History Series / MadMen

** The emphasis on cocktails and hard liquor in general. The post-Prohibition decades in America were the Golden Age of the Mixed Drink and the sophisticate's choice was nearly always a cocktail of some sort. Wine, unless it was French with a price like a car payment, was either "ethnic" or something that bums drank from paper bags; beer was strictly an industrial product consumed only in the most informal settings, and hard cider was completely off the radar, while non-alcoholic drinks were strictly for children and members of weird teetotal religions).

* YouHaveToHaveJews: Roger orders Peggy to hire Ginsberg because he thinks having a Jewish copywriter will make the firm seem more "modern."

* TrophyWife: Jane Siegel Sterling is a perfect example. Roger throws away a decades-long marriage to Mona in order to take up with a sexy young secretary. He soon tires of her, treating her more like a bratty daughter, and in Season 5 they decide to end the marriage.

The show premiered on July 19, 2007 and has received fifteen Emmys and four Golden Globes. The seventh season is the final one; however, after the success they had with splitting ''Series/BreakingBad'''s last season, AMC has elected to do the same with ''Mad Men.'' The first half of Season 7 aired in spring 2014, and the second half aired in spring 2015.

** After Peggy has broken up with both Abe and Chaough in Season 6, and taken over Don's office and assumed the pose that ends the opening credits, she seems more and more to be Married To The Job.

** Megan starts at RSDP as Don's new secretary, they sleep together and quickly Don decides to marry her, as he was infatuated with her model looks, magical nanny abilities and desire to work in advertising as a copy writer.

* NotSoDifferent: 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:

* ExactWords: In "Collaborators", Don is charged by a Jaguar dealer that he hates with selling a new, locally-targeted Jaguar campaign to the Jaguar brass. Don gives the pitch -- but deliberately makes the campaign sound cheap, so the Jaguar bosses will turn down the deal.

** The emphasis on cocktails and hard liquor in general. The post-Prohibition decades in America were the Golden Age of the Mixed Drink and the sophisticate's choice was nearly always a cocktail of some sort. Wine, unless it was French with a price like a car payment, was either "ethnic" or something that bums drank from paper bags; beer was strictly an industrial product consumed only in the most informal settings, and hard cider was completely off the radar, and non-alcoholic drinks were strictly for children and members of weird teetotal religions).

-->'''Don''': ''*strolling into the Creative lounge*'' I smell creativity!

* RousingSpeech: Don, numerous times. Particularly notable in "Chinese Wall" and "Christmas Waltz." Played for laughs in "The Crash" when the speech is nonsensical due to an injection of amphetamines Don received.

* SarcasticConfession: Harry mistakes Stan's discreet warning for a sarcastic joke:

** (Stan may or may not have been trying to sound like he was lying, but after Harry fails to take the hint, Stan just plays along and encourages him to dig himself even deeper.)

* SexySecretary: Joan. Also, Jane, Megan, Peggy... all of them, really, probably even Miss "queen of perversions" Blankenship back in the day.

** Don and Peggy spend one half of "The Suitcase" acting like an old married couple. Actually, there's really no living adult 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).

* SeparatedByACommonLanguage: When talking to the Israel tourism board, the staff at Sterling Cooper wonder why they're not approaching one of the established Jewish advertising firms in New York instead. The Board says that they came to them because they're looking for something "old fashioned", which offends the SC personnel before they clarify that they mean "classic", not outmoded.

As the show progresses through the 1960s, many seasons are tied to and punctuated by milestone events. Season 1 culminates in the 1960 election of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, Season 2 takes place during 1962 (not before a brief recap of 1961 at the beginning) and ends with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Season 3 runs through 1963 and featured the JFK assassination in its penultimate episode. Season 4 (1964-65) breaks this pattern, though much of it centers around UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. Season 5 (1966-67) continues to deal with Vietnam; and Season 6 (1968)[[labelnote:*]]OK, technically, it begins in December 1967 skipping the "Summer of Love"[[/labelnote]] is highly chaotic (just like the year) and delves into the racial tensions at the time, including the assassination of UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr. The first half of Season 7 begins with Nixon's inauguration in January 1969 and ends with man's first moonwalk later in July. The final half continues and closes in 1970, with less focus on current real-life events and more on the professional and personal turmoils of the main cast.

As the show progresses through the 1960s, many seasons are tied to and punctuated by milestone events. Season one culminates in the 1960 election of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, season two takes place during 1962 and ends with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and season three runs through 1963 and featured the JFK assassination in its penultimate episode. Season Four (1964-65) breaks this pattern, though much of it centers around UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. Season 5 (1966-67) continues to deal with Vietnam; and Season 6 (1968)[[labelnote:*]]OK, technically, it begins in December 1967 skipping the "Summer of Love"[[/labelnote]] is highly chaotic (just like the year) and delves into the racial tensions at the time, including the assassination of UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr. The first half of Season 7 begins with Nixon's inauguration in January 1969 and ends with man's first moonwalk later in July. The final half continues and closes in 1970, with less focus on current real-life events and more on the professional and personal turmoils of the main cast.

* {{Backstory}}: Don's past is explored via flashbacks regularly.
* BadassDecay: Don [[TookALevelInKindness mellows out]] and loses some of his [[ByronicHero mojo]]. Peggy references it in-universe in Season 5 premiere "A Little Kiss".
--> '''Peggy''': "I don't recognize that man. He's kind and he's patient... [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness It concerns me]]."

* BastardAngst: Don Draper experienced this, being the bastard son of a whore. When his biological father died his stepmother made life miserable for him, spurring him to take over a dead man's identity and become the ManipulativeBastard he is in the show.

* BondageIsBad: 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".

* CatchPhrase: Don's "This never happened."

* TheDogBitesBack: 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.

* DoorstopBaby: Don, dumped on the Whitmans after his prostitute mother dies in childbirth.

* EntitledToHaveYou: Pete 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 naivete 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.

* FaceDeathWithDignity: Everyone else in her life is rocked pretty hard by the news, but Betty is amazingly poised after finding out that she will die of lung cancer in less than a year.
* FagHag: Peggy asks out one of her coworkers only to find out he's gay. He still hangs out with her for the night, and ends up giving her a new haircut to give her a more assertive attitude at work. And later in season 4, she becomes good friends with a lesbian who tried to ask her out.

* FallenOnHardTimesJob: Late in Season 3, Pete encounters Joan working at a department store after she left Sterling Cooper to be a housewife to her surgeon husband, who it turns out is an incompetent oaf and unable to support her.

* FreudianExcuse: The [[TroubledBackstoryFlashback backstory flashbacks]] of Don often account for his [[ByronicHero twisted personality]] in the present day. Hell, even his very name, Dick Whitman, has a Freudian origin; his mother's fondest wish was to [[FreudianThreat cut off his father's dick]] and boil it in hog fat for getting her pregnant.

* HasAType: Don begins the show married to a blonde StepfordSmiler, but all of his mistresses/lovers have been rather independent-minded and outspoken, and all have been brunette except for redhead Bobbie Barrett (who pursued him, rather than the other way around), and blonde Faye Miller (whom he dated after his divorce), and then (briefly) marries dark-haired Megan.

* HypercompetentSideKick: Lane Pryce while at PPL. He is an absolute financial wizard, seemingly able to make financial miracles happen over and over. This is one reason PPL kept him on. The other was that Lane was seemingly always willing to do as told. He eventually got fed up with that. Afterwards, although he occasionally gets treated as chopped liver at SCDP, he is usually treated with respect.

* IAmNotPretty: Peggy, especially in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Bl9-UxDeQ "The Suitcase"]]

* InformedJudaism: For some time, the only hint that Jane Siegel Sterling might be Jewish was her maiden name. Then in Season 5, she makes a reference to her father speaking Yiddish, and a couple of episodes later this is made explicit when Roger takes her along for dinner with a Jewish client.

* IgnoredEpiphany: For Christ's sake, Don, how many times do you have to realize you love and value your wife before it's enough to make you ''not'' go right out and sleep with another woman? It's enough to make her want to divorce you.
** Don, how many times does your MartinGuerre past have to be dragged out of you and how many anxiety attacks do you have to have because of it before you take Faye's advice and do something about it legally?

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

* LadykillerInLove: Serial adulterer Don Draper falls hard for Megan at the end of Season 4 and in Season 5 is still devoted to her. [[spoiler:By season 6, he's cheating on her too.]]

* ManipulativeBastard: Ted Chaough, the Don Draper of rival ad agency CGC. Claims Don's "got him in his rear-view mirror", engineers a meeting with Don at Benihana and sends Don a bottle of sake claiming victory after Roger sinks SCDP's chances of landing the Honda account. Then in Season 5, he steals Peggy Olson away from SCDP (see BenevolentBoss above).

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: 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.]]

* NeverGetsDrunk: Don, prior to Season 4.

* RapeAsDrama: Joan gets raped by her fiancé in Don's office.

* SexySpectacles: Previously Joan has been occasionally seen wearing glasses with thick black frames only when she's home. In "The Phantom," she openly wears a pair of cat eye glasses with a chain around her neck at the partners meeting.

* SlouchOfVillainy: Though Roger Sterling is not much of a villain, his remarkable assholism is often underscored by his postures when he's using a chair or a couch. The credits, art box [=DVDs=], and promotional materials feature images and scenes of Don reclined on a couch in a decidedly antiheroic, jaded way.

* SonOfAWhore: Dick Whitman.
* SophisticatedAsHell: Roger Sterling might be the patron saint of this trope.
-->"I wanna tell you something because you're very dear to me. And I hope you understand it comes from the bottom of my damaged, damaged heart. You are the finest piece of ass I ever had, and I don't care who knows it."

* StandardFiftiesFather: 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 ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver''? Unlike Mister Cleaver, he is most definitely not a paragon of American virtue, what with the affairs, stolen identity, etc., etc., etc. Oh, he also drove his wife to divorce. (Or perhaps she drove herself to it.) 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.

* StealingFromTheTill: Lane Pryce owes the British government a large amount of money in back taxes and he is so [[IntimidatingRevenueService scared of Inland Revenue]] that he embezzles from the company to pay them back. The British tax authorities are very harsh on Pryce because he paid his US taxes before he paid his UK taxes.

* StiffUpperLip: Lane Pryce. He is so imperturbable that he practically deserves a medal for his sheer equanimity.

* {{Foil}}: Ted Chaough is built as the anti-Draper in Season 6; an unbroken creative [[TheAce ace]] (he even flies planes) who CantHoldHisLiquor if he tries to keep up with Don and an overall NiceGuy friend of his friends who is set to correct his [[YourCheatingHeart mistakes]] before they spiral out of control.

* SecretRelationship: The series has lots of secret relationships, often involving an OfficeRomance and/or YourCheatingHeart:

* YourCheatingHeart: Virtually ''everyone'':
** Don, Pete, Roger, Lane, Ted, and Harry all cheat on their wives on multiple occasions.
** And as far as the women, Betty cheats on Don once, and Joan cheats on Dr. Greg once, although Greg [[RapeAsDrama had it coming]].

* AllAsiansLookAlike: Or so thinks a drunk GI talking to Don in Season 6 premiere "The Doorway".

[[folder:A - C]]

* FiftiesHair: Season 1 has chock full of late 50s carryover styles with all of the men sporting side parts and crew cuts, and the women having diversity with Betty sporting the classic short and wavy, Joan with the artichoke, and Peggy with the ponytail and bangs.

** Don's father, physically. His stepmother too.
** Betty during her particularly rageful periods in season 4 and 5, emotionally and physically, having hit Sally for cutting her hair and implying she does it often and it "doesn't do any good". She's calmed down quite a bit in season 6.

* {{Adorkable}}: Abe Drexler in Season 4. He's so cool when he first meets Peggy... then he's reduced to nervous stammering when he's on her turf.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: How Dick Whitman lost his virginity. A prostitute who had been caring for him in a motherly fashion suddenly tries to seduce the underage boy. Though reluctant, he submits due to this trope.