Much like its AMC successor Breaking Bad, Mad Men is a show whose quality was so consistent that it's difficult to bring to mind a weak episode. The closest the show has come was probably this season's meandering and clunky 'New Business', and even that laid groundwork that's paid off well down the road.

But to mark the end of Mad Men, we've attempted the impossible. Below are the 16 best episodes of a show that arguably had no bad ones - presented in chronological order:

Season 1, Episode 1, 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes'

Doug Hyun



Matthew Weiner wrote the pilot episode on spec almost a decade before it finally made it to the small screen, and the years of dedication and fine-tuning show.

Not a single word is wasted in 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes', which establishes its 1960 setting with such elegance that you scarcely notice until afterwards how rich the characters already feel.

Weiner uses Peggy's first day in the office as Don's secretary to explore everything from workplace harassment (hi, Pete Campbell), to women's limited professional options (Joan's blistering advice to Peggy), to contraception (her doctor's condescending attitude speaks volumes).

While a few lines feel out of place in retrospect – Don's "I won't allow a woman to talk to me like this" being the most glaring example – this is an effective self-contained scene-setting story, surprising down to its final moments in which Pete shows up at Peggy's door, and apparent bachelor Don is revealed to have a wife and children sleeping in the suburbs.

Season 1, Episode 5, '5G'

Carin Baer



The first episode to delve into Don's dual identity as Dick Whitman – which saw his long-lost half-brother Adam (Jay Paulson) come to town hoping to re-establish their relationship – was also the first time we saw a real chink in Don's emotional armour.

Don is characteristically ruthless with Adam, sending him on his way with a bribe. There's a moment of ambiguity as we see him withdraw something hidden from a drawer before going to meet his brother. At this stage, we have no reason to believe Don Draper isn't capable of a "You broke my heart, Fredo" moment.

But instead he pays him off and sends him away, and it's almost as bad. Hamm turns the moment into far more than a straightforward brush-off – as a devastated Adam hugs him, it's clear for just a second how shattered Don is by this too. It's momentarily devastating, until he yanks the mask back into place.

Season 1, Episode 9, 'Shoot'

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Though Betty Draper has become one of Mad Men's most divisive characters, the show's first season served her exceptionally well, and 'Shoot' is the episode that really hammers home just how oppressive her life as a suburban housewife is.

In a pretty low bid to woo Don, rival agency McCann Erickson gives former model Betty the chance to audition for their Coca-Cola campaign. She's clearly elated by the renewed purpose it gives her, and it's impossible not to feel for her when it all falls apart – and not to cheer when she lets out her anger on the neighbour's pigeons.

Meanwhile at the office, Peggy and Joan's increasingly tense relationship simmers over in telling ways. Peggy is beginning to excel as a copywriter, while Joan still finds it incomprehensible that she has any ambitions in the workplace beyond finding a husband – and this dovetails neatly back to Betty and her thwarted attempt to reclaim her own professional identity.

Season 1, Episode 13, 'The Wheel'



The carousel.

We could just leave it there – there can't be a single Mad Men viewer who needs further explanation on this. No other scene in the show summarises so beautifully the genuine power of marketing, while simultaneously tapping into Don Draper's deeply wounded core.

Don's heartfelt pitch to Kodak, in which he explains that their slide projector is a time machine offering consumers the chance to recover their past, is all the more resonant because it comes hours after the revelation that his brother has committed suicide (largely because of Don's refusal to acknowledge his own past).

There are plenty of other highlights to this season one finale – the triumph-horror double whammy of Peggy's promotion and sudden contractions, Betty's quiet revelation about Don, the use of Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' – but the carousel is arguably Mad Men's defining moment, and it overshadows everything on either side.

Season 2, Episode 5, 'The New Girl'

Carin Baer



Don's affair with Bobbie Barrett hits the skids in a very literal sense, and the fallout from their drunken fender bender inspires some revealing interactions with Peggy for both.

This is an important episode on several levels, but most of all because it's when Don and Peggy become one another's secret keepers. He calls her from jail, knowing that she will be discreet in bailing him out because several months earlier, he did the same for her.

"It will shock you how much this never happened," Don counsels Peggy as she lies in her hospital bed after giving birth to a baby she didn't know she was carrying. He gives her what she needs to get herself out of the psych ward, while Bobbie gives her a game-changing piece of career advice during their loaded conversation: "You can't be a man – be a woman."

It's debatable whether or not Peggy ultimately takes her advice, or whether it's good advice, but it's unquestionably crucial to Peggy's development.

Season 2, Episode 13, 'Meditations In An Emergency'



The threat of nuclear war looms large in this episode, and the hysteria surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis spurs several characters into game-changing moments of boldness.

For Don, it's returning home and vowing to be a better husband to Betty. For Betty, it's taking a taste of Don's lifestyle by having sex with a stranger, following through on the vague promise of season two's premiere. For Pete, it's confessing his love to Peggy, and for Peggy it's confessing in return that she had his baby, and doesn't want his love.

The latter scene is a heartbreaking standout for both Elisabeth Moss and Vincent Kartheiser, and all the more powerful for never being brought up between the two directly ever again – it's only referenced obliquely throughout the series after this episode.

Season 3, Episode 6, 'Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency'

Carin Baer



"He's going to lose the foot." "And he just got it in the door."

Aside from giving us potentially Roger Sterling's finest one-liner to date, this unexpectedly gory hour is a meticulously executed piece of blackly comic farce, cutting against the show's usual tone to spectacularly surreal effect.

As the firm's new bosses arrive from London, it becomes clear that up-and-comer Guy MacKendrick is the nicest of the bunch, so naturally he gets it in the neck. Or more accurately the foot, as hapless secretary Lois slices through his foot with a John Deere lawnmower, spraying blood all over Sterling Cooper's stunned assembled workforce.

At least poor Guy doesn't lose his foot in vain, since his maiming gives rise to some great moments between characters we don't see interact enough – from Pete catching Peggy as she faints, to Don and Joan bonding over gallows humour in the hospital.

Season 3, Episode 8, 'Souvenir'

Carin Baer



Mad Men doesn't go in for much globe-trotting. You can count on one hand the number of times anyone even leaves the state until season seven. However, Don and Betty's brief trip to Rome was a revelatory escape, giving a temporary new lease of life to a marriage that was clearly terminal.

Betty's fluent Italian tilts the power dynamic in their relationship so entirely that they feel – both to us and to themselves – like a brand new couple, with Don's lack of education and world experience standing out in ways it never does in familiar surroundings. And the post-holiday crash is brutal, making everything wrong with the Drapers' relationship all the more glaring.

This is also a landmark episode for Pete, whose horrific treatment (and arguably rape) of his neighbour's au pair remains his lowest moment to date, an ugly example of his raging sense of entitlement.

Season 3, Episode 11, 'The Gypsy and the Hobo'



Betty had known of Don's adultery for some time by this point, but his bigger secret stayed buried for close to three seasons – that not only was their marriage a lie, but Don himself was one.

And after those three seasons of build-up, the payoff here is beautiful as Betty finally breaks her silence and wrings the truth out of Don, all as Sally's teacher waits outside for him to take her for a romantic getaway.

The latter adds stakes to what's already an extraordinarily tense situation, Don and Betty's standoff playing out like a one-act play with its own self-contained three-act structure. He lies, he evades, he gets defensive, and finally he gives in and confesses everything.

Season 3, Episode 13, 'Shut the Door, Have a Seat'

Carin Baer



Though Mad Men is often cynical – inevitably for a show about the advertising industry – its season finales never are. Every season ender is heartfelt and in some way cathartic, and in the case of season three's finale it's also jam-packed with moments of pure fan service.

Don and Roger freeing themselves from PPL by starting up their own agency is a thrilling caper story, which requires Don to eat a lot of humble pie. Having buried the hatchet with Roger, he then has to convince Pete ("We need you to keep us looking forward") and Peggy ("I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you") to join him, and it's a pleasure to watch him succeed.

There's a bittersweet edge to all this, because as Don is assembling his work family – who he gazes at with fondness in the episode's closing moments – his actual family is falling apart. For every heartwarming moment like Don enlisting Peggy, there's a moment as ugly as Don calling Betty a whore, or the Draper children's reaction to their parents' divorce.

Season 4, Episode 7, 'The Suitcase'

Michael Yarish



There's nothing like a bottle episode to pay off a long-simmering relationship, and after several seasons of Don and Peggy's dynamic being developed through too-brief glimpses, we were gifted with what is essentially a two-hander as they connect over the course of one long, exhausting, revelatory all-nighter.

Don, desperate to avoid making a devastating phone call, pressures Peggy into staying later and later in the office to work on a Samsonite campaign. She stays and stays, and misses her own birthday party, and she and Don fight viciously before beginning to bare their souls to each other.

'The Suitcase' blends brutal character comedy ("That's what the money is for!") with the kind of raw emotion that always feels novel on a show this jaded. Peggy talks about her baby for the first time in years, and Don lets her see him cry when he finally gets the news that Anna Draper is dead, and at the end they hold hands in a mirror image of their awkward first interaction, marking out how far they've come. It's a perfect episode of television.

Season 4, Episode 10, 'Hands and Knees'



The threat of Don's identity theft and desertion being exposed runs throughout the entire show, but comes to a peak in this episode.

Betty and Pete, two characters who never met but have often been paralleled, are both forced to protect Don when a new account triggers a government investigation into his past. The panic attack he suffers with Dr Faye (who he should have ended up with, if only he were emotionally healthy) is a visceral reminder of just how fragile Don Draper – the man and the facade – still is.

Pete and Don's relationship is fascinating for how dramatically it morphs over the course of the show, and here (three seasons after he tried to blackmail Don with his past) Pete actually takes the fall for him, losing the client in the process.

The introduction of Lane's abusive father here is also striking. It's an interlude which didn't immediately seem connected to anything, but would pay off in heartbreaking ways a season down the line.

Season 5, Episode 5, 'Signal 30'

Ron Jaffe



Born-and-bred New Yorker Pete was always likely to be thrown into crisis by moving out to the suburbs, and a dinner party with Don and Megan kicks off a perfect storm of emasculation which ultimately lands Pete at his lowest emotional point ever.

The persistently leaking faucet in his house which Don can fix in a heartbeat; the pre-college girl who has no interest in him; and finally the indignation of getting the snot beaten out of him - by Lane of all people. It's all no less than Pete deserves (Joan says as much to Lane afterwards), but Kartheiser's performance inspires sympathy as much as revulsion.

"I have nothing, Don," Pete says tearfully in the episode's final moments (one of many loaded elevator exchanges in Mad Men history. It's a sad moment not because he's right, but because he can't see how wrong he is – Pete is incapable of appreciating what he has, and in this way he and Don are exactly alike. It's neither the first nor the last time the pair of them are paralleled.

Season 5, Episode 11, 'The Other Woman'

Michael Yarish



Possibly the most divisive episode in Mad Men history thanks to its A story, which sees Joan prostitute her way into a partnership, after a Jaguar executive implies that he'll give SCDP the account in exchange for a night with Joan.

Don (unsurprisingly given his past in the whorehouse) is the only one in the office truly opposed to this. Roger and Lane are both somewhat depressingly resigned to it, while Pete and Joan herself are almost brutally pragmatic.

The moral questions this situation raises are nuanced and troubling, putting almost every character under the moral spotlight. Is Don being a gentleman when he tries to dissuade Joan from saying yes, or is he patronising a woman who has the right to make her own decision? Is Pete fulfilling Lane's description of him as a "grimy little pimp" by bringing the deal to Joan, or is he treating her with respect by being upfront about her options?

But wherever you come down on the Joan debate, there's no arguing that the final scene between Don and Peggy – in which, having suffered his abuse for long enough, she tells him she's leaving to join Ted Chaough's firm – is anything other than wrenching and lovely, as he kisses her hand and she holds back tears.

Season 6, Episode 11, 'Favours'

Michael Yarish AMC



Don Draper lives in terror of being caught. The threat of his being exposed by the feds had more or less faded out of the picture by this point, but the way he gets discovered by Sally in this episode is arguably just as devastating.

Don's affair with his neighbour Sylvia felt dangerous from the off. It was his first adultery since marrying Megan, and it's clear he's not as slick as he was once. Playing away this close to home is more of a Pete move than a Don one, and you'll recall it didn't work out too well for Pete either.

A psychologist might say, given how sloppy Don became with Sylvia and Arnold, that he wanted to get caught, but even if that's true there's no way he intended it to be poor Sally who discovered him in bed with Sylvia. It's a real heart-in-your-throat moment that has a ripple effect through Don and Sally's relationship from then onwards.

The mystery of Bob Benson also comes to a head here – though it won't resolve fully until the next episode – when he makes a move on Pete. It's an intriguing, ambiguous interaction that never fully pays off, but works spectacularly in the moment.

Season 7, Episode 6, 'The Strategy'

Justina Mintz



Don, Peggy and Pete. No trio of characters on Mad Men share as many mutual secrets, or relate to one another with the same level of unspoken complexity. So it's no surprise that the most rewarding episode of season 7's first half sees the three of them united for the first time in several seasons.

Don and Peggy have been at odds for so long by this point, following Peggy's departure for CCG and Don's firing, and it's Pete's return to Manhattan that brings them back together. Pete pushes to get the still-disgraced Don more involved with the firm's upcoming pitch for Burger Chef, and though grateful to be back in the room, Don balks at being asked to take Peggy's place on the pitch.

So Don and Peggy rebuild their bond, and share their insecurities with each other in a mini-'Suitcase' reprise that culminates in them dancing to 'My Way'. If we had to pick a single Mad Men scene to re-watch on a desert island, it would probably be this.

And in the episode's final moments Don and Peggy and Pete all come together at the Burger Chef dinner table, strange dysfunctional family unit that they are, and Peggy gets the inspiration for what will become her Carousel equivalent.

Season 7, Episode 11, 'Time & Life'

Justina Mintz



The beginning of the end in more or less every sense. The realisation that 'Waterloo' really had been just that, and McCann was absorbing SCP and all of its remaining autonomy, was a surprisingly affecting beat that brought all of the show's divided and jaded characters together in sorrow.

Don's doomed attempt to caper his way out of yet another workplace trap only made everything sting more, recalling the innocent times of 'Shut the Door. Have a Seat'. In place of that triumphant arc we get rewarding interactions between Don and Roger, between Pete and Peggy, between Joan and Pete, between Roger and Joan, and every moment is rich and steeped in the characters' nostalgia for their shared past.

Also: "THE KING ORDERED IT!"

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