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Mad Men: Difference between revisions
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* [[Ambiguously Evil]]: Bert Cooper. It is never made clear whether he is willing to follow up on the threats he makes or if he really had his old doctor killed.
** Considering what we find out about said doctor in "The Suitcase" {{spoiler|namely, that he surgically removed Bert's testicles ''accidentally''}}, it wouldn't be surprising if that was the case.
* [[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| '''Joey''': "Everyplace I've worked, there's always some old fairy who comes on to me, but that was the weirdest by far."}}
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** 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
* [[Anvilicious]]: Paul's ''[[Star Trek the Original Series (TV)|Star Trek]]'' script, "The Negron Complex," is an in-universe example. According to Harry, it involves aliens called the Negrons oppressed by a race called the Caucasons. The twist is that the Negrons are white.
* [[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.
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** 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]].
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* [[Blackface]] / [[Uncle Tomfoolery]]: Holy [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]] [[Batman (TV)|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 [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".
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* [[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 [[
* [[Call Back]] / [[Continuity Nod]] : There are numerous subtle touches that make reference to previous events and imagery from previous episodes:
** Pete's gun from "Red in the Face" reappears occasionally throughout the series, as if solely to remind the viewer that he still has it.
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** In season one's "New Amsterdam," Roger mentions that "more guys have gotten jobs" because of alcoholism than anything else. Don quips "that's how I got in". In season four's "Waldorf Stories", we get to see how Don got his job at Sterling-Cooper - he got Roger drunk enough to forget whether or not he'd really offered Don a job.
** Also in "New Amsterdam," we see Betty read a book with the title "ITALY". Much later, we later learn that she is a fluent Italian speaker.
** Three seasons after Dr. Greg raped her in "The Mountain King", Joan finally acknowledges what happened in "Mystery Date" (see [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]] below).
** In season 1's "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", Don takes a nap on a couch, [[Time Passes Montage|time passes by]], and he's woken later by secretary Peggy. In season 5's "Far Away Places", Peggy takes a nap on a couch, [[Time Passes Montage|time passes by]], and she's woken later by secretary Dawn.
** "Christmas Waltz" is rife with these, both explicit and implied:
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* [[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).
* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]: Bert Cooper, especially in his verbal smackdown of Pete Campbell in the season one finale.
* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: Robert Pryce {{spoiler|takes down Lane with one quick smack across the head with his cane and then steps on his hand to force him to go back to England and deal with his family}}.
== Tropes D-G ==
* [[
** Averted by the main adult women (Betty's relationship with her father Gene is strained; Joan's father appears to have walked out on the family when she was young; and while Peggy's relationship with her mother is not the best, all we know of her father is that he had a heart attack and died in front of Peggy when she was twelve). However, Gene grows rather fond of his granddaughter Sally, encouraging her to make her own way in the world and treating her like an adult (unlike, by implication, her mother), and she is the one most visibly upset by his death.
** Played with somewhat when Betty told her father the she didn't want to discuss the arrangements for his death because she's his "little girl" while she was 9 months pregnant with her 3rd child.
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** Bert Cooper too. The man keeps a print of [[Naughty Tentacles|"Dream of the Fisherman's Wife"]] on his office wall.
* [[The Dog Bites Back]]: Lane Pryce. After being condescended to by his PPL bosses for most of Season 3 and then cast overboard when PPL decides to sell Sterling Cooper, he participates in the season-ending mutiny and helps found Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
* [[Door
* [[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]].
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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 With a Bang]], he's mumbling the name of the one-night-stand he was with, and an overwrought Don slaps him and growls, "Mona! Your wife's name is ''Mona''!"
* [[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.
* [[Glad to Be Alive Sex]] / [[Wall Bang Her]]: Roger and Joan in "The Beautiful Girls", after they're [[Unfortunate Implications|mugged by a black man with a gun]].
* [[Gondor Calls for Aid]]: The assembling of the new Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce team.
* [[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.
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* [[Married to The Job]]: Peggy starts to show hints of this in "The Suitcase," although it really ''is'' Mark's fault for bringing along Peggy's hated family.
{{quote| '''Joan''': I've learned a long time a go not to get all my satisfaction from this job.<br />
'''Peggy''': That's [[Precision F
[Both laugh] }}
** Joan herself is showing signs of this--she freaks out about getting replaced in the Season 5 premiere and is aching to get back to work.
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* [[My Beloved Smother]]: Peggy's mother. Also Betty's, who seems to be mostly responsible for Betty's huge complex about physical appearances.
** Joan's mom, though she's more along the lines of simply meddling, since she really seems to want to be there for Joan and has her best interests at heart.
* [[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| '''Roger''': "Hey, writers, how many extra vowels is that?"}}
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== Tropes N-S ==
* [[Naked in Mink]]: In "Dark Shadows" Pete dreams of seeing his one-night-stand Beth (played by [[Gilmore Girls|Alexis Bledel]]) like this.
* [[
* [[Never Gets Drunk]]: Don, prior to Season 4.
* [[No Hero to His Valet]]: The secretaries are privy to information about their bosses that could easily ruin them in some cases.
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* [[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.
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* [[Playboy Bunny]]: Lane Pryce dates one.
* [[Plucky Office Girl]]: Peggy began as one of these.
* [[Precision F
* [[Previously On]]
* [[Primal Scene]]: In season 5's "At the Codfish Ball", at the hotel where the award banquet is being held, Sally walks into a room and sees Megan's mom Marie giving Roger a blowjob. They don't see her and she is still stunned when she returns to their table. When she calls Glen up later and he asks how was the city, she answers: "Dirty."
* [[Product Placement]]: Pays the bills. ''Mad Men'', being a show about an advertising agency, can do this more gracefully than most other movies/programs.
* [[Promotion to Opening Titles]]: Kiernan Shipka, who plays Sally Draper, in Season 4. Jessica Pare, who plays Megan, in Season 5.
* [[Pun
* [[Put On a Bus]]: Sal Romano's fate remains unknown after SC fired him in Season 3.
* [[Quick Nip]]
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** 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| '''Roger:''' Yoou know, my mother was right. It's a mistake to be conspicuously happy. Some people don't like it.<br />
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** [[Call Back|Three seasons]] after her husband raped her, Joan finally lets him have it in "Mystery Date".
{{quote| '''Joan''': You’re not a good man, you never were, even before we were married--''and you know what I’m talking about''.}}
* [[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| '''Roger''': If Lee Garner wants three wise men flown in from Jerusalem, he gets it.}}
** 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.
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** In Season 5, Ken's secret second career as a sci-fi writer and his determination to keep doing it after Roger Sterling tells him to quit give Ken his first real storyline.
* [[Sci Fi Ghetto]]: This trope is why Ken is embarrassed to discuss his career as a writer.
* [[Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!]]: Miss Blankenship.
* [[Secret Keeper]]: Numerous people for Don, including Pete, Cooper, Betty, and Faye.
** In "Chinese Wall" - and for other secrets a long time beforehand - Joan for Roger.
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** In "A Little Kiss" Don sends his kids off to their mom's house with "Say hi to [[The Addams Family (TV)|Morticia and Lurch]] for me.
** In "Mystery Date" Peggy says she was discovered in the secretarial pool [[A Star Is Born|"like Esther Blodgett".]]
* [[Sibling Yin
** Peggy is a modern, liberated career girl, while her sister is a traditional Catholic housewife who resents Peggy for this.
* [[Side Boob]]: Megan nestling up to Don in "A Little Kiss" is as close to nudity as ''Mad Men'' will get.
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* [[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).
** In Season 4 Don makes the rather poignant admission that he's uncomfortable around his kids but still misses them when they're not visiting.
* [[Star
* [[Start My Own]]: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
* [[Stealth Insult]]: Sally's new therapist tells Betty to call her Dr. Edna, just like the kids do; suggesting she recognizes Betty as immature and childlike.
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** Peggy and her sister Anita both feel this way -- Peggy because of the baby and because she's putting her career ahead of finding a husband, and Anita, interestingly, because she feels like Peggy gets away with those things when she couldn't. Mrs. Olson provides enough guilt for everyone to partake.
** In an office version, Peggy thinks of herself this way to Don - everyone else thinks of her as the favorite, because unlike everyone else she actually seems to have Don's respect. {{spoiler|This eventually prompts Peggy to leave SCDP for the sake of her career.}}
* [[Viewers
* [[The Vietnam War]]: Joan's husband, Dr. Harris joins the Army Medical Corps and is sent to Vietnam at the end of the fourth season. The anti-war protests and various drafts are background moments in season five.
* [[Visual Pun]]: After {{spoiler|Pete Campbell's}} father dies, the family's in the parlor, discussing everything but the death. Then his mother finally points out the elephant in the room. An actual pink ceramic elephant on the mantel, that she hates and immediately gives away.
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** At the end of "A Night to Remember", after {{spoiler|Jimmy Barret confronts Don and Betty about Don's affair with his wife}}, Don and Betty are driving home, both obviously very upset, and Betty nervously upchucks all over the dash of Don's new Coupe DeVille.
* [[Welcome Episode]]: In the pilot, Peggy starts her new job at Sterling Cooper.
* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]]: Don to Peggy. Don himself suddenly decides that he's not up for one of these relationships with Connie Hilton after having been made to feel like he did something wrong by not living up to Hilton's weird standards.
** Pete never got this with his own father and desperately seeks it from Don and Duck.
* [[Wham Episode]]:
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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 Mouse?]]: The show's habit of jumping forward months or years at a time leaves some threads dangling. Viewers still don't know what happened to former regulars Sal Romano or Paul Kinsey.
** [[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).
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]:
** Allison finally snaps at Don - "I don't say this easily, but you are not a good person!"
** Faye, after she finds out that {{spoiler|Don is engaged to Megan}}: " I hope she knows that you only like beginnings."
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* [[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"]].
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