Top 10 Memorable Mad Men Scenes

While Don may take the gold when it comes to womanizing, Roger Sterling is certainly a close second. Unfortunately, as he continues to grow older, these affairs seem to take more of a toll on his body, as evident in this classic scene from the first season. Here, Roger suffers a heart attack during a midnight romp with a model named Mirabelle. It also contains an epic slap from Don, who reminds Roger that his wife’s name is Mona as he is wheeled out of Sterling Cooper.

Herman Phillips wasn’t the first man to try and bully Don Draper, and he definitely wasn’t the last, but he learnt the hard way what happens when you try to mess with the Don. While attempting to merge Sterling Cooper with Puttnam, Powell, and Lowe, Duck attempts to convince Roger Sterling, Bert Cooper, and Don to adapt to a new way of advertising. When Don declines, Duck gives him an ultimatum: honor the contract or quit. It’s Don who gets the last laugh, however, when he declares that he doesn’t have a contract. Game, set, and match for Draper.

One of the best features of Don Draper is that he knows how to get out of a pinch, which is on full display in this scene. While attempting to secure Chevrolet for Sterling Cooper Draper Price, Don runs into Ted at the hotel bar, a partner at the rival firm Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough. Ted realizes that Chevrolet is only using their two firms for their ideas, and plans on signing with a larger firm. This inspires Don to spontaneously merge the two firms in order to win Chevrolet’s business, which they are able to successfully do.

It seemed this moment had been building throughout the entire season. Frustrated from being excluded from the Jaguar pitch, on top of many other things, Peggy finally decides enough is enough. She interviews with Cutler, Gleason and Chaough, who offer her the role of Copy Chief with a high salary. The episode concludes with this emotional scene when Peggy tells Don that she is moving on. Don tries to convince Peggy to stay by offering her more money, but she tells him it isn’t about how much she gets paid.

As Don’s professional and personal life come crashing down, he is required to make a pitch to executives from Hershey’s chocolate to win their account. At first, it seems like classic Don – he tells a heartfelt albeit fabricated tale about his father’s love being tied together with the Hershey chocolate bar during his childhood. This time, however, Don can’t keep it together, and finally breaks, revealing that he was actually an orphan and grew up in a whorehouse, and his real memory of Hershey comes from his dealings with one of the prostitutes.

Sterling Cooper is nearly history, and it is up to Lane Pryce to keep everything together. Just when things look the worst, Don suggests that Lane fire everyone, allowing them to create their own advertising agency. Holed up in a hotel room, the partners decide which members of the staff they need, and are then promptly fired by Lane, ironically as a way to keep their jobs.

The second moment from this pivotal episode to make our list, this scene showed just how far Joan was willing to go to be seen as an equal member of Sterling Cooper Draper Price. Herb Rennet, a member of Jaguar’s selection committee, suggests that SCDP would be able to sign Jaguar if he was allowed to have an evening with Joan. She is offered $50, 000 from the partners and a 5% partnership stake in the company. Don shows up on her door to persuade her from sleeping with Herb to win the account, but we discover that he is too late and she's already done it.

With SCDP’s future looking foggy at best, Don decides he needs to do something drastic. So he takes inspiration from a painting he bought from his ex-lover and now broke-heroin addict Midge, and writes an article titled “Why I’m Quitting Tobacco”. While this enrages the other partners, the ad – written in letter form - wins him the affection of Megan, and also of the American Cancer Society, which asks SCDP to create an anti-smoking ad for them, giving them at least a little business and enough money to prevent the agency from folding.

Some of the best scenes of “Mad Men” have been between Don and Peggy, and this one takes the cake. The pair is pulling an all-nighter to work on the Samsonite campaign as everyone else watches the Ali vs. Liston fight. Peggy is missing out on a surprise birthday dinner arranged by her boyfriend. With emotions running high, Don and Peggy confront each other, with each delivering hard truths, although they also bond at the same time. The episode ends with Duck Phillips attempting to use a couch as a toilet, mistakenly believing that he is in Don’s office. Classic!

Before we unveil our number one pick, here are a few honorable mentions:

Bert Cooper’s Dance

Miss Blankenship Dies

Don Gives Peggy Advice

Don Draper Likes It Rough

Zou Bisou Bisou

At the end of season one, we know that Don Draper is a great ad-man, as is evident by his Lucky Strike proposal in the first episode. He takes things to a whole other level with The Carousel pitch in the season finale, however. He uses personal family photos to pitch the carousel slide project, tugging at the heartstrings of Kodak’s executives with poignant lines like... While Don has certainly had his ups and downs throughout the series, this is him at his absolute best.

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