| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MadMen_6420.jpg]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ->''"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."'' |
| 4 | --> -- '''Don Draper''' |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ''Mad Men'' is an American [[PeriodPiece period drama]] TV series surrounding an {{advertising}} firm on Madison Avenue, UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, during TheSixties. The series deconstructs nostalgia of the "good old days" of America's past and explores the changing American landscape through the eyes of Sterling-Cooper Advertising and the world of advertising at the dawn of the decade that would change the country forever. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | The series, while an ensemble piece, focuses mainly on Don Draper (Creator/JonHamm), a charming rogue LivingADoubleLife and chasing things he can't have -- making him perfect for advertising. Other characters include: |
| 9 | * Peggy Olsen (Creator/ElisabethMoss), who starts out as Don's new secretary but aspires to break into the advertising business herself... and has the talent to counter the misogyny of the '60s. Her arc involves not only her growth into a HighPoweredCareerWoman but her [[HeterosexualLifePartners Heterosexual Life Partnership]] with Don. |
| 10 | * Joan Holloway (Creator/ChristinaHendricks), office manager and head secretary at Sterling-Cooper. A HeadTurningBeauty and the HypercompetentSidekick who keeps the agency running, Joan faces similar challenges to Peggy but has somewhat different answers. |
| 11 | * Pete Campbell (Creator/VincentKartheiser), an accounts man[[note]]He speaks to the client and finds out what they want. He then hands that information over to Creative, which Don is in charge of, and they actually execute on the client's orders.[[/note]] with large aspirations but [[KnowNothingKnowItAll somewhat less talent]]. His wedding to Trudy Campbell (Creator/AlisonBrie) is one of the defining events of the first season. His constant chafing about [[SmallNameBigEgo what he thinks he deserves]] forms the bulk of his character arc. |
| 12 | * Betty Draper (Creator/JanuaryJones), Don's TrophyWife. Privileged and sheltered, she is living the suburban housewife dream but nonetheless balks at how empty her life is. |
| 13 | * Sally Draper (Creator/KiernanShipka), Don and Betty's oldest child. 6 years old at the start of the series, her slow growth into maturity defines her character arc. She has a younger brother named Bobby (Creator/MasonValeCotton, [[TheOtherDarrin eventually]]); the Drapers add a second son, Gene, in a later season. |
| 14 | * Roger Sterling (AndStarring Creator/JohnSlattery): the son of the man who founded the firm. He is Don's {{mentor}}, but more importantly one of his closest friends, drawn together by their shared love of drink and womanizing, not to mention experiences in the service (UsefulNotes/WorldWarII for Roger, UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar for Don). Like Betty, he is the scion of a rich family, and has rarely found a problem he can't solve by throwing money at it; like Betty, he's [[ManChild not exactly mature]]. |
| 15 | * Bertram Cooper (AndStarring Creator/RobertMorse): the other co-founder of the firm. An EccentricMentor who flits in and out of the office at his own whims, he nonetheless knows the business inside and out. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | As the show progresses through the 1960s, many seasons are tied to and punctuated by milestone events. |
| 18 | * Season 1 starts around the time the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill combined oral contraceptive pill]] is cleared for public consumption, laying the foundation for ''huge'' cultural shifts, and culminates in the 1960 election of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy. |
| 19 | * Season 2 takes place during 1962 (not before beginning with a brief recap of what everyone’s been doing since 1961) and ends with the Cuban Missile Crisis. |
| 20 | * Season 3 runs through 1963 and features the JFK assassination in its penultimate episode. |
| 21 | * Season 4 (1964-65) breaks this pattern, though much of it centers around UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. |
| 22 | * Season 5 (1966-67) continues to deal with Vietnam. |
| 23 | * 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 |
| 24 | * The first half of Season 7 begins with [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon 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. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | The series is the brainchild of {{showrunner}} Matthew Weiner, at one point the Number Two man on ''Series/TheSopranos''. Weiner originally pitched to {{Creator/HBO}}--with whom he had a working relationship, after all--but they turned it down. He then turned to Creator/{{AMC}}, which has run with the ball as far as ''Mad Men'' being to AMC as ''Series/TheShield'' (or ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'') is to FX Network. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | The show ran for 7 seasons from July 19, 2007 to May 17, 2015, and aired as a SundayEveningDramaSeries; receiving fifteen [[MediaNotes/EmmyAward Emmys]] and four MediaNotes/{{Golden Globe}}s along the way. After the success they had with splitting ''Series/BreakingBad'''s last season into two parts, AMC 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. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | A character sheet and [[Recap/MadMen recap page]] are currently under construction; show them some love. |
| 31 | ---- |
| 32 | !!This series contains examples of: |
| 33 | |
| 34 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 35 | |
| 36 | [[folder:# - C]] |
| 37 | * AbortedArc: The first episode where we really get to meet Betty introduces her suffering some kind of affliction which causes her to lose control of her hands, serious enough that she wound up in a driving accident. Though immediately after she starts going to a psychiatrist this is dropped, being shrugged off as psychosomatic and never shown or referenced to again. |
| 38 | * AbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder: Joan's mother, Gail, warns her of this trope when Greg is coming home from Vietnam in ''Mystery Date''. Soon Joan gets more irritated and tells her that not all men are like Joan's father. |
| 39 | * AbusiveParents: |
| 40 | ** Don's father abused him, physically. His stepmother was cold and distant, and she's shown beating him when he's a teenager. |
| 41 | ** Betty is abusive to her children 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. |
| 42 | ** Don's frequent lapses when it comes to taking care of his kids is a form of emotional neglect, especially as it literally endangers them, emphasized when a thief breaks into the apartment when the children are left alone and threatens them with harm. Don eventually lays bare where his ParentalNeglect stems from. |
| 43 | --->'''Don''': I don't think I ever wanted to be the man who loves children. But from the moment they're born, that baby comes out and you act proud and excited and hand out cigars but you don't feel anything. Especially if you had a difficult childhood. You want to love them, but you don't. And the fact that you're faking that feeling makes you wonder if your own father had the same problem. Then one day they get older, and you see them do something and you feel that feeling that you were pretending to have. And it feels like your heart is going to explode. |
| 44 | ** Lane's father, who strikes Lane -- a grown-ass man -- with a ''goddamn cane''. |
| 45 | * AccidentalInnuendo: InUniverse: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-QXjOQjVmQ Don's Hawaii ad]] is suggestive of suicide, which his colleagues and the client point out. |
| 46 | * AgeCut: Done in reverse several times. In "Babylon", Don is flat on his back after tripping and falling on the stairs. We cut to little Dick Whitman in the same position, letting us know we're in a flashback. |
| 47 | * AgeGapRomance: |
| 48 | ** Office manager Joan Holloway and one of the partners Roger Sterling have a long love affair. She's in her early thirties, he is in his fifties (as evidenced by him remembering the 1919 World Series). Most people in the office don't know about it. Bert Cooper advises Joan she could "do a lot better" -- She thinks he means a professor she had a date with and Joan explains "he's just a friend", Cooper insists, "that's not what I'm talking about, my dear. Don't waste your youth on age." |
| 49 | ** Betty's second husband Henry Francis is about two decades older than her. Henry met Betty when she was married and pregnant with her third baby and he was simply charmed with her beauty. His mother doesn't approve of the relationship, thinking he need not marry her. |
| 50 | --->'''Pauline Francis:''' Well, I know what you see in her. And you could have gotten it without marrying. |
| 51 | ** Roger started an affair with Jane Siegel, a college graduate and new secretary, and later they got married. One day she told him that their souls were the same age. At a country club party hosted by Roger to help Jane socialize with his colleagues and friends, Jane becomes wildly drunk and expresses her frustration at not being accepted. Roger's mother confused Jane with his daughter from his first marriage Margaret. Margaret was very upset by Jane's attempts to befriend her and she did not want Jane to attend her wedding |
| 52 | ** Peggy Olson had an affair with Duck Phillips. She was a young talented copywriter at her early twenties and he was a middle-aged guy. They met at Sterling Cooper and he later tried to get her to work for another company. She refused, but they started to sleep together in secret. |
| 53 | ** Don Draper and Megan. After they get married and Megan throws Don a surprise birthday party, we find out that Don is forty while Megan is in her mid-to-late twenties. Don is not super excited about Megan's younger friends and her modern ideas. |
| 54 | * TheAlcoholic: |
| 55 | ** Duck Phillips, who had been sober until "Maidenform" and proceeds to go spectacularly OffTheWagon. |
| 56 | ** Freddy Rumsen, who joined AA and seems to have sobered up. |
| 57 | ** Roger Sterling, who can drink the table under the table. When schmoozing clients, though, he's careful not to be the drunkest guy in the room; he 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. |
| 58 | ** Don teeters on the edge of this in Season 4. And in Season 6, when he's drinking in the morning and vomiting in public, he seems to have completed the transition. |
| 59 | * TheAllegedCar: |
| 60 | ** SCDP got the account for the GM XP-887 prelaunch campaign; in production form, this car would be called Chevrolet Vega, one of the all-time infamous American alleged cars. |
| 61 | ** The Jaguar is also one, which becomes a factor in [[spoiler:Lane's first bungled suicide attempt.]] |
| 62 | * AlliterativeTitle: '''M'''ad '''M'''en |
| 63 | * AllJustADream: In "Mystery Date", Don has one hell of a fever dream in which he strangles an old flame to death and then kicks her body under his bed. It's meant to be symbolic of how he wants to kill the philandering part of himself, but damn, it's chilling. |
| 64 | * AllPsychologyIsFreudian: {{Justified|Trope}} for the era, as this was when Freudian psychology was just starting to became obsolete. |
| 65 | * 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. |
| 66 | * AlterKocker: Michael Ginsberg's father. For bonus points, Michael actually calls him this (actually, he calls two old Jewish men this in one breath -- his dad and his dad's chess partner, who collaborate to set their children up). |
| 67 | * AlternateCompanyEquivalent: Almost every important member of SCDP has a direct CGC counterpart, sometimes with a physical resemblance. This creates some confusion when they merge. |
| 68 | * AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: Megan's parents, Dr. and Mrs. Calvet. Dr. Calvet is a leftist -- probably Communist -- who might have trouble with English (or might just be pretending to as part of his elaborate scheme to prove his utter disdain for American capitalism). Mrs. Calvet is nice, doting on her daughter (to an almost ridiculous degree), but also sucks off Roger Sterling at the American Cancer Society ceremony held for Don. And [[PrimalScene Sally sees them]]. |
| 69 | * AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:The series ends with Don practicing Yoga and smiling. Then the famous Coca-Cola commercial, "I Would Like to Buy the World a Coke" plays. What this means for Don is left for the viewer to decide. The strong implication is that Don invented that commercial, given the resemblance between the clifftop setting of the yoga session and the hilltop setting of the commercial, as well as [[https://twitter.com/emillersmith/status/600142889058902016/photo/1 the physical resemblance between]] the desk clerk at the retreat and one of the women in the ad, and the chiming bell that implies a moment of inspiration.]] |
| 70 | ** The thematic meaning of that ending is also ambiguous. Has Don finally achieved real peace and happiness? Or has he [[spoiler: simply taken a genuine moment and spun it into another cynical piece of emotionally manipulative advertising, demonstrating that he hasn't changed at all?]] |
| 71 | * AmbiguouslyEvil: 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, a doctor who surgically removed Bert's testicles ''accidentally''. |
| 72 | * AmbiguouslyJewish: |
| 73 | -->'''Betty:''' [[ItMakesSenseInContext You... people are ugly and crude.]] \ |
| 74 | '''Jimmy Barrett:''' What "people?" You mean comedians?! |
| 75 | ** 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." |
| 76 | ** Dr. Faye Miller |
| 77 | * UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents: Oddly enough, mostly not really there; most characters seem to have fairly "neutral" accents. That said: |
| 78 | ** Peggy's mother and sister have old-school Brooklyn squawks, with her mother in particular always going on about "[[UsefulNotes/ThePope Thuh Howly Fauwthuh]]". Peggy's very neutral accent sticks out in her family and may be the result of her suppressing something more regional. |
| 79 | ** Ginsburg's accent is very much old-school "New York Jewish." He even says to Don, "It's a regional accent. Everyone has one. Even you." (or words to that effect). |
| 80 | ** One of Kinsey's old school friends tells Peggy about how Kinsey -- who went to Princeton on scholarship -- used to have a ridiculously thick "{{Joisey}}" accent. He's suppressing it, of course. |
| 81 | ** Betty's dad Gene Hofstadt has a very recognizable Philly accent. |
| 82 | ** Lee Garner, Jr. of course has an old-style Dixie accent. |
| 83 | ** Of note is Don's own very neutral, all-American accent, which for him ''is'' his regional accent: born in rural northern Illinois and raised there until the age of ten, that really is how people spoke out there back then--indeed, how people spoke out there (the Midwest) back then (the 1920s and 30s) is the ''basis'' for the canonical "neutral" "General American". (The accent also matches Jon Hamm's background; he's from St. Louis, whose accent is similar to the old Great Lakes one before the Northern Cities Vowel Shift gave us today's Chicagonese.) |
| 84 | * AmicableExes: It takes a while, but Don and Betty eventually settle into this, particularly by Season 7B. To a lesser extent, Roger and Mona do as well. |
| 85 | * AnachronismStew: [[AnachronismStew/MadMen Has its own page]]. |
| 86 | * AnachronisticSoundtrack: A few times. For example, the first scene of "Maidenform" is set to "The Infanta" by Music/TheDecemberists. |
| 87 | ** In reverse: Certain stock music pieces were created after the decade that the series takes place in; for example, "Satin Sounds" by Dick Walter was composed in the '80s. |
| 88 | * AndStarring: John Slattery (starting in Season 2). |
| 89 | * AnimatedCreditsOpening |
| 90 | * {{Anvilicious}}: Paul's ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries 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. |
| 91 | * ArcWords: ''This never happened.'' In Season 4, Don's secretary challenges him with "''this actually happened''" when he dismisses the issue of them sleeping together as unimportant. It does not go down well. |
| 92 | * ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: "You're fired for costing this company millions of pounds, you're fired for insubordination, you're fired for '''lack of character!!!'''" |
| 93 | * ArtisticLicenseMilitary: In "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", Roger relates briefly about his time on a U.S. Navy destroyer. He starts talking about "a young PFC" (private first class). This rank does not exist in the U.S. Navy -- the Navy equivalent would be Seaman (E-3). Also, while some Navy ships had a Marine Corps contingent aboard (the USMC does have PFC as a rank), destroyers did not. |
| 94 | * AsbestosFreeCereal: When marketing tobacco products on health grounds is banned, everyone is flummoxed about how to advertise. Don realizes: they can advertise ''any way they want'' as long as whatever they say is technically true and more or less meaningless. |
| 95 | -->Lucky Strike: It's toasted! (So is the tobacco in all other cigarettes... but that doesn't matter) |
| 96 | * BadassIsraeli: 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. |
| 97 | * BadBadActing: |
| 98 | ** The SC crew act out Paul Kinsey's play in Season 1's penultimate episode, "Nixon vs. Kennedy". |
| 99 | ** 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 has quit, so Peggy subs in for her. The result is this trope. |
| 100 | * TheBarnum: Madison Avenue and the ad industry in general; specific examples would be Roger, Don, and Pete. |
| 101 | * BatmanGambit: Several. With a master manipulator like Don in the mix, plus a few others, how can it not have these? |
| 102 | ** One particularly crucial one: In "A Night to Remember" (Season 2, Episode 8), Don and Duck have a disagreement about how to market Heineken. Duck -- along with the clients themselves -- just want to increase the brand's bar exposure. But Don has the idea to do some UpMarketing: play on the "[[MadeInCountryX Imported from Holland]]" angle and set it off as "better" than other beer, to be presented to well-off, educated housewives as something to serve at parties (like wine), rather than hide in the garage like the cold ones her husband drinks. To prove his point, Don makes sure the store that Betty (who as the wife of an ad executive and Bryn Mawr College graduate is definitely part of the target demographic) shops at is part of the test market, and invites Duck along to dinner at his place (along with the Sterlings and some other friends). Sure enough, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvOop3O569Y when Betty is running through her "tour-of-the-world" selection of courses]], she presents the Heineken "from Holland" as an alternative to the French wine also on offer. Everyone laughs heartily...except for Betty, who resents being used as a guinea pig. As a result, although the plan works perfectly from a business perspective (they even consider using Betty's menu verbatim), it's a catastrophe for Don personally: it leads to Don being ExiledToTheCouch for the first time. |
| 103 | ** Don runs a KansasCityShuffle against Chaough's firm CGC in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword." When Honda's visit to SCDP is ruined by Roger's [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs obnoxious, racist, and obnoxiously racist]] behavior towards their executives, Don realizes he has no chance of winning, and probably no chance to resign. He does not, however, want to give CGC another "win". So he proceeds to give every indication SCDP will make a really high-quality but budget-busting spec ad for Honda (which was against the rules, and which Chaough would recognize as the kind of gambit Don ''would'' run) in order to get CGC to ''actually'' make a high-quality but budget-busting spec ad, then resigns the account when asked to meet with the Honda execs (who had seen and liked CGC's spec ad), 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 bid to develop the advertising for their new automotive division. |
| 104 | ** In Season 7A finale "Waterloo", Roger cuts off Jim Cutler's power play by selling SC&P to [=McCann=]. |
| 105 | * BavarianFireDrill: Nobody hired Bob Benson. He kept showing up at the office after having an interview with Ken and acted like he was an employee until everybody assumed that someone else hired him. |
| 106 | * BeAWhoreToGetYourMan: |
| 107 | ** Peggy finally gets Chaough to sleep with her by dressing in revealing clothing and claiming that she has a date with another man. |
| 108 | ** This is Megan's mother's advice to her daughter about how to repair the relationship with an increasingly distant Don. |
| 109 | * TheBeard: |
| 110 | ** Kitty Romano, Sal's wife. The scene where Sal gets a little too enthusiastic about the choreography in a commercial, and his wife figures this out, is pretty funny, yet deeply sad. |
| 111 | ** Bob Benson flirts with Joan in hopes of making her one. [[spoiler:When he suddenly proposes to her in "The Strategy", she tells him that she is aware of his sexuality and that if she marries again, it will be with someone she loves.]] |
| 112 | * {{Beatnik}}: Midge and her circle of friends. Paul Kinsey is kind of a wannabe. |
| 113 | * TheBeautifulElite: Don meets the lovely Joy and her friends in season 2's "The Jet Set," and they memorably whisk Don off to their palatial house in Palm Springs. Don's beautiful enough that he's invited to join the club, but he declines. |
| 114 | * BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted in "The Quality of Mercy", when Ken gets shot in the face by the Chevy execs. He survives, but winds up losing his right eye. |
| 115 | ** Averted again with Sally's nose getting busted after a fight. It's not broken and it's only temporary, but she looks a mess. And then FEELS a mess when [[JerkAss Betty starts giving her crap about it, as she does]]. |
| 116 | * BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Don asks Lane to resign after catching him embezzling. He delivers his resignation letter [[spoiler:as his suicide note.]] |
| 117 | * BeenThereShapedHistory: Sterling Cooper in general (a fictional company) is shown to be responsible for a few pieces of real life advertising. For example, in the first episode, Don coins the Lucky Strike slogan "it's toasted", and in the first season finale, he names the Kodak Carousel (previously called the Wheel). [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]], since these are not exactly huge historical events. Don himself also creates [[spoiler:the famous "I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke" ad based on his spiritual awakenening at a hippie retreat.]] |
| 118 | * BenevolentBoss: Ted Chaough. He treats Peggy with far more respect than Don ever did and is genuinely upset to learn that one of his partners has cancer. |
| 119 | * BerserkButton: |
| 120 | ** Peggy hates it when people imply that she became a copywriter by sleeping with Don. |
| 121 | ** Don't expect Roger to react rationally around the Japanese. |
| 122 | ** Don when Megan locks him out of their apartment after the disastrous trip to Howard Johnson's in "Far Away Places." |
| 123 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: Roger [[GroinAttack finds out the hard way]] that making fun of Danny Siegel's height is a bad idea. |
| 124 | * 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 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) along with other New York-related tchotchkes ([[ImmigrantPatriotism he has the love of being a New Yorker only an immigrant can have]]). When Peggy is apartment-hunting, the agent notes that the value will increase dramatically when the [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkSubway Second Avenue Subway]] is finished...something only New Yorkers would realize is a joke (the SAS didn't open until January 2017. You heard us.) |
| 125 | ** TheBigRottenApple: As the show moves into the late '60s, it really shows New York City's decay. |
| 126 | * BigWhat: Lane Pryce upon hearing of the Kennedy assassination. |
| 127 | * BilingualBonus: Pete Campbell's nickname for Trudy is "Tweety." OK, that's nice and cutesy. Then you realize that Trudy's maiden name, Vogel, is German for "bird"... |
| 128 | * BirthDeathJuxtaposition: |
| 129 | ** Betty's father, Eugene, dies in one episode; the next, she gives birth to a son. [[DeadGuyJunior She names him Eugene]]. |
| 130 | ** In 4x11, David Montgomery dies and Pete Campbell's daughter is born. |
| 131 | * BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Sterling Cooper is absorbed into [=McCann=] Erickson. After being chased out of the advertising industry, Joan starts her own business, although this costs her her relationship with Richard. While Peggy doesn't like her job at [=McCann=], she is thriving there and finally gets together with Stan. Betty is terminally ill, but she has accepted her fate and is at peace. Don is stranded in a hippy commune and it's unclear if he ever intends to return to his old life, but he is finally happy. It is implied, however, that he returns to his old job and uses his commune experience to create the "I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke" ad.]] |
| 132 | * BlackComedy: |
| 133 | ** On occasion and most definitely in "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency", in which the titular Guy gets his foot chopped up by a lawnmower. |
| 134 | --->'''Harry Crane''': They say he's going to lose his foot. |
| 135 | --->'''Roger Sterling''': Right when he got it in the door too. |
| 136 | ** Anything having to do with Miss Blankenship in "The Beautiful Girls". |
| 137 | ** [[spoiler:Lane's attempt to use his new Jaguar as an instrument of suicide]] in "Commissions and Fees" is possibly one of the most exquisite examples of black comedy ever put on television, incorporating {{Brick Joke}}s, riffs on [[spoiler:Lane]]'s characteristic stoicism, and just general good acting to produce a scene where you can't help but laugh and then feel very guilty about laughing because what's happening is so horrifying. |
| 138 | * {{Blackface}} / UncleTomfoolery: Holy DeliberateValuesDissonance Series/{{Batman|1966}}, 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. |
| 139 | * {{Blackmail}}: Pete's intent when he learns about Don's past; of course, [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome 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. |
| 140 | * BlondeBrunetteRedhead: 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 TallDarkAndHandsome Don Draper. "The Beautiful Girls" ends with a shot of Joan (redhead), Peggy (brunette), and Faye (blonde) in the elevator together. It's [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic very symbolic]]. |
| 141 | ** Peggy (brunette) with her Mother Katherine (blonde) and older sister Anita (redhead). |
| 142 | * BloodyHilarious: The lawnmower incident. |
| 143 | * BookEnds: "The Quality of Mercy" opens with Don sleeping in a fetal position on Sally's bed after having ruined his relationship with her in the previous episode. It ends with Don curled up in a fetal position on his office's couch after ruining his relationship with Peggy. |
| 144 | ** When Jimmy Barrett first appears on the show, he's filming a monologue that begins, "Imagine my horror when a night on the town turned ugly...." In his last appearance, he is enjoying a night on the town when he encounters Don, who knocks him down. |
| 145 | * BondageIsBad: |
| 146 | ** 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". |
| 147 | ** 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. |
| 148 | ** In "Mad With a Plan", Don makes Sylvia follow his rules after isolating her in a hotel room. It gets off to a good start, but ends with him getting dumped. |
| 149 | * BottleEpisode: "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. |
| 150 | * BourgeoisBohemian: Paul Kinsey. He even dates a black woman in part for the shock value, and lives in [[{{Joisey}} Montclair]] before it became suburban and ''long'' before Hoboken became Hipsterville. |
| 151 | * BrattyTeenageDaughter: Roger's daughter Margaret in earlier seasons and played with Sally in Season 5. By Season 6 Sally, who is about 13 and smarting off to Betty, has fully become this trope. |
| 152 | * BreakingTheGlassCeiling: Peggy is the first female copy writer. She starts out simply feeding ideas to the male copywriters who then present the ideas as their own. During this time, she's paid as a secretary (a much lower salary) and expected to complete all of her secretarial work during billing hours and do copy writing in her free time. Later, she is promoted to junior copywriter, even though there are no male junior copywriters. Eventually, she is made a full copywriter, and later copy chief, with the implication that she'll make creative director before long. |
| 153 | * BreakTheCutie: |
| 154 | ** Betty and, initially, Peggy. |
| 155 | ** If Sally [[spoiler:catching her father banging his mistress]] hasn't broken her yet, nothing will. |
| 156 | * BreakTheHaughty: |
| 157 | ** Joan. See CharacterDevelopment for the full version, but believe us, she's the preeminent example. |
| 158 | ** 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. |
| 159 | ** Roger in season one, and then periodically throughout the series. In Season 5, he seems to make peace with being the "professor emeritus" of Accounts, and acts as a mentor to junior account exec Cosgrove. |
| 160 | ** Season Four did quite a number on Don Draper. |
| 161 | ** Season Five does one on Lane Pryce, though it starts with his father's treatment in S4's "Hands and Knees". |
| 162 | ** Season Seven starts this way for Don, as his actions at the end of Season Six torpedoed his career at SCDP and trying to get things back on track ends up being a long HumiliationConga for him. Previously, no matter how bad his personal life got, he could always just focus on his work ,but now even that has been taken from him. |
| 163 | * BrickJoke: |
| 164 | ** In "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", Roger makes an obscure reference to a Dr. Lyle Evans, and Bert promptly tells him to shut up. Two episodes later, we find out that Bert, in the middle of his sexual prime, got his testicles removed in an 'unnecessary' procedure performed by one Dr. Lyle Evans years back. |
| 165 | ** Early in "New Business", Roger tells Don that wives will always take more than their husbands are willing to give them in the divorce. [[spoiler:At the end of the episode, Don returns to his apartment after giving Megan a million dollars to find that she took all of his furniture. While that was actually [[MamaBear Marie's doing]], Don has no way of knowing that.]] |
| 166 | * BriefAccentImitation: Courtesy of Don and Roger, toying with AllGermansAreNazis:"[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gplQoQBU4c Did you enjoy the Führer's birthday? May he live for thousand years]]". |
| 167 | * BritishBrevity: Seasons usually have about 13 episodes. |
| 168 | * BungledSuicide: 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.]] |
| 169 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Bert Cooper. |
| 170 | * TheBusCameBack: Many characters pop up again after long absences. |
| 171 | ** Smitty Smith resurfaces at a rival ad agency in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword". |
| 172 | ** Rachel Menken popped up in one episode after her affair with Don ended to let the viewers know she got married. [[spoiler:She dies in the first episode of Season 7B.]] |
| 173 | ** 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". He shows up again sober and working as a headhunter is Season 6. He pops up yet again towards the end of Season 7B, drinking heavily again but still working as a headhunter, and helping to resolve Pete's final story arc. |
| 174 | ** 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. Then in Season 7A he pops up again as Don's unofficial AA sponsor. |
| 175 | ** 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. |
| 176 | ** Nearly two seasons after the SCDP mutineers did not take him along at the end of Season 3, Paul Kinsey appears in "Christmas Waltz". He's a Hare Krishna and a wannabe writer for ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Star Trek]]''. |
| 177 | ** Burt Peterson, Sterling Cooper's former head of accounts, whom Roger Sterling fired in Season 3, reappears working for Cutler Gleason and Chaough in Season 6. When SCDP and CGC merge, Roger took great pleasure in firing him again posthaste. |
| 178 | ** Danny Siegel, the nerdy copywriter and in-law of Roger Sterling, pops up at a Hollywood party in Season 6's "A Tale of Two Cities" looking very California and apparently now in the movie business. |
| 179 | ** Jim Hobart from [=McCann=], who tries to lure Don away from Sterling Cooper in Season 1 episode "Shoot", appears again ''six seasons later'', and proves crucial to the resolution of Season 7A. |
| 180 | * ButNotTooGay: Sal, the only major gay character, 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 gay/bi men or dealing with unrequited crushes on straight men. The one time he finally decides to give in to his desire, they're interrupted by a hotel fire before they can do anything. |
| 181 | ** Bob Benson plays a similar role in Season 6. |
| 182 | * ButtMonkey: |
| 183 | ** Pete in season 1. Harry Crane most of the time, and Paul Kinsey in Season Three. |
| 184 | ** Lane Pryce's bosses at PPL treat him this way in Season 3. He [[WhosLaughingNow takes his revenge]] in the season finale. |
| 185 | * BuxomBeautyStandard: "Can I see them?", says a loathsome pig Jaguar dealer to busty Joan in "The Other Woman". |
| 186 | * CallBack: There are numerous subtle touches that make reference to previous events and imagery from previous episodes: |
| 187 | ** 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. |
| 188 | ** In "A Night to Remember," while searching for evidence of Don's philandering, Betty rummages through his desk and stumbles upon several miscellaneous items - most prominently shown of these are a scrap of paper with his tag line for Right Guard from "Ladies Room" and the Valentine's Day card he got from Sally in "For Those Who Think Young." Additionally, Matt Weiner states in his audio commentary that the camera framing of when Don returns home for the last time is meant to be evocative of the ending of "The Wheel" (the season 1 finale), which is in and of itself a CallBack to the ending of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (the pilot episode). |
| 189 | ** At one point in "Six Month Leave," Jane presents Don with a bag containing new dress shirts that she bought for him. Attentive viewers will note from the bag that she went shopping at Menken's, alluding to the events of Season 1. Also, Don identifies himself to the bouncer at the casino with the name Tilden Katz -- Rachel Menken's husband, who was briefly seen in "The New Girl." |
| 190 | ** WordOfGod states that the scene of Don and the Betty look-alike in "The Jet Set" is meant to be reminiscent of Don seeing Betty coming down the stairs at the hotel in "For Those Who Think Young." |
| 191 | ** After getting fired in "Wee Small Hours," Sal is seen leafing through a stack of artwork he's done for Sterling Cooper, all of which comes from previous episodes in the series. |
| 192 | ** In "The Suitcase", when Don places his hand on Peggy's. In the pilot she placed her hand on his and he responded angrily "I'm not your boyfriend; I'm your boss." |
| 193 | ** In "The Rejected", Allison pointedly says to Don "this actually ''happened''", as a reference to the ArcWords "this never happened". |
| 194 | ** 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. |
| 195 | ** Three seasons after Dr. Greg raped her in "The Mountain King", Joan finally acknowledges what happened in "Mystery Date" (see TheReasonYouSuckSpeech below). |
| 196 | ** In season 1's "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", Don takes a nap on a couch, [[TimePassesMontage 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, [[TimePassesMontage time passes by]], and she's woken later by secretary Dawn. |
| 197 | ** "Christmas Waltz" is rife with these, both explicit and implied: |
| 198 | *** The woman Don quotes as saying "I like being bad and going home and being good" is season 2's Bobbie Barrett. |
| 199 | *** While talking to Joan in the bar, Don makes a reference to Burt Peterson, TheGhost from seasons 1 and 2. |
| 200 | *** 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." |
| 201 | *** 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. |
| 202 | ** In "The Phantom", Lane's widow finds the picture of the girl he flirted on the phone with that he kept in his wallet from "A Little Kiss", in the beginning of the season. |
| 203 | ** Season 6 premiere "The Doorway" has the Drapers showing off their Hawaiian vacation pictures with a [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] Carousel, a callback to Season 1 finale "The Wheel". And TheReveal of Don's new girlfriend at the end of that episode is highly reminiscent of the reveal at the end of the pilot that he's married with a family. |
| 204 | ** When Don is in the doldrums and drinking in a seedy bar after a failed attempt to reconcile with Sally in "In Care Of," Don Cherry's "Band Of Gold," the first song that played in the series premiere, is heard in the background to remind how far down America and Don's life has taken a tumble since the start of the decade. |
| 205 | ** In series finale "Person to Person", Don tries to comfort Stephanie, who is wracked with guilt over abandoning her child, by telling her to move forward. This is a CallBack not only to his advice to Peggy after she has a baby out of wedlock at the end of season 1, but what he said to Adam Whitman in Season 1 after Adam found him. This time the person he's talking to rejects his advice, as Stephanie says "I don't think you're right about that." |
| 206 | * CallForward: A staple of the show. References are frequently made toward future real-life events. |
| 207 | ** 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 UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy -- then it's revealed they're actually discussing UsefulNotes/RichardNixon. This being Corporate America, they're all Republicans. |
| 208 | ** Roger's daughter has her wedding scheduled for November 23, 1963. |
| 209 | ** 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 Jimmy Barrett, knocking him to the floor with a single blow. Upon getting up, 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 brutal first-round knockout losses to Sonny Liston. |
| 210 | ** The clueless call forwards to Vietnam are possibly the saddest, for instance with 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. |
| 211 | ** Joan's speech in "The Summer Man" to Rizzo, Bill, and Joey telling them that when they're over in Vietnam next year, and they're being shot at and dying, they'll beg for someone (i.e. her) to make their lives easier. |
| 212 | ** 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. Contrast that to the agency's "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. |
| 213 | ** There is a CallForward RunningGag in Season 2 about Martinson Coffee and their concern that young people aren't going to drink coffee in the future. |
| 214 | ** In "The Flood", this is mixed with HistoricalInJoke when Peggy's realtor promises her that the Second Avenue Subway would increase the value of the apartment she was trying to buy. At the date the episode is set in (April 1968), the Second Avenue Subway had already been in the planning stage for nearly 40 years, and when "The Flood" aired ''45 years later'' (April 2013), the SAS ''still was not finished'', 84 years after it was first approved. (Construction started in 2007 and the first phase of the line, 96th Street to 63rd Street, opened on January 1, 2017.) |
| 215 | ** In "The Strategy", a [=McCann=] exec says of Burger Chef that "It's not [=McDonald=]'s. They're run by idiots." Burger Chef went downhill starting in TheSeventies and was merged into Hardee's in TheEighties. |
| 216 | ** At his low ebb in Season 7A, Don finds Lane Pryce's old Mets pennant and pins it to the ceiling of his office. The "Miracle Mets", formerly perennial losers, shocked the world by winning the World Series that year (1969). |
| 217 | * CampGay: |
| 218 | ** The party planner at Don's 40th birthday party in Season 5's "A Little Kiss". |
| 219 | ** The Chevalier Blanc men's cologne guy in Season 5. |
| 220 | ** According to Bob Benson, Pete Campbell's mom's nurse Manolo. |
| 221 | * CannotKeepASecret: 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. |
| 222 | * CantGetAwayWithNuthin |
| 223 | ** At the end of the pilot, Peggy has a one night with Pete -- on the eve of Pete's wedding. She delivers a surprise baby in the Season Finale. |
| 224 | ** Separated Don and Betty have sad, confusing sex in her childhood bedroom after her father Gene has had a stroke, thus producing Baby Gene 9 months later. |
| 225 | ** Joan and Roger, both married, re-consummate their relationship against a wall after being mugged. Joan gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby and pass it off as her absent husband's. |
| 226 | ** It's also often {{subverted}}. A number of instances of cheating (like Pete's one night stand with a model, or Don and Betty sleeping together at Bobby's camp) result in no consequences and are not discovered by their spouses. |
| 227 | * CantHoldHisLiquor: Don drinks Ted Chaough under the table in "Man with a Plan". Chaough gets his revenge by scaring the wits out of Don in Chaough's private plane. |
| 228 | * CaptainErsatz: In-universe, the title song and scene from the 1963 film version of ''Theatre/ByeByeBirdie'' is duplicated, frame for frame, and re-purposed as an ad for diet cola. |
| 229 | -->'''Harry:''' It doesn't make any sense. It looks right, it sounds right, smells right. Something's not right. What is it? \ |
| 230 | '''Roger:''' It's not Ann-Margaret. |
| 231 | * TheCasanova: 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). |
| 232 | * CassandraTruth / TheCuckoolanderWasRight: When Peter's mother (who is shown to be suffering from advanced dementia) comes in to wake Peter to tell him about Robert Kennedy's assassination, she says "they shot that Kennedy boy"; he naturally assumes she's confused and referring to ''John'' Kennedy, and tells her to go back to sleep |
| 233 | * CastingCouch: |
| 234 | ** When the agency is casting the commercial for a double-sided aluminum ad, Roger takes it upon himself to pick out the set of twins he likes best for himself and Don. |
| 235 | ** It's also implied that Harry, head of the television department, uses his connections to broker dates with actresses (or tries to). |
| 236 | ** Betty outrights accuses Megan of being out doing this when the children are left alone and a burglary occurs. |
| 237 | ** Megan worries that it will mean career trouble when she and Don decline to swing with her show's head writer and his wife. |
| 238 | * CaughtWithYourPantsDown: Don's ten year old daughter Sally is watching ''Series/TheManFromUNCLE'' when she starts masturbating, without really knowing what it is she's doing, to Ilya Kuryakin at a friend's 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. |
| 239 | * ChainedToABed: Don does this to Bobbie when she tells him that he has a reputation. NoGuyWantsToBeChased. |
| 240 | * CharacterDevelopment, some more than others. |
| 241 | ** 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." |
| 242 | ** Pete, the ButtMonkey and JerkAss in seasons 1 and 2 to most viewers, has gone on a long journey. He cuts the ties he's gotten with nepotism and actually attempting to earn his job. He's questioning the institutional racism with companies he is dealing with and actually made the new owners pay attention to it. He sees opportunities in "the Negro market" (as Don calls it) that no one else at the firm does. 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. But just when it looks like Pete has really evolved as a person, in season 5 he takes a giant step backward, becoming profoundly unhappy with life with his beautiful wife and new baby, patronizing hookers, screwing neighborhood housewives, getting his ass beat by Lane Pryce, etc. Eventually Pete's suburban ennui winds up getting him separated from his gorgeous, awesome wife. |
| 243 | ** 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 raped by her fiancé 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. Finally, in "Mystery Date", 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. |
| 244 | *** Likewise, in the pilot episode, Joan makes clear to Peggy that the goal of the women in the office is to find a husband who can buy them a house away from the city, herself included. By the end of the series, Joan has turned down proposals from Bob Benson, Roger Sterling, and Richard Burghoff and is starting her own business. |
| 245 | ** At first, Ken Cosgrove is basically a fratboy, consistently crude and immature, constantly hitting on women in the most brazen way possible. Oh, and he has ''tremendous'' false modesty about his literary achievements when ''The Atlantic'' publishes his short story. When he shows up again at SCDP, he is far more mature -- probably the most mature of the junior people who aren't Peggy -- keeping a strict wall between personal and professional and actually being ''embarrassed'' by his fiction (which, admittedly, are [[SciFiGhetto science fiction and therefore "supposed" to be embarrassing to an Ivy League "sophisticate" like Ken]]). |
| 246 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: |
| 247 | ** In Season 1, Paul Kinsey, Harry Crane, and Ken Cosgrove had little personality beyond being sexist friends of Pete. |
| 248 | ** Ted Chaough's reinvention as Peggy's BenevolentBoss doesn't match all that well with the douchey Chaough as he was initially presented, although his wife's attitude toward his feud with Don implies he wasn't acting normal at the time. |
| 249 | * ChekhovsBoomerang: Don's desertion/identity switch in Korea. |
| 250 | * ChekhovsGift: Don receives Anna Draper's engagement ring in "Tomorrowland." |
| 251 | * ChekhovsGun: |
| 252 | ** You introduce a lawn mower in Act I, 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.'' |
| 253 | ** Roger Sterling's daughter spent some time planning a date for her wedding. She settled for [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy November 23, 1963]]. |
| 254 | ** Roger's memoirs, dictated to his secretary and spoken into a tape recorder. Sure enough, Don finds the tapes, and boy, are they hilarious. |
| 255 | ** Spectacularly in season two, Don's lack of a contract. Duck Phillips gets a nasty surprise when he tries to force Don to bend to his will. |
| 256 | ** Bert Cooper's offhand comment about Jaguar in "Christmas Waltz" -- "They're lemons; they never start!" -- takes on new meaning when Lane Pryce tries to kill himself in "Commissions and Fees" via tailpipe exhaust and can't start his new Jaguar. |
| 257 | ** Related to this, there's the time early in Season 5 that Pete and his commuter-train companion Howard discuss life insurance (which Howard sells), and Pete finds out that the company has a policy on each partner that pays out even in the event of suicide. In "The Phantom," SCDP gets a ''staggering'' death benefit from its policy on Lane. |
| 258 | * ChekhovsGunman: Megan seemed to be getting a lot of moments onscreen without any actual story for a secretary through most of Season 4 before she became Don's secretary and fiancee. |
| 259 | * ChekhovsSkill: Pete's lack of skill at the wheel. He only learns to drive in Season 5 and he rarely does it anyway. Come Season 6, he has to [[DrivingStick drive stick]] in Detroit at the request of some General Motors rowdy executives, and [[DidntThinkThisThrough disaster ensues]]. |
| 260 | * {{Chiaroscuro}}: The light is always amazingly specific; illumination defines the location (from time of day to which side of a building an office is on), and also artistically defines a character (Don's always hiding in the shadows). |
| 261 | * CigaretteOfAnxiety: |
| 262 | ** When Betty finally tells Don that she knows about his secret identity, not only do Don's hands shake when he lights the cigarette, he actually ''drops'' the cigarette, and Betty has to do it for him. Given how cool, calm, and confident Don had been portrayed for three years, it came off as a very dramatic moment. |
| 263 | ** Betty in the ladies' room stall in "The Summer Man" after she sees Don out on a date with Bethany. |
| 264 | * ColorCodedForYourConvenience: This is a testament to the psychology of the scripts and to the costume design of Janie Bryant. There is usually a color theme running throughout a season (brown and blue for 7B and blue and green for 6) and often a scheme for the characters (blue for Betty, purple for Joan, and yellow for Peggy) with concepts like dressing couples somewhat alike or tying their clothing into their surroundings or the person they're talking to. One example being Peggy's pitch to Burger Chef at the end of 7A where she's wearing colors identical to Julio, a little boy she befriended before and another being that blue and white for Betty represent her role as a wife and mother (aside from showing off the looks she works hard to maintain). |
| 265 | * ComeBackToBedHoney: Don says this to Betty at one point. |
| 266 | * CompetencePorn: Don, and to a lesser extent the other creatives at Sterling Cooper, is an appealing character, despite his many major flaws (that include a propensity for adultery, alcoholism, and narcissism), because he's so damn good at his job. |
| 267 | * ComplimentBackfire: After Megan helps to land the Heinz account, Peggy congratulates her and tells her to soak in all the adulation she is receiving because this will be as good as it gets. Megan previously was already having reservations about continuing to work for the Ad Agency because of all the cynicism, and Peggy's statement [[NiceJobBreakingItHero only drove her dislike of the job further.]] |
| 268 | * ConvenientMiscarriage: Megan admits to this after the fact in "The Collaborators," confessing she is relieved that she didn't have to decide whether she should have an abortion. |
| 269 | * CoolCar: |
| 270 | ** 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. |
| 271 | ** Don even goes as far as replacing his first Coupe [=DeVille=] with a newer one in season 5. |
| 272 | ** All of the Jaguars in season five, especially the cherry red one Joan and Don test drive in "Christmas Waltz", and the ChekhovsGun green one Lane's wife buys for him in "Commissions and Fees". Subverted in that the XKE is rather unreliable. |
| 273 | * CrapsaccharineWorld: 1960s New York, devolving into a CrapsackWorld in the late '60s, as it did in real life. |
| 274 | * CreepyChild: 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). He graduates to Creepy Young Adult by 1970, when he enlists in the Army at the height of the Vietnam War in hopes that Betty will have sex with him. |
| 275 | * CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Bert Cooper, especially in his verbal smackdown of Pete Campbell in the season one finale. |
| 276 | * CurbStompBattle: Robert Pryce 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. |
| 277 | * CyclicNationalFascination: From the late [[TheFifties '50s]] to the early [[TheSixties '60s]], American society was positively obsessed with the inner workings of advertising agencies. As a period drama, the series revisits the topic through a more objective lens. It also revives much of the old adman slang. |
| 278 | [[/folder]] |
| 279 | |
| 280 | [[folder:D - I]] |
| 281 | * DaChief: Bert Cooper, full stop. The door might say Sterling Cooper, and Roger and Bert nominally have equal power, it's just generally understood that Cooper has the final say on everything. The "Sterling" in Sterling Cooper is actually Roger's father. |
| 282 | * DaddysGirl: Played mostly straight with Sally Draper, who comes to loathe her mother. Her relationship with Don gets rocky as Don's life gets rockier in later seasons, but in Season 7A they have a rapprochement. |
| 283 | ** Pete and his young daughter Tammy fall into this role in Season 7B. Trudy even discusses and deconstructs the trope with her friend. |
| 284 | ---> '''Trudy:''' The incredible thing is: I make her lunch, I take her to school, I read to her every night, and he spends Sunday and Thursday night with her and that's all I hear about. |
| 285 | ** Played around with Betty and her father, Gene; she was shown to be really protective of him when his dementia kicks in and names her youngest (and favorite) child after him. |
| 286 | ** Peggy was implied to have had a close relationship with her father before he died; she takes it hard when her mother states that the late Mr. Olson would be disappointed in her for "living in sin" with Abe. |
| 287 | * DarkerAndEdgier: The series shows the darker side of TheSixties, averting the NostalgiaFilter. |
| 288 | * DarkAndTroubledPast: |
| 289 | ** 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. |
| 290 | ** Don attempts to take the title back when it's revealed that his first sexual experience was with a motherly whore who took care of him when he was sick. The experience wasn't consensual. The show goes to some lengths to juxtapose his backstory and Don's [[FreudianExcuse less than examplary behavior in the present]]. |
| 291 | * DeadGuyJunior: 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). |
| 292 | * DeadPersonConversation: Don has one with Adam in "The Phantom." |
| 293 | ** Don has another one with PFC Dinkins in "A Tale of Two Cities." |
| 294 | ** And again in the driving scene in "Lost Horizon," this time with Bert Cooper. |
| 295 | * DeadPersonImpersonation: Dick Whitman assumes the identity of Lt. Don Draper after Draper is killed in Korea. |
| 296 | * DeadpanSnarker: Roger. |
| 297 | -->'''Harry:''' Are you kidding me?\ |
| 298 | '''Roger:''' Yes, yes we are. [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Happy birthday.]] |
| 299 | ** Almost everyone else; it's perhaps harder to find a character who never fulfilled this trope than it is to find a needle in the haystack. |
| 300 | * DeathAsComedy: Miss Blankenship croaks in the office and has to be removed while important clients are there for a meeting. |
| 301 | * DeathByChildbirth: Don's real mother. Certainly not unheard of in rural America in 1925. |
| 302 | * {{Deconstruction}}: Of the "good old days" NostalgiaFilter view of the Fifties, which are still prevalent well into the Sixties. Needless to say, America was ''not'' a perfect and happy place back then like such views claim. See the entry below for DeliberateValuesDissonance for some good examples. |
| 303 | * DefconFive: DiscussedTrope in "The Doorway", when Peggy has to explain to her boss what the DEFCON levels really mean. |
| 304 | * DefrostingIceQueen: Dr. Faye Miller in Season 4. |
| 305 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance: ''The whole damn point of the show''. |
| 306 | ** Sterling Cooper finds some random Jewish guy from the mailroom to attend a meeting with a department store owned by a Jewish family, pretending he's a "rising star" in the art department. Then they serve their prospective clients ''cocktail shrimp'' (extremely non-kosher). |
| 307 | ** At one point, a character loses a foot due to a lawnmower accident. Aside from the fact that OSHA would've had a field day with the circumstances involved, nearly everybody seems to think it's obvious this means his career, in a desk job, is over because of the new disability. |
| 308 | ** Everything involving children: |
| 309 | *** 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, or else. |
| 310 | *** Sally is expected to make her father drinks, clean up and make dinner when her brother misbehaves, and her parents are having shouting matches, and sneaks drinks at Don's office. She's between six and ten during these scenes. |
| 311 | *** Little Dick Whitman gets a sip of moonshine, right before his father dies. |
| 312 | *** Trick-or-treating in pitch darkness with mostly black costumes and no flashlights. (Though the show flubbed something that time -- the kids almost certainly would ''not'' have had their parents with them back then.) |
| 313 | *** Kids are running around the house at Sally's birthday party. One of them breaks a glass after jostling a table. A man grabs him, slaps his face, and reprimands him. Then the boy's father shows up and makes the child apologize to the man who slapped him. And '''then''' he tells the boy to [[CrossesTheLineTwice have his mother clean up the mess]]. |
| 314 | *** No seatbelts. Bobby and Sally are climbing all over the back seat when Betty crashes the car into a neighbor's yard. |
| 315 | *** Sally isn't allowed to go to her grandfather's funeral, because "a graveyard is no place for children." Neither of her parents even really realizes how close she became to Gene when he was living with them. |
| 316 | ** Environmental awareness. Or more specifically, the lack thereof: When they have a picnic, it's almost laughable the mess they left behind when they leave. When discussing Pampers brand diapers. "What's best about these? They're disposable!" |
| 317 | ** Drunk driving with a crash resulting is penalized only with a fine payable all at once, because the driver was under the then-legal limit of 0.15. Repeating this for emphasis -- the ''legal limit'' was ''0.15''. A BAC of 0.08 is the highest you will find in any developed country these days. |
| 318 | ** Pete Campbell buys a .22 and proceeds to point it at random people in the office while he and his friends have a good laugh about it. Not to mention the conversation he has with Peggy afterwards. Trudy even calls it "a toy" when she finds out. |
| 319 | ** All over the place with smoking -- in "The Gypsy and The Hobo," a possible client notes that her husband just died at 51 from lung cancer, and the focus immediately shifts to Don, casually lighting a cigarette. |
| 320 | ** Peggy's mom all but disowns her after she decides to move in with her boyfriend Abe without marrying him. |
| 321 | ** There will often be comments, jokes, and actions that would be deemed very sexist today -- many times openly in front of the women. |
| 322 | ** Peggy's gynecologist openly berates her, all but calling her a slut for being an unmarried woman asking for birth control. |
| 323 | ** Bert vetoes Joan's attempt to transfer Dawn to reception on the grounds that having a "Negro" at the front desk will hurt the agency. |
| 324 | ** Pete's plan for the Admiral Television execs to target market to the black consumers who are already buying Admiral's TV's in droves is met with horror and offense, with one executive stammering that "Maybe negros are buying our TV's because they know that white people like them" and not wanting to be a "colored" TV manufacturer. |
| 325 | ** Don's doctor telling him that his blood pressure is "a little high" during his checkup. Said blood pressure is 160/100, or stage 2 hypertension. In other words, very very bad, but in a world where everybody smoked and drank like crazy was closer to the norm. |
| 326 | * DepravedHomosexual: Lee Garner Jr., unfortunately for Sal. And, as stated in "The Quality of Mercy," for Roger as well. |
| 327 | * DescriptionCut: Don and Lane decided to catch a movie, checking the movie listings in the newspaper and settling on the French romance film ''Film/TheUmbrellasOfCherbourg''. "For all the young lovers in the world," reads Lane. Cut to them watching ''Film/{{Gamera}}'' instead. |
| 328 | * DidntThinkThisThrough: When one of their rival companies gets some bad press because their employees mistreated some civil rights protesters, Roger decides to twist the knife by running an ad for Sterling Cooper that proudly touts that they are equal opportunity employers. The result of this stupid in-joke prank is that the next day their offices are flooded with black applicants, who they can't turn away for reasons of optics. |
| 329 | * DiegeticSwitch: At the end of "Lady Lazarus", Don plays "Tomorrow Never Knows" by Music/TheBeatles on his record player. The song switches to background music as a montage of Megan taking doing exercises in her acting class and Peggy and Stan sharing a joint at work plays. Then it switches back to diegetic when the show cuts back to Don listening to the record. Then it switches yet again to background music in the closing credits. |
| 330 | ** At the beginning of "The Summer Man", someone in the pool's locker room has "Satisfaction" by Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} playing on a small tape recorder. As Don exits the facility, the music switches to background music. |
| 331 | * DineAndDash: Subverted in the last season. Don Draper takes his teenage daughter Sally out to dinner during a period where he's not in good graces with his own company, essentially being on paid suspension, on the verge of being outright fired. When they're finished he tells Sally in a worried tone to go outside and get the car engine running, then admits he's just kidding. |
| 332 | * DirtyOldMan: |
| 333 | ** Roger Sterling is at least as promiscuous as Don. |
| 334 | ** Bert Cooper too. The man keeps a print of "Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" on his office wall. |
| 335 | ** Jim Cutler in Season 6, especially when he enjoys watching the teenage daughter of recently deceased Frank Gleason have sex with Stan in the office after Gleason's funeral. |
| 336 | * DistancedFromCurrentEvents: Several in-universe examples: |
| 337 | ** The third-season Aqua Net campaign, whose TV spots would've featured two couples in an open convertible, has to be retooled. It had reached the storyboard stage by the JFK assassination. |
| 338 | ** Peggy also notes after Creator/MarilynMonroe's death that it's a good thing their idea of a [[BettyAndVeronica "Jackie and Marilyn"]]-themed ad campaign for Playtex bras was turned down, because they'd have had to pull it all immediately. |
| 339 | * TheDitz: |
| 340 | ** Meredith the receptionist seems to have the IQ of a fly. The last time we see her, she has taken Roger's joke about translating a speech into Pig Latin seriously and actually done it. |
| 341 | ** Herb Rennet's wife is obsessed with puppies and is completely oblivious to how much of a {{Jerkass}} her husband is. |
| 342 | ** Don't forget Lois Sadler trying to drive the lawn mower in "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency." |
| 343 | * DivorceInReno: Betty flies to Reno to get a divorce. The state of Nevada was then considered the easiest option in the U.S. for un-hitching, allowing marriages to dissolve if one spouse became a state "resident" for six weeks. (New York would be the last state in the union to allow no-fault divorce, not changing the law until '''2010'''.) |
| 344 | * DivorceIsTemporary: Pete and Trudy separate in Season 6 and are in the process of divorce by the season's end. However, they never officially finalize it, and eventually graduate to AmicableExes before getting back together in the penultimate episode (which would've roughly taken place two and a half years after the initial separation). |
| 345 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Since season 6 takes place when the Vietnam War is unfolding, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHE1uEnQw60 the show references the topic using the Chevrolet account as an analogue]]. |
| 346 | ** Pete clutches his .22 rifle awfully protectively while getting yelled at by Trudy for trading a wedding gift for it. |
| 347 | ** A drugged-up Betty, undergoing childbirth, dreams pleasant dreams. A smash cut back to reality shows a hospital vending machine being violently jostled until a nurse finally "delivers" a box of cigarettes. |
| 348 | * DoorClosesEnding: Numerous times, finally deliberately averting it in "The Suitcase." |
| 349 | * DoubleStandard: The series! |
| 350 | * 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. {{Lampshaded}} by [[https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/don-draper-was-raped/276937/ Abigail Rines's article]] in ''[[UsefulNotes/AmericanNewspapers The Atlantic]]'', where she compares Dick's rape with other, then-current, fictional rapes. |
| 351 | * DownerEnding: 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 OffscreenInertia. |
| 352 | ** Season 5 finale "The Phantom" is a DownerEnding for most of the characters, although once again, SCDP's prospects are looking up. |
| 353 | ** Season 6 finale "In Care Of" ends a thoroughly depressing season with a mega-Downer Ending in which Ted dumps Peggy, Pete's mother is apparently murdered, Pete heads off to California with his marriage over, Don's marriage is apparently also over, and Don loses his job. This pile of bummers is lightened with a little bit of hope in the last scene, when Don takes his children to see the home he grew up in. |
| 354 | * DrFeelgood: Jim Cutler brings in a dubious doctor who gives everyone speed injections, leaving the agency tripping balls all weekend, in "The Crash". |
| 355 | * DreamSequence: |
| 356 | ** Betty has a pretty funky one in "The Fog" when she gets drugged up while giving birth. |
| 357 | ** And another in "Tea Leaves" during her cancer scare. |
| 358 | ** Those are topped by "Mystery Date", wherein Don Draper dreams of murdering an old flame. |
| 359 | ** Don smokes hasish at an L.A. party in "A Tale of Two Cities," resulting in visions of pregnant hippie Megan and the dead PFC Dinkins. It ends with him face down in the pool, unsure of how he got there. |
| 360 | * DressHitsFloor: Happens to Betty a few times in seasons 1 and 2, and in "Waldorf Stories", Joan's mink hits the floor. |
| 361 | * DrinkBasedCharacterization: |
| 362 | ** Roger seems to drink whatever's handy, but has a particular liking for vodka and especially vodka martinis; ever since he got his super-modern office in Season 4, it seems that there's always a bottle of Smirnoff around. Although to be frank, he's always gone in for Smirnoff; in Season 1, he was seen pouring Smirnoff into ''milk'' (apparently because his doctor recommended milk to calm his gastric ulcer). |
| 363 | ** Don's a whisky guy -- rye for preference; he even has it in his Old Fashioned, a cocktail that usually uses bourbon. His brand of choice is Canadian Club, which is as prevalent in his office as Smirnoff is in Roger's. |
| 364 | ** Megan is fairly eclectic, but seems to like wine -- as do her AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents, who (surprise, surprise) are French-Canadian intellectuals. |
| 365 | ** Joan's choices are also eclectic, but she does seem to like gin drinks. If she's feeling stressed, she'll even drink straight gin. |
| 366 | ** 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. |
| 367 | * DrivenToSuicide: |
| 368 | ** Don's brother Adam, who hangs himself after Don sends him away. |
| 369 | ** [[spoiler:Lane Pryce.]] |
| 370 | * DrivingADesk: Don and Megan not really driving through upstate New York in "Far Away Places". |
| 371 | * DroppedABridgeOnHim: In "Waterloo", [[spoiler:Bert Cooper passes away off screen.]] |
| 372 | * DrugsAreBad: |
| 373 | ** Played entirely straight with Midge, a heroin addict by the time she reappears in Season 4. |
| 374 | ** In "The Crash", the whole office gets amphetamine injections in preparation for a brainstorming session, producing only unpleasantly bizarre behavior and no substantial progress. |
| 375 | ** In "A Tale of Two Cities", where Don nearly drowns after he walks into a swimming pool during a drug-induced stupor. |
| 376 | ** The drug nicotine is responsible for [[spoiler:Betty Francis]] not living to see age 40, as she's diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. |
| 377 | * DrugsAreGood: Zigzagged: |
| 378 | ** Kinsey claims to get ArtisticStimulation 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. |
| 379 | --> "My name is Peggy Olson, and I'd like to smoke some marijuana." |
| 380 | ** Peggy smokes up again in "The Rejected", and isn't caught by the police when they raid the party. |
| 381 | ** And it seems from the montage at the end of "Lady Lazarus" that Peggy and Stan seem to do this on a regular basis while working. Hell, pot basically turns Stan from an aggressive bro-ey frat boy type into a cool laid back stoner type. |
| 382 | ** 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. He remains an LSD enthusiast and drops acid again in "The Phantom". |
| 383 | ** In "The Doorway"; Don and Megan are smoking weed to make sex better while Creative is smoking so much ''in the office'' that both Don and Joan joke about it. |
| 384 | -->'''Don''': [strolling into the Creative lounge] I smell creativity! |
| 385 | ** In Season 7B, Joan tries cocaine with her boyfriend and seems to enjoy it. |
| 386 | * DrunkDriver: |
| 387 | ** Don rolls his car while tooling around with Bobbi Barrett. |
| 388 | ** Lois the secretary gets hammered and takes the [[ItMakesSenseInContext John Deere tractor in the office]] for a spin. It ends with an amputated foot. |
| 389 | * [[invoked]]DudeNotFunny: Joey's rape comment to Joan. Really, ''really'' [[RapeAsDrama not funny]], to the point it makes a brief, rare visible impression on her. |
| 390 | * DudeWheresMyRespect: The saga of Lane Pryce, the HyperCompetentSideKick. Almost every competent worker who is not a senior partner feels underappreciated at some point. Peggy Olson, Pete Campbell, Harry Crane, and Joan are the ones who complain more often about it. |
| 391 | * DumbassHasAPoint: Freddy and Peggy are working together developing a campaign for Pond's Cold Cream. Freddy seems to be stuck going back and forth between "Use this and you'll find a husband" and "If you don't use this, you won't find a husband"; Peggy is understandably offended and chides him for his regressive outlook. Her idea is greenlit instead, but in focus group testing, it fails to resonate with the young women -- who are too busy commiserating with each other about their love life anxieties to respond to the interviewer's cues. |
| 392 | * DumbBlonde: |
| 393 | ** Meredith, the new receptionist who started appearing in Season 5. |
| 394 | ** Herb Rennet's wife Peaches in the dinner scene from "For Immediate Release." |
| 395 | ** For the most part, the trope is averted with characters like Betty and Sally. |
| 396 | * DysfunctionJunction: Where do we ''start''? Every single character on this show is screwed-up. |
| 397 | * EccentricMillionaire: |
| 398 | ** Bertram Cooper, with his Japanese-themed office and general mild craziness. |
| 399 | ** Conrad Hilton, who demands advertising for a hotel on the moon. |
| 400 | * EndsWithASmile: The series ends with Don Draper meditating on a hillside as a smile creeps onto his face, then the show cuts to the famous "hilltop" Coca-Cola ad, the implication being that Don just came up with the idea. |
| 401 | * EmptyPromise: Don's decision to offer these to Betty after Kennedy was assassinated rather than genuine comfort and emotion catalyzed the dissolution of their marriage. |
| 402 | * EnemyMine: In "For Immediate Release", [[spoiler:Don and Chaough merge their agencies to get the GM account.]] |
| 403 | * EnterStageWindow: Creepy Glen Bishop does this to see Sally at a girls' boarding school in "The Quality of Mercy". |
| 404 | * EstablishingCharacterMoment: In addition to the examples on the page itself, Dr. Greg Harris's rape of his then-fiancee Joan colored every scene the character ever appeared in afterwards. |
| 405 | * EverybodyHasLotsOfSex: SO MUCH, especially Don. |
| 406 | * EverybodyMustGetStoned: In "The Crash", Jim Cutler brings a "doctor" to the office to give most of the cast speed to help them get through a very sad and busy day. |
| 407 | * EverybodySmokes: to the point of LampshadeHanging when the first season's DVD packaging looked like a giant Zippo lighter and the first episode is titled "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." |
| 408 | ** ''Gynecologists'' drinking and smoking while working. |
| 409 | ** The producers said that their general rule was if the actor either smokes or used to smoke and since quit, the character smokes, too. If the actor has never smoked, neither does the character. Which makes you really wonder about Hollywood.... |
| 410 | ** Pete Campbell doesn't, which makes for a gag in one episode where he tries cigarettes and can't stop coughing. |
| 411 | ** A new generation gets addicted to nicotine when teenaged Sally Draper starts lighting up in Season 7A. |
| 412 | * EvenTheGirlsWantHer: |
| 413 | ** Joan's roommate Carol makes a pretty overt proposal. Joan pretends that she doesn't understand. |
| 414 | ** 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. |
| 415 | ** Megan's sexy swinger boss Arlene makes advances to her in Season 6 in both "To Have and To Hold" and "The Better Half." Megan laughs it off both times. |
| 416 | * ExactWords: |
| 417 | ** 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. |
| 418 | ** During a weekend visit from the kids in "The Flood", Don learns that Bobby is being punished by his mother when Sally objects to him watching TV. Once Don learns that Bobby is forbidden from watching ''television'' for a week, Don takes him to the movies. |
| 419 | * ExecutiveExcess: All the Sterling-Cooper executives get up to a lot of debauchery over the course of the show, though most of them are WorkHardPlayHard types who balance their hedonism with genuine productivity. The exception, and the truest example of this trope, can be found in Roger Sterling: because he was born wealthy and inherited his position, he doesn't treat the job seriously, and can often be relied upon to waste time or drink heavily at work. Also, it's not uncommon for him to be seen in the aftermath of orgies or experimenting with drugs. In one memorable instance, he actually had a heart attack during an attempt to carry on with his playboy lifestyle and nearly died. |
| 420 | * ExiledToTheCouch: |
| 421 | ** Betty does this to Don for much of Season 2. |
| 422 | ** 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. |
| 423 | ** Trudy exiles Pete Campbell to his apartment in the city in Season 6. |
| 424 | * ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Done in Season 6 to let people know we're now heading into the late Sixties. Most of the men at SCDP have grown sideburns (see, e.g., Harry, and to a limited extent, Pete and Roger), mustaches (see, e.g., Ginsburg), or beards (see, e.g., Stan).[[note]]This last makes him nigh-unrecognizable.[[/note]] Don's hair still remains the same. Betty dyes her hair brunette after an encounter with Hippies at an East Village flophouse who deride her for being the establishment. |
| 425 | ** Ted and Roger grow mustaches as well in Season 7B. Don grows slight sideburns to keep up and his hair is slightly longer, but otherwise the same part and comb style. [[note]]Don's whole gimmick is that any fashion change he makes is slight, so that he remains eternally cool and stylish because he never goes overboard into fads that later generations will/would make fun of.[[/note]] |
| 426 | * {{Expy}}: This show is basically if someone took the characters of ''Theatre/HowToSucceedInBusinessWithoutReallyTrying'' and gave them some real dramatic development rather than sticking them in a musical comedy. Say if the boss's affairs were taken seriously, what if the SexySecretary had actual HiddenDepths, etc. This is especially highlighted in the casting of Robert Morse, who is best known for playing the lead in ''How to Succeed...''. |
| 427 | * EyeTake |
| 428 | * EyepatchOfPower: Zig-zagged. When Ken gets shot in the face while out hunting with GM executives, he dons an eyepatch which everyone seems to regard as alternately amusing and kind of cool. He himself hates it, since he's about to become a father and does not relish the prospect of only having the use of one eye then. |
| 429 | * FagHag: |
| 430 | ** 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. |
| 431 | ** Joan and Bob Benson in Season 6 appear to have this dynamic. |
| 432 | * FakeGuestStar: John Slattery in the first season, in spite of Roger Sterling's major role in the first season and seasons that would follow. He appears in 10 of the 13 episodes of season 1. Notably, Maggie Siff (Rachel Menken) is a main cast member in season 1 but only appears in 7 episodes. |
| 433 | * FauxlosophicNarration: Don's voiceover of his memoirs in "The Summer Man". |
| 434 | * {{Fauxreigner}}/ObfuscatingStupidity: Kurt, probably. He seems to play up his foreignness in order to get away with saying subversive things. |
| 435 | * TheFellowshipHasEnded: [[spoiler:[=SC&P=] being absorbed into [=McCann=] ultimately leads to this. Several minor characters are laid off from the merger. Joan is chased out of the industry by [=McCann=]'s sexism, Pete leaves for a better job, and Don walks out of [=McCann=] and whether he returns is left for the audience to decide.]] |
| 436 | * FeminineMotherTomboyishDaughter: Bourgeois housewife Betty Draper once called her daughter Sally "daddy's little lesbian" over her love of handiwork. |
| 437 | * {{Fingore}}: In Season 4, Joan gives her own finger a nasty slice while cutting oranges. |
| 438 | * 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. |
| 439 | * FireForgedFriends: |
| 440 | ** Don and Pete don't become close, but their working relationship develops a lot. In the first season Don fires Pete until Roger is forced to hire him back. Pete retaliates by revealing Don's DeadPersonImpersonation, to Bert Cooper's utter indifference. Contrast that to the fourth season, where Pete takes the fall for losing a defense contract so that Don won't have to reveal his true identity, and Don covers the difference for Pete when partnership stakes go up. |
| 441 | ** Joan and Peggy may be an even straighter example. Joan initially sees Peggy as one of numerous interchangeable secretaries under her charge, to the frustration of the ambitious Peggy. Peggy's rise through the ranks in the Creative department rankles Joan, who's apparently hit her own glass ceiling. At the end of the series, when Joan leaves [=McCann=] Erickson, Peggy is the first person she wants to work with. |
| 442 | * FirstPeriodPanic: In episode "Commissions and Fees", Sally has a date with Glenn in New York when she's staying at Don and Megan's (her divorced father and his young wife). She suddenly feels uncomfortable and excuses herself. She discovers she's had her first period. Megan comes home and finds Glen's gym bag but no Sally. It turns out Sally took a taxi and went back to the Francis's residence, her permanent home. She runs into the bathroom, tells Betty that she got her period and didn't know what to do, that she just wanted to come home. Betty is usually not a very good or caring mom, but in this episode she's nothing but sweet and supportive and explains to Sally that she's become a woman and that it only means that everything is working normally. |
| 443 | * FiveStagesOfGrief: In "The Milk And Honey Route", [[spoiler:Betty is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.]] Henry is in denial, trying to use his political connections to find a cure, while Betty goes straight to acceptance. |
| 444 | * {{Flashback}}: This is how we learn Don's whole backstory. |
| 445 | * FlatWhat: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJSRP7cZVo Don has a penchant for these]] |
| 446 | ** Peggy has two of these when [[spoiler:Stan confesses that he's in love with her]]. |
| 447 | * FlippingTheBird: Stan does this to Peggy in "To Have and to Hold" after finding out that she used information he told her in confidence to get an advantage at work. |
| 448 | * {{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 mistakes before they spiral out of control. |
| 449 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: |
| 450 | ** 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 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. |
| 451 | --> '''Don:''' Why did you even buy us? |
| 452 | --> '''Pryce:''' ... I don't know. |
| 453 | ** An early Season 3 arc has them filming a commercial based on ''Film/ByeByeBirdie'', which was a hit movie at the time. Birdie is the affectionate nickname Don has for his wife Betty who divorces him at the end of the season. |
| 454 | ** 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 ''Theatre/{{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. |
| 455 | ** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9-XthPUaHg Season 5 is replete with dialogue and imagery]] alluding to death, which foreshadows [[spoiler:Lane Pryce's suicide]]. |
| 456 | ** A dark example, in "Tea Leaves"; Peggy's first impression after meeting Michael Ginsberg: [[spoiler:"He's certifiable!"]] |
| 457 | ** In Season 7A finale "Waterloo", Roger has seemingly pulled off a coup when he foils off Cutler's power play by selling the agency to [=McCann=]. But the show and the season end with Bert Cooper singing "The Best Things in Life Are Free". Sure enough, in Season 7B, less than a year later in show time, SC&P is dissolved and absorbed into [=McCann=]-Erickson. |
| 458 | ** Multiple references to Coca-Cola in Season 7B, such as Jim Hobart dangling the Coke account before Don, Peggy asking Don if he wanted to work on Coke, and Don's attempt to fix a Coca-Cola machine in "The Milk and Honey Route". This pays off in the final scene of the series and the iconic "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" commercial. |
| 459 | *** The first time Hobart meets Don (and the first time the viewer is introduced to [[=McCann=]]-Erikson) way back in season 1, he tries to entice Don to leave Sterling Cooper by offering Betty a modeling gig for a Coca-Cola campaign. The [[spoiler:Hilltop ad for Coca-Cola]] paid off series-long foreshadowing. |
| 460 | * FourTemperamentEnsemble: the four partners in SCDP: Don (Phlegmatic), Roger (Choleric), Cooper (Sanguine), and Lane (Melancholic). Although, of course, Don is Choleric as well and Roger can be very Sanguine. |
| 461 | * FourthDateMarriage: Don and Betty both enter into their second marriages after very brief courtships. Betty and Henry do well. Don and Megan, not so much. |
| 462 | * FreudianCouch: |
| 463 | ** Played completely straight in Season 1. Don sends Betty for psychoanalysis, and the setup is correct for free association: the couch is set away from the chair the therapist is sitting in, and he freaks out slightly when she sits up and makes eye contact. |
| 464 | ** A laid-back guy like Roger enjoys it in a slouchy way during his Season 6 sessions. |
| 465 | * FreudianExcuse: |
| 466 | ** 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. |
| 467 | ** Subverted in "The Suitcase". Peggy had gamely took part in a pitch involving football and Samsonite and merely observed all the hubub around the Clay v. Liston fight. Later she notes to Don that her father died in front of her when she was twelve while a sports game was playing. She then states "That's why I hate sports." |
| 468 | * FromBadToWorse: |
| 469 | ** 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. And then he learns she has terminal cancer. |
| 470 | ** In Season 6, this happens to Don again, but even worse, as his alcoholism worsens and his job performance suffers, leading to him getting fired. |
| 471 | * FunnyBackgroundEvent: |
| 472 | ** Bert Cooper lurking in his own reception area in "The Rejected". In the same episode, Peggy standing on her desk and peering into Don's office above his head as Allison quits. |
| 473 | ** Also, in "Beautiful Girls" when Don, Faye, and Ken are deciding on an ad campaign with Fillmore Auto Parts, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjInPSmSZW8 only to be interrupted because of the abrupt death]] of Don's ancient secretary Miss Blankenship. Don tells the secretaries to take care of it. The meeting resumes, while in the background, Pete and Joan try to cart away the chair, with the body covered in a blanket. And Harry protesting that his mother made that blanket. |
| 474 | ** An earlier example in "Ladies Room" -- Don is discussing the possibility of working on the Nixon campaign with Roger and Bert, and through the window to his office you can see a fireball as Ken Cosgrove and some of the other guys in the office set a spray of the deodorant they're playing with aflame. |
| 475 | ** Roger casually offering Don a ride home while junior executives brawl in the background in "Shoot". |
| 476 | * GayCruising: ImpliedTrope. Sal Romano, a closeted gay man working at Sterling Cooper, is fired after he refuses the advances of an important client who happens to be a DepravedHomosexual. Sal is last seen calling [[TheBeard his wife]] from a truck stop, telling her he's going to be working late that night. |
| 477 | * GetAHoldOfYourselfMan: |
| 478 | ** When Roger almost goes OutWithABang, he's mumbling the name of the one-night-stand he was with, and an overwrought Don slaps him and tells him, "Mona! Your wife's name is ''Mona''!" |
| 479 | ** Don to Peggy in flashback in "The New Girl." Delivered to snap her out of HeroicBSOD. |
| 480 | ** Freddy Rumsen's speech to a hung-over Don at the end of "The Monolith." |
| 481 | * TheGhost: 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. Then she dies, and becomes a literal ghost. |
| 482 | * GilliganCut |
| 483 | ** When a younger Don first met Roger Sterling and offered to buy him a drink, Roger fired back, "It's 10:30 a.m.!" Cut to Roger in a bar enjoying a drink. |
| 484 | ** Lane's wife drags him to go meet some fellow Englishmen in a pub and watch a soccer game; Lane, never having been much a fan of his home country, drags his feet and only grudgingly promises to pretend to have fun. Cut to him belting "God Save the Queen" with total sincerity as England wins the 1966 World Cup. |
| 485 | * GirlWatching: When the men of SC watch the secretaries through a one-way mirror in "Babylon" as the secretaries sample lipstick. |
| 486 | * GladToBeAliveSex / WallBangHer: Roger and Joan in "The Beautiful Girls", after they're mugged at gunpoint. |
| 487 | * GodwinsLaw: Don compares giving up to increasingly bad demands from clients to Munich appeasement. The reference falls flat on Campbell, who states that the Germans [[ComicallyMissingThePoint lost the war anyway]]. Roger then tops it by attributing a famous UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill's quote about dishonor and war to his own mother. |
| 488 | * GoingColdTurkey: Don tries this in "In Care Of" after the night in the drunk tank. Ted Chaough convinces him to have a drink before a big meeting, saying "My father... you can't just stop like that." |
| 489 | * GondorCallsForAid: The assembling of the new Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce team. |
| 490 | * GoneHorriblyRight: |
| 491 | ** Throughout the series, the characters will work really hard to get a new client, but once the client signs up with the agency, it creates a a ton of conflict and makes everyone miserable. |
| 492 | ** The Jaguar deal is a great way for SCDP to show that it is a serious contender in the ad world, but it means having to work with slimy EntitledBastard Herb. |
| 493 | ** The Chevy deal really puts the agency in the spotlight but the auto executives end up almost killing Ken. The merger allows the agency to win the Chevy contract, but it creates massive stresses among the partners, with Cutler being on the verge of taking control of the agency. |
| 494 | ** Opening a California office brings in a lot of new business and Pete and Ted get away from the problems they have in New York. However, the separation only increases the tension in the agency and both Pete and Ted end up miserable. |
| 495 | ** Taking out a newspaper ad to attack one of their competitors after their employees are caught racially abusing some civil rights protesters gets SCDP some favorable publicity... and roughly two dozen African-Americans showing up looking for employment, forcing the already struggling agency to hire one as a secretary just so they don't look like hypocrites. Subverted when the person they hire, Dawn, proves extremely competent at her job (and just the right person to replace Joan as office manager when Joan moves to Accounts). |
| 496 | * GoodAdulteryBadAdultery: Adultery is all over this show, with different characters treated differently. |
| 497 | ** 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. |
| 498 | ** 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. |
| 499 | ** 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 almost doubles that tally in season 5, though. |
| 500 | ** 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. He cheats again in season five, and this time seems a lot less hesitant to do so and a lot less guilty about it afterwards. |
| 501 | ** As mentioned above, Joan is married to Greg when she cheats on him with Roger. This is treated somewhat sympathetically because of Greg's previous rape of Joan 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 sleeps with Herb Rennet, the head of Jaguar, to land SCDP the account. |
| 502 | ** Betty's one night stand in "Meditations in an Emergency" and flirtation with Henry Francis throughout season 3 are treated sympathetically. Of course, Betty has it coming from another direction entirely... |
| 503 | ** Don's affair with Sylvia comes across very negatively. But when Peggy seduces a married man (Ted Chaough), it's treated much more sympathetically, to the point where Peggy is outraged when Chaough goes back to his wife. |
| 504 | * GoodbyeCruelWorld: [[spoiler:A [[StiffUpperLip rather fitting one]] for Lane Pryce:]] |
| 505 | -->'''Roger''': A resignation letter. It's boilerplate. |
| 506 | * GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: |
| 507 | ** 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. |
| 508 | ** Joan, who goes so far as to convince Roger that she went through with one (probably because she actually has in the past). |
| 509 | ** Megan was taught about the evils of abortion by the nuns of her Catholic school and is relieved when a miscarriage terminates her pregnancy before she takes a decision about it. |
| 510 | * GorgeousPeriodDress: Too bad they must all reek of cigarette smoke. |
| 511 | * GrandeDame: |
| 512 | ** Mona. |
| 513 | ** Henry's mother, Mrs. Francis. |
| 514 | ** Alice, Bert Cooper's sister and part owner of Sterling Cooper. |
| 515 | ** Pete's mother Dorothy Dyckman. |
| 516 | * GreenEyedMonster: In "The Quality of Mercy", Don does just about everything in his power to sabotage Peggy and Chaough's burgeoning relationship. |
| 517 | * GriefInducedSplit: Don's waitress squeeze Diana reveals that she abandoned her family following her daughter's death. Her remaining daughter lives with her dad in Racine. |
| 518 | * GroinAttack: |
| 519 | ** Apparently, Bert Cooper was on the wrong end of an "unnecessary orchiectomy[note]testicle removal surgery[/note] at the height of his sexual prime." Well, that certainly explains why he isn't married... |
| 520 | ** In "A Tale of Two Cities", Roger makes one too many short jokes at Danny Siegel's expense. Roger quickly learns why you shouldn't insult someone whose arms are already at your groin level. |
| 521 | * HangoverSensitivity: Peggy is downing Alka-Seltzer and wincing at work in "Severance" after drinking too much during a blind date. |
| 522 | * HappilyMarried: Averted with pretty much everyone. Except maybe Betty and Henry Francis -- although they start sniping at each other in Season 7A -- and Ken and Cynthia Cosgrove, whom we hardly ever see together. The writers like to tease us sometimes, like Harry and Jennifer Crane before Season 5, Don and Megan Draper during Season 5, and even Pete and Trudy Campbell in Seasons 4 and 5, but inevitably, it ends in shit. |
| 523 | * HasAType: |
| 524 | ** 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. |
| 525 | ** Pete tends to pick women with girlish features like Trudy, Peggy, and Bonnie Whiteside. This is lampshaded when his senile mother mistakes Peggy for Trudy. |
| 526 | * HaveAGayOldTime: "I like the show. Very gay songs." -- Betty in "Shoot" |
| 527 | * TheHecateSisters: Deconstructed with the women in Season 5: |
| 528 | ** Megan is the Maiden, as Don's younger new wife. |
| 529 | ** Betty is the Mother, newly married to Henry but having gained a great deal of weight, feels unattractive and disconnected. |
| 530 | ** Joan is the Crone, following her abandonment by her husband, she is a more bitter single mother, but she also takes on more responsibility at Sterling Cooper, and becomes more empowered and professional. |
| 531 | * HeldGaze: This is combined with the LongingLook at the end of "The Rejected." Peggy and Pete lock eyes wistfully as they each follow their separate paths (her with new counterculture friends, him with businessmen in suits). However, you can tell there's always going to be a bit of longing and a "what could have been" vibe between them, even though neither one wants to travel down that path again. |
| 532 | * HeroicBSOD: Don's little California adventure, until he's snapped out of it by a visit to Anna. |
| 533 | ** 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. |
| 534 | ** Don in the elevator and lobby of his apartment building in "Favors" after Sally catches [[spoiler:Don and Sylvia having sex in Sylvia's apartment.]] |
| 535 | * HiddenDepths: ''Lots'', to the point that it's nearly as prominent a part of the show's approach as DeliberateValuesDissonance. After two or three seasons with a major character, we generally have a pretty good idea of what they're like inside, but even then some unexplored facet of their personality or history will pop up to surprise us. |
| 536 | ** 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. |
| 537 | ** 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. |
| 538 | ** 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. |
| 539 | * HideYourPregnancy: January Jones was pregnant, but in Season 5 Betty's just gaining weight. |
| 540 | * HighTurnoverRate: The job of Don's secretary. Lampshaded in Season 4 when folks at the office guess what will happen to Megan. (They all guess wrong.) |
| 541 | * HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Peggy in "My Old Kentucky Home." Roger and Jane in "Far Away Places". |
| 542 | * HistoricalDomainCharacter: The real-life hotelier Conrad Hilton is a major supporting character in season 3. |
| 543 | * HistoricalInJoke: The doctor Joan goes to for an abortion in Season 4 (before she changes her mind) is in Morristown, New Jersey. A mere five years later, in 1970, New York adopted abortion-on-demand up to the 24th week, while it remained completely banned in New Jersey until the decision in ''Roe v. Wade'' in 1973. |
| 544 | * HitlerAteSugar: "All I can get from this story is that Hitler didn't smoke, and I do." -- Roger in "Red in the Face" |
| 545 | * {{Hobos}}: Little Dick Whitman meets one in "The Hobo Code". |
| 546 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard / BatmanGambit: Roger sneaks a peek at Pete's calendar so he can go to meetings between Pete and his clients and steal Pete's thunder. When Pete figures it out, he makes a fake appointment on his calendar for very early in the morning in a remote part of New York City. |
| 547 | * HookersAndBlow: When Midge makes her depressing return in Season 4 we learn that she's prostituting herself to feed a heroin habit. |
| 548 | * HopeSpot: In "Time & Life", [[spoiler:the partners come up with a scheme to save the agency by convincing [=McCann=] to allow them to take any accounts that would be lost due to conflicts of interest from the absorption to California. Unfortunately, [=McCann=] isn't interested.]] |
| 549 | * HospitalHottie: Don's new neighbor in season four. |
| 550 | * {{Housewife}}: Betty Draper. The show spends three seasons deconstructing this trope, as we see seemingly stereotypical 50s housewife Betty dealing with sexual frustration, her husband's infidelity, and boredom. |
| 551 | * HugeGuyTinyGirl: Quite a few couples can fill this role. |
| 552 | ** [[http://images.amcnetworks.com/amc.com/wp-content/uploads/mt-legacy/mad-men/mm203-hunt-schilling-325.jpg Mr.]] and [[http://images.amcnetworks.com/amc.com/wp-content/uploads/mt-legacy/mad-men/mm203-edith-schilling-325.jpg Mrs.]] Schilling are a gender-reversed version of this, she's very obese and he's a more average middle-aged man |
| 553 | ** [[http://cdn.hark.com/images/001/681/062/1681062/original.jpg Herb Rennet is very fat in comparison to his ditzy little wife Peaches]]. |
| 554 | ---> '''Marie:''' ''(in French)'' She looks like the apple that fits in the pig's mouth. |
| 555 | ** The [[https://youtu.be/AtO_QP3tS0A?t=3m58s finale]] has [[spoiler:the petite Peggy getting together with large Stan]]. |
| 556 | * HumiliationConga: Don's return to SC&P in "Field Trip." |
| 557 | ** 1. Roger forgot to tell the other partners that Don was coming, so Don returns to a bunch of awkward looks. |
| 558 | ** 2. While Dawn and the creative team are glad to see him, everyone else treats him like a fossil. |
| 559 | ** 3. Lou schedules a meeting with the creative team just to strip Don of the few people who are happy to see him, Peggy stops by just to tell him that she's still upset with him over his role in breaking up her and Ted, and the partners only allow Don back in exchange for agreeing to several burdensome restrictions -- in particular, having his responsibilities massively reduced, and a warning that even the slightest act of misconduct will result in him not only being fired, but forfeiting all his shares in the agency. |
| 560 | ** 4. This continues in the next episode where Don is not given any real work for the first few weeks, and when he is finally assigned to a project, he is subordinate to Peggy and is given a task more appropriate to a new copywriter than someone of Don's experience. |
| 561 | ** 5. It thus becomes quite clear that the other partners are just waiting for an excuse to fire him for good. |
| 562 | * HuntingIsEvil: |
| 563 | ** Betty is bothered by the birds in her garden, however, it's only after she loses her chance at modeling again thanks to Don, and realizes that she is still trapped in an unfulfiling and unhappy family and marriage that she takes a gun out to the garden and calmly shoots them. |
| 564 | ** Ken gets his eye shot out on a hunting trip with Chevy executives. |
| 565 | * {{Hypocrite}}: |
| 566 | ** Don Draper, chronic philanderer, berates his wife for merely flirting or wearing a bikini. |
| 567 | ** Pete's father-in-law is furious when he learns that Pete is cheating on Trudy, which doesn't stop him from sleeping with prostitutes. |
| 568 | ** Don scoffs at Cassius Clay for changing his name to Muhammad Ali. |
| 569 | * IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Poor Ken Cosgrove gets a faceful of birdshot while out hunting with some Chevrolet executives. He survives, albeit with the loss of one of his eyes, but resigns the account. The same bunch of executives also almost got him killed in a car accident and he wants out before their recklessness kills him. |
| 570 | * ImmigrantPatriotism: Lane loves living in America and embraces all things New York (putting a [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball Mets]] pennant and a little copy of the Statue of Liberty in his office). This doesn't keep him from being proudly British (including cheering on England in the '66 World Cup), but on multiple occasions he's made it clear he wants to stay in America. |
| 571 | --->'''Rebecca Pryce''':You like it here! The smells and the noise and the criminals at every level. |
| 572 | --->'''Lane Pryce''': I have made the best of this. My salary is good. The company is flourishing. My wife has a beautiful gown. May I see it? |
| 573 | --->'''Rebecca''': It's not London. It's not even England. |
| 574 | --->'''Lane''': That's true. I've been here ten months and no-one's ever asked me where I went to school. |
| 575 | * ImpairmentShot: The first shot of Season 6 is from the POV of a man having a heart attack. |
| 576 | * INeedAFreakingDrink: So often. And a smoke, too. |
| 577 | ** A particularly direct one in "Flight 1": After being informed his father was on the infamous crashed flight, Pete's first reaction is to pour a glass of whisky and step, speechless, out of his office, where he downs the whole drink in a single gulp and makes his way to Don's office to ask for advice... and Don promptly pours him another. |
| 578 | * InformedJudaism: |
| 579 | ** 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. |
| 580 | ** WordOfGod indicated that Dr. Faye is supposed to be an assimilated Jew. |
| 581 | * IgnoredVitalNewsReports: |
| 582 | ** Pete and Harry miss JFK assassination bulletins because the sound is down on the TV. Duck ''turns one off to have sex with Peggy''. It kills the afterglow a little. |
| 583 | ** Pete assumes that RFK's assassination was just his senile mother confusing him with JFK. ("That was years ago, mother.") |
| 584 | * IllTakeTwoBeersToo: When Jimmy and Bobbi Barrett come to dinner with the Drapers and the Schellings (the owners of Utz) at Lutèce, Jimmy orders two Johnnie Walkers on the rocks and then asks Bobbi what she would like. |
| 585 | * ImagineSpot: |
| 586 | ** Don imagining catching his family at home before they leave for Thanksgiving weekend, at the end of Season 1. |
| 587 | ** Peggy pretending that she's making out with Chaough while actually making out with Abe in "For Immediate Release". |
| 588 | ** In the Season 3 premiere, Don begins to see the events leading up to his birth happening right in front of him in his kitchen. These are most likely his imagination as he wasn't born yet when these events happened. |
| 589 | * ImportantHaircut: Peggy. She started with a shy and naive young woman with a ponytail, becomes tougher and more outspoken with a short haircut (bouffant, bobs, pageboy, and flip). |
| 590 | * ImpoverishedPatrician: Pete. His mother's family is old New York Dutch BlueBlood stock, and had owned half of Upper Manhattan before [[TheGreatDepression 1929]]. Pete's dad squandered what was left of the family fortune, and thus Pete is resentful, working as a mid-level ad executive, and has to marry Trudy, whose family isn't as old as his but has more money (as her father is a bigshot at Richardson-Vicks). Of course, he eventually comes out better for it (and eventually settles down about Trudy for good...probably). |
| 591 | * ImStandingRightHere: Harry Crane outlines in lurid detail what he'd do to Megan, oblivious to the fact that she's right behind him. |
| 592 | * IndyPloy: 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. And in Season 6, when it becomes clear that neither SCDP or CGC is big enough to land the Chevy account, Don and Ted Chaough merge their agencies. |
| 593 | * IronicEcho: 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 separate. |
| 594 | ** Season 7's "Time & Life" contained quite a few [[CallBack Call Backs]] to the Season 3 finale, "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." Most notably, the Partners attempt to make another power move to avoid being absorbed into [=McCann=], only this time it blows up in their face. |
| 595 | ** "The Suitcase" had Peggy lament to Don that [[IAmNotPretty men don't stop and look at her on the street]], and then on "Lost Horizon", she is doing her stride in the narrow hallways of [=McCann=] Erickson with several men turning around to look at her in amazement and Peggy is giving no fucks whatsoever. |
| 596 | * {{Irony}}: All over the place, but the Situational kind was on prominent display in Season 2's "The Jet Set": when Kurt comes out as gay to some other employees in the break room, most of the others express disgust; Smitty says that Kurt can't have been "the first homo [they've] met in advertising" as the shot turns to Sal standing awkwardly. |
| 597 | * IsThisThingStillOn: In "A Day's Work", the New York and California offices are engaging in a conference call, when the call gets messed up so the New York office can't hear what the California office is saying. The New York office falsely assumes that the call was dropped altogether and start badmouthing the California office. Pete is not amused. |
| 598 | * ItsAllAboutMe: Most of the characters, especially in Season 5. Notable exceptions: Anna Draper, Carla, Henry Francis, Suzanne Farrell. |
| 599 | * ItWillNeverCatchOn: |
| 600 | ** Don says this about Jai Alai. [[SubvertedTrope He is right]]. |
| 601 | ** Admiral Television has something of a similar response to the idea of race-targeted advertising. |
| 602 | ** In the second episode, Roger dismisses psychiatry as "just this year's candy pink stove". By Season 6, he's seeing a shrink. |
| 603 | ** In 1965, Don is skeptical about a green Joe Namath and about the whole concept of celebrity endorsement. Both things become a hot trend in the following years. |
| 604 | ** In the third episode, Don and a few others in Creative dismiss the Volkswagen "Think Small" and "Lemon" campaigns; they don't see it as "the future," although Don admits it must be working for Volkswagen (with the implication it's probably a fluke). By Season 4, this kind of "Creative Revolution" advertising is what SCDP lives and breathes. |
| 605 | ** The creative team is contemptuous of the arrival of the room-sized IBM computer in "The Monolith." |
| 606 | ** In the pilot, Don says "It's not like there's a magical machine that makes identical copies of things." Then in Season 2, the Xerox machine arrives at the office. |
| 607 | [[/folder]] |
| 608 | |
| 609 | [[folder:J - R]] |
| 610 | * {{Jerkass}}: |
| 611 | ** All the men are either this or the ButtMonkey (or both), but particularly Lee Garner Jr. and Joan's husband. |
| 612 | ** Howard Dawes. Not only is he an adulterer, it is eventually revealed that he has subjected his wife to electroshock therapy on multiple occasions. The most recent issue that prompted this: she became depressed after discovering that her husband was cheating on her. |
| 613 | * JerkassHasAPoint: In a series where characters behave as jerkasses, these moments are plenty. |
| 614 | ** Joan is often an AlphaBitch, yet when she gives advice or has to settle issues in the office, she's shown often to be in the right (though her methods may be questionable). |
| 615 | ** Don is this, especially when he chides Peggy for being so meek about demanding something. He tells her that she gave a performance like a man, so to ask like one. |
| 616 | ** Bobbie is one unscrupulous woman, yet her advice to Peggy about channeling her femininity and developing a backbone worked in Peggy's favor. |
| 617 | ** Peggy's mom really shames her daughter for considering cohabitation with Abe, telling her that he will use her "for practice" until he finds another woman to marry. She tells Peggy that if she doesn't want to be alone, get a cat. Obviously SlutShaming? Yes. Pointing out that her daughter is getting the raw deal in the relationship and that it's better to be an OldMaid rather than be an in AllTakeAndNoGive relationship? Yes. |
| 618 | ** Arguably Bert, Peggy, and Joans' attitudes towards Don in 7A: Don cost them Big Tobacco and his marriage with Megan seeped into the office (Bert), Don lost the Jaguar account and is irresponsible (Joan), and Don basically put Ted through hell in the last season and split Peggy's romance with him (Peggy, and that's just the iceberg). Bert and Peggy get over this by the end of 7A, whereas it takes about one more year in-universe for Joan to warm right back to Don. |
| 619 | ** Joan and Peggy's uncomfortable elevator convo after dealing with FratBro like execs. Peggy [[InnocentlyInsensitive states that Joan should consider the sort of]] [[SlutShaming attention she got was a result of how she dresses]]. Joan is righteously incensed and tells Peggy that she (Joan) is prettier. Peggy then angrily shoots back that Joan is filthy rich and can do anything she wants. |
| 620 | * {{Joisey}}: Of the "Shore-As-Place-Where-Rich-White-New-Yorkers-Go-In-The-Summer" flavor: Betty's family has a house on Cape May, and her father seems to live there much if not most of the time. (Betty even seems to have been born there.) Of course, the Hofstadts are rich white ''Philadelphians'', but same difference. |
| 621 | ** Also, in Season 2, Paul Kinsey lives in Montclair; everyone complains how much of a pain it was to get there from New York. |
| 622 | ** In "Waterloo", little Julio cries "I don't want to go to Newark!" and Peggy shoots back with "No one does". |
| 623 | * KansasCityShuffle: See BatmanGambit, above. |
| 624 | * KeepingSecretsSucks: |
| 625 | ** What Don decides after having a panic attack over the possibility that his might be discovered. |
| 626 | ** In Season 5, we find out that Don learned a lesson from his problems with Betty and told his new wife about Dick Whitman. |
| 627 | ** And at the end of Season 6, a humbled and jobless Don is telling his children about his past. |
| 628 | * KickTheDog: No puppy is safe! Duck almost makes this trope literal. |
| 629 | * KickTheSonOfABitch: Most of the male leads, but especially Pete. It's hard to feel bad for Pete Campbell a lot of the time, considering his treatment of his wife, his smug egocentric personality, and his patronization of anyone who isn't Don. And even Don isn't safe from him, since at one point Pete tries (unsuccessfully) to blackmail him. Perhaps one of the most entertaining times Pete is kicked is when he picks a fight with Lane, likely thinking he'd be too mild mannered to respond. Lane, tired of putting up with Pete, socks him a couple good ones in the nose, humiliating him in front of everyone. |
| 630 | ** Don himself has some pretty low points, especially in season 6. But considering how selfish he is most of the time, and that the low points he has are often his own fault, it's hard to truly feel sorry for him. |
| 631 | * LackOfEmpathy: When Roger's mother dies, he's not only callously unaffected, he's also annoyed by his secretary genuinely mourning over his loss. |
| 632 | * LastMinuteHookup: [[spoiler:After four seasons of {{UST}}, Peggy and Stan finally admit their feelings for one another in the final episode.]] |
| 633 | * LateArrivalSpoiler: It would be very hard to start watching the show now and completely avoid the knowledge that Don will eventually marry Megan. Also, Don's real identity. |
| 634 | * LatinLover: The caretaker Pete hires for his mother. It turns out that he's gay -- which does not stop him from marrying her, and apparently chucking her off a cruise ship. |
| 635 | * LawOfInverseFertility: |
| 636 | ** Pete gets Peggy pregnant on the first time, but his wife who wants a baby has trouble conceiving. |
| 637 | ** Betty gets pregnant by Don precisely when she doesn't want to. |
| 638 | ** 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. |
| 639 | * LeaningOnTheFourthWall: |
| 640 | ** In "The Better Half", Bobby exclaims "I'm Bobby #5!", referring to all the Bobbys at his summer camp. He then explains that Bobby #1 went home. The actor playing Bobby was the fourth to play that role. |
| 641 | ** In "Person to Person", Peggy worries that Don is going to commit suicide. It seems to be a nod to the fan theory that, based on the title sequence, Don would leap to his death in the final episode. |
| 642 | * LeaningOnTheFurniture: Roger Sterling. Scenes with Roger, Cooper, and Don have a tendency to look like rounds of [[Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway "Sitting, Standing, Leaning".]] |
| 643 | %%* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: See DiegeticSwitch above. |
| 644 | * LegFocus: Megan does a sexy song and dance for Don while wearing a very short miniskirt and [[StockingFiller fishnet stockings]] at his surprise party. |
| 645 | * LiteraryAllusionTitle: |
| 646 | ** [[Theatre/TheMarriageOfFigaro "Marriage of Figaro"]] |
| 647 | ** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Hall_of_the_Mountain_King "The Mountain King"]] |
| 648 | ** [[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=15741 "Meditations in an Emergency"]] |
| 649 | ** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Among_the_Ruins_(poem) "Love Among The Ruins"]] |
| 650 | ** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysanthemum_and_the_Sword "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"]] |
| 651 | ** [[http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15292 "Lady Lazarus"]] |
| 652 | ** "Literature/ATaleOfTwoCities" |
| 653 | ** ShoutOutToShakespeare: [[Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice "The Quality of Mercy"]] |
| 654 | ** "Literature/LostHorizon" |
| 655 | ** "Literature/TheMilkAndHoneyRoute" |
| 656 | * LockedOutOfTheLoop: Nobody tells Anna that she's dying. |
| 657 | * LongGame: Jim Hobart's attempts to get Don to work for [=McCann=]- since season 1! -finally pay off in Season 7A when SC&P merges with [=McCann=]. |
| 658 | * LoveEpiphany: Somehow, Mad Men managed to have this happen as we see [[spoiler:Peggy realize she loves Stan in the series finale]]. |
| 659 | * TheMafia[=/=]KosherNostra: Faye Miller's father is apparently a "handsome, two-bit gangster" who knows every restaurant owner in Manhattan. (Faye is apparently supposed to be an assimilated Jew -- see InformedJudaism, above -- but since the Jewish and Italian Mobs often worked together, both tropes apply.) |
| 660 | * MagicalNegro: Betty has a slight tendency to see black housemaids as this, seeking their sage advice; particularly true respecting her father's housemaid Viola (who had apparently taken care of the Hofstadt household for a long time). Viola's advice, it must be admitted, is pretty good. |
| 661 | * MaleGaze: Witnessed many times, and depicted especially nicely (if depressingly) with the storyline about the Patio ad. Peggy, the lone female copywriter, objects to sexualizing women in an ad aimed at women, but gets overruled. |
| 662 | ** One of the best examples of deconstructing the MaleGaze is the scene in "Babylon" where Joan bends over ''very'' slowly and knowingly in front of mirrored glass, displaying her, ah, assets for all the male execs to see. |
| 663 | ** In "The Better Half", a gas station attendant delays servicing Don's car because he's too busy staring at Betty's ass. |
| 664 | * ManipulativeBastard: |
| 665 | ** Don himself is extremely manipulative and will exploit just about any weakness just to gain an advantage or get out of trouble. |
| 666 | ** 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). |
| 667 | * ManlyTears: |
| 668 | ** Don's breakdown in "The Suitcase." |
| 669 | ** Roger at the end of "The Doorway" when he receives the shoeshine kit from the shoeshine guy who has died, but is obviously also crying about his mother's death earlier in the episode. |
| 670 | ** Don again, when having an emotional catharsis with another man at the Esalen Institute in "Person to Person". |
| 671 | * TheManIsStickingItToTheMan: In "Person to Person," it's heavily implied that [[spoiler:Don was inspired by his experience on the hippie commune to create the famous "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" ad. In real life, the ad was created by [=McCann=].]] |
| 672 | * MarriedToTheJob: Peggy starts to show hints of this in "The Suitcase," although it really ''is'' Mark's fault for bringing along Peggy's hated family. |
| 673 | --> '''Joan''': I've learned a long time ago not to get all my satisfaction from this job. |
| 674 | --> '''Peggy''': That's [[PrecisionFStrike bullshit]]! |
| 675 | --> [Both laugh] |
| 676 | ** 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 MarriedToTheJob. |
| 677 | ** 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. |
| 678 | * MatchCut: |
| 679 | ** For [[DirectedByCastMember his directorial bit]] in "Signal 30", John Slattery seems to like these. This episode features a Match Cut with Ken opening a door, cutting to Pete in the same position opening a different door, and an audio Match Cut from a woman tapping her shoes to Pete Campbell's dripping faucet. |
| 680 | ** Series finale "Person to Person" has one of these. Don is shown in his hotel room hoisting a drink -- cut to Ken Cosgrove in a restaurant putting a drink down. |
| 681 | * MeaningfulEcho[=/=]StrangeMindsThinkAlike: It's constantly happening to Don that someone unwittingly says something that gets right at the heart of whatever's torturing him at the moment. |
| 682 | * MeaningfulName: Don Draper, first and last. |
| 683 | ** Freddy Rumsen also qualifies, given his struggle with alcoholism. |
| 684 | * MileHighClub: Pete and his new girlfriend Bonnie do it in an airliner bathroom in Season 7's "The Strategy." |
| 685 | * MissingMom: |
| 686 | ** Don's mother died at childbirth and his step-mother was abusive. |
| 687 | ** Margaret bails on her husband and small son. Her father, not a paragon of fatherhood himself, tries to set her straight and get her back to her family, telling her that she is a mother first. |
| 688 | ** Stephanie talks about how she feels judged for abandoning her son in "Person to Person", only for another member of the therapy group to essentially say that she ''should'' feel bad. |
| 689 | * MistakenForPregnant: Inverted in Season One where everybody (including herself) thought Peggy was just getting chubbier; in the end, it turned out she was pregnant. |
| 690 | * TheMistress: |
| 691 | ** All of Don's girlfriends before his divorce could be said to be this, except for the also-married Bobbi and Sylvia. Suzanne, the schoolteacher that he forms a genuine emotional bond with, might be the most typical example of this trope. |
| 692 | ** Jane is also this before she becomes Roger's trophy wife. |
| 693 | * TheMissusAndTheEx: Betty can't stand the idea of Don rebuilding his life with another woman and she is particularly mean and malignant whenever Megan is involved or crosses her path in season 5. By season six, her feelings have softened considerably, even referring to Megan as "that poor girl." |
| 694 | * MoodWhiplash: |
| 695 | ** "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?!? |
| 696 | ** 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. |
| 697 | ** 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. |
| 698 | ** "The Crash" is twenty minutes of speed-induced hilarity, forty minutes of demonstrating why getting high isn't that great. Nobody gets any work done, Stan has sex with a minor, Don leaves his kids unattended, and everybody makes a fool of themselves. |
| 699 | ** At the end of "The Other Woman," Peggy quits SCDP and bids a very sad goodbye to Don... and then Music/TheKinks start singing "You Really Got Me" as she gets into the elevator. |
| 700 | * MoralityPet: Anna Draper to Don. |
| 701 | * MushroomSamba: |
| 702 | ** Roger and Jane try LSD in "Far Away Places." Roger likes it more than Jane. |
| 703 | ** "The Crash" in Season 6 is an even more blatant one, where the ''entire office'' does speed to allow them to stay up for one weekend straight, and it's made very unclear what is actually happening and what is just a drug/sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination. |
| 704 | ** And in "A Tale of Two Cities" in Season 6, Don's hash-smoking experience, which ends with a near-death experience. |
| 705 | * MustHaveCaffeine: When the characters don't have a drink in their hands, they have a cup of coffee. |
| 706 | * TheMutiny: The formation of SCDP at the end of Season 3. |
| 707 | * MyBelovedSmother: |
| 708 | ** Peggy's mother, a combination of genuine worry for her youngest daughter, Catholic guilt, and a not so very warm attitude. |
| 709 | ** Also Betty's, who seems to be mostly responsible for Betty's huge complex about physical appearances. Betty even said she punished her brother William by taping his revealed pornography magazine to his door for everyone to see. |
| 710 | ** 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, that said, she is one of the few people to make Joan waver in bravado. |
| 711 | * MyNaymeIs: Ted Chaough, pronounced "Shaw". |
| 712 | -->'''Roger''': Hey, writers, how many extra vowels is that? |
| 713 | * MysteriousPast: |
| 714 | ** Don is a mysterious person to viewers, to his colleagues and even his family. His father-in-law remarks how Don has no folks (he never introduced them to his family and never talks about them) and that you can't trust such a person. Viewers eventually find out about his troubled past and how he stole someone else's identity. |
| 715 | ** Bob Benson in Season 6. He's set up as Don 2.0. Pete Campbell finds out he uses a fake name and that he can't be traced back. It's revealed that he's a closeted gay and he's likely involved in a murder but not much more is known about him. |
| 716 | * NakedInMink: |
| 717 | ** In "Dark Shadows", Pete dreams of seeing his one-night-stand Beth (played by [[Series/GilmoreGirls Alexis Bledel]]) like this. |
| 718 | ** Used several times in "Severance", both with a model in the opening scene and later in Don's dream sequence of Rachel Menken. |
| 719 | * NewYearHasCome: Season 6 premiere "The Doorway" ends with Dec. 31-Jan. 1, 1967-68. Don and Megan have some neighbors over for a New Year's party. |
| 720 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: |
| 721 | ** In "For Immediate Release", Don insults the Jaguar exec Herb and deliberately blows the account, due to a combination of Herb insulting him one too many times and sexually extorting Joan, costing SCDP their most prestigious account. Even Joan gets upset with Don over this, as it means that her sleeping with Herb had no purpose. |
| 722 | ** In "In Care Of", Don realizes how much of an ass he's been and decides to quit drinking and become a better husband and father. [[spoiler:He winds up ruining his relationship with Megan and costs the agency a chance at getting the Hershey account. The latter is the last straw for the other partners, who force him to go on indefinite leave.]] |
| 723 | ** Roger [[spoiler:convinces the other partners to sell the agency to [=McCann=] to save Don's career and so Roger can prove to himself that he is a leader. Unfortunately, this winds up destroying Sterling Cooper for good when [=McCann=] absorbs [=SC&P=] in "Time and Life"...]] |
| 724 | ** ....when Pete's well-intentioned decision to tell Peggy [[spoiler:that [=McCann=] is absorbing the agency starts a rumor mill that destroys any faith the [=SC&P=] staff had in the partners.]] |
| 725 | * NoHeroToHisValet: The secretaries are privy to information about their bosses that could easily ruin them in some cases. |
| 726 | * NoPreggerSex: Averted during one of Don's flashback scenes in Season 6 when his heavily pregnant stepmother has sex with the owner of a brothel. |
| 727 | * NoodleIncident: Joan talked to her friend, Kate, about marrying a "Scotty" and how it was the "worst 6 months of my life". |
| 728 | * NotSoDifferentRemark: 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: |
| 729 | -->'''Peggy''': Most of the things Negroes can't do, I can't do either... the Union Club? They said I couldn't eat dinner there, and that the only way I could even come in was if I was inside a cake. |
| 730 | * NotThatKindOfDoctor: In "At the Codfish Ball," Bobby asks Emil Calvet if he gives a lot of shots. Dr. Calvet replies that he isn't a medical doctor, but a professor, and Don explains this trope to Bobby: |
| 731 | -->'''Don''': When you have a high degree in any field, they call you a doctor. It's from the Middle Ages. |
| 732 | -->'''Emil''': That's right. |
| 733 | * NoYay: In-universe, [[UnequalPairing Don and Peggy]] attempt to play a playful bickering couple in order to sell a Cool Whip ad. [[EpicFail It bombs spectacularly.]] |
| 734 | * OddFriendship: 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. |
| 735 | ** 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. |
| 736 | ** Lane kisses Joan in "Signal 30" after [[spoiler:beating up Pete]]. She doesn't push him off, slap him, or otherwise act disgusted. She simply indulges him for a moment (leaning her head with his instead of pulling away immediately), opens the office door afterward and responds to his apology with "For what? Everyone in this office has wanted to do that [[spoiler:to Pete]]" - as if to tell him he doesn't have to apologize for kissing her. |
| 737 | ** Lane makes a pass at Joan before [[spoiler:killing himself]]. Later, a remorseful Joan wonders why she didn't go along with it. |
| 738 | * OhCrap: |
| 739 | ** You have to feel for Don when Betty confronts him about the contents of his desk drawer. When someone on this show is shaking badly enough to drop a cigarette, you know they're suffering. |
| 740 | ** Season 4's "Hands and Knees" is full of this, from Don's utter panic when he finds out about the background check to Roger's similar panic when he finds out that Lucky Strike, still a huge part of SCDP's business, is moving to another agency. |
| 741 | ** Peggy's expression in the Life cereal meeting when she hears Don accidentally steal Danny's tagline while spitballing. |
| 742 | ** This is Pete's expression when he sees Peggy and Trudy talking to each other. |
| 743 | ** Season 5's "Far Away Places"; when Don is unable to find Megan back at the Howard Johnson, he expects the worst. |
| 744 | ** Lane Pryce when Don hands him the check with his forged signature. |
| 745 | ** In Season 6's "Favors", when [[spoiler:Sally walks in on Don and Sylvia having sex, their reactions afterward give us one of the biggest "Oh Crap" moments of the series.]] |
| 746 | * OfficeRomance: |
| 747 | ** In the first episode, Peggy gets hired as Don's new secretary and tries to impress him and sleep with him, but he has none of it. (He is married and sleeps around the town, but not with office ladies.) |
| 748 | ** Peggy, a single gal, sleeps with Pete who is a newly-wed. They don't last long as a couple but remain friends. Pete later goes OhCrap when he sees Peggy taking to his wife Trudy, but Peggy didn't reveal anything. |
| 749 | ** Don Draper has a seemingly meaningful relationship with Rachel Menken, a Jewish client of Sterling Cooper. |
| 750 | ** Joan Holloway and Roger Sterling have a long and passionate love affair. He is one of the bosses in their ad agency and married with a teen daughter while she is a single secretary (who more or less runs the office as an unofficial office manager). Some people know, Roger's older business partner Mr. Cooper, but most are oblivious to the relationship. They break up when Joan gets engaged. Roger continues to have a soft spot for Joan. |
| 751 | ** Roger starts a romance with Jane, Don's new hot secretary. Roger gets divorced and marrries Jane very soon after. It was a great surprise for everyone in the office. Don gives Roger shit for it and mocks his sickly sweet happiness. |
| 752 | ** Lois keeps looking for a guy to marry at Sterling Cooper, but she is looking at the wrong place. Most men are married and she could be just a mistress, and she soon zooms in on Sal Romano who is gay. |
| 753 | ** Don sleeps with his secretary Allison whe he's wasted and she helped him to get home. She feels exploited by him because he pretended like nothing happened. |
| 754 | ** Don starts sleeping with Faye Miller. She is a marketing researcher hired by SCDP, and probably the healthiest of Don's post-divorce relationships, until he screws it up. They kept it secret from all people in the office. |
| 755 | ** Megan starts at SCDP 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. |
| 756 | ** Ted Chaough has an affair with Peggy, his head writer. He wants to leave his wife for her, but breaks it off very soon and leaves Mannhatten. He insists he loves her though, but Penny is understandably very hurt by his treatment of her. |
| 757 | * OffTheWagon: |
| 758 | ** Duck, a recovering alcoholic, relapses with dire consequences. |
| 759 | ** Don in "The Monolith" -- he's saved from exposing his intoxication in the office by Freddy Rumsen. |
| 760 | * OldNewBorrowedAndBlue: Jane's gift to Margaret for her wedding. Very much not appreciated. |
| 761 | * OminousPipeOrgan: Well, it's not a pipe organ, and it's played for laughs. But in "Lost Horizon", Peggy is getting her stuff from the abandoned offices of the shuttered Sterling Cooper & Partners, when she hears ominous organ music coming out of nowhere. Peggy is pretty spooked until she finds the source -- [[LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn Roger Sterling playing an organ]] that [[RuleOfCool for some damn reason]] just happened to be in his office. |
| 762 | * OnTheNext: With a supernatural ability to air random bits while not actually giving the viewer an idea of what's going to happen. |
| 763 | * OnceDoneNeverForgotten: |
| 764 | ** Don's anti-tobacco ad. Two and a half seasons later, it's still costing the agency business but it can't be overlooked that it did help them first from bankruptcy. |
| 765 | ** In Season 7, his Hershey's proposal fiasco is making the rounds in the ad industry rumor mill. |
| 766 | * OneDialogueTwoConversations: 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. |
| 767 | * OneDrinkWillKillTheBaby: Averted by Betty and other pregnant women. Accurate for the time period. |
| 768 | * OneSteveLimit: Averted, with Burt Peterson and Bertram "Bert" Cooper, despite the spelling difference. |
| 769 | ** Also averted with Don and Dawn. |
| 770 | ** Pete and Betty both have a sister-in-law named Judy. |
| 771 | ** Averted once again with Jim Hobart and Jim Cutler. |
| 772 | ** Bobby Draper and Bobbie Barrett as well. |
| 773 | * OOCIsSeriousBusiness: 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)[[note]]While DrinkingOnDuty is nothing new for Don, actually getting really, really drunk was something we'd never seen him do before[[/note]] and (2) he seduces his secretary Allison, something which he would have frowned upon in earlier seasons from more or less anyone, let alone himself. These together convince ''him'' to get his act together, which he starts doing in "The Summer Man". |
| 774 | * OrphanedPunchline: Lampshaded by Roger in "The Wee Hours." |
| 775 | --> '''Pete:''' ''(walking in)'' So the hillbilly says, "That's not my finger!"\ |
| 776 | '''Roger:''' I'll have to hear the beginning of that sometime. |
| 777 | * OrWasItADream: In "Waterloo", [[spoiler:Bert's performance of "The Best Things in Life are Free" is implied to take place in Don's head, but Bert's office door is open before the vision starts and remains closed after Bert shuts it at the end of the performance, the implication being that Don really was visited by Bert's ghost.]] |
| 778 | * OutOfCharacterMoment: The usually kind, level-headed, and doting Henry telling [[StayInTheKitchen Betty to keep her opinions to herself and leave the thinking to him]] in "The Runaways" was this for many fans. |
| 779 | * OverCrank: When Don arrives in Los Angeles in the season 7 premiere, Megan meets him at the airport and she gets out of her cool new sports car convertible, wearing a sexy baby doll minidress and kisses him in slow motion, as the Spencer Davis Group's "I'm a Man" plays. |
| 780 | * OverlyLongName: The name for the new firm becomes a problem -- Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Cutler Gleason and Chaough is a mouthful, and so is SCDPCGC -- so the owners settle for Sterling Cooper and Partners or SC&P. |
| 781 | * ParentalAbandonment: Dick Whitman's mother dies at childbirth and his father dies when he was ten. He's raised by his abusive step-mother and later her new husband "Uncle Mac", who has a brothel and is a decent man. |
| 782 | * ParentsAsPeople: So many examples and from the POV of the parents and the kids (like Sally and Bobby) themselves, the characters have rich, varied personalities and lives but they don't exactly live up the term GoodParents but often are dealing with their own issues; discussed by Peggy and Stan in "Time and Life". |
| 783 | * ParentWithNewParamour: |
| 784 | ** After Betty's mother dies, her father takes up with a new woman, whom Betty determinedly hates. |
| 785 | ** Sally Draper initially 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. |
| 786 | ** Bobby has fully taken to Henry as a father figure, as evidenced when he expresses worry to Don about Henry's safety during the MLK riots. |
| 787 | ** Sally, Bobby, and Gene take well to Megan. Sally, though, doesn't take to Sylvia (who was having an affair with Don and she walked in on them). |
| 788 | ** 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. |
| 789 | ** The 4th Season premiere shows Henry Francis's adult daughter ignoring Betty at the Thanksgiving dinner. |
| 790 | ** Season 7B shows Megan walking in after her mother Marie and Roger have finished having sex, there follows an argument, then later Megan's gloomy, whiny devout sister blames Megan for their parents splitting. Megan then tells her that wallowing in misery and other's misery is a sin and that at least their mother did something about her unhappiness. |
| 791 | * ParentalIssues: Hoo boy. |
| 792 | * ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: In "Six Months Leave", Don, Roger, and Freddy Rumsen go to an underground casino. Roger gives the password "Swordfish" to the bouncer at the elevator. Roger has to bribe the bouncer to prove they aren't cops; it turns out the password is actually "Milwaukee". |
| 793 | * PetTheDog: Several. Pete, however, gets a lot in Season 3 (his startlingly progressive -- if business-oriented -- positions on race and his enthusiastic Charleston with Trudy, for starters) as a result of CharacterDevelopment. |
| 794 | * PlayboyBunny: Lane Pryce dates one. |
| 795 | * PluckyOfficeGirl: Peggy began as one of these. |
| 796 | ** Meredith and Dawn join her ranks later on. |
| 797 | * PointyHairedBoss: Lou Avery, Don's replacement at SC&P, is an incompetent asshole who blames others for his own mistakes. |
| 798 | * {{Polyamory}}: |
| 799 | ** Season 7A premiere "Time Zones" reveals that Roger has some sort of polyamorous group relationship going on at home. In his first scene, there are about a half-dozen naked people lying around. Later in the episode, he gets in bed with a woman and another man. |
| 800 | ** When Roger finds out a few episodes later ("The Monolith") that his daughter has abandoned her family to live in a hippie sex commune, he doesn't take it well. |
| 801 | * PoorCommunicationKills: Peggy finds flowers on her secretary Shirley's desk on Valentine's Day. Peggy assumes that the flowers were sent to her by a secret admirer. When she asks Shirley who the flowers are from, Shirley tries to explain that they are from her own fiancé, but she doesn't have the heart to tell Peggy this. Peggy assumes that Ted sent the flowers and sends him an angry call telling him that "that account" is lost forever. Ted assumes that Peggy is actually talking about a real account and is somewhat worried for the agency. |
| 802 | * PopularityCycle: Don's romantic relationships are characterized by this, by everyone except Rachel (who [[spoiler:turns him down]] herself). He has relationships with a series of women (Mitch, Bobbi, Suzanne, Faye) then chooses someone else over them. He marries Megan, which appears to be much more successful...for a while. Invariably, the pattern repeats, and he has an affair with his downstairs neighbor. Faye, who is a psychotherapist, calls him out on this. |
| 803 | -->'''Don''': I met someone, and we're engaged. |
| 804 | -->'''Faye''': I hope she knows you only like the beginning of things. |
| 805 | * PornStache: They were big in TheSeventies, and sure enough, when the show jumps to 1970 with Season 7B, Roger Sterling is sporting a ridiculous pornstache. Surprisingly, mild-mannered Ted Chaough is too. |
| 806 | * PrecisionFStrike: Roger delivers one in response to Pete Campbell telling him they've lost a $4 million account. |
| 807 | * PrecociousCrush: Glen for Betty. Later Mitchell, the son of Don's season 6 mistress. |
| 808 | * PredatoryProstitute: |
| 809 | ** Don was raped as a child by a woman at the brothel where he grew up, just as he was starting to see her as a mother / maternal figure. |
| 810 | ** Manolo is implied to be a gigolo who seduced Pete's elderly mother, married her for her money, and then pushed her off a cruise ship. Maybe. |
| 811 | * PrettyInMink: Quite a few furs show up. |
| 812 | * PreviouslyOn |
| 813 | * {{Pride}}: This turns out to be Lane Pryce's undoing. The man started the series as a bit of a ChewToy who is used as a hatchet man by his bosses and never given the recognition he deserves. In America, he finds the freedom to pursue his own goals and becomes a founding partner of Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce. He is justifiably proud of his achievements, but his pride soon leads him to make questionable decisions. When a business downturn forces the partners to put more money into the company, he commits all his assets to the venture and does not tell anyone about his difficult financial position. More importantly, he fails to pay his taxes, and a year later has to make a very large lump payment that would bankrupt him. Don would have been more than happy to lend Lane the money, but Lane's pride prevents him from asking for a loan. Instead, [[spoiler:he forges a check to get an advance on a bonus. When bonuses are canceled, he cannot return the money, and Don fires him when he finds out about the embezzlement. Lane hangs himself in his office rather than face the disgrace.]] Lane was no longer willing to "suffer the little humiliations" that his life was filled with before he became successful and thus was not able to ask for help when he most needed it. |
| 814 | * PreviouslyOverlookedParamour: Peggy goes through a series of relationships, none of which pan out, while working a desk (at most) away from Stan near-constantly since his introduction in the middle of Season 4. The final episode ends with Peggy realizing her love for Stan and their last scene in the series is TheBigDamnKiss between them. |
| 815 | -->'''Peggy''': I don't even think about you. I mean, I do, all the time. Because you're there... and you're here. |
| 816 | * PrimalScene: |
| 817 | ** 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 (remember, Roger is probably her favorite -- if [[HonoraryUncle honorary]] -- uncle). 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 the city was, she answers, "Dirty." |
| 818 | ** In "Favors", [[spoiler:Sally walks in on Don and Sylvia. This ruins what little faith Sally had in her father.]] |
| 819 | * ProfessionalButtKisser: Bob Benson in Season 6. In a broader sense, as Roger puts it, the job description of an account executive consists of roping in a client, being overly obsequious, and sucking it up to him no matter how outrageous the client may be. |
| 820 | * PromotionToOpeningTitles: Kiernan Shipka, who plays Sally Draper, in Season 4. Jessica Pare, who plays Megan, in Season 5. |
| 821 | * PunBasedTitle: And in-universe, too! |
| 822 | --> Mad Men |
| 823 | --> A term coined in the late 1950's to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue. |
| 824 | --> They coined it. |
| 825 | -->--Opening of the pilot, "Smoke Gets Into Your Eyes" |
| 826 | * PunnyName: Dick Whitman gets his name (unbeknownst to his family) from his mother's fondest wish -- cutting [[FreudianThreat off his father's johnson]] and boiling it in hog fat for getting her pregnant. |
| 827 | * PutOnABus: Sal Romano's fate remains unknown after SC fired him in Season 3. |
| 828 | * QuittingToGetMarried: |
| 829 | ** Joan's new husband forces her to quit her job because he feels that if she keeps on working it will look like he cannot support his family. Then it turns out that he really cannot support them financially and Joan has to take a much less prestigious and lower paying job at a department store. |
| 830 | ** Averted when Don marries his secretary. He is actually quite supportive of her working at the firm as a copywriter and is disappointed when she quits the job to pursue an acting career. |
| 831 | * RacistGrandma: |
| 832 | ** Pete's mother. He tells Bob Benson when he recommends Manolo as a caretaker when her dementia takes its toll that she'll only accept if he's "Spanish from Spain." |
| 833 | ** Joan's mother, now a grandma since Joan has a baby, pipes up in "The Strategy" that "the Jews close everything on Saturday". |
| 834 | ** Surprisingly, Bert Cooper when he sees Dawn has been moved to the reception desk. |
| 835 | --> '''Bert''': I’m all for the national advancement of colored people, but I do not believe they should advance all the way to the front of this office. People can see her from the elevator. |
| 836 | ** Ida Blankmanship isn't a grandma or mom, but she quipped that, if she wanted to watch "two Negroes fight", she'll drop a dollar on the street. |
| 837 | * RageQuit: In "Blowing Smoke", Bert Cooper of all people. He gets over it. |
| 838 | ** Also a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}} - "Get me my shoes!" |
| 839 | --> '''Stan''': I didn't think they'd start with ''him''. |
| 840 | * RagingStiffie: 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 embarrassment. |
| 841 | * RapeDiscretionShot: Joan's BadDate isn't shown. The camera pulls away and we see what she's seeing: the floor under the sofa. |
| 842 | * RapeAsDrama: Joan gets raped by her fiancé in Don's office. [[spoiler:Don was raped in the past while staying in a brothel as a child.]] |
| 843 | * RealityIsUnrealistic: |
| 844 | ** 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. |
| 845 | ** Season 5 opens with African-American protestors getting doused with paper bag water bombs by employees of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_&_Rubicam Young & Rubicam]], one of SCDP's non-fictional 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. |
| 846 | ** Hanna Rosin, [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2015/mad_men_season_7_part_2/episode_5/mad_men_season_7_reviewed_the_villains_of_mad_men_have_never_been_quite.html writing for Slate]], thought that the sexual harassment Joan suffers in "Lost Horizon" was too crude to be believable for the era. Scott Lemiuex, writing for the blog Laywers, Guns & Money, [[http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/05/was-the-sexual-harassment-portrayed-on-mad-men-unrealistically-crude-or-implausible-spoiler-no pointed out]] that a lot of ''modern'' sexual harassment cases are far worse than what was portrayed on the show. |
| 847 | * ReallyGetsAround: Virtually everybody's favorite pastime. You need a [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2013/04/which_mad_men_characters_score_the_most_the_slate_mad_men_scorecard.html scorecard]] to keep up with the body count. As of Season 6, Don gets the gold with 17 partners, [[SilverFox Roger]] gets the silver at 9, and Pete is bronze with 7. |
| 848 | * ARealManIsAKiller: "I killed seventeen men in Okinawa!", says Duck, the drunken loser. |
| 849 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: |
| 850 | ** 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". |
| 851 | ** Don's tend to be short and sweet, as in "My Old Kentucky Home": |
| 852 | -->'''Roger:''' You know, my mother was right. It's a mistake to be conspicuously happy. Some people don't like it.\ |
| 853 | '''Don:''' No one thinks you're happy. They think you're foolish. |
| 854 | ** Sweet, demure Allison, pushed to the breaking point, finally hits Don with the harshest one she can muster: |
| 855 | --> '''Allison:''' I don't say this easily, but ''you're not a good person!'' |
| 856 | ** [[CallBack Three seasons]] after her husband raped her, Joan finally lets him have it in "Mystery Date". |
| 857 | --> '''Joan''': You’re not a good man, you never were, even before we were married -- ''and you know what I’m talking about''. |
| 858 | ** '''Joan''': unloads one on Don after he scuttles the Jaguar account in "For Immediate Release." |
| 859 | ** Peggy to Ted in "In Care Of:" "Well, aren't you lucky -- to have *decisions*!" |
| 860 | ** Megan to Don in "New Business" [[spoiler:while divorcing him]]: |
| 861 | --> '''Megan:''' I'm going to say a word. Wasn't going to give you a satisfaction of knowing you ruined my life. |
| 862 | --> '''Don:''' Megan. |
| 863 | --> '''Megan:''' Why did I ever believe you? Why did I believe the things you said to me? Why am I being punished for being young? I gave up everything for you. Because I believed you and you're nothing but a liar. An aging, sloppy, selfish liar. |
| 864 | ** Mathis to Don as he's being fired in "The Forecast": "You don't have any character. You're just handsome! Stop kidding yourself!" |
| 865 | * ReassignedToAntarctica: In the season 6 finale, the position in California with Sunkist is seen as such from a career perspective (Peggy even compares it to Siberia). It's subverted, however, when a number of SC&P employees vie for the position for personal reasons, including Don and Ted, who both see it as a chance to start their lives over away from the things that are tearing their personal lives apart, with Ted ultimately taking the position as a way to repair his marriage while getting away from Peggy. |
| 866 | * RefugeInAudacity: the woman who breaks into Don and Megan's apartment in "The Crash" claims to be Sally's grandmother. Sally disbelieves her, partially because she's never heard of her before, and partially because she's black (although the woman claims she wasn't literally Don's mother, but that she raised him all the same). |
| 867 | * RichInDollarsPoorInSense: Lee Garner Jr., who owns Lucky Strike and seems to show up to make everyone at Sterling-Cooper's lives miserable. Crosses the MoralEventHorizon 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. |
| 868 | -->'''Roger''': If Lee Garner wants three wise men flown in from Jerusalem, he gets it. |
| 869 | ** 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. |
| 870 | -->'''Don''': [in German accent] Did you enjoy the Fuhrer's birthday?\ |
| 871 | '''Roger''': [in German accent] May he live for a thousand years. |
| 872 | * RidiculousProcrastinator: Roger and Peggy drink, tell stories, roller skate, and play the organ in the old SC&P office in "Lost Horizon" before going to [=McCann=]. They do this even as the walls are being removed and the lights are going out. They both have their reasons for staying away. |
| 873 | * RightBehindMe: Harry makes sexist comments about Megan to Stan. Megan eventually walks in on them, and Harry ignores Stan's "Hi, Megan!" warning, proceeding to [[DiggingHimselfDeeper Dig Himself Deeper.]] |
| 874 | * RightHandHottie: Lane Pryce's Season 3 [[InsistentTerminology "right hand" (NOT "secretary")]], John Hooker. 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 [[Film/JamesBond "Moneypenny."]] |
| 875 | * TheRival: Several firms hold this position with varying degrees of [[FriendlyRivalry amicability]]. Peggy and "Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough" is probably the most [[WorthyAdversary prominent example]]. |
| 876 | * 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. |
| 877 | ** Subverted at the end of "Time and Life" when Don starts the rousing speech and the staff immediately ignore him and walk away. |
| 878 | * RunningGag: |
| 879 | ** 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. |
| 880 | ** Harry constantly spoiling people for plot twists in "Peyton Place" . |
| 881 | ** Roger has resorted to bribery to solve his problems in the office three times so far in season 5. After the first time, he laments that he should carry less money on his person -- the two subsequent bribes see incrementally less cash change hands. |
| 882 | ** Jaguars are unreliable and don't start when you need them. That led to Lane Pryce using his second choice of [[spoiler:suicide methods]]. |
| 883 | ** Fictional client Secor Laxative brought up each season for comic relief. |
| 884 | ** The pillar in Pete's/Harry's/Peggy's office regularly gets smashed into. |
| 885 | [[/folder]] |
| 886 | |
| 887 | [[folder:S - Z]] |
| 888 | * SanitySlippage: Peggy toward the end of Season 1. |
| 889 | ** Ginsberg full blown in Season 7A. |
| 890 | * SarcasticConfession: Harry mistakes Stan's discreet warning for a sarcastic joke; after he fails to take the him, Stan just plays along, encouraging Harry to dig himself a little deeper: |
| 891 | -->'''Harry:''' I would've just stood up and grabbed [Megan]'s little French behind and pushed her through those cheap-post-four-walls. |
| 892 | -->'''Stan:''' [[RightBehindMe Hi, Megan.]] |
| 893 | -->'''Harry:''' Very funny. God, what I would do to her... |
| 894 | * SassyBlackWoman: Shirley, contrasted with the more demure Dawn. |
| 895 | * SatelliteCharacter[=/=]TheGenericGuy: Ken Cosgrove seems to exist primarily to act as a foil for other characters. Paul Kinsey and Pete Campbell are jealous of Ken's literary ability, Sal Romano is attracted to Ken, and Ken's refusal to mix SCDP business with his personal life in Season 4 serves to contrast with most of the other account men at SCDP. He gets a couple storylines later in the show's run, like his secret career as a sci-fi writer as revealed in Season 5, or his taking a job at Dow Chemical solely to spite Roger Sterling after he's fired in Season 7B. |
| 896 | * SceneryCensor: Roger is nude in "Time Zones", but a very, very carefully placed telephone covers his naughty bits. |
| 897 | * ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Miss Blankenship. |
| 898 | * ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: Don tries to help Dr. Rosen's son get a deferment from the draft but quickly realizes that he does not have the connections to accomplish this. It turns out that Ted Chaough does have the right connections and he arranges for the kid to join the Air National Guard instead. |
| 899 | * SecretKeeper: |
| 900 | ** Numerous people for Don, including Pete, Cooper, Betty, Faye, and Megan. |
| 901 | ** In "Chinese Wall" -- and for other secrets a long time beforehand -- Joan for Roger. |
| 902 | * SecretRelationship: The series has lots of secret relationships, often involving an OfficeRomance and/or infidelity: |
| 903 | ** Don Draper's first mistress is a bohemian artist Midge. Her friends know about them, but people in Don's job don't, and he keeps it secret from his wife. |
| 904 | ** Don Draper sleeps with Rachel Menken, a Jewish client of Sterling Cooper advertising company. Rachel starts falling in love with him, but breaks it off when Don offers to run away with her without any consideration for his wife or kids. |
| 905 | ** Joan Holloway and Roger Sterling have a long and passionate love affair. He is one of the bosses in their advertising agency and married with a teen daughter while she is a single secretary (who more or less runs the office as an unofficial office manager). Some people know, for example Roger's older business partner Mr. Cooper tells Joan she should not waste her youth, but most are oblivious to the relationship. They break up when Joan gets engaged. Roger continues to have a soft spot for Joan. They later have a baby together after they sleep together once, and Roger tries to tag along. |
| 906 | ** Roger starts a romance with Jane, Don's new hot secretary. Roger gets divorced and marries Jane very soon after. It was a great surprise for everyone in the office. |
| 907 | ** In season 2, Don Draper has an ugly affair with Bobbie Barrett, a wife and manager to an obnoxious comedian Jimmy. The relationship started as professional but they soon begin sleeping together. Jimmy strongly suspects they slept together, and Don's copy writer Peggy also finds out about the affair. Don ends their relationship after he learns she's been gossiping about him. |
| 908 | ** Don Draper, still married to Betty, romantically pursues Susan Ferrell, his daughter's young idealistic teacher. She resists -- at first. Later she is sorry they can't date publicly for fear that they would be seen. Susan's brother visits her when they are together and figures out something is off. Don breaks it off when his marriage starts crumbling. |
| 909 | ** Don starts sleeping with Faye Miller. She is a marketing researcher hired by SCDP, and probably the healthiest of Don's post-divorce relationships. They kept it secret from all people in the office, and not many knew about it because Faye left the job when SCDP lost their tobacco account. |
| 910 | ** Megan starts at SCDP as Don's new secretary, they sleep together and very soon 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. Many people are so surprised when he announces the engagement that they don't even know who Megan is. |
| 911 | ** Ted Chaough has an affair with Peggy, his head writer. He wants to leave his wife for her, but breaks it off very soon and leaves Mannhatten. He insists he loves her deeply, but Penny is very hurt by his treatment of her. |
| 912 | ** Pete (married to Trudy) has an affair with a young depressed housewife. Her husband eventually finds out and he and Pete have a fight on a train. |
| 913 | ** Don Draper sleeps with Sylvia Rosen, an older but beautiful housewife of a doctor who live in the same building as Don and his wife Megan. Don is disgusted with himself when his daughter Sally accidentally sees them in bed. |
| 914 | * SelfDeprecation: In the premiere of Season 7B (the final run of episodes), Ken speculates about using his work experience as material for an upcoming short story or novel. Pete comments that their line of work is "boring", and that Ken should focus on an adventure tale instead. |
| 915 | * SeparatedByACommonLanguage: The Israeli tourism board all speak English, but it's not their first language. The staff of Sterling Cooper are put off when the Israelis say they came to them because they wanted something 'old fashioned', since that is almost an insult in the advertising world. One of the other members has to explain that they meant 'classic'. |
| 916 | * SerialHomewrecker: |
| 917 | ** Joan [[EthicalSlut enjoys her sexuality]] and as she works at an advertising agency, she's mostly surrounded by married men who all want her. She has an affair with Paul Kinsey, but ends it because he bragged about her, a one-night stand with Harry Crane, and has a lengthy affair (covering a period of years) with professional partner Roger Sterling. Although Joan and Roger's relationship is loving, she implies later that she viewed sex as her purpose, as she feels intense guilt for [[spoiler:Lane's suicide]] because she feels she could have stopped it if she slept with him. However, Joan actually goes out of her way to tell her partners that she doesn't intend for them to leave their wives. |
| 918 | ** Don starts off as a subversion (he genuinely believes he can run away with Rachel in Season 1 and loses interest in Midge when he realizes she's in love with someone else). However, after his marriage to Megan between Season 4 and 5, he seems to prefer married women, such as his downstairs neighbor, because he won't be asked to leave Megan. |
| 919 | * TheSeventies: Season 7B premiere "Severance" is set in April 1970. Joan tries cocaine in one episode. |
| 920 | * SeventiesHair: Season 7B sees longer sideburns, loosened up looking hairstyles, loose tendrils, Jean Shrimpton style wavy hair, and Don with a little less brylcreem. |
| 921 | * SexGod: Bobbi Barrett confirms that the good things she heard about Don are true. Faye calls Don "Mr. Bond" in bed. Betty tells Don in the first season how much she's physically attracted to him. |
| 922 | ** Seriously, Don's idea of solving problems with a client's wife is shagging her in a coat room. It works too! [[http://www.hulu.com/watch/40972/saturday-night-live-don-drapers-guide SNL even posted a guide to how you can be one too]]. |
| 923 | * SexSells: Don describes this expression as over-simplifying things ("people who say that think that monkeys can do [our job]"). Basically, he argues, people want to be the product. |
| 924 | * SexWithTheEx: When Betty and Don go to drop Bobby off at camp (Season 6 Episode 9, "The Better Half"), they have a "camping trip" of their own in Betty's motel room. |
| 925 | * SexyPriest: Father Gill. There's even a {{subtext}} of an attraction to Peggy, featuring some noticeably frustrated guitar playing on his part after a conversation. Peggy cuts off contact with Father Gill in the last episode of the second season. |
| 926 | * SexySecretary: Joan. Also, Jane, Megan, Peggy ... all of them, really, probably even Miss "queen of perversions" Blankenship back in the day. |
| 927 | ** Averted with Peggy, as her sensuality only shows when her confidence develops, which was after she was promoted from secretary. |
| 928 | * SexyStewardess: |
| 929 | ** One is almost a conquest of Don's in "Out of Town", until a fire alarm interrupts. |
| 930 | ** Roger is sleeping with one in season 6. She tips him off that there is a GM executive waiting in the airport lounge due to a flight delay and helps Roger get a meeting with Chevy about a new ad campaign. |
| 931 | ** TWA's Trisha flirts with Don in "Field Trip" and by "Severance" she is bedding him during a layover in New York. |
| 932 | * SharpDressedMan: Being the 1960s, a smart suit is practically a must for men in business. Three-piece or two-piece is an interesting generational divide: three-piece for older suits like Roger, while younger execs like Don and Pete wear more modern two-pieces with dangerously sharp and narrow lapels. Don epitomizes this trope, but pretty much all male staff in the corporate world, outside most of creative, are always seen in suits of different cuts. The optional fedoras and trilbies, [[WaistcoatOfStyle waistcoats]], and overcoats during the colder months, may add to the look. This takes an interesting turn in Season 7, when 70s-era fashions like tan plaid sport coats (a favorite of Ken and Harry) start showing up, making you realize why these fashions (which seem ridiculous today) might have seemed stylish at the time. |
| 933 | * ShadowArchetype: Been a few in the show. |
| 934 | ** Margaret Sterling to Peggy. For one, they started off as young women with a rather childlike 50s state of dress with their brown hair in ponytails and with a relationship with a father/mentor figure, the name "Margaret", parents that want them married, having sacrificed motherhood for a more fulfilling adult life, and slightly Joan wanting them to pick up some style tips from her; the resemblance ends there with Peggy having a more direct approach (especially later on) towards things she's entitled to (the directness impressing Roger) and having been trying to make peace with having her baby taken away, Roger also shares his working life with Peggy and has a night of bonding before they move on to [=McCann=] Erickson, Peggy lacks the relationship Margaret has with her father because he died before her 13th birthday, she didn't go down the traditional path her family wanted for her, and she develops a medium between the counter culture and the more traditional adult life set by her era albeit one that doesn't [[StayInTheKitchen place her in the home]]; Margaret was Daddy's SpoiledBrat who looked like a miniature of her Mother, got married after high school, has a strained relationship with her father, did the job her parents expected her to do (get married), yet later leaves her husband and young son for a hippie commune and becomes "Marigold". |
| 935 | ** Peggy to Joan: hard-working, they both lost their fathers and were raised by [[MyBelovedSmother critical]] mothers in a lower-middle class environment, both worked their way out of the secretarial pool while dealing with the misogyny of their workplaces, [[MyGirlIsNotASlut both lied about their sexual history to their boyfriends]], rarely seen with genuine female office friendships, were impregnated by one of the SC&P partners, both are smokers with a sharp wit and intellect to match, and both end the series with their careers on top and with their stars rising. |
| 936 | *** Peggy grew up in a devout Catholic environment in Brooklyn with her mother and sister, witnessed her father die, went to secretarial school after high school, experiments with the counter culture, she works in a more creative field (also one that is more open-minded about women in positions other than secretary), both have depended on the Men giving the thumbs up to advance, and tries not to play up her sensuality at work and dresses more simply. She also [[spoiler: gets a guy (Stan) who loves her for who she is and isn't threatened by her strength and talents but appreciates them]], was separated from her baby, and is on the fast track to become Creative Director (if Pete's predictions, good chance, are correct). |
| 937 | *** Joan was raised by a mother who raised her to be "admired" by men and likely saw her father leave the family, she had two failed marriages, went to college and moved to New York from Spokane, is more conventional in attitude than Peggy, works as a partner and under accounts, dresses sexily and uses her womanly wiles to get things done, takes great pride in being "the most gorgeous" woman in the office, raised her baby under the guise of being conceived by her and Greg, and [[spoiler: breaks off with yet another man that wants to keep her as a woman of leisure and not work, and starts her own production agency]]. |
| 938 | ** Rachel Menken and Betty Draper in the 1st season: well-educated, both lost their mothers, came from very comfortable backgrounds, Daddy's little princesses, [[spoiler: soon die from cancer]], and involved with Don. But Rachel grew up motherless and quite lonely, is Jewish, urban, fights for her familys' business and what she's entitled to, is more open and kinder, relies on her intelligence rather than looks, and finally got the husband and children she's always wanted without sacrificing her career. Sharp contrast to the spoiled, passive, WASP-ish, suburban[[note]]In both her current life and her upbringing; she grew up in Lower Merion Township in Philadelphia's posh Main Line suburbs.[[/note]] Betty who grew up with a mother that sent the message that women's worth lie in their beauty, and gave up a lively career of being a model and the humanities for marriage and motherhood, and was an unhappy homemaker. |
| 939 | ** Betty Draper Francis and her friend Francine Hanson. Both are unhappy homemakers with distant and unfaithful husbands and share a AlphaBitch-like personality and wit with the common prejudices of that time. But while Betty tries to look perfect and is tearing up inside, Francine acknowledges more of her own insecurities and how imperfect her life is; Betty was a glamorous model in Manhattan who spent a year in Italy while Francine was a schoolteacher somewhere less glamorous. Francine is more honest and aggressive, has a healthier relationship with her children for the most part, confronts her husband and stays married to him, and later becomes a working mom when she attempts a real estate exam and starts her own travel agency. Betty maintains that facade, is very cold to her children, divorces Don and marries another man quickly, and voices skepticism about being a working mother and wife before starting on a Masters in Psychology. |
| 940 | * ShipSinking: |
| 941 | ** Don and Joan after Don fires Jaguar without consulting anyone. |
| 942 | ** For Pete and Peggy in the season two finale. |
| 943 | * ShipTease: |
| 944 | ** Don kisses Joan square on the mouth when he wins the Clio in "Waldorf Stories." |
| 945 | ** 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. |
| 946 | ** 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 exception of Miss Blankenship, which is of course why she becomes Don's secretary after Allison leaves). |
| 947 | ** Lane kisses Joan after he punches out Pete in "Signal 30". |
| 948 | *** Her calmness in handling it, including appearing to return the kiss for a moment and responding to his apology as if he is apologizing for [[spoiler:beating up Pete]], ups the ShipTease factor, |
| 949 | ** Chaough kisses Peggy in "For Immediate Release". In that same episode, Peggy has an ImagineSpot where she makes out with Chaough instead of Abe. They eventually have sex in the season 6 finale. |
| 950 | ** Peggy and Stan make out in "The Crash". Subverted when Peggy realizes that Stan is willing to sleep with just about anyone if it helps get his mind off of his cousin's death in Vietnam. |
| 951 | ** Joan Harris and Bob Benson. Bob is at Joan's apartment as the both of them are about to go on a picnic together. This after Bob takes Joan to the hospital when she [[ItMakesSenseInContext accidentally drinks furniture polish]]. |
| 952 | * ShownTheirWork: Along with the general period research, the show employs two former real-life ad men to help them create the business deals and ad campaigns. |
| 953 | ** Everything about the business aspect is actually really well done. Business and business law professors sometimes encourage their students to watch the show in order to get a feel for the dynamics of running a small business and the rules that apply to them. |
| 954 | ** The incident where Y&R ad men pelt civil rights protestors with water balloons is based on [[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2012/mad_men_season_5/week_1/mad_men_premiere_the_generational_divide_gets_deeper_.html a real incident]]. In a case of RealityIsUnrealistic, several critics lambasted the scene for being ham-handed, even after they learned it actually happened. |
| 955 | * SiblingYinYang: |
| 956 | ** Open-minded free spirit Anna Draper's sister is uptight and conservative. |
| 957 | ** Peggy is a modern, liberated career girl, while her sister is a traditional Catholic housewife who resents Peggy for this. |
| 958 | ** In a more dysfunctional vein of the Olson Sisters, there is the glamorous, semi-bohemian, struggling actress Megan and her depressive, devout Catholic Housewife sister Marie-France. |
| 959 | * {{Sideboob}}: Megan nestling up to Don in "A Little Kiss" is as close to nudity as ''Mad Men'' will get. |
| 960 | ** Until Betty gets out of the tub in "Tea Leaves", the very next episode. |
| 961 | ** Then Pete's lover Beth does this in "The Phantom". Season 5 was heavy on sideboob. |
| 962 | ** Roger's young girlfriend Daisy in "For Immediate Release." |
| 963 | * SimultaneousArcs: "Far Away Places" uses this to show a single day from Peggy, Roger, and Don's perspectives. |
| 964 | * SixtiesHair: Season 2-7A sees a great progression of hairstyles in the Sixties where the younger men lose the Bryllcreem and/or grow their hair (including facial) out, Joan gets a beehive that loosens up into a elaborate artichoke, Peggy loses her ponytail and gets a flipped bob, Betty's hair gets a little bigger and more flipped before trading in for a more political wife look (think Jackie Kennedy, Ladybird Johnson, or Pat Nixon). |
| 965 | * TheFifties: While the show starts in March of 1960, many aspects of '50s fashion and culture are still very present until around the assassination of John F. Kennedy. |
| 966 | * TheSixties: Get their start in Season 4. If you don't believe us, look at the Sterling Cooper-Draper Pryce logo. Just look at it! Look at Peggy's little trip to what appears to be an outpost of the [[Creator/AndyWarhol Factory]] or (for that matter) what she wore to it. There's also Roger Sterling's new office, seemingly straight from the mind of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Saarinen Eero Saarinen]] himself, decked out in black, white, clear glass, and chrome, with circles everywhere and hardly a straight line to be found. Also underscored by Don's new mod apartment and the new Mrs. Draper in a miniskirt. Hippies show up for the first time in Season 6. |
| 967 | * SlapSlapKiss: Don and Megan's fights tend to turn into very angry foreplay. |
| 968 | * SleepCute: In "The Suitcase", Don and Peggy falling asleep on each other in Don's office. |
| 969 | * SleepingWithTheBoss: This is a frequent occurrence. Roger and Don have a habit of sleeping with their secretaries and both married one of them after divorcing their first wives. Peggy had a one night stand with Pete when she was still a secretary, and people falsely assume that she was promoted to copywriter because she slept with Don. Megan is propositioned by her female boss when she gets an acting job on a soap opera. |
| 970 | * SlidingScaleOfContinuity: Level 5 (Full Lockout). The ongoing story of Don Draper and the firm of Sterling Cooper. |
| 971 | * SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Rather firmly in the middle, with the slightest lean towards cynicism: despite the downer endings and shadiness, the characters are too complex for the series to fall anywhere else. |
| 972 | * SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty: ''Quite'' shiny, most of the time. Most of the main characters are either corporate executives or corporate executives' wives, for God's sake! More specifically, Matthew Weiner is interested in using the "visual vocabulary" of the early Sixties, which had the slightest tendency to over-shiny things, but on account of the realistic depiction, it provides a bit of dissonance. |
| 973 | ** Don's flashbacks to his childhood fall on the grittier side however, taking place in rural America during the Great Depression. The visual dissonance between the flashbacks and the main story just makes them all the more jarring. |
| 974 | * SlippingAMickey: Don falls victim to an OutlawCouple of thieves in a hotel room ("Seven Twenty-Three"). |
| 975 | * SlouchOfVillainy: |
| 976 | ** 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. |
| 977 | ** The credits, art box [=DVDs=], and promotional materials feature images and scenes of Don reclined on a couch in a decidedly antiheroic, jaded way. |
| 978 | * SlutShaming: |
| 979 | ** 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. |
| 980 | ** 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. |
| 981 | ** Subverted in "The Other Woman": 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''. They had to, since the partners – with the exception of Don -- were the ones who coerced her into doing it. Joan's visibly uncomfortable with the whole thing before and during the act, but only accepted it because of the financial security for her and her son (she got a partnership of the company and a voting equity stake in the partnership out of it). |
| 982 | ** In "Severance". After dealing with some FratBro like clients, Peggy [[InnocentlyInsensitive states that Joan invited their behavior due to the way she dresses]]. Joan then implies Peggy's just jealous of how good looking she is and Peggy angrily shoots back that Joan is "filthy rich". No one looks good there. |
| 983 | * SmokingHotSex: Fairly frequently; in fact, barely five minutes into the first episode. Duck in particular seems to be fond of the practice. |
| 984 | * SmokingIsCool: 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 while still looking cool on a superficial level. |
| 985 | ** Peggy swaggers into [=McCann=] Erickson at the end of "Lost Horizon" with a cigarette dangling from her lips and cool sunglasses on (plus Bert Cooper's copy of Hokusai's ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fishermans_Wife Dream of the Fisherman's Wife]]'' under her arm). |
| 986 | ** Totally deconstructed in "The Milk and Honey Route" when someone finally gets advanced lung cancer. |
| 987 | * SmugSnake: Duck Phillips and Pete Campbell. St. John Powell in Season 3 is another example. |
| 988 | * SoccerHatingAmericans: |
| 989 | -->'''Lane:''' ''(proudly)'' I'll have you know that England has won the World Cup! |
| 990 | -->'''Roger:''' ...cup of what? |
| 991 | * SpiritualSuccessor: Many of Don Draper's traits have been traced back to Tony Soprano (to name a few; duality, chronic and casual infidelity, a broken ace with a blonde StepfordSmiler wife, parental issues, childhood traumas). Creator Matthew Weiner was ''Series/TheSopranos'' producer and main co-writer for years. Both shows share a fair number of narrative and artistic elements and Matthew Weiner has compared Peggy's standing at Sterling Cooper as Don's protegee [[AuthorAvatar to his own standing]] while working under David Chase on ''The Sopranos''. Notably, the series was first pitched to Chase for HBO, but Weiner, as Peggy, had to move on without his mentor. |
| 992 | * SpontaneousChoreography: See SuddenMusicalEnding below. |
| 993 | * StalkerWithACrush: ''Glen Bishop.'' First to Betty in seasons one and two, and as of season four to Sally. The stalker gets overcome, as Glen's relationship with Sally ends up being a fairly innocent friendship. The dynamic with Glen and Betty reappears in "The Forecast" in Season 7B. |
| 994 | * StartMyOwn: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. |
| 995 | * StandardOfficeSetting: It is set in a New York advertising company. Secretaries sit in a secretarial pool, some people have their own office, sometimes shared with more employees. Men leading a department or dealing with clients usually have their own offices. The partners have gorgeous, spacious offices decorated with awesome art (e.g. Bert Cooper has some Japanese woodblock prints or Roger Sterling has some amazing op art pictures in later seasons). Meetings are held in big rooms or people's offices. Sometimes we see characters trying to get a better office or being envious of each other. |
| 996 | * StealthInsult: Sally's new therapist tells Betty to call her Dr. Edna, just like the kids do; suggesting she recognizes Betty as immature and childlike. |
| 997 | * StealthPun: "Every job has its ups and downs." Said by Hollis, the elevator attendant. |
| 998 | ** Herb Rennet's wife's nickname is Peaches... as in the musical duo Peaches and Herb. |
| 999 | * StepfordSmiler: In one way or another, just about all the women: |
| 1000 | ** Betty Draper is the name that most immediately springs to mind. |
| 1001 | ** Joan in all of season 3, especially on her last day at Sterling-Cooper. |
| 1002 | ** Trudy Campbell. Despite some {{Character Development}}, she still relentlessly pursues the suburban dream, glossing over her husband's weaknesses and infidelities and ignoring his wishes to remain in Manhattan. |
| 1003 | ** A recurring exception seems to be the women Don tends to cheat on his wife with, perhaps precisely because they ''aren't'' an example of this. |
| 1004 | * StepfordSuburbia: Played to the hilt, whether it's narrow-minded suburbanites like Betty's friend Francine, Betty and Don's horrible marriage inside their seemingly perfect Ossining home, or the rapid deterioration in Pete and Trudy's marriage after they leave the city for the burbs. |
| 1005 | ** The Ossining location is in many ways symbolic -- people who know UsefulNotes/NewYorkState also know it as the location of [[TheAlcatraz Sing Sing Prison]]. |
| 1006 | * TheStoic: Don, to the point that it's startling whenever he ''does'' show any emotion. |
| 1007 | * StraightGay: The Belle Jolie man in Season 1, although he gets slightly Camper in his "date" with Sal. |
| 1008 | * {{Subtext}}: Deserves special mention because the show doesn't just rely on this, but ''requires'' it. The setting actively forbids anyone from saying what they mean. More often than not, conversations and fights are about something else entirely. This is why the show is hailed as genius. This and the humor. And the drama. And the pretty people. |
| 1009 | * SuddenMusicalEnding: Easily one of the weirdest ever, as "Waterloo", and Season 7A of the show, end with Bert Cooper singing "The Best Things in Life Are Free", complete with secretarial backup dancers, completely out of nowhere. [[spoiler:To make things even weirder, Bert passed away earlier in the episode.]] |
| 1010 | * SuicideIsPainless: Subverted in [[spoiler:"Commissions and Fees". The scene where Lane tries to kill himself by stuffing the tailpipe of his Jaguar with a rag and asphyxiating himself is played like this, but then the attempt fails. Lane's actual suicide- - by hanging -- is played with no music whatsoever, just dialogue and horrified reactions when first Joan, then Pete, and finally Don and Roger, discover his body]]. |
| 1011 | %% * SurprisePregnancy: Frequently. |
| 1012 | * SweetAndSourGrapes: Season 3 ends with Pete finally agreeing to adopt. He finally gets Trudy pregnant in Season 4. |
| 1013 | * TakeThat: |
| 1014 | ** "I wouldn't have told Roger if I intended it to remain a secret." |
| 1015 | ** It's ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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". |
| 1016 | ** Megan lambasts ''Series/DarkShadows'' in the episode of that name, which just happened to air the same weekend that the ''Dark Shadows'' [[Film/DarkShadows movie]] was released. |
| 1017 | * TantrumThrowing: |
| 1018 | ** Long-suffering secretary Allison throws a vase at Don in "The Rejected" when he rants and suggests she write her own reference letter. |
| 1019 | ** After being dumped by Glo-Coat, Don throws his CLIO award across the office in "Chinese Wall." Megan later fishes it out of the trash and repairs it. |
| 1020 | ** Megan throws a plate of pasta against the wall when Don comes home late in "Christmas Waltz." |
| 1021 | ** Joan's response to a messenger serving her with divorce papers in "Christmas Waltz" is "Surprise, there's an airplane here to see you!". |
| 1022 | ** Don throws money in Peggy's face in "The Other Woman." |
| 1023 | ** An angry Don throws his office phone into the bar cart in "The Crash." |
| 1024 | ** After a particularly frustrating meeting in "The Monolith," Don throws his typewriter into the wall of his office. |
| 1025 | * TarotTroubles: Anna gives Don a reading in "The Mountain King". |
| 1026 | * TeethClenchedTeamwork: Petty and professional rivalries run wild all over the office, where moments of abrasiveness can be followed by a mutual understanding. In season 6, the SCDP and CGC partners retain a mindset that makes them work like two different entities for a while. |
| 1027 | -->'''Ted:''' Imagine if every time Creator/GingerRogers jumped in the air, Creator/FredAstaire punched her in the face. |
| 1028 | * ThreeWaySex: Don has this nearly forced on him by Megan (and Megan's attractive friend Amy) in "The Runaways". |
| 1029 | * ThousandYardStare: Used many times, particularly with Don. Notable examples: |
| 1030 | ** The ensemble at the end of "At the Codfish Ball." |
| 1031 | ** Don in "Commissions and Fees." |
| 1032 | ** Pete in "Meditations in an Emergency." |
| 1033 | ** Don in "The Good News." |
| 1034 | ** Lane in "Commissions and Fees." |
| 1035 | * TitledAfterTheSong: The first episode is titled after one of The Platter's signature songs: "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." |
| 1036 | * TitleDrop: |
| 1037 | ** Roughly one-third of all episodes have their titles dropped in one way or another. The most prominent example is probably "Shut the Door, Have a Seat." |
| 1038 | ** "The Phantom" is used by Megan's mother as a metaphor for how Megan keeps trying to do things that she is unable to do. |
| 1039 | * TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Pete is the Hunter: hungry, ambitious, seeking more wealth and more power, advocating risky business moves. Don is the Lord: he makes partner in Season 1, and is officially at the top of his field; he wants to be great, but he now has so much to lose (and he loses a lot). Cooper is the Prophet, satisfied with his life (except for that operation), wanting only to secure his legacy in the form of leaving a healthy firm. Roger is in the middle of transitioning from Lord to Prophet: at first uncomfortable with his increasing irrelevance, he gradually settles in to a role as "Professor Emeritus of Accounts" and leaves the heavy lifting to Pete and Ken. |
| 1040 | * TheThreeFacesOfEve: Deconstructed with the main female characters from Season 1 to 4: |
| 1041 | ** Betty appears to be the Wife, literally Don's wife and the mother of his children. However, it is immediately obvious that she is unstable, deeply unhappy, and unsuited to the role of motherhood. In fact, she actually has the Child's mentality. |
| 1042 | ** Peggy appears to be the Child: the NaiveNewcomer to the world of advertising, the youngest, ambitious and hopeful. By season 2, she fits the surprising mould of The Seductress much more closely, as she has had a baby with the married Pete out of wedlock. Then, by Season 4, she has become the most stable and professional woman in the cast, and thus fits the role of the Wife much more easily, despite being single and constantly unlucky in love. |
| 1043 | ** Joan is initially the Seductress, Roger's hotblooded and sexual mistress, but even midway through Season 1 it is clear that she is in fact much more like the Wife, as a stable, constant, and intelligent influence upon Sterling Cooper, and especially Roger and Don. |
| 1044 | * ThreateningShark: Both of Pete's parents die at sea and within the respective episodes for each death someone makes sure to point that it was possible, nay, probable that they were eaten by sharks. |
| 1045 | * ThreeWaySex: Don, Megan, and Megan's friend Amy in Season 7's "The Runaways -- at Megan's insistence. |
| 1046 | * TokenMinority: 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.) |
| 1047 | ** Dawn is basically the Token Minority in a meta-sense as well, given her lack of storyline (apart from that one scene with Peggy) and the continuing whiteness of the rest of the cast. She does get some background characterization, which is more than we can say about the other secretaries (except, of course, for the ones who are no longer secretaries). Also, by Season 7, she is also joined by another black secretary. |
| 1048 | * TomatoSurprise: The ending of the very first episode. We've been introduced to Don as TheCasanova and office hero, and only when we follow him home do we discover the existence of his wife and two young children. |
| 1049 | * TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Peggy and Joan, respectively as adult 1960s skirt-clad versions of the trope. Joan takes great pride in looking sexy and feminine: curve hugging clothing, elaborate yet work-appropriate up-dos, perfect make-up, and the beginning of the series has her aiming for more traditional feminine goals and shows her shakingly harnessing her power as a partner. Peggy, while not the traditional image of the tomboy, dresses in a manner that more or less mimics menswear (when it's not schoolgirl or simple dresses) and is short haired with some basic makeup. She takes charge more at work and one time asked Dawn "Do you think I act like a man?" only to be told by the latter that it might be necessary. |
| 1050 | * TookALevelInBadass: |
| 1051 | ** Peggy in Season 2, she gets Freddy Rumsen's office (much to Harry "I'm Head of Television!" Crane's chagrin) 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. |
| 1052 | --> "Peggy, can you get me some coffee?" |
| 1053 | --> "No." |
| 1054 | ** 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. |
| 1055 | ** Joan clocking Greg with that vase just made her even more badass. |
| 1056 | ** Pete Campbell, in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", verbally eviscerating Roger for his anti-Japanese prejudice. |
| 1057 | ** Each season, Betty takes another level. |
| 1058 | ** Lane Pryce, at the end of season 3. Goes from being PPL's overly dutiful employee to standing up and basically hijacking SCDP from under their noses. |
| 1059 | -->"Happy Christmas!" |
| 1060 | ** Lane again in "Signal 30" when he beats down Pete for insulting him. |
| 1061 | ** In "The Other Woman," Peggy finally gets fed up with Don's mistreatment and [[spoiler: leaves the agency for a rival firm. At the episode's end she's seen confidently marching onto the elevator with her box of stuff]]. |
| 1062 | * TragicBigot: Roger Sterling has a deep-seated hatred of the Japanese because he served in the US Navy in World War II's Pacific Theater and is implied to have seen Japanese soldiers commit many horrible brutalities. He purposely sabotages a deal with Honda when his colleagues go behind him for the good of their company and has an emotional talk about it with Joan later on who tells him to leave it behind. |
| 1063 | * TrophyChild: Don and Betty Draper seem to be the living embodiment of the wholesome 1960s nuclear family with a professional dad, a stay at home mom, and two perfect kids, one girl and one boy. However, the Drapers are more in love with the idea of marriage and children than their actual spouse and kids. Neither spends much time with their children and the emphasis is placed on the children looking immaculate and behaving well at all times. Once Don and Betty have their third child and divorce, the kids are used at chess pieces to punish each other with most of the child care falling to nannies and respective step-parents. In one episode, both Don and Betty and their respective spouses spend most of the episode thinking the other is taking care of the kids while the kids are actually in Don's apartment with a house burglar who is pretending to be an old friend of Don's while actually robbing the place. |
| 1064 | * 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. |
| 1065 | * TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: When Cooper hangs a Rothko in his office, the guys worry about what they're supposed to say if he asks them about it. The real reason Bert Cooper bought it was because he expected the price to double in a year and sell it to make a profit. |
| 1066 | * TruthInTelevision: The show seems to be slapping you in the face with DeliberateValuesDissonance, but things really were like that in the 1960s in a lot of places. |
| 1067 | * TwinThreesomeFantasy: Roger tries to pull this off with the models for a double-sided aluminum campaign in Season 1. It's creepy and sad, even before it leads to his heart attack. |
| 1068 | * TyrantTakesTheHelm: |
| 1069 | ** Duck. It usually doesn't work out for him. |
| 1070 | ** Lane Pryce from Putnam, Powell, and Lowe. Though it works for him in the short term, considering he was almost [[ReassignedToAntarctica sent to]] ''Bombay'' by his superiors for doing such a good job. Eventually he turns out to be more of a BaitAndSwitchTyrant, considering he joins Don, Roger, and Bert to start the new company. |
| 1071 | ** Jim Hobart, Alpha Male of [=McCann=]-Erickson -- starts in "Time and Life" and picks up speed in "Lost Horizon." |
| 1072 | * UnconfessedUnemployment: |
| 1073 | ** In Season 4, Roger's entire job boils down to the Lucky Strike account. When Lucky Strike drops SCDP (which may as well mean the death of the company), he keeps it a secret trying to somehow control the disaster. When the truth gets out, Roger puts up a shameful charade trying to keep face. |
| 1074 | ** In Season 5: Lane doesn't tell his wife that he's been forced to resign from SCDP after Don catches him embezzling. |
| 1075 | ** In Season 7: [[spoiler:Don gets a turn]]. |
| 1076 | * UncomfortableElevatorMoment: |
| 1077 | ** Don and Sylvia share a few in Season 6 after she breaks up with him. |
| 1078 | ** Peggy and Joan in "Severance" after an ugly meeting with some hideously sexist [=McCann=] people. They wind up turning on each other in the elevator. |
| 1079 | * UndignifiedDeath: |
| 1080 | ** Miss Blankenship dies in the office. Cooper at least tries to salvage and put some grandeur on it. |
| 1081 | -->"She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper. She's an astronaut." |
| 1082 | ** Don's father was kicked in the head by a horse. |
| 1083 | * TheUnFavourite: |
| 1084 | ** Pete is this to his [=WASP=] family. |
| 1085 | ** Don to his adoptive mother (even before she had a son of her own). |
| 1086 | ** 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. |
| 1087 | ** 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.]] |
| 1088 | * UnspokenPlanGuarantee: {{Inverted}} in "Lady Lazarus"; Don and Megan run through a proposed bit for a Cool Whip commercial, and their easy chemistry as husband and wife makes it all the more cringe-inducing later on when Peggy tries to take Megan's place during the actual pitch and spectacularly fails. |
| 1089 | * ViewersAreMorons: Very much, in-universe; perfectly straightforward advertising pitches are often rejected on the assumption that potential consumers would be either confused or bored. |
| 1090 | * VisualInnuendo: Pete peruses magazines, preparing to give a semen sample at a fertility clinic. He makes his selection...and we cut to Roger operating a paddle ball toy at crotch level. |
| 1091 | * VisualPun: After 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 [[LiteralMetaphor actual pink ceramic elephant]] on the mantel, that she hates and immediately gives away. |
| 1092 | ** Also this elephant is given away to Trudy, who never felt completely comfortable with her old money in-laws who made it clear they found her to be merely NouveauRiche, she's the elephant in the room as well. |
| 1093 | * VitriolicBestBuds: Peggy and Joan have this dynamic, sniping at each other on occasion but holding a deep respect for each other. At the very end, they're genuinely happy for each other's success in their careers. |
| 1094 | * VomitDiscretionShot: Don, after a long night of drinking, manages to make it to the SCDP bathroom (with Peggy's help) in "The Suitcase". While the noise is pretty nasty, we don't see anything (thank you stall walls!). |
| 1095 | ** There's more offscreen upchucking by Don a couple episodes later in "Hands and Knees", though this time it's the result of a pretty intense panic attack when the FBI starts investigating him. |
| 1096 | ** Lane in "Commissions and Fees," behind a parking garage pillar when his wife surprises him with a new Jaguar they can't afford. |
| 1097 | * VomitIndiscretionShot: |
| 1098 | ** Roger, after having a huge lunch and climbing 23 flights of stairs. Even better when you realize that this was [[FridgeBrilliance planned by Don as revenge for hitting on Betty]]. |
| 1099 | ** 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=]. |
| 1100 | ** Don at Roger's mother's funeral in "The Doorway", apparently after getting an early start on his drinking. |
| 1101 | * WackyCravings: The Drapers' neighbor Francine Hanson, pregnant near the beginning of Season 1, says while preparing snacks with Betty for Sally's birthday party in Episode 3, "All this one wants is raw hamburger. What does ''that'' say?" |
| 1102 | * WallBangHer: Don does this to Megan in "For Immediate Release". |
| 1103 | ** Don and Diana the waitress in "Severance." |
| 1104 | * WelcomeEpisode: In the pilot, Peggy starts her new job at Sterling Cooper. |
| 1105 | * WellDoneSonGuy: 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. |
| 1106 | ** Pete never got this with his own father and desperately seeks it from Don and Duck. |
| 1107 | ** Joan was shown to be shocked in "To Have And To Hold" when her usually irritating and [[StayInTheKitchen tradition-leaning]] Mother remarks about being proud of the fact she's the mother of a junior executive and said it even stunned her to be so proud. |
| 1108 | * WhatDidIDoLastNight: |
| 1109 | ** After several rejections, Roger ends up hiring Don after the two share plenty of drinks one night. When Don shows up the next day, Roger doesn't remember anything of it. |
| 1110 | ** 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 ''drunker,'' and ends up taking home a woman (actively looking for him) who had apparently written the jingle for the award-winning cake batter/topping commercial...and wakes up ''Sunday afternoon'' with an ''entirely different woman'' next to him (a waitress from a nearby diner, apparently--who calls him ''[[OhCrap Dick]]'' as she leaves). As things turn out, Peggy has to remind him about what he did at the Life pitch. |
| 1111 | ** In "In Care Of," Don wakes up in the drunk tank. He apparently punched an obnoxious evangelist. |
| 1112 | * WhatExactlyIsHisJob: "What do I do here?" says a demoralized Lane to Joan in "Signal 30". |
| 1113 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Many characters return after long absences (see TheBusCameBack above), but there never was any hint as to the fate of Sal Romano after he was fired in Season 3 episode "Wee Small Hours". |
| 1114 | * WhatIsGoingOn: |
| 1115 | ** 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. |
| 1116 | ** Betty has an epic "''What is going on?!?!?''" in the same episode after watching Lee Harvey Oswald get murdered on live TV. |
| 1117 | ** 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). |
| 1118 | ** Meredith in "Time and Life" to Don when she hears rumors of the [=McCann=] takeover. |
| 1119 | * WhatTheHellHero: |
| 1120 | ** Allison finally snaps at Don - "I don't say this easily, but you are not a good person!" |
| 1121 | ** Faye, after she finds out that Don is engaged to Megan: "I hope she knows that you only like beginnings." |
| 1122 | ** ''All'' of the other partners at SCDP at Don after he wrote a letter in the New York Times announcing that SCDP will no longer be working with any tobacco accounts, to the point where Bert ''quits the company.'' The letter further comes back to haunt Don in Season 5's "At the Codfish Ball" when he receives an award for it, but simultaneously learns that none of the corporate world's big fish want anything to do with SCDP because of that letter, as it showed Don is willing to publicly backstab even a longtime loyal client if they drop them. |
| 1123 | ** Bert gives one to Don at the end of "Far Away Places" for constantly ditching work with Megan. |
| 1124 | ** 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. |
| 1125 | ** Joan is the target of this from Peggy, Pete, and Chaough in "A Tale of Two Cities" when they learn that she ignored Chaough's instructions to invite Pete to the meeting with Avon. |
| 1126 | ** Freddie Rumsen chews Don out for drinking so hard that he passed out and expecting that he'd get back all of his responsibilities without having to prove to the other partners that he has turned over a new leaf. |
| 1127 | ** Roger's daughter chews her father out for neglecting her as a child. |
| 1128 | * WhenYouComingHomeDad: Don's habits often lead him to forget about his kids, but truth be told he's a mild case in comparison to some of his coworkers: |
| 1129 | ** Roger was too busy with his work and completely ignored his daughter when she was growing up. This eventually drives her to follow his example and abandon her husband and son to join a bunch of luddite hippies. |
| 1130 | ** Pete's involvement in his daughter's life is so minuscule that she doesn't even recognize him. Granted, he moves to California, but even before then he wasn't particularly engaged. |
| 1131 | * WhenEldersAttack: |
| 1132 | ** Lane's dad whacking him across the face with his cane and stepping on his hand. |
| 1133 | ** Pete's mother when she succumbs to dementia in Season 6. |
| 1134 | * WhereWereYouLastNight: Lots of this when Betty gets suspicious of Don. |
| 1135 | * WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant: Much of the cast, but especially Pete Campbell and Betty Draper. |
| 1136 | * WhoWritesThisCrap: In-universe, this is Megan's reaction to the ''Series/DarkShadows'' script one of her acting friends brings her. |
| 1137 | * WrongGenreSavvy: It's soon clear that after being assigned as Don's secretary, Maureen labors under the belief the two are going to engage in a series of bantering that will ultimate in an epic romance and Don is just "playing the game" to be professional in the office. The truth, of course, is that Don has no idea of Maureen's feelings and is baffled when, after a bad deal, she gives him a kiss and says "we'll get through this together." |
| 1138 | * WrongNameOutburst: See GetAholdOfYourselfMan, above. |
| 1139 | * YankTheDogsChain: In "Waterloo", it looks as if Harry Crane will finally get the recognition and respect he deserves, as he is about to become a partner in SC&P and his media department is about to become the centerpiece of the firm's vision for the future. However, he haggles over a few minor details and when he is ready to sign the final legal papers, [[spoiler:the firm is sold to [=McCann=] and the partnership offer is withdrawn. Harry not only loses out on the partnership but also on a million dollar payout]]. Ouch. |
| 1140 | * YellowPeril: Roger Sterling is really anti-Japanese, having failed to grow past his days in the Navy in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and deeply insults the Honda representatives. |
| 1141 | * YouAreFat: Happens between a few women as a reflection of the emphasis on women's looks. Oddly comments like these came from Pauline Francis to Betty (after Betty gained weight yet was still smaller than her mother-in-law) and the buxom Joan to petite Peggy ("The Summer Man" has Joan telling Peggy she needs the steps). |
| 1142 | * YouGetMeCoffee: Almost all of the secretaries play it straight, but in the season 3 finale, Peggy subverts it with a [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome "No"]]. |
| 1143 | * YouNeedToGetLaid: Ginsberg's father tries setting him up with a nice Jewish girl because he believes that his son's [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} eccentricity]] will be cured once he loses his virginity. |
| 1144 | [[/folder]] |
| 1145 |
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