The halfway mark of season four, The Suitcase is an intimate two-hander that moves the 60s ad agency drama’s already sky-high standards to a new level. It finds its yin-and-yang protagonists, antihero Don Draper and feminist heroine Peggy Olson, pulling an all-nighter on the Samsonite campaign, while everyone else leaves to watch the Ali v Liston fight. Don knows Peggy has plans but not that it is her birthday or that her boyfriend is waiting at a surprise dinner. So begins an epic evening of high emotion that sees the pair air a few home truths, Peggy get dumped, Don in mourning and desperate English exec Duck Phillips break into the office to defecate on Don’s sofa. Except, ever the drunken doofus, he gets the wrong sofa Photograph: AMC
“The main idea came from Matthew Weiner,” says creative director Steve Fuller. “He said, ‘I imagine a guy walking into a building, taking the elevator up to his office, putting his briefcase down and jumping out the window… but not that.’ I thought why not that and started figuring out how we might do that with illustration.” The result is a coolly sophisticated homage to Saul Bass, set to RJD2’s jazzy Beautiful Mine, showing a man lost in the American dream he’s selling. There are rumours that the credits foreshadow a series finale in which Don Draper kills himself. We’ll have to wait until part two of the final series (part one starts 17 April) in 2015 to find out Photograph: AMC
A demonstration of just how vengeful Don Draper can be comes with this gross-out incident from the seventh episode. As payback for his boss Roger Sterling hitting on his wife, Don takes the suave senior partner for a boozy, oozy lunch of Martinis and oysters. Rushing back for a meeting, they find the lift out of action – which Don has rigged by bribing the bellhop. The duo take 23 flights of stairs and when they stagger into the office after a skyscraper-high climb, Roger turns as grey as his suit and vomits in front of the clients, splashing their shiny shoes. “Oysters,” he groans. “I can see that,” comes the reply. The effect was achieved with a hose and some soup Photograph: AMC
All the more shocking for coming out of the blue and bursting the show’s stylish bubble, this season three scene remains one of the most memorable. Slimy Guy Mackendrick flies in with a brief from Sterling Cooper's London paymasters to rationalise the agency but office high jinks go badly awry. In a freak accident, ditzy switchboard operator Lois Sadler runs over Mackendrick’s toes with a ride-along John Deere lawnmower and the only thing that gets rationalised is his right foot. Amid the black comedy comes a pang of pathos. It also leads to a delicious payoff from queen bee Joan Harris: “One minute, you’re on top of the world. The next, some secretary’s running you over with a lawnmower” Photograph: AMC
Alfred Hitchcock is a big influence on Mad Men – see those Saul Bass-esque credits or Don’s dapper Cary Grant style – and never more so than in this scene from the debut season’s ninth episode. The fracturing Betty Draper, furious at losing out on a Coca-Cola modelling job and generally frustrated with suburban life, vents her anger on neighbour Mr Beresford’s beloved homing pigeons by blasting them out of the sky with an air rifle, while still clad in her Grace Kelly nightie and puffing on a cigarette throughout. Don’s nickname for his wife is “Birdy” and this is the moment she tries to break free from her gilded cage Photograph: AMC
The series five premiere’s standout moment is miniskirted Megan Draper’s slinky rendition of Zou Bisou Bisou, a sultry 60s go-go declaration of amour and ode to the joy of kissing, at new husband Don’s 40th birthday bash. Stunned party-goers openly ogle the hostess’s leggy burlesque performance, while Don squirms with discomfort – making it a metaphor for the 60s generation gap. This just edges out two other Mad Men musical moments: Pete and Trudy Campbell dancing the Charleston at Roger’s garden party and camp creative Sal performing Bye Bye Birdie for his wife, during which it dawns on her that he might be gay Photograph: Ron Jaffe/AMC
Arch-manipulator Don Draper sure knows how to pitch. This is made clear from the pilot, when Lucky Strike get toasted. Twelve episodes later, he trumps it. Don uses family photos to poignantly pitch the carousel slide projector to Eastman Kodak execs. “This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine,” he says. “It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the Wheel, it’s called the Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels: round and round, then back home again. To a place where we know we are loved.” The clients melt – even if our antihero has to exploit his own family to get the gig Photograph: AMC
Season three comes to a cliffhanging climax with office politics so giddily tense, they nail fans to the sofa. In the perfectly titled Shut the Door. Have A Seat, limey financial whiz Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) somehow paints his way into, and out of, a tight corner, getting intel that stops Sterling Cooper being thrown on the scrapheap and instead gives Don, Roger and Bert an ingenious escape route. It is like a heist caper: holed up in a hotel room with the members of staff they want to take with them, they hatch a plan to fire themselves, so they can start up a new agency. Season four is suddenly rich with possibilities Photograph: AMC
By series five, Roger Sterling is feeling predictable: all he does is splash cash around and drink all day. Then he drops acid and boy, is it a game-changer. At an intellectual dinner party with wife Jane’s therapist and LSD guru Timothy Leary, the couple try the drug. While experiencing beautifully shot hallucinations – including half his silver hair turning black – they catch a cab home, take a bath together, then lie on the floor and talk frankly about their marriage. Enlightened, Roger realises he doesn’t have to be trapped in an unhappy relationship. Newly liberated, he is restored to being one of Mad Men’s most entertaining characters Photograph: AMC
He has had it coming for four seasons. Conniving ladder-climber Pete Campbell has impregnated Peggy, blackmailed Don and sold out Joan. Viewers cheer, then, when he muscles in on the Jaguar account and mild-mannered Lane Pryce decides enough is enough, takes off his jacket and challenges the “grimy little pimp” to a boardroom fist fight. Roger and Don can barely conceal their glee – “I know cooler heads should prevail but am I the only one who wants to see this?” drawls Roger, lighting a cigarette – and Pryce puts the upstart in his place with a swift one-two to that weaselly nose and weak jaw Photograph: Ron Jaffe/AMC
