History Series / MadMen

Other aspects of the show involve its supporting cast:

* Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), a young WASP executive who learns the hard way that wealth and power don't mean instant success in the business world.
* Peggy (ElisabethMoss); an ambitious young secretary-turned-ad-woman under Don's reluctant mentoring.
* Don's wife, Betty (January Jones), who is suffering from society's restraints onto women as far as being condemned to be a housewife and StepfordSmiler while her husband whores around.
* Sal (Bryan Batt), a closeted gay male coworker of Don.
* Joan (ChristinaHendricks), office manager struggling to stay afloat after a bad marriage proposal leaves her married to a horrible man.
* Roger (John Slattery), a womanizing partner at Sterling-Cooper who has terminal marriage problems and a propensity for killer one-liners.
* And others...

* HiddenDepths: 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.

* IncrediblyLamePun: Crossed with MeaningfulName. Okay, is there really anyone left who hasn't thought "Wow, Don really is a Dick" multiple times?
** Amazingly, this also crosses with MeaningfulName 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.

* GladToBeAliveSex / RescueSex / WallBangHer: Roger and Joan in "The Beautiful Girls", after they're [[UnfortunateImplications mugged by a black man with a gun]].

* DepravedBisexual: Possibly Lee Garner, Jr., although he might just be closeted gay. Of course, it's implied that this is because he's a SpoiledBrat more than anything else.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: One episode revolved all around 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.
** Note that this was an isolated incident; in general the creators go to extraordinary lengths to get period details right.

** [[DeadBabyComedy Making fun of a plane crash]] today would probably get you ''fired.''
*** Although as the commentary to "Flight 1" points out, they're really noting a still very present instinct to start joking about a tragedy right away.

*** Trick-or-treating in pitch darkness with mostly black costumes and no flashlights.

* EstrogenBrigadeBait: Go to the nearest woman you can find and ask her what she thinks of Jon Hamm. Just do it.

* WhatIsGoingOn: Don in episode 3.12 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.

The series, while an ensemble, focuses mainly on Don Draper (JonHamm), a charming rogue of an ad executive with major personal problems: mainly the fact that he can't keep his [[IncrediblyLamePun dick]] in his pants, as well as his DarkAndTroubledPast.

* TheDanza: In Season 4, Danny Strong plays Danny Siegel, Jane's cousin.

[[folder:Tropes A-G]]

* Peggy (ElisabethMoss); a young secretary-turned-ad-woman under Don's reluctant mentoring.

* AllThereInTheManual: Each episode has multiple commentaries on the DVDs, which have writers, directors, actors, and even sound guys talking about the decisions they made and what everything means.

* MixedMarriage: Paul's black girlfriend, whom he was just using to show off how subversive he is.
** In "Hands and Knees", it's revealed that Lane Pryce has been dating a black girl from the Playboy Club. Surprisingly enough, they seem to be very fond of each other.

* UnexplainedAccent: Megan's French does ''not'' sound like she's from Montreal... or rather, perhaps she's from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Montr%C3%A9al,_Gers Montreal, France]]. Strangely enough, the actress that plays her ''is'' a genuine French Canadian from Montreal, which means that the very French accent she speaks to her mother with is actually ''faked'' for some reason.

* TheBeatles: Sally is a fan. Don gets her Beatles 45s for Christmas 1964 and later gets her tickets to the concert in Shea Stadium. Sally promptly starts screaming hysterically in joy.

* BigApplesauce: 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 to make way for Madison Square Garden is a plot point in an episode, and SCDP moves into offices in the then-new Time-Life Building. Lane Pryce has a Mets pennant in his office.

* BondageIsBad: Don doesn't really get the concept of "Safe, Sane and Consensual" with Bobby Barret. In contrast, most of the sex he's shown having that doesn't involve kink is seen as "good".

** A drunk off his ass Duck Phillips heckles the Cleo host in "Waldorf Stories" and makes an ass out of himself to Peggy in "The Suitcase".

** 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 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 first-round knockout losses to Sonny Liston.

** In Season 4 SCDP added Honda cars to their portfolio, a "motorcycle with doors" in 1965 which is now a full-line marque with a high reputation and little dependence on low-profit fleet sales. In contrast to their "jewel in the crown" Lucky Strike: in 1960 a market leader and one of the best-known brands in the country, in 2010 a ghost brand in a product segment over 80% of the population wants nothing to do with.

* CaughtWithYourPantsDown: Don's ten year old daughter Sally is watching ''TheManFromUNCLE'' when she starts masturbating, without really knowing what it is she's doing, to Ilya Kuryakin at a friends house while her friend is sleeping on the couch. She gets in trouble when the friend's mother walks in, and when she takes Sally back home her mother yells at her and threatens to cut her fingers off if she does it again - in public or in private. All the while Sally doesn't even know why the adults are mad at her.

** Roger Sterling's daughter spent some time planning a date to get married. She settled for [[JohnFKennedy November 23, 1963]].

* CoolCar: Don's Coupe [=DeVille=], Gene's (later Betty's) early '60s Lincoln, Betty's '57 Ford wagon from the first season...practically every outdoor shot is chock-full of Gorgeous Period Cars.

* CreepyChild: Glen Bishop, who's escalated from crushing on Betty Draper to crushing on Sally Draper to breaking and entering.

*** Sally running around with a plastic bag over her head. Betty calls her over... and tells her the clothes that were in that bag better not be on the floor.

** Played entirely straight with Midge the heroin addict in Season 4.

* TheFifties: Technically it's [[TheSixties The (very early) Sixties]], but attitudes haven't shifted yet. Also, the Beatles don't break America until November 1963.

** In season three, Sterling Cooper succesfully woos the city of New York for the Madison Square Gardens 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]].

* ForgottenTrope: Betty flying to Reno to get a divorce.

** Also, in "Beautiful Girls" when Don, Fay, and Ken are deciding on an ad campaign with a client as [[spoiler: the secretaries try to cart away Ms. Blankenship's dead body.]]

* TheGreatDepression: When many of the characters grew up and thus the setting of Don's flashbacks to his childhood.

* KeepingSecretsSucks: What Don decides after having a panic attack over the possibility that his might be discovered. [

** 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 realise the hidden potential in marketing it to women.

* SlippingAMickey: Don falls victim to a BonnieAndClyde pair of thieves in a hotel room.

* ActorAllusion: Having Roger Sterling play Santa at the Christmas party ''has'' to at least ''partially'' be a reference to John Slattery's turn as CIA man Henry Cravely (Philip Seymour Hoffman's boss) in ''[=~Charlie Wilson's War~=]''.
** Megan makes reference in "Tomorrowland" to her father having been a college professor - again, that has to at least partially have been a reference to her role as the college president's daughter in JackAndBobby, where her father was played by John Slattery.