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Whether you're trying to weave together a jumble of ideas, fix split infinitives, or nail down that hard-to-think-of word, there are plenty of writing apps to help you. But vetting those tools and determining which fit best with your writing style takes time.

That's why we've done the heavy lifting for you. The following 15 writing tools help you brainstorm, research, write, and edit better and faster—and they're all free to use.

Tools for Brainstorming and Organizing Your Thoughts

Sometimes, the hardest part of writing is figuring out what you want to write about. Other times, you know exactly what you want to write about, but your ideas are too disorganized to move forward. If you're struggling with either issue, these tools will help you brainstorm and organize your ideas, getting them out of your head and onto the screen.

MindMeister (Web, iOS, Android)

Best free writing software for expanding your ideas

Mind mapping is a great brainstorming exercise for all kinds of writing projects. Whether you're capturing thoughts for a term paper or thesis, putting together an outline for a long blog post or ebook, or coming up with ideas for a new novel or book series, mind mapping can help you capture your ideas and brainstorm new ones by triggering associations.

And while you could create a mind map on paper or a whiteboard, MindMeister offers more flexibility. MindMeister is a tool designed specifically to make mind mapping easier, giving writers a simple way to capture their ideas, organize them, and share them with others.

It doesn't matter how large your mind map gets, MindMeister expands to give you as much room as you need. Capture all of your ideas in a single file, rearrange and organize your ideas by dragging and dropping them, and connect ideas no matter how far apart they are on your mind map. With a premium plan, you can even attach related files and images to reference later.

MindMeister Pricing: Free for up to three mind maps; from $4.99/month for the Personal plan that includes unlimited mind maps and file attachments.

Want to learn more about mind mapping? Check out our mind mapping tutorial, or discover nine ways to use mind maps to jumpstart your projects.

WorkFlowy (Web, macOS, Windows, Chrome, iOS, Android)

Best free writing software for creating content outlines

Well-structured writing starts with a well-structured outline. WorkFlowy makes outlining straightforward: the app lets you quickly create an organized summary of any writing project and all of its parts using bullet points and nested lists.

Start with the broad strokes—section names, big ideas, themes—and nest related details and research beneath those bullets. WorkFlowy also offers hashtag-based tagging and search features, so you don't have to worry about creating too many lists or letting bullet points run wild.

You can zoom in on any list by clicking on the corresponding bullet point. Plus, if you hover over a bullet point, you'll see options to complete, add a note to, share, export, duplicate, or delete that item. Use the Complete option to tick off sections of your outline as you finish writing them, or drag and drop bulleted lists to organize your outline into logical sections.

WorkFlowy Pricing: Free for up to 250 list items per month; from $4.99/month for the WorkFlowy Pro plan that includes unlimited lists and items and customization options.

If WorkFlowy isn't right for you, check out our guide to the best outlining tools—many of which have free plans—to find the best app for your needs.

HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator (Web)

Best free writing software for brainstorming ideas

If you have a general idea of what you want to write about but need to expand your ideas, mind mapping helps. If you have lots of ideas but need to organize them, outlining helps. But what about when you need to write something but have no idea what to write about?

In that scenario, HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator helps. Enter up to five nouns into the generator, and it produces titles for five blog posts (or 250 if you're willing to provide contact information). While the titles it suggests are somewhat formulaic, it does provide suggestions for unique angles you can take with your piece.

For example, say you know you want to write about conferences but aren't sure what you want to say about them. Enter into the Blog Ideas Generator, and you'll get suggestions like "Conferences: Expectations vs. Reality," "The Next Big Thing in Conferences," and "This Week's Top Stories About Conferences."

You can take those suggestions and run with them, or read through them to try and trigger other ideas for topics and angles you're interested in writing about.

HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator Pricing: Free

If you try these tools and are still staring at a blank page, check out some of our favorite writing tips for generating ideas and overcoming writer's block.

Tools for Research and Note-Taking

Once you have a topic in mind, it's time to conduct your research and compile your notes. Whether you need to transcribe an interview, access paywalled research papers, or see what else has been published online, these tools can help.

Evernote (Web, macOS, Windows, Chrome, iOS, Android)

Best free writing software for compiling research

You could compile notes for your content by taking screenshots of the research you want to include and pasting those screenshots in a Google Doc, scribbling down handwritten notes in a notebook, or creating a custom list of bookmarks. But all of these options are time-consuming and hard to search. Evernote provides a simpler option.

Using Evernote's web clipper, you can capture full articles online in a couple of clicks. The articles are then added to Evernote where you can organize collected research into different notebooks, read the full-text of articles you've saved, search all of your collected research at once, and share your collected research with others. Plus, you can automate your note taking with Evernote's Zapier integrations.

With Evernote's premium plan, you can use its mobile app to scan in handwritten notes, pages of books, and business cards. Scanned documents are also searchable, making it easy to find what you're looking for regardless of its format. This makes it a great place to keep things you may need to reference in the future.

Evernote Pricing: Free for up to 60MB uploads monthly, 25MB maximum note size, and Evernote apps on up to two devices; from $7.99/month for the mobile app scanner, searchable PDFs, higher upload and note-size limits, and Evernote apps on unlimited devices.

If Evernote isn't right for your needs, find an alternative in our guide to the best note taking apps.

Unpaywall (Chrome, Firefox)

Best free writing software for finding free copies of paywalled research

You conducted a Google search and found a result for a research paper or article that seems like it has exactly the data you need to cite. Unfortunately, you can't read it because the site you landed on wants you to pay a fee to access the full-text version.

Instead of shelling out to read a paper that may or may not have the information you need, use Unpaywall's Chrome and Firefox extensions to see if there's a free copy of the paper available anywhere online. When you land on a result for a paywalled paper or article that's available for free elsewhere, a green unlocked icon displays; click it to open a free copy of the paper.

Unpaywall harvests data from sources like journals' open-access repositories and university and government databases, ensuring you're never infringing copyright when you access a paywalled article for free.

Unpaywall doesn't work on everything—for example, it won't get you past the paywall on your favorite news site—but if you need to reference paywalled scholarly articles from time to time, it's absolutely worth installing to save yourself some time and money.

Unpaywall Pricing: Free

oTranscribe (Web)

Best free writing software for transcribing interview and video content

If part of your writing process consists of transcribing audio or video interviews or content, oTranscribe removes some of the more time-consuming aspects of the process by putting your audio controls and word processor on a single screen. Simply upload your audio or video file, press play, and start typing your transcription onto the blank page.

This removes all of the back-and-forth of playing audio in one app and typing in another. Plus, keyboard controls let you play and pause the audio easily by tapping the key. Other controls let you jump forward or back a few seconds or adjust the speed of the audio playback.

If you're planning on publishing your transcript, you can add basic formatting like bold and italics, or use + on a Windows machine or + on a Mac to insert a timestamp. When you're finished, you can download your transcription in Markdown, plain text, or oTranscribe formats, or sign in to Google to save it directly to your Google Drive.

oTranscribe Pricing: Free

Tired of transcribing? Use our guide to the best transcription apps and services to find an automated transcription tool or human-powered transcription service to do the work for you.

Tools for Freewriting and Collaborative Writing

Looking for a free word processor, a distraction-free writing app, or a way to collaborate with others on a piece without losing your original content? These apps have just what you need.

BlindWrite (Web)

Best free writing software for freewriting

There's an old adage in the writing world: Write drunk, edit sober. The point? Some of the best writing happens when your mind is unhindered and free of distraction.

In that spirit, BlindWrite forces you to write blind and edit… not blind. The app's interface is a simple white-on-black text editor that asks you what you want to write about and for how many minutes. From there, you can type away, but BlindWrite blurs out your text until the timer hits zero.

This method encourages you to just start writing. When you can't see what you're typing, you can punch out all of your thoughts before considering things like word choice and sentence structure, eliminating perfectionist tendencies that lead to writer's block.

Note: When you open BlindWrite, you'll notice a chat bubble in the corner stating that BlindWrite is now Blurt. We've spoken with Blurt's maker, and he assured us that he has no plans to shut BlindWrite down. However, if you use BlindWrite, like it, and are willing to pay a monthly subscription ($4.99/month for early adopters) to get more features, Blurt is definitely worth checking out.

BlindWrite Pricing: Free

Looking for more ways to eliminate distractions while you're writing? Check out our roundup of the best apps for staying focused and blocking distractions.

Google Docs (Web, Chrome, iOS, Android)

Best free writing software for collaborative writing

With a free Google account, you can use Google Docs to write, edit, and archive your work. It autosaves your document to Google Drive after nearly every word you type—ensuring you never lose part of your draft—and it backs up everything you write to the cloud automatically. Plus you can automate your document creation using Google Docs' Zapier integrations.

And while this makes Google Drive a great tool for any type of writing, where it really stands out is with its collaborative features. With a few clicks, you can share your document with others and give them viewing, editing, or commenting permissions. And best of all, everyone you share the file with can edit the document together at the same time without overriding others' changes.

Just like Word's Track Changes tool, the Suggesting mode in Google Docs allows collaborators to recommend changes, which anyone can either reject or accept. If you accept it, Docs automatically incorporates the suggestion so you don't have to type it in yourself. Docs also maintains a version history of every document you create, so it's easy to access earlier versions or see who made specific changes.

Google Docs Pricing: Free

Not a fan of Google Docs or don't want to create a Google account? Find another great option in our guide to the best collaborative writing apps.

Draft (Web)

Best free writing software for version control

Though Google Docs has great collaborative editing features, it doesn't offer the same editing insurance of Draft. Draft's take on editing is that a collaborator's changes shouldn't immediately alter the original document. Instead, a new version is created for each round of editing.

After someone submits edits, it's up to the document owner to individually accept or reject them. Each time this is done, a new version of the doc is automatically generated, and the doc's owner is given the ability to switch between these versions. It works like Google Docs' Suggesting feature, but it ensures that the original document is always easily accessible.

When you've finished writing a draft, you can share it with others via a link; download the content in Markdown, plain text, or HTML formats; or email it to yourself as a PDF, Google Doc, or Word file.

Draft Pricing: Free

Tools for Editing and Proofreading

Editing your own writing can be a beast. It's hard to see typos when you know what a word is supposed to be, and it's hard to know what someone else may not understand when you understand it perfectly. If you don't have an editor to help you—or if you want to send your editor a near-perfect draft—these tools can help you spot typos, grammatical errors, jargon, and more.

OneLook Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus (Web)

Best free writing software for finding the perfect word

OneLook's Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus works like any other thesaurus you've used: Type in a word, and it suggests dozens of synonyms to consider as alternatives. And while the thesaurus is a must-have in any writer's toolkit, OneLook offers some uniquely helpful options.

For example, you can enter more than a single word into OneLook: Enter a phrase or even an entire sentence. Say you can't think of a word you want to use that means "hard to remember." Enter the phrase into OneLook, and it returns multiple options like "elusive," "hazy," and "mnemonic." You can even filter the results by part of speech to see only nouns, adjectives, adverbs, or verbs.

Reverse Dictionary Pricing: Free

Hemingway Editor (Web, macOS, Windows)

Best free writing software for clear and concise writing

Ernest Hemingway was lauded for his conservative use of words and ability to communicate volumes in short sentences. The Hemingway Editor helps you do the same, making it useful for cleaning up all those thoughts you spilled onto the page.

Paste your content into Hemingway, and it highlights areas of concern in several categories: use of adverbs, use of passive voice, overly complex words and phrases, and overly complex sentences. Scroll through your content to look for highlighted items, then make the necessary changes to remove adverbs, use active verbs, and simplify complex sentences.

Hemingway also gives your writing a grade that represents the reading level for your content. The lower the grade, the more accessible your content will be to a wider audience.

In the long term, Hemingway teaches you to be a better writer because you're identifying and fixing your errors. Over time, you won't make so many of them, and eventually, you may find you don't even need the tool anymore.

Hemingway Editor Pricing: Free for editing in the Hemingway web app; $19.99 for the Mac or Windows desktop app.

Grammarly (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)

Best free writing software for catching spelling and grammar mistakes

You've written the perfect Twitter post, and now you need to sit back and wait until it goes viral. It does, and you're excited until you realize that you typed "your" instead of "you're," you can't edit it after publishing, and your mistake is all anyone in your comments can talk about.

Grammarly helps you avoid these embarrassing mistakes. Install one of its browser extensions to spell- and grammar-check everything you write online, then download the appropriate desktop app for your machine to check things you write offline. It catches mistakes like misspellings, incorrect usage of singular or plural nouns, and homophone mistakes like "its" and "it's"; "you're" and "your"; and "to," "too," and "two."

Grammarly's browser extensions can also be used as a replacement for Google Docs' built-in spell-checker, and overall, it's a better option. When you misspell a word, Grammarly underlines it in red. Hover over the word to see the correct spelling and click the word to change it. It also recognizes when you're using a product name—like WorkFlowy—that isn't technically a word but also isn't incorrect, and it doesn't mark that as a misspelling as Google Docs does.

Grammarly Pricing: Free for the basic spell- and grammar-checker; from $11.66/month for Grammarly Premium that includes more advanced grammar-checking tools, vocabulary enhancement suggestions, and a plagiarism checker.

Cliche Finder (Web)

Best free writing software for finding and removing cliches

Cliche Finder helps you eliminate cliches from your writing, so your work can stand out instead of sounding just like everyone else's.

Paste your text into the tool, click the Find Cliches button, then see a version of your text with any cliches highlighted in bold, red text. You'll have to make the edits in your original document, but it's an easy way to identify any place where you're using a phrase that may need to be re-worded for originality or clarity.

Cliche Finder Pricing: Free

De-Jargonizer (Web)

Best free writing software for finding uses of jargon in your text

Say you're a developer writing a blog post for other developers. It's probably fine—and expected—to use the industry-specific words (jargon) you use every day in your role. However, if you're a developer writing an explanation for non-developers, using day-to-day technical jargon can baffle and alienate your audience.

But it's hard to recognize jargon when the terms you use in your role are ingrained in the way you communicate daily. That's where De-Jargonizer comes in: It helps you identify words that might be considered jargon to readers who aren't in your field.

Paste your text into or upload your draft to De-Jargonizer, and it highlights potentially problematic words in orange or red, depending on severity. While it sometimes highlights words that aren't really jargon (like "evolve" in the example above), it does a great job of highlighting words you may need to change or define for an audience of beginners (such as "lifecycle," "provisioning," and "velocity").

De-Jargonizer Pricing: Free

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer (Web)

Best free writing software for creating compelling headlines

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer gives you the tools you need to craft compelling headlines. Type in a title you're considering, and you'll get a headline score, tips for improving your headline, and other suggestions on length, word placement, and sentiment.

Use Headline Analyzer to test multiple headlines: It displays all of the headlines you've tested, so when you're finished, you can pick the highest-scoring title. Or use CoSchedule's suggestions to improve your existing title by adding power words, uncommon words, or words that invoke emotions and entice click-throughs.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer Pricing: Free

The right writing tools help you create content better and faster by giving you what you need to stay focused, find errors, brainstorm ideas, and perfect your copy. You may find yourself wondering later how you ever wrote a word without them.

This post was originally published in March 2015 by Jane Callahan.

Mad Men is an Americanperiod drama television series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. The series ran on the cable networkAMC from 2007 to 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes.^[1] Its fictional time frame runs from March 1960 to November 1970.

Mad Men begins at the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City and later at the newly created firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (later named Sterling Cooper & Partners), located near the Time-Life Building at 1271 Sixth Avenue. According to the pilot episode, the phrase "Mad men" was a slang term coined in the 1950s by advertisers working on Madison Avenue to refer to themselves, "Mad" being short for "Madison". (In reality, the only documented use of the phrase from that time may have been in the late-1950s writings of James Kelly, an advertising executive and writer.)^[2]

The series' main character is the womanizing advertising executive Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), who is initially the talented creative director at Sterling Cooper, and later a founding partner at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The plot tracks the people in his personal and professional lives. As the series progresses, it depicts the changing moods and social mores of the United States throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Mad Men received widespread critical acclaim for its writing, acting, directing, visual style, and historical authenticity; it won many awards, including 16 Emmys and 5 Golden Globes. The show was also the first basic cable series to receive the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning the award each year of its first four seasons (2008–2011).^[3] It is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time,^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} and as part of the early 21st century Golden Age of Television.^[10][11][12]

Production[edit]

Conception[edit]

In 2000, while working as a staff writer for Becker, Matthew Weiner wrote the first draft as a spec script for the pilot of what would later be called Mad Men.^[13][14] Television producer David Chase recruited Weiner to work as a writer on his HBO series The Sopranos after reading the pilot script in 2002.^[13][15] "It was lively, and it had something new to say," Chase said. "Here was someone [Weiner] who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism."^[15]

Weiner and his representatives at Industry Entertainment and ICM tried to sell the pilot script to HBO, which expressed an interest, but insisted that David Chase be named executive producer. Chase declined, despite his enthusiasm for Weiner's writing and the pilot script. HBO CEO Richard Plepler later became a fan of the show and congratulated AMC on their success with it. In 2017 he named passing on Mad Men as his biggest regret from his time at HBO, calling it "inexcusable" and attributing the decision to "hubris."^[16][17][18]

Weiner then moved on to Showtime, which also passed. Lacking a suitable network buyer, they tabled sales efforts until years later, when a talent manager on Weiner's team, Ira Liss, pitched the series to AMC's Vice President of Development, Christina Wayne.^[19][20]The Sopranos was completing its final season then, and the cable network happened to be getting into the market for new series programming.^[15] "The network was looking for distinction in launching its first original series," according to AMC Networks president Ed Carroll, "and we took a bet that quality would win out over formulaic mass appeal."^[13][i]

Influences[edit]

Weiner listed Alfred Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series, especially the film North by Northwest.^[21] He also was influenced by director Wong Kar-wai in the music, mise en scène, and editorial style. Weiner noted in an interview that M*A*S*H and Happy Days, two television shows produced in the 1970s about the 1950s, provided a "touchstone for culture" and a way to "remind people that they have a misconception about the past, any past." He also said that "Mad Men would have been some sort of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if not for The Sopranos."^[22] Peggy's "psychic scar for the entire show, after giving away that baby," Weiner said, is "the kind of thing that would have never occurred to me before I was on The Sopranos."^[23]

Pre-production[edit]

Tim Hunter, the director of a half-dozen episodes from the show's first two seasons, called Mad Men a "very well-run show." He said:^[24]

They have a lot of production meetings during pre-production. The day the script comes in we all meet for a first page turn, and Matt starts telling us how he envisions it. Then there's a "tone" meeting a few days later where Matt tells us how he envisions it. And then there's a final full crew production meeting where Matt again tells us how he envisions it ...

Filming and production design[edit]

The pilot episode was shot at Silvercup Studios in New York City and various locations around the city; subsequent episodes were filmed at Los Angeles Center Studios.^[25][26] It is available in high definition for showing on AMC HD and on video-on-demand services available from various cable affiliates.^[27]

The writers, including Weiner, amassed volumes of research on the period in which Mad Men takes place so as to make most aspects of the series—including detailed set design, costume design, and props—historically accurate,^[14][15][21] producing an authentic visual style that garnered critical praise.^[28][29][30] On the scenes featuring smoking, Weiner stated: "Doing this show without smoking would've been a joke. It would've been sanitary and it would've been phony."^[21] Each episode had a budget between US$2–2.5 million; the pilot episode's budget was over $3 million.^[13][14]

Robert Morse was cast in the role of senior partner Bertram Cooper; Morse starred in two 1967 films about amoral businessmen, A Guide for the Married Man, a source of inspiration for Weiner,^[15] and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, in which Morse recreated his role from the 1961 Broadway play of the same name (and which was itself based on a satiric novel by a former executive at the defunct New York ad agency, Benton & Bowles, Inc.).^[31]

Weiner collaborated with cinematographer Phil Abraham and production designers Robert Shaw (who worked on the pilot only) and Dan Bishop to develop a visual style that was "influenced more by cinema than television."^[26]Alan Taylor, a veteran director of The Sopranos, directed the pilot and also helped establish the series' visual tone.^[32] To convey an "air of mystery" around Don Draper, Taylor tended to shoot from behind him or would frame him partially obscured. Many scenes set at Sterling Cooper were shot lower-than-eyeline to incorporate the ceilings into the composition of frame; this reflects the photography, graphic design and architecture of the period. Taylor felt that neither steadicam nor handheld camera work would be appropriate to the "visual grammar of that time, and that aesthetic didn't mesh with [their] classic approach"—accordingly, the sets were designed to be practical for dolly work.^[26]

Finances[edit]

According to a 2011 Miller Tabak + Company estimate published in Barron's, Lions Gate Entertainment received an estimated $2.71 million from AMC for each episode, a little less than the $2.84 million each episode costs to produce.^[33]

In March 2011, after negotiations between the network and the series' creator, AMC picked up Mad Men for a fifth season, which premiered on March 25, 2012.^[34] Weiner reportedly signed a $30 million contract, which would keep him at the helm of the show for three more seasons.^[35] A couple of weeks later, a Marie Claire interview with January Jones was published, noting the limits to that financial success when it comes to the actors: "We don't get paid very much on the show and that's well-documented. On the other hand, when you do television you have a steady paycheck each week, so that's nice."^[36]

Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce wrote that sales from home video and iTunes could amount to $100 million in revenue during the show's expected seven-year run, with international syndication sales bringing in an additional estimated $700,000 per episode.^[33] That does not include the $71^[33] to $100 million^[37] estimated to come from a Netflixstreaming video deal announced in April 2011.

Episode credit and title sequences[edit]

The opening title sequence features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of a businessman falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards, accompanied by a short edit of the instrumental "A Beautiful Mine" by RJD2. The businessman appears as a black-and-white silhouette. The titles, created by production house Imaginary Forces, pay homage to graphic designer Saul Bass's skyscraper-filled opening titles for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and falling man movie poster for Vertigo (1958); Weiner has listed Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series.^[21] In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show's opening title sequence ranked No. 9 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.^[38]

David Carbonara composed the original score for the series. Mad Men – Original Score Vol. 1 was released on January 13, 2009.

At the end of almost every episode, the show either fades to black or smash cuts to black as period music, or a theme by series composer David Carbonara, plays during the ending credits; at least one episode ends with silence or ambient sounds. A few episodes have ended with more recent popular music, or with a diegetic song dissolving into the credits music. Apple Corps authorized the use of The Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the Season 5 episode "Lady Lazarus", and the same track was used over the closing credits. Lionsgate, which produces Mad Men, paid $250,000 for the use of the song in the episode.^[39] Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice It's All Right" ended the last episode of Season 1.

Crew[edit]

In addition to having created the series, Matthew Weiner was the show runner, head writer, and an executive producer; he contributed to each episode through writing or co-writing the scripts, casting various roles, and approving costume and set designs.^[13][14] He was notorious for being selective about all aspects of the series, and promoted a high level of secrecy around production details.^[13][14]Tom Palmer served as a co-executive producer and writer on the first season. Scott Hornbacher (who later became an executive producer^[25]), Todd London, Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were producers on the first season. Palmer, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were also writers on the first season. Bridget Bedard, Chris Provenzano, and writer's assistant Robin Veith completed the first-season writing team.

Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton returned as supervising producers for the second season. Veith also returned and was promoted to staff writer. Hornbacher replaced Palmer as co-executive producer for the second season. Consulting producers David Isaacs, Marti Noxon, Rick Cleveland, and Jane Anderson joined the crew for the second season. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, Cleveland, and Anderson were all writers for the second season. New writer's assistant Kater Gordon was the season's other writer. Isaacs, Cleveland, and Anderson left the crew at the end of the second season.

Albert remained a supervising producer for the third season but Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton became consulting producers. Hornbacher was promoted again, this time to executive producer. Veith returned as a story editor and Gordon became a staff writer. Noxon remained a consulting producer and was joined by new consulting producer Frank Pierson. Dahvi Waller joined the crew as a co-producer. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, and Waller were all writers for the third season. New writer's assistant Erin Levy, executive story editor Cathryn Humphris, script co-ordinator Brett Johnson and freelance writer Andrew Colville completed the third season writing staff.

Alan Taylor, Phil Abraham, Jennifer Getzinger, Lesli Linka Glatter, Tim Hunter, Andrew Bernstein, and Michael Uppendahl were regular directors for the series. Matthew Weiner directed each of the season finales. Cast members John Slattery, Jared Harris and Jon Hamm also directed episodes.

As of the third season, seven of the nine writers for the show were women, in contrast to Writers Guild of America 2006 statistics that showed male writers outnumbered female writers by 2 to 1.^[40] As Maria Jacquemetton noted:^[40]

We have a predominately [sic] female writing staff—women from their early 20s to their 50s—and plenty of female department heads and directors. [Show creator] Matt Weiner and [executive producer] Scott Hornbacher hire people they believe in, based on their talent and their experience. "Can you capture this world? Can you bring great storytelling?

Cast and characters[edit]

Mad Men Season 5 core cast from left to right: Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, Jared Harris, Vincent Kartheiser, Jon Hamm, Robert Morse, Elisabeth Moss

Mad Men focuses mostly on Don Draper, although it features an ensemble cast representing several segments of society in 1960s New York. Mad Men places emphasis on recollective progression as a means of revealing the characters' past.^[41]

Don Draper[edit]

Don Draper (Jon Hamm): Creative director and junior partner of Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency and, as of the sixth season, a partner of Sterling Cooper & Partners, he is the series' main protagonist. He is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking executive with a shadowy past who has achieved success in advertising. He's married to Elizabeth "Betty" Draper, with whom he has three children. Don keeps many secrets from Betty. He hides a long history of infidelity. Despite Don's best efforts, Betty gradually starts catching on, and when she learns about both his cheating and secret past, it leads to their separation and eventual divorce.^[13][42] It is gradually revealed over several seasons that Draper's real name is Richard "Dick" Whitman;^[43][44] during the Korean War, he assumed the identity of Lieutenant Don Draper, who was killed in front of Whitman when their entire unit was ambushed by the enemy and in the ensuing chaos Whitman dropped his lit lighter on some fuel which caused some fuel drums to explode thus killing the CO and injuring Whitman. Draper was due to be sent home, so Dick found a way to escape his impoverished, dysfunctional family by switching dog tags with him.^[45]

Peggy Olson[edit]

Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss): Olson rises from being Draper's secretary to being a copywriter with her own office.^[46] She becomes pregnant with Pete Campbell's child, a pregnancy that neither she nor her family or coworkers seem to notice, until she goes to the emergency room due to illness, and they tell her she is in labor.^[47] Campbell is unaware of her pregnancy until the end of Season 2, when Peggy tells him that she gave the baby up for adoption.^[48] In Season 3, Peggy is approached by Duck Phillips to leave Sterling Cooper, but turns him down, despite the fact that his persistence leads to a romantic relationship. While he rarely acknowledges it, Don appreciates Peggy's abilities, leading him to choose her to go with him to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. She is given more freedom to come up with her own creative advertising ideas, with Don always pushing her to be better. During Season 5, Peggy feels increasingly unappreciated and patronized by Draper. In the episode "The Other Woman" she leaves SCDP to accept an offer to become head copywriter at Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough, though the agency merges with SCDP in Season 6, which once again places her under Draper's leadership. In the final season, she transitions to the McCann Erickson agency and eventually finds her true feelings for Stan Rizzo.

Pete Campbell[edit]

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser): A young, ambitious account executive from an old New York family with connections and a privileged background. Often displaying recurring lapses in experience and judgement, Campbell's ruthless climb to the top causes him to attempt to blackmail Don Draper with the Dick Whitman information he has learned, but it does not work. He and Don are antagonistic some of the time, but later develop a grudging respect for each other, culminating in Don's approaching Pete over Ken Cosgrove when forming a new agency.^[45] Campbell and his wife, Trudy, were unable to conceive a child early in their marriage, and he only learned of his child with Olson at the Season 2 finale. He and Trudy do conceive a daughter, Tammy, late in Season 4. At the end of Season 3, dissatisfied with his treatment at Sterling Cooper regarding a promotion, he secretly plans to leave the firm. Unaware of this, Don Draper approaches Campbell with an offer to join his new firm as long as Pete brings accounts worth $8 million of cash flow. Campbell decides to join Draper, with the condition that he be made a partner, though his surname does not appear in the new firm's name (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce). Campbell is one of the few characters in the show who does not smoke cigarettes, though he is seen smoking marijuana on one occasion. He looks up to Don in many ways. Campbell is often shown cheating on his wife, and is not above manipulating and blackmailing women to get them to sleep with him. While Pete and Trudy separate in Season 6 after another one of his affairs, the two reconcile at the end of the series as Pete takes a lucrative offer with Learjet in Wichita, Kansas.

Betty Francis[edit]

Betty Francis (née Hofstadt, formerly Draper) (January Jones): Don Draper's ex-wife and mother of their three children: Sally, Bobby, and Eugene Scott. Raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania and a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she met Don when she was a model in Manhattan and married him soon thereafter. At the start of the series, they have been married for seven years (since 1953) and live in Ossining, New York. Over the course of the first two seasons, Betty gradually becomes aware of her husband's womanizing.^[13] After a brief separation, Betty allows Don to return home when she learns she is pregnant with their third child, but not before having a one-night stand of her own.^[48] She leaves for Reno at the end of Season 3, in December 1963, with the intention of divorcing Don. At the start of Season 4, in November 1964, she has divorced Don and married Henry Francis.^[49] She and her children and new husband move to Rye. Betty's relationship with her children, particularly Sally, is often strained. At the end of Season 7, Betty learns that she has an advanced stage of lung cancer and is given six months to a year to live, even with aggressive treatment. She quickly accepts that her life will soon be over and makes plans for her funeral and her children's future care.

Joan Harris[edit]

Joan Harris (née Holloway) (Christina Hendricks): Office manager and head of the secretarial pool at Sterling Cooper. She had a long-term affair with Roger Sterling until his two heart attacks (Season 1) caused him to end the relationship. In Season 2, she becomes engaged to Dr. Greg Harris (Samuel Page). By Season 3, they are married and at Greg's request Joan quits her job at Sterling Cooper. Their marriage is tested when Greg's lack of skill as a surgeon and consequent difficulties securing work force Joan to return to work at a department store, prompting her to call Roger Sterling to ask for his help in finding an office job. Because of her invaluable organizational and managerial skills, she is later hired for the new agency formed by Don, Roger, Bert, and Lane. Meanwhile, Greg's desire to further his career as a surgeon leads him to obtain a commission in the Army, and early in Season 4 he is sent to basic training and then to Vietnam. While her husband is deployed, Joan and Roger have one sexual encounter, which results in her becoming pregnant. Joan initially decides to terminate the pregnancy, but changes her mind and gives birth shortly before the beginning of Season 5, with her husband unaware he is not the father. Greg returns from Vietnam during Season 5, but he and Joan separate, after he announces to Joan that he is returning to Vietnam for another tour of duty regardless of her feelings on the matter, and are divorced by the end of the season. By the close of Season 5, Joan has become a full partner at SCDP in exchange for agreeing to sleep with a Jaguar executive to help land the account. This leads to conflict with Don in the sixth season, during which Don ends the account with Jaguar just before SCDP makes a public offering. Joan is furious over the loss of potential earnings and the fact that her sacrifice has been for nothing. At the close of the series, she is subject to harassment by McCann executives and agrees to a buyout of her partnership stake. She starts a production company called Holloway Harris.

Roger Sterling[edit]

Roger Sterling (John Slattery); recurring Season 1, regular Seasons 2–7: One of the two senior partners of Sterling Cooper, and one-time mentor to Don Draper. His father founded the firm with Bertram Cooper, hence his name comes before Cooper's in the firm's title. A picture in Cooper's office shows Roger as a child alongside Cooper as a young adult. In Season 2, Bertram Cooper mentions that "the late Mrs. Cooper" introduced Sterling to his wife, Mona, whom Sterling is in the process of divorcing in favor of Don's former secretary, 20-year-old Jane.^[46] Sterling, a World War IINavy veteran, was a notorious womanizer (living like he was "on shore leave"^[50]) until two heart attacks changed his perspective, although they did not affect his drinking or smoking habits, which remained excessive. His experiences in the Pacific theatre led to him harbouring a strong contempt for the Japanese and refuses to do business with them as seen in Season 4. Prior to his marriage to Jane, Roger had a longstanding affair with Joan Holloway. In Season 4, he and Joan have a brief romantic encounter, and Joan becomes pregnant. It is revealed in Season 3 that sometime in the early-1950s, when Don was a salesman at a furrier, and eager to break into advertising, Roger met him and through that connection Don was hired at Sterling Cooper. Season 4 has Roger less involved with the day-to-day activities at SCDP than he was at Sterling Cooper. His primary function is to manage the Lucky Strike account, which is responsible for over half of SCDP's billings. However, in the episode "Chinese Wall", it's revealed that Lucky Strike is moving its account to a rival agency, forcing a dramatic downsizing of the firm. During Season 5, however, Roger is given new accounts to handle. He refocuses his efforts and lands a big account with Chevrolet Motor Company. He offers to financially support his son, but Joan does not believe he is reliable. By the end of the sixth season, however, Joan agrees to let him into Kevin's life but not hers. At the close of the series, Roger indicates to Joan that half his estate will go to Kevin in his will. Roger eventually marries Megan Draper's mother, Marie, and their honeymoon in Paris is part of the final montage in the series.

Kenneth "Ken" Cosgrove[edit]

Kenneth "Ken" Cosgrove (Aaron Staton): A young account executive originally from Vermont. Outside the office, Ken is an aspiring author who had a short story published in The Atlantic, which is a source of some envy by his co-workers, particularly the competitive Paul Kinsey and jealous Pete Campbell. According to his bio in The Atlantic, Ken attended Columbia University.^[51] His wife is Cynthia. He has one admirer, art director Salvatore "Sal" Romano, who secretly has a crush on him.^[52] Ken was promoted in the beginning of Season 3 to Account Director, a role he shared with Pete Campbell. Later on, the more easy-going Ken is promoted over the more ambitious Campbell to Senior Vice President of Account Services. However, at the end of Season 3, Draper and Sterling choose Pete over Ken for their new agency. During Season 4, Ken joins SCDP after working for McCann Erickson, which had bought Sterling Cooper, and BBD&O. When Pete learns of Ken's return, he is initially upset with Lane Pryce for not telling him, since Pryce had authorized Ken's previous promotion over Pete. However, when Ken agrees to serve under Pete as accounts manager at SCDP, the two reconcile over lunch and Pete comes to realize that Ken is a practical choice to help bring new business to the firm. In Season 5 it is discovered that Ken secretly writes science fiction short stories. In Season 6, he is wounded in the eye during a hunting accident with SCDP clients, Chevrolet. By Season 7, he shows increased stress over the state of the agency, and with the acquisition of SC&P by McCann Erickson, Ken is fired. However, he assumes his father-in-law's position at Dow Chemical and thus becomes a client for the remainder of the series run.

Harold "Harry" Crane[edit]

Harold "Harry" Crane (Rich Sommer): A bespectacled media buyer and head of Sterling Cooper's television department, which is created at Harry's initiative. Unlike his mostly Ivy League fellows, Harry went to the University of Wisconsin. Harry joins his colleagues in drinking and flirtations, though he is a dedicated husband and father. However, he does have a drunken one-night stand with Pete's secretary in Season 1, which leads to a brief separation from his wife Jennifer. Although he is well-meaning, Harry has a tendency to make poor decisions and avoid confrontations, which contributes to the dismissal of Sal Romano in Season 3. He is ultimately coerced by Draper and Cooper into joining Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, although he comes to the realization that it is the right move on his own. When Sterling Cooper was in the process of being sold, Harry mistakenly thinks they are considering opening a West Coast office and believes that he would be the person to move to California. Harry later becomes a bit of a braggart, who is overly fond of discussing his Hollywood connections. In Season 5 he has abandoned his faithfulness to his wife as he discusses having affairs while abroad on business and is easily seduced by Paul's Hare Krishna girlfriend Lakshmi in his office. He also becomes increasingly image-conscious and petty, culminating in Season 6 when he explodes at Joan after she fires his secretary Scarlet for falsifying her time card, venting his frustration over her being made partner when he was not. By Season 7, the question of his being named partner is discussed again and endorsed by Jim Cutler, but the sale of SC&P to McCann Erickson eliminates that possibility. He also propositions Megan Draper in exchange for helping promote her acting career, but is rejected.

Paul Kinsey[edit]

Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis); regular Seasons 1–3, guest star Season 5: A creative copywriter and Princeton University alumnus, the bearded, pipe-smoking Paul prides himself on his politically liberal views. Some time before the series began he had a relationship with Joan Holloway which ended badly, largely because Paul talked about it too much. Paul tried, unsuccessfully, to date Peggy soon after she was hired by Sterling Cooper.^[53] Through most of the second season, Paul dated Sheila White, an African-American woman from South Orange, New Jersey. They break up while in Oxford, Mississippi, where they had gone as Freedom Riders to oppose segregation in the South.^[46] It is a source of pride for Kinsey to live in the low-income, southern section of Montclair, New Jersey; Joan, however, mocks him as a shallow poseur. He is highly competitive, an attribute revealed to have soured a few friendships while he was in college, and which causes friction with Peggy, who quickly proves to be a superior copywriter to him. He is furious upon discovering that Don chose Peggy for the new agency over him. Paul did not appear after the third season finale until he reappeared in the tenth episode of Season 5, revealing himself to Harry as a disciple of Krishna Consciousness. Paul asks Harry to look at a Star Trek script he wrote, which Harry thinks is awful. Harry later realizes that Paul's girlfriend is manipulating him because of his recruiting skills within the Krishna movement, and encourages Paul to follow his dreams. He gives Paul $500 and tells him to get to Los Angeles as soon as possible.

Salvatore "Sal" Romano[edit]

Salvatore "Sal" Romano (Bryan Batt); regular Seasons 1–3: The Italian-American former art director at Sterling Cooper. Sal is a closeted homosexual. Reluctant to act upon his homosexuality, he twice avoids sexual encounters with men. By 1962, Sal has married Kitty, who seems unaware of Sal's sexual orientation, yet begins to realize that something is amiss in their relationship.^[52] The issue of being closeted for Sal is shown in brief but stark contrast against the newly evolving social attitudes toward homosexuality. Sal's secret crush on Ken Cosgrove comes uncomfortably and awkwardly close to being revealed during a dinner in Sal's apartment.^[52] Later, when a recently hired young advertising exec, Kurt, casually announces his homosexuality, Sal remains painfully silent while his fellow co-workers speak disparagingly about Kurt.^[54] In the premiere of Season 3, Sal has a brief interrupted homosexual encounter with a hotel employee while in Baltimore, the end of which Don accidentally witnesses. Don, who was in the midst of a heterosexual encounter of his own at the same hotel, finesses this uncomfortable situation through a coded conversation about their current client, London Fog. He suggests the tagline "Limit your exposure". Later in Season 3, Sal rebuffs the sexual advances of Lee Garner Jr., the drunken playboy son of Lucky Strike's founder and a key client. Angered by the rejection, the client demands Sal be removed from the campaign and Roger fires Sal in order to appease the client and keep his $25 million account. In a conversation right after the firing, Don explains the agency cannot risk losing Lucky Strike and implies Sal should have gone along with Garner Jr.^[55] At the end of the episode, Sal is seen calling his wife Kitty from a phone booth (presumably in Central Park), in an area frequented by gay men cruising for sex. On the phone, Sal explains to Kitty he will be working late that night. Sal never appears again in the series.^[56]

Bertram "Bert" Cooper[edit]

Bertram "Bert" Cooper (Robert Morse); recurring Seasons 1–2, regular Seasons 3–7: The somewhat eccentric senior partner at Sterling Cooper. He leaves the day-to-day running of the firm to Sterling and Draper but is keenly aware of the firm's operations. Bertram is a Republican. He is fascinated by Japanese culture, requiring everybody, including clients, to remove their shoes before walking into his office, which is decorated with Japanese art. He is also a fan of the writings of Ayn Rand. Among his eccentricities, Bert frequently walks through the offices in his socks and intensely dislikes gum-chewing and smoking, an oddity for the time, especially considering Lucky Strike cigarettes is a major client through Season 4. He owns a ranch in Montana and is a widower with no children. Don approaches him about buying back the agency at the end of the third season, which evolves into their forming the new Sterling Cooper firm. In Season 4, Roger Sterling, being a WWII veteran of the Pacific theater, is outraged at the possibility of taking on a Japanese client, Honda. In a heated office meeting with some of the other executives including Peter Campbell, who had the lead, Roger says to Bert, "Why don't we just get Dr. Lyle Levins in here?" and storms out of the room, leaving Peter Campbell dumbfounded, asking, "Who the hell is Dr. Lyle Levins?" Interestingly enough, a few episodes later, a drunk and lonely Don who is pulling an all-nighter at the office with Peggy, stumbles upon an audio tape recording of Roger Sterling's memoirs that reveals that Bert received a war injury to his groin and was castrated by an incompetent doctor, named Lyle Levins. Later in Season 4, in the episode "Blowing Smoke", when the agency is forced to radically downsize its staff following the loss of the Lucky Strike account, Bert tells the others that he is quitting the business. He is not seen for the rest of the season but is back at work at the beginning of Season 5. Bert's sister Alice is a silent partner in Sterling Cooper. By the sixth season, Bert is increasingly frustrated with Don's erratic behavior and joins the other partners in placing him on a leave of absence. During the seventh season, he agrees to let Don return under an agreed set of stipulations. He dies while watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television. He appears to Don in two dream sequences following his death.

Sally Beth Draper[edit]

Sally Beth Draper (Kiernan Shipka); recurring Seasons 1–3, regular Seasons 4–7: The eldest child of Don and Betty Draper; her relationship with her mother is often strained. Sally is a minor character through the first two seasons but assumes a larger role during the third season as she approaches adolescence. She forms a strong bond with her grandfather, Gene Hofstadt, when he comes to live with the Drapers and is devastated by his sudden death. She also becomes distraught when Don and Betty break the news that they are getting a divorce, reproaching her father for breaking his promise to always be there and accusing her mother of making him leave. She develops a friendship with Glen, a boy who lives down the street from her (and of whom her mother does not approve). Betty is extremely jealous of this relationship and seeks to sabotage it, deciding to move the family to Rye, New York and firing Carla, the housekeeper, when she lets Glen in the house to say goodbye to Sally. In Season 5, Sally is shown to continue her friendship with Glen through phone calls and secret meetings. When Don marries Megan Calvet, Sally establishes a mostly positive relationship with Megan. During the sixth season, Sally is accepted to Miss Porter's School but gets suspended after being caught buying alcohol with a fake ID. In the final season, Sally's disillusion with both of her parents is evident but changes upon the news of Betty's cancer diagnosis.

Rachel Katz[edit]

Rachel Katz (née Menken) (Maggie Siff); regular Season 1, guest star Seasons 2 and 7: The Jewish head of a department store who comes to Sterling Cooper in search of an advertising agency to revamp her business's image. She is initially cool towards Don Draper, who bristles at her assertive, independent image but they warm to each other and eventually begin an affair. In the course of their affair, Don tells her things he has not shared with Midge Daniels (his previous mistress) or his wife. When Don is blackmailed by Pete Campbell, he comes to Rachel with the suggestion that they run away together to Los Angeles. She reminds him of his duty to his children and questions whether he would want to abandon his children after having grown up without a father. When Don persists, Rachel comes to the realization that he didn't want to run away with her, he simply wanted to run away. Ironically, her calling him a coward and urging him to think more clearly inspires him to persuade Pete to stand down. The relationship seems to collapse from that point on, and Cooper complains to Don about how upset he has made her. Don and Rachel end the affair at some point between the first and second seasons. He encounters her again in Season 2 while out to eat with Bobbie Barrett, finding out that Rachel has moved on and married a man named Tilden Katz. Though it appears that Don is only momentarily shaken by the news of her marriage, several episodes later, after drinking heavily with Roger and Freddie Rumsen, he gives his name as "Tilden Katz" to the bouncer of an underground club Roger is trying to get them into. In Season 7, Don sees Rachel in a vision while auditioning actresses for a fur commercial, but when he attempts to contact her, he learns that Rachel had two children and that she died from leukemia.

Lane Pryce[edit]

Lane Pryce (Jared Harris); recurring Season 3, regular Seasons 4–5: The English financial officer installed by Sterling Cooper's new British parent company. He first appears in the first episode of Season 3. His role is that of a strict taskmaster who brings spending under control, in particular by cutting out frivolous expenses. His efforts are so successful, he is to be sent to India to enact cost-cutting measures, a move which Pryce is not looking forward to after having settled in with his wife and child in New York. An unfortunate accident at work handicaps his replacement, thus allowing Pryce to keep his current position. He warms to American culture, and foresees some form of cultural and societal changes in American race relations. When the British parent company is sold at the end of Season 3, Pryce realizes he has become expendable and negotiates to become a founding partner in the new agency that Don Draper, Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling want to form. At Draper's suggestion, Pryce frees Sterling, Cooper, and Draper from their contractual non-compete clauses by firing them, then is fired himself, enabling the four of them to start their own firm. When hard times hit SCDP after Lucky Strike, their largest client, leaves them in Season 4, Pryce liquidates his portfolio in order to pay his share of the cash infusion required by the bank as collateral for a loan that keeps SCDP afloat. His finances already tight, he faces a crisis when the British Inland Revenue demand immediate payment of back taxes on the gain from the sale of his portfolio in Season 5. In order to pay the debt, Pryce secretly negotiates a $50,000 line of credit on behalf of the firm and announces to the partners that SCDP has a $50,000 profit and is able to pay bonuses. In anticipation of the bonus, Pryce forges Draper's signature on an early bonus check to himself, and views it as a 13-day loan which will be made good once the bonuses are paid. However, the partners decide to forgo their bonuses despite Pryce's pleading. In the penultimate episode of Season 5, Cooper discovers the cancelled check and confronts Draper, who in turn confronts Pryce, demanding his resignation. That weekend, Pryce types out a resignation letter and hangs himself in his office.

Megan Draper[edit]

Megan Draper (née Calvet) (Jessica Paré); recurring Season 4, regular Seasons 5–7: Don's wife (as of the beginning of Season 5) and a junior copy writer at SCDP. Initially Megan is a receptionist at SCDP, but following the death of Miss Blankenship, she takes over as Don Draper's secretary. In the Season 4 finale, Don takes Megan on a trip to California to take care of his kids. In spite of being involved with Faye Miller, a marketing research consultant who works with SCDP, he proposes marriage to Megan and she accepts. In the episode "Lady Lazarus," she leaves the firm to pursue her dream of acting, and (with the help of Don) lands her first acting gig in one of SCDP's commercials by the Season 5 finale. Don seems to be more honest with Megan than he was with Betty, apparently telling Megan about his true identity between Seasons 4 and 5. At the same time, he retains some of those possessive qualities he displayed during his previous marriage, although Megan is more stubborn and combative than Betty. Megan relocates permanently to California to pursue her acting career and she and Don divorce during Season 7. Megan is originally from Montreal, and French is her first language.

Stan Rizzo[edit]

Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson); recurring Season 4, regular Seasons 5–7: The art director at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Before coming to the company, he worked for Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 Presidential campaign. He and Peggy are often at odds with each other due to his abrasive attitude, although the two later develop a strong working relationship after Peggy challenges Stan over working in the nude for a campaign, which Stan gruffly concedes to her. Stan is one of the few members of the SCDP creative department who survives the staff cuts. He makes the transition to McCann Erickson in Season 7 and tells Peggy of his love for her at the conclusion of the series, which Peggy reciprocates.

Henry Francis[edit]

Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley); recurring Seasons 3–4, regular Seasons 5–7: A political adviser with close connections to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the Republican Party, it is later revealed that he serves as the Director of Public Relations and Research in the Governor's Office. He is instantly infatuated with the six-months-pregnant Betty Draper when he meets her at the Sterlings' Kentucky Derby party as she is waiting by the women's restroom. Later, he is called upon by Betty Draper and some of her friends to use his influence to save a local reservoir, and he and Betty develop a personal connection. Betty reciprocates Henry's attention because she increasingly feels no connection with Don due to his non-stop infidelities, lies over his true identity, and his dismissive and sometimes verbally abusive attitude towards her. After the death of Betty's beloved father, the much older Henry also serves as a replacement father-figure for her. Henry and Betty have only a few brief and furtive meetings before Henry proposes marriage in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Season 3 ends with the two of them on a plane with baby Gene, presumably flying to Reno so Betty can obtain a quick divorce from Don. At the start of Season 4, we see that Henry and Betty have married and Henry has rather uncomfortably taken up residence in the Drapers' house, living with Betty and her three children and paying rent to Don. He tries to soothe Betty as she continues to react angrily to Don and his irresponsibility towards the children, but gets more fed up over time. Betty, on her part, feels unaccepted by Henry's family, especially when she is unable to control Sally during a family visit to Henry's mother's house. At the end of Season 4, they decide to move to Rye, NY. Their relationship during Season 5 seems to be more affectionate, though Henry still periodically loses his temper with Betty. The news of Betty's cancer in Season 7 devastates him and despite her desire to keep the illness from the children, Henry informs Sally of her mother's condition.

Ted Chaough[edit]

Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm); recurring Seasons 4–5, regular Seasons 6–7: A self-proclaimed rival of Don Draper in the advertising world, his agency—Cutler Gleason and Chaough (CGC)—was in competition with SCDP for an account with Honda. Don tricked Ted into making an expensive presentation to Honda executives, which backfired on Ted as he violated Honda's presentation rules (no finished work or commercials allowed at the presentation). Though the two agencies are comparable in size, he seems obsessed with competing against Don. Ted also tried to woo Pete Campbell over to his agency. After Don writes his New York Times ad about dropping business with cigarette companies, Ted makes a prank call to Don pretending to be Robert F. Kennedy. When he returns in Season 5 to recruit Peggy to leave SCDP and join his advertising firm, he remains very confident but is much less obnoxious than in his previous appearances; he does not indulge his typical dislike and jealousy of Don to Peggy, and that helps her decide to accept his offer, which in the season finale has him assigning her a huge amount of material involving an account for cigarettes aimed at female consumers. During Season 6, Ted and Don impulsively decide to merge their smaller firms so as to compete with the larger ones; however, this leads to numerous small struggles for power between them. In the Season 6 finale, Ted moves to a California SC&P office to have a "new start" after a short-lived affair with Peggy. He returns in Season 7 after the McCann purchase and settles into the culture of the firm.

Michael Ginsberg[edit]

Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman); recurring Season 5, regular Seasons 6–7: First appearing in the episode "Tea Leaves" (Season 5, Episode 3), Michael is hired as a part-time copywriter by Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. He is initially hired to service the Mohawk account, and proves himself to be both prolific and innovative. He quickly becomes an essential part of the creative team and surpasses Peggy Olson midway through the season as the firm's most productive writer, while Peggy becomes mired in the Heinz story arc. Ginsberg is an idiosyncratic, socially awkward character who tends to speak his mind, which can be both a help and hindrance to him. Indeed, his position at the firm is threatened at times, including at his interview, when Peggy decides not to employ him for fear of his being too extroverted for Don's tastes. However, this decision is reversed by Roger, who has already told Mohawk that they have taken him on. As the firm's only Jewish copywriter, Roger uses this to his advantage to help Jewish clients, like Manischewitz. His role at SCDP becomes more integral after Peggy leaves the agency, though he commands almost none of the respect and support from Don that she did. His paranoia about the newly installed computer in the office drives him insane, eventually cutting off his own nipple as a gift to Peggy; he is then taken to a psychiatric hospital.

Robert "Bobby" Draper[edit]

Robert "Bobby" Draper (Mason Vale Cotton; previously Maxwell Huckabee, Aaron Hart, and Jared Gilmore) recurring Seasons 1–5; regular Seasons 6–7: The middle child of Don and Betty Draper. He was referred to by his mother Betty as a "little liar." Bobby was mentioned as being 5 years old in the Season 2 episode "The Mountain King," making his birthdate between October 1956 and September 1957. Despite not having many story lines during the series, Bobby is shown to be affected by his parents' divorce but grows fond of Don's and Betty's new spouses, Megan and Henry, respectively. In Season 6, he expresses sympathy towards blacks just after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and fears Henry might be shot. By Season 7, Bobby grows troubled over the increased arguments between Betty and Henry.

Episodes[edit]

Themes and motifs[edit]

Mad Men depicts parts of American society of the 1960s, including cigarette smoking, drinking, sexism, feminism, adultery, homophobia, antisemitism and racism.^[21][57] Themes of alienation, social mobility and ruthlessness set the tone of the show. MSNBC noted that the series "mostly remains disconnected from the outside world, so the politics and cultural trends of the time are illustrated through people and their lives, not broad, sweeping arguments".^[58]

According to Weiner, he chose the 1960s because: