Mad Men/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Sterling Cooper

Don Draper, real name Dick Whitman (Jon Hamm)

I have been watching my life. It's right there. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can't.

The most prominent member of the series' Ensemble Cast, Draper starts Season 1 as the head of Creative at Sterling Cooper, rises to junior partner, and flees the company to start Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce when Sterling Cooper is sold to McCann Erickson. Has a Secret Past (two of them, in a way).

  • Abusive Parents: Don's father was an abusive drunk, and his wife, who only took Don in because she wanted a child and her own had all been stillbirths, clearly never liked him.
  • A Father to His Men: A very distant, cold, 1960s-style father, but a father none-the-less.
  • The Alcoholic: In Season 4. His nurse neighbor and Allison both call him a drunk.
  • Alliterative Name
  • Anti-Hero: Type IV
  • Broken Ace
  • Bumbling Dad: In an odd sort of way. He gives the overall impression of being well-meaning and loving, if clueless, which stands in sharp contrast to Betty's emotional and physical abuse of Sally. However, the later seasons are taking this apart. In the fourth, following his divorce, he starts forgetting when he has to take his kids, going on a date and leaving them with a sitter, or missing his weekend with them because he was on a two-day bender. The fifth season opener shows the increasing distance with his promise to take the kids to the Statue of Liberty, to which Sally responds, "You always say that, but we never do."
  • Byronic Hero
  • Casanova: Wherever Don Draper goes, beautiful women hit on him and Don is perfectly willing to take them up on it, despite being married. He becomes something more of a Casanova Wannabe in the fourth season. Now that he's available and hitting on everything that moves, he gets turned down at lot more (though his conquests are still legendary). At least until he starts getting his act together in The Summer Man.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: In spite of his dickish tendencies, he has a problem with the other guys at the office being overtly crude and creepy around female employees. He sort of lampshades this tendency when he tells Peggy, "I have rules" about this kind of thing (meaning, particularly, hitting on/having relationships with women at work). His drunken seduction of Allison, his secretary in Season 4, unfortunately undermined this - becoming a deliberate signal of just how out of control Don's life has become.
  • Cool Car: In order: 1959 Oldsmobile, 1960 Buick, 1961 Dodge, 1962 Cadillac, 1965 Cadillac.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Dead Person Impersonation: While serving in the Korean War, he accidentally caused a gas explosion that killed his commanding officer and wounded him. He switched their dog tags, used Don Draper's identity to desert, and pretended to be him to get away from his family and start his own life.
  • Flat What: Don does these. A lot.
  • Manipulative Bastard
  • Morality Pet: Anna is his. He's not entirely a bad guy, but Anna is the only person in his life he doesn't on occasion act like a dick towards. Tellingly, she's also for a long time the only person who really knows who he is.
  • Orphan's Ordeal
  • Parental Abandonment: Don has abandoned his children on several occasions--his daughter Sally's birthday party where he just took off for several hours, missing the cake; his trip to California which lasted almost a month; and his blackout in Season 4, where he drank the whole weekend and forgot to come get his kids for their visit.
  • Really Gets Around: He has a reputation.
  • That Man Is Dead: The only time he acknowledges having been Dick Whitman is when Adam confronts him, and even then he does not directly confirm it. He does go by Dick when with Anna.
    • His second wife Megan also knows his real name, and referred to him as it in "A Little Kiss."
  • Sink or Swim Mentor: To Peggy.
  • Son of a Whore: "You told me your mother died in childbirth. Mine did too. She was a prostitute. I don't know if my father paid her, but when she died, they brought me to him and his wife. And when I was ten years old, he died. He was a drunk, he got kicked in the face by a horse. She buried him and took up with some other man, and I was raised by those two sorry people."
  • Unfortunate Names: Dick isn't a terribly unfortunate name in and of itself but in this case he got the name because his mother died in childbirth and her last words were "I'll cut his dick off".
    • Dick Whitman, 'nuff said.
  • Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Don is against the use of physical punishment in the raising of his kids, a very progressive attitude for his time. As he explains to Betty when questioned about this, his father used to beat him up all the time when he was a child, and all it lead to was him fantasizing about murdering him.
  • Tall, Dark and Handsome: When you hear this phrase, Don Draper is the image that pops into your head.
  • Your Cheating Heart: He's a serial adulterer.
    • At times borders on Sympathetic Adulterer due to some of Betty's deep character flaws, but it's portrayed as a bad thing.

Margaret "Peggy" Olson (Elisabeth Moss)

Starting as Don Draper's wide-eyed new secretary at the beginning of Season 1, she ends up senior copywriter at SCDP. Initially has trouble with men (particularly Pete) hitting on her; eventually, she starts hitting on men. Known for flirting with the counterculture, but not being radical/interested enough to commit to it (so far, anyway).

  • Acceptable Feminine Goals: As a rising star at an advertising firm, she defies this.
  • Adorkable
  • Brainy Brunette
  • Break the Cutie: With regard to Pete and the baby.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Her lesbian friend Joyce.
  • Face Heel Turn: In "The Other Woman", she quits SCDP for Chauogh's agency.
  • Family Versus Career: Her sister resents that she gave birth to a child and then gave it up and went on with her life (and career) as if it never happened.
  • The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Has this slightly with her sister Anita.
  • Important Haircut
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Her coworkers see her as this (she was at one point described as an undercover nun)- this obviously isn't entirely true.
  • Law of Inverse Fertility: While on birth control, she becomes pregnant by Pete Campbell and gives birth to his child, at the same time that he and his wife are unsuccessfully trying to conceive.
    • Sort of on birth control. She had only just started using it, so it probably hadn't yet taken effect. But it is clear she definitely didn't want a baby.
  • My Beloved Smother: Her mother is a classic example, constantly nagging her to go to church and trying to set her up with men, taking her decision to move from Brooklyn to Manhattan (where her job is) as a personal betrayal, and sowing enough Catholic guilt for Peggy to reap for a lifetime. (However, she does seem to have been touchingly supportive about the fact that Peggy got pregnant out of wedlock about five minutes into the flashy Manhattan job that worries her so much.)
  • Plucky Office Girl: She gets hired as a secretary, but her comments on a lipstick project in which the secretaries are used as guinea pigs get her noticed, and she becomes a copywriter and a rising star.
  • Raised Catholic: Her faith at the very least took a big dent over her pregnancy, but as there's no escaping the Church, she still goes to Mass off and on, does the posters for a CYO dance, and creates an ad for Popsicles inspired by Catholic iconography. The church's new, young priest takes an interest in her and tries to steer her back towards the religion.
  • Servile Snarker: Develops into one.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Gets one of these moments at the end of a season 2 episode, and in general as she starts to dress (in Joan's words) "less like a little girl" over the season and into season 3.
  • Smurfette Principle: Once she's promoted from secretary, the only female copywriter at the firm. Justified in that this is the early 60's and the second wave of feminism won't really kick it into high gear for nearly a decade. Useful to the agency (in addition to her talent) in that she brings a female perspective to the boys club of advertising. Has complained about only being given the "girly" accounts (bras, lipstick, diet soda, etc).
  • Supporting Protagonist
  • Surprise Pregnancy: At the end of season one she gives birth, much to her surprise.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Turning down Don's demand that she join SCDP in the season finale, because of the simple fact he hasn't asked her. He needs her so much, he ends up begging her to join.

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser)

From a family that once owned half of Upper Manhattan, now fallen on relatively hard times. Initially full of himself and rather an unlikable creep, his experiences at work give him a sense of humility and maturity that makes him one of the more likable characters by Season 4 (in some viewers' eyes, anyway).

  • Afraid of Needles: Mentioned during the blood drive.
  • Batman Gambit: He figures out that Roger has been reading his secretary's calendar in order to poach his accounts, and so he has his secretary write in a fictional meeting with Coca Cola at 6 in the morning at the Staten Island Ferry Building. It works
  • Butt Monkey
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: After Lucky Strike switched to another firm, Pete surpassed Roger in terms of contributions to SCDP's profits. Despite this, he still has the worst office in the building and is not pleased about it (he eventually gets Harry's office, but it doesn't stop him from feeling he deserves Roger's"). To add insult to injury, Roger then starts to poach potential customers from him and Pete can't officially do anything about it.
  • Happily Married: Eventually. By the standards of this show, he's been very loyal (only cheating on his wife three or four times!) and their marriage actually approaches what we would consider an equal, loving partnership by today's standards at times. But by Season 5, he's started to cheat on her again.
  • Henpecked Husband: Feels like this in his marriage as of Season 5.
  • Hidden Depths: Is apparently quite the social dancer.
    • Despite what a brown-nosing greenhorn he was in the first season, Pete had an eye for social change that the dinosaurs at SC sorely lacked, scoffing at him for predicting things like the trend of humorous advertising, or that Kennedy was going to win over Nixon. (He doesn't even wear a hat!)
    • He also is completely baffled as to why the senior leadership of Sterling Cooper and their clients aren't going after African American customers, as to his eyes they are consumers who no one is trying to reach (and in the case of the clients black people seem to be buying their products anyways). This relative colorblindness is rather progressive for the time, to say the least.
  • Impoverished Patrician: He comes from one of the oldest Dutch families in America, with a million connections in Manhattan, but due to a combination of being The Unfavorite and his spendthrift father having nothing to leave when he dies, he becomes beholden to his Nouveau Riche parents-in-law, which puts a strain on his marriage.
  • It's All About Me: Though he's starting to grow out of it.
  • Older Than They Look: Naturally as he is played by Vincent Kartheiser.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Tends to get these a lot.
    • He is finally able to give a few come Season Four, particularly to Roger and to Don.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Initially.
  • Smug Snake: Again, he's improving. Until Season Five's "Signal 30", where he resumes being a pain in the ass.
  • Took a Level in Badass: In season four's "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", taking point on the Honda account and verbally eviscerating Roger over his prejudice.
    • Also, in covering for Don after the security probe threatens to reveal his ruse.
    • In season 5 he starts demanding more respect from the partners (especially Roger) and retaliates when Roger starts poaching his clients
  • The Unfavorite
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy

Joan Harris(nee Holloway) (Christina Hendricks)

Voluptuous and highly competent--if at times difficult--head of the Sterling Cooper secretarial pool at the beginning, with an on-again-off-again affair with Roger Sterling. By the end of Season 4, she's the office manager at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and widely recognized as the sine qua non of the whole agency.

  • Break the Haughty: Initially the queen bitch of the office, much of the first three years are devoted to knocking her down a peg, in both her personal and professional lives.
  • Career Versus Man: Although she's peerlessly good at her job, she explicitly is in the market for a husband and only plans to work until she finds one. Later, she gets a chance to briefly move out of her role as secretary and do some work in the agency's TV department, which it turns out she's good at and enjoys... and then it gets taken away from her without her even getting a chance to decide whether she might want to do it permanently. She was given another promotion in Season Four, but it doesn't come with any extra prestige or money. Following her divorce, she strikes a deal with Pete that nets her a non-silent partnership with 5% stake in SCDP.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Her roommate in Season 1.
  • Family Versus Career: She's gotten what she's always wanted, a doctor husband, a baby, a nice little apartment in the city... and the fifth season opener shows her impatient to come back to work because she values it and because she's valued. Roger's joke advertisement of SCDP as an equal opportunity employer inspires her to walk back into the office and start demonstrating her competence in a bid to save her job.
  • Femme Fatale
  • Fiery Redhead: Averted. She loses her temper exactly twice, once each in the third and fifth seasons, and otherwise keeps her emotions tightly (maybe too tightly) controlled.
  • Girl Friday
  • Glamorous Single Mother: Averted. She may look the part, but it's not easy raising a baby whilst being separated from Dr. Rapist.
  • Heroes Want Redheads/Redheaded Hero
  • Hidden Depths: Plays the accordion, and with her stint working for Harry proves herself to have a great deal of business acumen. Also, through most of the first three seasons almost no one seems to realize that she's running the office.
  • Hot Mom: Becomes one in 1966.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick
  • Lady in Red: Red (along with green) is one of her colors, and boy does she look good in it.
  • Rape as Drama: Joan's fiance Greg is introduced by raping her on the floor of Don's office. She says no and even attempts to fight him off, but he doesn't care.
  • Servile Snarker
  • Sexy Secretary: Probably this generation's Trope Codifier.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Finally standing up to her asshole husband and smashing him over the head with a vase.
    • In Season Five finally kicking her husband to the curb

"You're not a good man. You never were."

Roger Sterling (John Slattery)

Partner at Sterling Cooper and then Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. A chronic drinker and womanizer, he's a bit older than Don (having served in the Pacific Theater of World War II), but is arguably his closest friend (or, along with Peggy, perhaps the closest thing he has to a friend). He inherited his partnership from his father, a friend of Bert Cooper's.

  • The Alcoholic
  • Break the Haughty: Roger's fast-living, hard drinking, womanizing lifestyle has been shown to have consequences. He's survived a heart attack - not that it really slowed him down too much - and he's confronting the reality that in this new agency, he might be superfluous.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Has a snarky one-liner for virtually every occasion.
  • Dirty Old Man: While he's not that old, he still fits - particularly in the beginning of "The Long Weekend."
  • Jerkass / Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's not completely horrible, but you have to look for the good parts pretty hard.
  • Ladykiller in Love: It took him three collective marriages, four seasons, a pregnancy scare, and a new agency to realize he'd not only taken Joan for granted, but that he loves her.
  • Meaningful Name: "Sterling" is another word for money, and Roger is quite well-off. It's also a synonym for "silver", and he wears a lot of the color--and is noted for his gray (i.e. silver) hair, to boot.
    • Ironically, it also refers to being a person of the highest quality, and Roger isn't a very good person much of the time.
  • Pass the Popcorn: His reaction to Lane challenging Pete to a fist fight:

"I know that cooler heads should prevail, but am I the only one who wants to see this?"

  • Silver Fox
  • Sophisticated As Hell: Providing many a Crowning Moment of Funny.
  • Yellow Peril: Do not expect Roger to react rationally around the Japanese; he's still angry with them over Pearl Harbor.
  • Younger Than They Look: John Slattery is in his late 40s (as of Season 5/2012), and it would make sense for Roger to be, as well, given his life experience (if you were in your mid to late 20s--a fairly normal age for military service--in World War II, you'd be in your mid to late 40s in the early to mid 1960s).
    • This is a little hard to determine. Roger indicates to Jane that he and Mona were married for at least 30 years in "The Jet Set," but then they could have married young.
  • Your Cheating Heart: Roger seems to be incapable of monogamy, cheating on Mona with Joan and then Jane, later marrying Jane and cheating on her with Joan again.

Harry Crane (Rich Sommer)

A media buyer at Sterling Cooper notable chiefly because everyone tends to overlook his existence, he eventually gets the agency into the television game, becoming Head of Television. He skips to SCDP to do the same job, where he finally has the resources to be effective.

  • Bow Ties Are Cool: He always wears one at work, while everyone else wears neckties (with the sole exception of Cooper, who's about eighty years old). It's pretty depressing.
  • Butt Monkey: Very often.
  • Happily Married: He fits this trope best out of the married men in the office -- he did cheat on his wife once, but it was a drunken one-night stand, he clearly regretted it immediately, and he must have told her, because it's doubtful she could have found out any other way. He was temporarily Exiled to the Couch for it and then forgiven (between seasons). She also has a job of her own and he often takes her advice on work matters. Subverted in Season 4, where he is seen flirting with a model and in Season 5 it is revealed that he has become unhappy with his marriage and cheats on his wife once more.
  • Hidden Depths: He's clearly succeeded despite having less advantages than Pete or Ken - he didn't go to an Ivy League school, for instance, and doesn't seem to have their connections. He is ahead of his time on the importance of television. He was also a photographer in college.
  • Nerd Glasses
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: After his Television department takes off at SCDP, he starts to suffer from a massively inflated ego. He also becomes more sexist.

Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton)

Columbia-educated WASP from Vermont and a major rival of Pete's, coming in as an account executive at about the same time as him. They eventually come to a truce.

  • Always Someone Better: He's the target of envy from Pete, Harry and Paul.
  • The Bus Came Back
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Oh, poor Sal.
  • Most Writers Are Writers
  • The Generic Guy/Satellite Character: Ken 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 him, 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.
  • Happily Married: To Alex Mack
  • Hidden Depths: For all his bluster and inappropriate behavior, he respects Peggy and treats her relatively equally much faster than any of the other characters in his generation.
  • The Pollyanna: The phrase "golden retriever" comes up a lot in fan discussions of him.
  • Only Sane Employee: So far, Ken seems to be the only character whose work has never been affected by a completely screwed up personal life, blatant narcissism, excessive drinking, the inability to keep his pants on, or any of the other deep character flaws everyone else seems to have.

Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis)

A wannabe Bohemian copywriter. He doesn't transfer to SCDP with the rest of the cast.

  • Bourgeois Bohemian
  • Butt Monkey: More and more as Peggy rises through the ranks.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Green-Eyed Monster: He's jealous of Peggy's success (not that he does anything about it).
  • Hidden Depths: Was a talented a capella singer at Princeton, and sung in their choir.
  • Hipster
  • Humiliation Conga: After he is not invited to join SCDP, he works for McCann Erickson but is fired. He then goes through a series of jobs at other agencies until he is reduced to work as an in-house copywriter for A&P. Then he loses that job as well.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: He's very pretentious and arrogant, though it's repeatedly made clear that he's something of a dunce and everyone eventually comes to see that Peggy and Smitty are more talented copywriters.
  • Morality Pet: In "Christmas Waltz" he becomes Harry's.
  • Most Writers Are Writers: He tries, anyway.
  • Old Shame: It's revealed that he went to Princeton on a scholarship in season 3, implying he's from lower-class roots and he doesn't want anyone else to know.
  • Put on a Bus: He isn't hired by SCDP and thus leaves the cast after Season 3.
    • The Bus Came Back: After being absent for the entirety of Season 4, he shows up once more in Season 5's "Christmas Waltz," where it is revealed that he has joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
  • Soapbox Sadie: Against the destruction of Penn Station.

Sal Romano (Bryan Batt)

Head art director at Sterling Cooper, and a closeted gay man. He leaves just before the end of Season 3 for reasons that have to do with Sterling Cooper's main client being a huge dick.

Bert Cooper (Robert Morse)

Senior partner in Sterling Cooper and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, known for his fondness for Japonica, the Republican Party, Ayn Rand, and other eccentricities. Has known Roger Sterling from childhood.

  • Casting Gag: Robert Morse's first big role was in the 1961 sendup of the business world How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: He certainly acts like one, although he has demonstrated an uncanny talent for being cleverer than his fellows give him credit for.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As shown with his verbal smackdown of Pete in the season 1 finale, as well as Roger's theory that Bert had a doctor who gave him an unnecessary orchiectomy killed. He is also the only character to have gotten away with blackmailing Don, and Don never even tries to retaliate.
  • Dirty Old Man: He has a copy of the woodcut The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife on the wall of his office.
  • Eccentric Millionaire
  • Obfuscating Senility: It's been pointed out in the commentaries that his bizarre insistence that everyone take off their shoes before entering his office is actually a power move.
  • The Man: Until they sell the firm. Sterling's name may come first, but Cooper has final say.
  • Out of Focus: In Season 4. He had already entered a state of semi-retirement at the end of Season 2 and he doesn't even have an office in SCDP's building (he hangs out in the lobby instead). His role in Season 4 mostly consists of making snarky comments to passersby. Lampshaded and subverted in Season 5's "Far Away Places", where Don is stunned when he learns that Bert has become involved in SCDP business once more.
  • Pet the Dog: As amoral as he is, he still is outraged when he learns that Pete tried to get Joan to engage in prostitution. Even after he and the other partners vote that its okay if Joan's okay with it, he tells Pete that if Joan changes her mind, he can't force her to do it.
  • Satan: Bert isn't literally the Devil, but his Satanic appearance isn't by accident. Nor is it by accident that it is Cooper who blackmails Don into signing his contract.

Lane Pryce (Jared Harris)

Introduced in Season 3, when the British firm Putnam, Powell, & Lowe buys out Sterling Cooper. Initially presented as the unwelcome representative of the foreign overlords, it proves that PPL isn't exactly treating him well, either. In exchange for "firing" Sterling, Cooper, and Draper, he is invited to become a named partner and the chief money man at their new firm.

  • Abusive Parents: His father STILL hits him. That is to say, clubs him to the ground and then tortures him for supposedly "abandoning" his family.
  • Bait and Switch Tyrant
  • Beware the Nice Ones: In "Signal 30", he responds to Pete's mockery of him by challenging him to a fist fight. Lane kicks his ass.
  • British Stuffiness
  • Defrosting Ice King: He comes to enjoy America and get along well with Don as Season 3 and Season 4 roll on.
  • Driven to Suicide
  • Intimidating Revenue Service: He owes the British government a large amount of money in back taxes and he is so scared that he embezzles from the company to pay them back. According to his lawyer, the British tax authorities are going after him so harshly because he paid his US taxes before he paid his UK taxes.
  • Only Sane Man: Frequently clashes with Don and Roger over their more extravagant ideas and reminds them of their financial obligations.
  • Playboy Bunny: He dates one -- a black one.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: He seems to have a more even temper than the rest of the partners. When Joan is in tears, thinking they're going to replace her at the opening of season five, he comforts her and tells her that they're barely holding together without her and can't wait for her to return. Don would have been stiff and uncomfortable in the presence of a crying woman and Roger would have tried to have sex with her.
  • Stiff Upper Lip: A prime example, even in his suicide note: it's just a boilerplate resignation letter.

Herman "Duck" Phillips (Mark Moses)

Brought into Sterling Cooper after his Dark and Troubled Past at the London office of Young & Rubicam[1]. His decisions result in frequent clashes with others (especially Don), but he gets the job done. Gets a job with agency Grey[2] after PPL sells Sterling Cooper to McCann Erickson[3].

  • Dark and Troubled Past: His career at Y&R was ruined by his alcoholism and an affair.
  • May-December Romance: With Peggy.
  • Off the Wagon: As we later discover.
  • Smoking Hot Sex: Of its many practitioners on the series, none is quite as avid as Duck, particularly during his affair with Peggy.
  • Standard Fifties Father: Divorced though he may be, this is clearly an image he's cultivated for himself.
  • Tyrant Takes the Helm
  • Villainous Breakdown: Gradually becomes more stressed out over his time at Sterling Cooper. It gets even worse when he falls off the wagon. This culminates in his ragequitting Sterling Cooper after Don effortlessly foils his plan to use the merger to become company president.
    • It reaches its climax in Season 4, when he drunkenly disrupts the Clio award ceremony, then breaks into the SCDP office to take a crap on Don's chair (where Peggy finds him after he almost does it in Roger's office by mistake).

Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray)

An avuncular copywriter who, despite being a little old and behind the times, is generally open and fun-loving. He's a big supporter of Peggy, though they have their disagreements. Has had problems with alcohol, but is presently on the up-and-up.

  • The Alcoholic
  • The Bus Came Back
  • Chew Toy: Pretty much exists to be the butt of Roger's (and Don, to a lesser extent) jokes.
  • The Obi-Wan: He's the one who discovers Peggy's talent as a copy writer. One season later, his alcoholism gets him fired. By the time The Bus Comes Back Peggy has become experienced enough that she no longer needs him as a mentor. However, he reprises this role to Peggy in season five, as he is the one who convinces her to leave SCDP and move on to another firm.

SCDP New Additions

Stan Rizzo (Jay Ferguson)

The new artistic director at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Seen at first as a Replacement Scrappy for Sal Romano, his cocky mannerisms and political grandstanding dies down as the firm nears disaster. Much of his obnoxious behavior is tolerated because he's quite good at his job.

Faye Miller (Cara Buono)

A marketing researcher hired by SCDP, and probably the healthiest of Don's post-divorce relationships, until he screws it up.

  • Ambiguously Jewish: Word of God says she's supposed to be an assimilated Jew.
  • Career Versus Man
  • Child-Hater: She likes children fine, she's just horrible with them, and she resents it when Don asks her to watch Sally. Given the later contrast with Megan, this may have gone a long way towards turning Don off her.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen
  • One of the Boys: The scene that introduces her bends over backwards to show how she considers the secretaries lab rats, making them think she's one of them to get honest answers about the product, when outside the research room she appears not even to remember that one of them ran out crying.

Megan Calvet Draper (Jessica Paré)

Don's latest secretary, to whom he takes a shine quite suddenly. He cheats on Faye with her, he asks her to accompany him to California to help watch his kids... AND THEN HE PROPOSES TO HER. She later joins the SCDP Creative team as a copywriter...only to leave to pursue her dream of becoming an actress.

  • Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Her father is a Marxist university professor who disapproves of capitalism in general and the advertising industry in particular. Her Maman seems much nicer and more supportive, but after overhearing her husband having a suspicious phone conversation with one of his students, she accuses him of cheating on her in front of Don and at the American Cancer Society reception, she cheats on him with Roger.
  • Brainy Brunette: Don thinks so at least, as he said that she reminds him of Peggy, the resident Brainy Brunette in-chief. How true this is remains to be seen, although her idea for Heinz does seem to have worked out quite well.
  • Everything Sounds Sexier in French: She's French-Canadian, and we hear her speak it once or twice, plus she teaches the Draper kids a French song. In the opening of season 5, she throws a surprise party for Don and sings "Zou Bisou Bisou" to him.
  • Nepotism: Several of her coworkers are convinced that the only reason that she was made a copywriter as a reward for marrying Don. She subverts this by actually being competent.
  • The Pollyanna
  • Secret Keeper: In between seasons Don told her he's really Dick Whitman.

Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman)

A Jewish copywriter hired in Season 5. He's good at his job, but rather eccentric.

  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Despite generally being polite to people's faces, he has a habit of insulting people behind their backs.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Subverted. His eccentricity initially made Peggy refuse to hire him.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Although he can turn it off.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: He was born in a concentration camp.
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Genius Ditz: The genius part is debatable, but he gives off this vibe.
    • Debate settled in "Dark Shadows" when Don realizes most of SCDP's recent campaigns came from Ginsberg, lighting a fire in him to step up his game.
  • Motor Mouth: He never shuts up.
  • Token Minority: Roger ordered Peggy to hire him against her better judgment simply because Roger believed that every ad agency needs a Jew.

Dawn Chambers (Teyonah Parris)

An African-American secretary hired in Season 5. So far seems to be doing just fine in the world of SCDP. Works for Don, which for awhile led to some jokes.

Meredith

The receptionist at SCDP. Seems sweet and a bit clumsy at her job.

Caroline

Roger Sterling's secretary, hired sometime around Season 4. Married and older than the other secretaries.

Clara

A secretary hired sometime around Season 4.

Scarlett

Joan's secretary, appears in Season 5


Families

Betty Draper Francis (January Jones)

Wife of Don until the end of Season 3. Wealthy and educated, and bourgeois and clueless. When we first meet her she's The Woobie, an outwardly perfect, inwardly depressed housewife who can't even go to her old-school Freudian psychiatry sessions without her husband calling her doctor behind her back to find out what she's saying. Over the first three seasons she finds out a lot about Don than she didn't want to know and confronts him several times to varying effect, eventually having an affair of her own and divorcing Don for her lover. Since this, the main focus for her has been what an awful ex-wife and mother she is. Opinions vary as to whether the character has crashed or is making a controlled descent.

  • Abusive Parents: We learn through her therapy sessions that her mom was somewhat emotionally abusive and highly critical (for example, Betty was chubby as a child and her mother told her that because of this she wouldn't be able to find a husband) - she becomes defensive when her doctor points out that she has a lot of anger towards her mother. Later, feeling beleaguered by her own children, she displays abusive tendencies herself.
  • Adult Child: As much as she'd like to think she's been around the block, she has some very naive and childlike qualities, which make her a victim initially (she has to have it spelled out for her before she realizes that Don cheats on her and constantly lies, and she forms a weird friendship with a ten-year-old boy to cope with her loneliness) and eventually a victimizer (manifesting most significantly in the petty, spiteful way she acts with Sally). Her comments about her own childhood reveal that her mother raised her pretty much how she raises Sally, and her father's comparison of her to a housecat ("You're very important and you have little to do") sums up the kind of adult life she expected and was expected to have.
    • After divorcing Don (and the recent death of her father), she marries a man a generation older than she is.
  • All Girls Like Ponies: Is frequently seen riding in Season 2.
  • Break the Cutie
  • Celebrity Resemblance: Is said to look like (and briefly gets a modeling gig (partially) because of it) Grace Kelly.
    • This is in fact an Invoked Trope: The show's stylists intentionally modeled Betty's general look on Kelly.
  • Cool Car: Starts off with a buttercup-yellow-and-white '57 Ford wagon, graduating to a black/fake wood '60 Mercury wagon before inheriting her father's '61 Lincoln Continental.
  • Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Discusses the possibility with her doctor and a friend, but ultimately keeps the baby.
  • Hair of Gold
  • Hot Mom
  • Ice Queen: And she's not defrosting any time soon.
  • Law of Inverse Fertility: Discovers she's pregnant at the end of Season 2 right when she and her husband are on the verge of becoming permanently estranged.
  • Princess in Rags: This is pretty much how she reacts when, after divorcing Don and marrying Henry Francis, she finds she's not suddenly in paradise with all her problems solved.
  • Model Couple: Makes one with Don, her dark haired, equally gorgeous (ex)husband. It has been commented on in show just how picture perfect a couple they are.

Roger: I remember Mona said they looked like they were on our wedding cake.

Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka)

Don and Betty's eldest child and only daughter. Very intelligent and precocious, she seems to take after her father. Betty takes primary custody after the divorce, which causes Sally to resent her even more.

Bobby Draper (Maxwell Huckabee, Aaron Hart, Jared Gilmore) and Gene Draper

Don and Betty's sons. Much more in the background than Sally.


Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley)

A man who works in New York State politics (specifically for Governor Nelson Rockefeller), whom Betty meets a party. After her marriage to Don starts to founder (though admittedly during a good period), she begins an affair with him and eventually divorces Don to marry him. He himself is already divorced, with a daughter.

  • Standard Fifties Father: In the most ironic way possible, given the context.
  • Nice Guy: Betty seems to consider him this, in contrast to Don. He may not be so much of one.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: In comparison with abusive Betty and neglectful Don, he might be the best parent on the show.

Anna Draper (Melinda Page Hamilton)

The wife of the real Don Draper, who lives in California. Through flashbacks we find out that she tracked "Don" down after he came back from the war and demanded an explanation, but was very forgiving when she got one. She and this Don never had a romantic relationship; instead she was, as they both said at different times, the only person who knew all about him. She dies of cancer in season four.

Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie)

Pete Campbell's wife, from a Nouveau Riche family. They had a rocky start, but have grown into one of the most stable and loving couples on the show.

Greg Harris (Samuel Page)

Joan's fiancé and then husband, a doctor. In the first episode he appears in, he rapes her on the floor of Don's office, which she keeps a secret and hasn't mentioned since. He fails to get his residency when they planned, then joins the Army instead. As of the end of season four, he's under the impression that the baby Joan's carrying is his, when it is in fact Roger's.

  • Establishing Character Moment: His raping Joan whilst they are engaged has pretty much defined his character. As such any genuinely tender moments between the couple later on are pretty tough to watch knowing what he was actually capable of.
  • Fan Nickname: "Dr. Rapist."
  • Happily Married: Sometimes the scenes between them that are hardest to watch aren't the ones where he sexually assaults Joan and then acts like nothing happened, but rather the ones later on where they have every appearance of a normal loving relationship. The marriage does have more mundane low points. Joan's contempt for him for sucking at his job and wangsting about it, a huge contrast to the professional life she's giving up to marry him -- which he doesn't even seem to realize. In Season 5, this is finally subverted when Joan kicks him out of her apartment for good after he volunteers for a second tour of duty in Vietnam without her approval. While doing this, she also calls him out on raping her.
  • Jerkass
  • Marital Rape License: Takes Joan against her will whilst she's his fiancee.

Other characters

Carla (Deborah Lacey)

The Drapers' housekeeper and sort-of nanny. The show's most prominent black character, not that that's saying very much.

Glen Bishop (Marten Weiner)

The son of Helen Bishop, a divorced woman who moves into the Drapers' neighborhood in season one. Betty develops a rapport with him due to their mutual loneliness. We don't see him again until after Betty has divorced and remarried; he befriends Sally and shows his affection by breaking into and vandalizing her house (every room but hers).

Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff)

The daughter of a Jewish department-store owner and heir to the business, who comes to Sterling Cooper in the first episode. She and Don have an affair, which she ends when she realizes he keeps coming to her when he's in trouble and wants to run away. Smart and self-possessed, making her one of his more interesting relationships.

  • Career Versus Man: Although she seems to get both.
  • Death by Childbirth: Her mother, one of the things that makes Don see her as a kindred spirit.
  • Lonely Together: With Don.
  • Matzo Fever: Lampshaded. Particularly in the first season, Mad Men acted like Jews were a distant and exotic tribe to the main cast of the show, who, while mostly conservative WASPs, were after all New Yorkers in the advertising business and probably wouldn't have been that befuddled and bedazzled by them. When SC does business with Israel's ministry of tourism, Don arranges lunch with Rachel to pick her brain, and she asks is she's the only Jew he knows in New York. (She is.)
  • Put on a Bus: She resurfaces in season two just long enough to let us know that she's married some guy named Tilden Katz, i.e. that we won't be seeing her anymore. Many fans were disappointed. (In a Brick Joke on the night of Freddy Rumsen's firing, Don uses "Tilden Katz" as his alias when the guys are trying to get into a seedy club.)

Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt)

The very first woman we see Don sleep with, a commercial artist with a circle of racially mixed, pot-smoking, counterculture friends. Don stops seeing her when he comes to believe that she's in love with one of them.

Lee Garner, Jr.

The boisterous and possibly insane member of the family that owns North American Tobacco, which owns Sterling Cooper's most lucrative account, Lucky Strike. At first seemingly a friend of Roger's--they're certainly rather similar--he proves to be too much for everyone.

  1. ↑ A real firm, by the way.
  2. ↑ Also real.
  3. ↑ Real again. How did you guess?
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