathetic and Betty is devastated when she finds out.
** Roger's cheating on Mona is pretty terrible - even though very few people disapprove of his relationship with Joan, his affair with Jane is cringeworthy. After marrying Jane he impregnates Joan but fails to rekindle their old relationship.
** Pete only cheats on Trudy three times in the first four seasons, which is such a low tally by the standards of this show that if not for one of them being all-important to the plot we might never have noticed. He's almost doubled that tally in season 5, though.
** Harry cheating on his wife ''once'', under the influence of alcohol and an office party, results in him getting kicked out of the house. They're back together by early the following season, but considering that a year and a half lapsed between "Nixon v. Kennedy" and "The Benefactor," we don't know how long it took for Jennifer to forgive Harry.
** As mentioned above, Joan is married to Greg when she cheats on him with Roger. This is generally portrayed as a good thing, because Greg is an abusive rapist and while Roger may be a jerk, he's been shown to care for her greatly. Then, in Season Five, she divorces Greg, but is still technically married to him when she {{spoiler|sleeps with the head of Jaguar to land SCDP the account. The Jaguar guy comes out of it looking terrible}}, Joan more heartbreaking than "bad".
* [[Good Girls Avoid Abortion]]: Treated probably realistically. Betty is all for having one, if unwilling to say so in so many words, when she realizes she's pregnant in the middle of her estrangement from Don, but is discouraged from it by her doctor, who claims that "that option is for young girls," and as a "married woman of means" she should just roll with the punches.
** Joan, who goes so far as to convince Roger that she went through with one (probably because she actually has in the past).
* [[Gorgeous Period Dress]]: Too bad they must all reek of cigarette smoke.
* [[Grande Dame]]: Mona.
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** Later he has a very realistic and scary panic attack when an ill-advised government contract puts his past in more danger than ever of being discovered.
* [[Hidden Depths]]: Crotchety old Miss Blankenship, according to Roger's memoirs, was quite the "Queen of Perversions" in the late 1940s. Naturally, both Don and Peggy find this hilarious.
** Played straight with Joan; while early episodes basically portray her as a woman who is more adept to general office politics of lying for your boss when he cheats on his wife and whoring and boozing with your coworkers, later episodes have shown that Joan was one damn effective secretary/office manager and that without her, the agency routinely falls into utter chaos.
** It was already known that Ken Cosgrove had written and published one story, but Season 5 reveals he's published over 20 science fiction and fantasy stories under a pseudonym, something he's mildly embarrassed about but that both his wife and Peggy seem genuinely impressed by. When Roger finds out, he's less impressed, giving Ken a tongue lashing for dividing his focus
* [[Hide Your Pregnancy]]: January Jones was pregnant, but in Season 5 Betty's just gaining weight.
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* [[Hitler Ate Sugar]]: "All I can get from this story is that Hitler didn't smoke, and I do."--Roger in "Red in the Face"
* [[Hobos]]: "The Hobo Code"
* [[Hoist
* [[Hookers and Blow]]: When Midge makes her depressing return in Season 4 we learn that she's prostituting herself to feed a heroin habit.
* [[Hospital Hottie]]: Don's new neighbor in season four.
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* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: Crossed with [[Meaningful Name]] in-universe. Dick Whitman gets his name (unbeknownst to his family) from his mother's fondest wish - cutting off his father's dick and boiling it in hog fat for getting her pregnant.
* [[Indy Ploy]]: Typically, Don is very careful and deliberate, but he's proved several times that he can tap dance on quicksand. In the pilot, he comes up with a new (well, in reality extant and successful) campaign for Lucky Strike. At the end of the second season, he takes advantage of the fact that he doesn't have a contract. At the end of the third, he takes advantage of the fact that he does.
* [[Ironic Echo]]: When Pete gets his father in law to sign with the agency, Ken is excited and comments that he needs to get married to someone like Pete's wife, who has a powerful executive for a father to get him to do business with the agency. Several years and seasons later, Ken marries the daughter of an important businessman and promptly freaks out when the agency asks if he can get his father-in-law to hire the agency, commenting that he doesn't intend on bringing his family into his work and wanting to keep them seperate.
* [[It Got Worse]]: Don was in a downward spiral at the start of season four, breaking his own rules about sleeping with employees and ''hiring a prostitute to slap him in the face'' as they have sex. So he goes to California to spend some time with Anna Draper, his safety net and the only person who he feels he can truly be himself around. {{spoiler|And then he learns she has terminal cancer.}}
* [[It Will Never Catch On]]: Don says this about Jai Alai. [[Subverted Trope|He is right]].
** Admiral Television has something of a similar response to the idea of integrated advertising.
* [[Ivy League for Everyone]]: Averted. Though Pete went to Dartmouth, Paul to Princeton (on a scholarship), and Ken to Columbia, we also have Peggy, who only went to secretarial school, Don, whose higher education was limited to a few classes at City College of New York, Harry, who went to the University of Wisconsin, and Smitty, who went to the University of Michigan. Academic background is used rather thoughtfully on ''Mad Men'', and in every case serves to reinforce the class and social position of the characters being referenced by their alma mater.
* [[Jackass Genie]]: Roger offers Harry one wish after Harry impresses a client. Harry blows it.
** Not quite. Roger is indeed a Jackass ("Done. You're now head of the television department. Which is you."), but Harry plugs away at it and the job grows, and his responsibility and salary and importance grows along with it.
* [[Jerkass]]: All the men are either this or the [[Butt Monkey]] (or both), but particularly Lee Garner Jr. and Joan's husband.
* [[Kansas City Shuffle]]: See [[Batman Gambit]], above.
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** In Season 5 we find out that Don learned a lesson from his problems with Betty and told his new wife about Dick Whitman.
* [[Kick the Dog]]: No puppy is safe! Duck almost makes this trope literal.
* [[Kick the Son of
* [[The Korean War]]: Don served in Korea, and in flashbacks to his time there we learn his big secret.
* [[Ladykiller in Love]]: Serial adulterer Don Draper falls hard for Megan at the end of Season 4 and in Season 5 is still devoted to her.
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** Betty gets pregnant by Don precisely when she doesn't want to.
** {{spoiler|Joan gets pregnant by Roger a few weeks too late to be able to pass it off as her husband's, though she's sure going to try}}.
* [[Leaning
* [[Left the Background Music On]]: The song that plays at the end of "Lady Lazarus" is actually a record that Don is playing. When he removes it, the song stops, only to start up again when the credits start.
* [[Life Imitates Art]]: Many of the period styles from the show have crept back into fashion.
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** [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=15741 "Meditations in an Emergency"]
** [[wikipedia:Love Among the Ruins (poem)|"Love Among The Ruins"]]
** [[wikipedia:The Chrysanthemum and the Sword|"The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"]]
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20131203190551/http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15292 "Lady Lazarus"]
* [[Locked Out of the Loop]]: Nobody tells Anna that she's dying.
* [[The Mafia]]: Faye Miller's father is apparently a "handsome, two-bit gangster" who knows every restaurant owner in Manhattan.
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* [[The Man]]: In "Tea Leaves" Megan notices the squareness of Don's suit and Don says he has to look like this.
* [[A Man Is Not a Virgin]]: It seems like the men of Sterling Cooper spend more time on hanky-panky than on advertising.
* [[Married to
{{quote|
'''Peggy''': That's [[Precision F-Strike|bullshit]]!<br />
[Both laugh] }}
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* [[Mood Whiplash]]:
** "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency": Starts out as a farewell party to Joan, who tries her best to disguise her dissatisfaction with leaving Sterling Cooper (people think she's overwhelmed with the goodbyes) when HOLY CRAP WHAT JUST HAPPENED
** In "The Arrangements", after Don takes away the World War I German helmet Gene gave to Bobby, Gene pulls a fan out of his box of memorabilia, opens it, and says, "There was this girl...", followed by a cut to the next scene.
** In Season 5's "Christmas Waltz", the plotline with Harry reuniting with Paul starts out being humorous, what with Paul becoming a member of the Krishnas, only to become more bleak once it becomes clear just how broken Paul has become.
* [[Morality Pet]]: Anna Draper to Don.
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* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: Don, after learning that his brother committed suicide shortly after Don bribed him into leaving him alone. He has another moment at the end of "Commissions and Fees", {{spoiler|when he learns that he drove Lane to suicide.}}
* [[My Nayme Is]]: Ted Chaough, pronounced "Shaw".
{{quote|
* [[Mysterious Past]]: Don, at first.
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* [[No Hero to His Valet]]: The secretaries are privy to information about their bosses that could easily ruin them in some cases.
* [[Not So Different]]: Peggy tries to tell Abe in "The Beautiful Girls" that what blacks go through isn't that different to what she goes through. The comparison falls a little flat, though:
{{quote|
* [[Odd Friendship]]: Joan and Lane Pryce, who run into rough patches initially (in "The Good News"), but who are acknowledged by the junior employees as "basically running" SCDP.
** Further solidified in "A Little Kiss" when Joan breaks down to Lane about missing her job and people thinking that they didn't need her.
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* [[Of Course I'm Not a Virgin]]
* [[Off the Wagon]]: Duck, with dire consequences.
* [[Old, New, Borrowed and Blue]]: Jane's gift to Margaret for her wedding. Very much not appreciated.
* [[One Dialogue, Two Conversations]]: In "A Little Kiss" Harry thinks that Roger called him into his office to fire him. Roger is actually trying to convince Harry to swap offices with Pete and assumes that Harry already knows about his intent.
* [[One Steve Limit]]: Averted with minor characters Judy Hofstadt and Judy Campbell.
** Appears in-universe when the firm is forced to hire a black secretary. The best candidate is named Dawn, and everyone is quite wary about confusing her name and Don's.
* [["On the Next..."]]: With a supernatural ability to air random bits while not actually giving the viewer an idea of what's going to happen.
* [[OOC Is Serious Business]]: It happens a fair number of times, but the first half of Season 4--Don's downward spiral--includes more than its fair share, culminating in two events in "Waldorf Stories": (1) he actually gets drunk--apparently blackout drunk--and makes a pitch to Quaker Oats that he had previously derided as stupid (it ''works'', forcing him to take on some idiot who shouldn't be at SCDP)<ref>While [[Drinking
* [[Orphaned Punchline]]: Lampshaded by Roger in "The Wee Hours."
{{quote|
'''Roger:''' I'll have to hear the beginning of that sometime. }}
* [[The Other Darrin]]: Four different child actors have played Don's son Bobby.
* [[Parent
** Sally Draper does ''not'' like Betty's new husband, Henry Francis, or his family. In fairness to Henry, he tries to be kind to Sally and encourages Betty to do the same; it's just that Sally still sees him as a manifestation of Betty's hatred for Don. Curiously, her brother Bobby doesn't seem to have this problem.
** Margaret Sterling hates Jane, who is only two years older than her. Although, considering Jane's onslaught of unwanted showy gifts and borderline-creepy marriage advice, delivered to Margaret ''right before her own wedding'', you can kind of see her point.
* [[Parental Issues]]: Hoo boy.
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* [[Promotion to Opening Titles]]: Kiernan Shipka, who plays Sally Draper, in Season 4. Jessica Pare, who plays Megan, in Season 5.
* [[Pun-Based Title]]
* [[Put
* [[Quick Nip]]
* [[Rage Quit]]: In "Blowing Smoke", Bert Cooper of all people. He gets over it.
** Also a [[Crowning Moment of Funny]] - "Get me my shoes!"
{{quote|
* [[Raging Stiffie]]: Unapologetic sexist Stan suggests that he and Peggy "get liberated" and take their clothes off during a brainstorming session. Peggy surprises him by taking him up on it, and Stan gets an erection, much to his embarassment.
* [[Rape Discretion Shot]]: Joan's [[Bad Date]] isn't shown. The camera pulls away and we see what she's seeing: the floor under the sofa.
* [[Rape
* [[Rashomon Style]]: "Far Away Places" uses this to show a single day from Peggy, Roger and Don's perspectives.
* [[Real Life Relative]]: John Slattery's real life wife Talia Balsam plays Roger's wife Mona. Rather amusingly, their characters get divorced so that he can marry a twentysomething.
** Creepy little Glen Bishop is played by Matt Weiner's son.
* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: Some viewers found Peggy being pregnant without realizing it at the end of Season 1 to be asinine and completely unrealistic; but 'surprise pregnancies' actually do happen.
** Also, Season 5 opens with African-American protestors getting doused with paper bag water bombs by employees of one of SCDP's competitors, who then march upstairs to complain and catch the pranksters red handed. The scene ends with a protestor remarking "And they call ''us'' savages!" Several critics chided the scene, claiming it was ham-handed, especially the final line... only for it to be revealed that that event actually happened exactly how it was depicted, including the infamous line. Most of the critics who initially criticized the scene stuck to their guns, however, saying that the scene was still ham-handed even if it was true.
* [[A Real Man Is a Killer]]: "I killed seventeen men in Okinawa!" (Subverted in that the guy who says it is one of the most pathetic on the show.)
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Roger, to Pete Campbell. Also, Don to Pete in the very first episode. Come to think of it, Pete gets this a lot. Pete finally nails Roger with one in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword".
** Don's tend to be short and sweet, as in "My Old Kentucky Home":
{{quote|
'''Don:''' No one thinks you're happy. They think you're foolish. }}
** [[Call Back|Three seasons]] after her husband raped her, Joan finally lets him have it in "Mystery Date".
{{quote|
* [[Rich in Dollars, Poor In Sense]]: Lee Garner Jr., who owns Lucky Strike and seems to show up to make everyone at Sterling-Coop's lives miserable. Crosses the [[Moral Event Horizon]] in "Wee Small Hours" when he basically ruins Sal's life out of pettiness. His father scolds him for being clueless about how his own product is made.
{{quote|
** At SCDP's Christmas party, he humiliates Roger and gets friendly with his wife, knowing full well how reliant the agency is on Lucky Strike's account. The next day, Don and Roger refer to him as Hitler.
{{quote|
'''Roger''': [in German accent] May he live for a thousand years. }}
* [[Right Behind Me]]: Harry makes sexist comments about Megan to Stan. Megan eventually walks in on them, and Harry ignores Stan's "Hi, Megan!" warning, proceeding to [[Digging Himself Deeper|Dig Himself Deeper.]]
* [[Right-Hand Hottie]]: Lane Pryce's Season 3 "[[Insistent Terminology|right hand" (NOT "secretary")]], John Hooker, is one of these even within the universe: as office manager at Sterling Cooper upon its takeover by Putnam, Powell, and Lowe, he replaces Joan...and is thus in charge of the secretarial pool. The secretaries all swoon over his good looks and sexy British accent. Peggy, on the other hand, calls him [[James Bond|"Moneypenny."]]
* [[The Rolling Stones]]: In "Tea Leaves" Harry and Don make an ill-advised attempt to get them to record a jingle. Don notes they recorded a Rice Krispie cereal ad [https://web.archive.org/web/20131027224454/http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2012/04/mad-men-has-us-wondering-did-the-rolling-stones-really-do-a-cereal-commercial.html three years prior].
* [[Rule of Drama]]: As of season 4, all breathing space between the blows seems to have gone out.
* [[Running Gag]]: Almost everything about Miss Blankenship, particularly her tendency to buzz "[So-and-so] here to see you" right after that person has entered the room and started talking to Don.
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* [[Sexy Stewardess]]: One is almost a conquest of Don's in "Out of Town", until a fire alarm interrupts.
* [[Sexy Walk]]: Nearly ''all'' of the women, even the housewives, but ''especially'' Joan. Peggy is a notable semi-exception.
* [[She's Got Legs]]: Megan does a sexy song and dance for Don while wearing a very short miniskirt and fishnet stockings at his surprise party.
* [[Ship Tease]]: Don kisses Joan square on the mouth when he wins the Clio in "Waldorf Stories."
** Veers right into [[
** After Joan gets served with divorce papers in "Christmas Waltz", Don takes her out on the town. They pretend to be married and buy a Jaguar, then go to a bar and talk about their terrible relationships and why they never got together. There is a moment when Don propositions her, and Joan almost accepts, but Don leaves her to return home to Megan.
** Don and Peggy spend one half of "The Suitcase" acting like an old married couple. Actually, there's really no living female body on this show that Don hasn't seemed on a course to bed down with at least once (with the possible exception of Ms. Blankenship).
** Lane kisses Joan after {{spoiler|he punches out Pete}} in "Signal 30".
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** In "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", Sally Draper is watching [[The Man
** Don describes himself as "[[The Odd Couple|a Felix who wants to be an Oscar]]".
** A post-coital Fay calls Don [[James Bond|"Mr. Bond"]].
** Hm, a [[Sexy Secretary]] named Holloway? [[Secretary|I wonder where they got that name from...]]
** In "Out of Town" Don sees a liquor advertisement and jokes about [[The Lost Weekend|pawning his typewriter to spend all weekend drinking]].
** In "A Little Kiss" Don sends his kids off to their mom's house with "Say hi to [[The Addams Family
** In "Mystery Date" Peggy says she was discovered in the secretarial pool [[A Star Is Born|"like Esther Blodgett".]]
* [[Sibling Yin-Yang]]: Open minded free spirit Anna Draper's sister is uptight and conservative.
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* [[Slipping a Mickey]]: Don falls victim to a [[Outlaw Couple]] of thieves in a hotel room.
* [[Slut Shaming]]: The men are free to romp, so long as they're discreet, and other men don't particularly care, but if a woman steps one toe over the line, she's torn apart. Peggy Olson gets it particularly bad from her family and her priest, for having a baby out of wedlock.
** Somewhat Inverted, in that men's 'romps' tend to be much more destructive to others around them, which often comes back to bite them in the ass, like when Don finds out that he has a reputation as a good, easy lay.
** And surprisingly subverted in "The Other Woman": {{spoiler|Joan sleeps with the Jaguar exec to get the account, and neither Lane nor Don approve, but none of the men is shown treating her with any less respect than they had before. Pete actually seems to respect her ''more''.}}
* [[Smoking Hot Sex]]: Fairly frequently; in fact, barely five minutes into the first episode. Duck in particular seems to be fond of the practice.
* [[Smoking Is Cool]]: SO damn cool. The dashingly beautiful cast doing it helps a lot on emphasizing this. However, there are also a lot of shots of the characters coughing in the morning, or while smoking, effectively deconstructing the trope.
** Still cool though, no doubt about that.
* [[Smoky Gentlemen's Club]]: Who needs one, when you have the leather chairs, fully stocked liquor cabinet and all the cigarettes you can smoke right there in your office?
** The morning after the 1960 election, Bert Cooper refers to having spent the previous evening "in a literal smoke-filled room".
* [[Smug Snake]]: Duck Phillips and Pete Campbell. St. John Powell in Season 3 is another example.
* [[Son of a Whore]]: Dick Whitman.
* [[Sophisticated As Hell]]: Roger Sterling might be the patron saint of this trope.
{{quote|
* [[Stalker
** Possibly subverted in that Glen's relationship with Sally ends up being a fairly innocent friendship.
* [[Standard Fifties Father]]: Subverted by Don. Recall the first episode: Look at this high-flying, brilliant, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, philandering, single ad--wait a minute, he's ''married''? And has ''kids''? What is this, some kind of twisted ''[[Leave It to Beaver]]''? Unlike Mister Cleaver, he is most definitely not a paragon of American virtue, what with the affairs, stolen identity, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and the divorce. Let's not forget he drove his wife to divorce. (Or perhaps she drove herself to it. Whatever).
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* [[Take That]]: "I wouldn't have told Roger if I intended it to remain a secret."
** It's ''[[wikipedia:George W. Romney|George]]'' Romney that Henry Francis was talking about, of course, but it can't be a coincidence that in episode "Tea Leaves", airing in the spring of 2012, Henry says "Romney's a clown".
** Megan lambasts ''[[Dark Shadows]]'' in the episode of that name, which just happened to air the same weekend that the ''Dark Shadows'' [[Dark Shadows (
* [[Tarot Troubles]]: Anna gives Don a reading in "The Mountain King".
* [[Technology Marches On]]: Lampshaded in the first episode. "It's not like there's some kind of magical machine that makes identical copies out of things."
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* [[Token Minority]]: In-universe with two different minorities. The sarcastic "equal opportunity employer" ad in Season 5 premiere "A Little Kiss" basically forces lily-white SCDP to integrate, and in "Tea Leaves" Dawn the secretary has been hired as their first black employee. In the same episode, SCDP hires a Jewish copywriter, which Roger thinks makes the business seem more "modern". (In the first season Sterling Cooper had to pluck some random Jewish employee out of the mailroom when meeting with the Jewish owners of Menken's department store.)
* [[Tomato Surprise]]: The ending of the very first episode. We've been introduced to Don as a [[Casanova]] and office hero, and only when we follow him home do we discover the existence of his wife and two young children.
* [[Took a Level
** Peggy in Season 2, she gets Freddy Rumsen's office (much to Harry's chagrin, "I'm head of television!") then in season 3 she bitches about her "girl" to Joan, much like Don does about his "girl" in season 2. Standing up to Roger's imperiousness at the end of Season 3 continues her arc.
{{quote|
"No." }}
** Season 5, Roger tries to get Peggy to come up with an ad campaign on the fly because he forgot to get the dedicated copywriter for his account to do it. Peggy agrees, but only after shaking him down for $400+ (in 1966 money). "The lie costs extra," indeed. She doesn't even take him seriously when he threatens to fire her for not doing it.
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** Each season, Betty takes another level.
** Lane Pryce, at the end of season 3. Goes from being PPL's little snitch / bitch to standing up to them and basically hijacking SCDP from under their noses.
{{quote|
** Lane again in "Signal 30" when he {{spoiler|beats down Pete for insulting him}}.
* [[Too Soon]]: Deliberately invoked by the third-season Aqua Net campaign whose TV spots would've featured two couples in an open convertible. It had reached the storyboard stage by the JFK assassination.
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** "Commissions and Fees" {{spoiler|Lane Pryce kills himself, becoming the first major character to be killed off.}} Also, {{spoiler|Sally gets her period while on a "date" of sorts with Glenn.}}
* [[What Could Have Been]]: John Slattery originally auditioned for the role of Don Draper, but the production team felt he was too old.
** Jon Hamm originally auditioned for Jack Doneghy on ''[[
* [[What Did I Do Last Night?]]: Don in "Waldorf Stories," after having ''far'' too much to drink at the Clios (a Friday afternoon). He idiotically does a pitch to Quaker Oats for Life cereal--that ''works'', but in the worst possible way--heads to the bar with Roger, where he gets ''more'' drunk, and ends up taking home a woman (actively looking for him) who had apparently written the jingle for the award-winning cake batter/topping commerical...and wakes up ''Sunday afternoon'' with an ''entirely different woman'' next to him (a waitress from a nearby diner, apparently--who calls him ''[[Oh Crap|Dick]]'' as she leaves). As things turn out, Peggy has to remind him about what he did at the Life pitch.
* [[What Exactly Is His Job?]]: "What do I do here?" says a demoralized Lane to Joan in "Signal 30".
* [[What Happened to
** [[The Bus Came Back|Now no longer the case with Paul]], as it turned out that - over the years - he got into Hare Krishna... and now wants to write for [[Star Trek]]. Let's just say that his scripts for the latter aren't too promising.
* [[What Is Going On?]]: Don in "The Grown-Ups" when he wanders into the bullpen to find every single telephone ringing and all the secretaries huddled in a corner around a radio. What Is Going On is news of the Kennedy assassination.
** Betty has an epic "''What is going on?!?!?''" in the same episode after watching Lee Harvey Oswald get murdered on live TV.
** Also, Don and Roger walk in on the entire office huddled around a different radio in season two, to learn that a jet liner just crashed off the coast of Queens (Roger initially assumes they're excited about John Glenn).
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** The rest of the SCDP partners give one to Pete when they learn that he tried to get Joan to engage in prostitution on behalf of the agency.
* [[When Elders Attack]]: Lane's dad whacking him across the face with his cane and stepping on his hand.
* [[Where Were You Last Night?]]
* [[White Anglo Saxon Protestant]]: Much of the cast, but especially Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell and Betty Draper.
* [[White Shirt of Death]]: No-one dies in the scene, but the lawnmower thing qualifies.
* [[World War II]]: Roger Sterling served in the Navy in World War II, specifically the Pacific. After his heart attack(s), he says that he has spent most of his life "living like [he] was on shore leave" and still retains a deep hatred of the Japanese (as we see in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword").
** Apparently Michael Ginsburg was born in a concentration camp and lived the first five years of his life in a Swedish orphanage before his father adopted him.
* [[Wrong Name Outburst]]: See [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!]], above.
* [[Yellow Peril]]: Roger Sterling is really anti-Japanese, having failed to grow past his days in the navy in [[World War II]], and deeply insults the Honda representatives.
* [[You! Get Me Coffee!]]: Almost all of the secretaries play it straight, but in the season 3 finale, Peggy subverts it with a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|"No"]].
* [[Your Cheating Heart]]: Virtually ''everyone''.
** Don cheats on Betty nigh constantly, with, among others: Midge, Rachel, Bobbie, Joy, and Suzanne.
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{{reflist}}
{{Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time}}
[[Category:
[[Category:TV Series]]
[[Category:Live-Action TV of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Live-Action TV of the 2010s]]
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