Today, we look at perhaps the most famous piece of dialogue from one of the greatest TV shows of all-time, Mad Men.
This is To Quote a Phrase, a spotlight on notable pop culture quotes.
October is a Month of To Quote a Phrase, both here and at Comics Should Be Good!
There really isn’t a central relationship in the acclaimed TV series, Mad Men, about a New York ad agency during the 1960s, unless you perhaps want to say that the show is about the relationship between Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his own narcissism, but the closest the show comes to a central relationship otherwise is between Don and his protege, Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss), a secretary with impressive writing skills that Don promoted to becoming a copywriter at a time when there were very few female copywriters.
As the series continued, Peggy and Don’s relationship became more and more complicated, likely coming to a head in Season 4’s “The Suitcase,” one of the best episodes of the entire series (if not the best period). Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce won an award for a commercial for Glo-Coat, with Don getting the credit for the award, but Peggy having come up with the initial idea for the ad (or at least the basic plot of a kid being locked in a closet while his mother mopped the kitchen. Don then turned that idea into a whole western themed commercial) leads to her resenting Don for not giving her enough credit for her work.
This lead to the following iconic exchange…
Don Draper: That’s how this works. I pay you for ideas.
Peggy Olson: You never say “thank you”!
Don Draper: That’s what the money is for!
Eventually, Peggy leaves the firm (but she comes back after the firm she left to join merges with Sterling Cooper). Their relationship was such a great piece of the show.
Okay, folks, if you have suggestions for cool pop culture quotes, drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com!
I’m reminded of a Perry Mason novel where he takes Della and Paul out for dinner, gives the staff a whopping tip and compliments them.
Paul: “Wasn’t the money enough, Perry?”
Perry: “Money without compliments is tacky. Compliments without money are cheap.”
Which is to say, I kind of side with Perry.
Agreed, I think the greatness of “The Suitcase” is that Don is obviously being a dick to Peggy by taking her for granted (which ultimately leads to her leaving the firm), but at the same time, Peggy is probably being unrealistic due to how much Don clearly respects her ideas, which makes her think they’re closer to being peers while he is clearly very much her boss. She rose from basically nowhere to become a valued copywriter as a woman in her 20s in the 1960s! That’s pretty amazing.