Arguably the standout episode of the entire series, the one that makes it clear that the most important relationship in the entire show is the one between Peggy and Don. Naturally, "The Suitcase" belonged on this list. "One minute you're on top of the world, the next minute some secretary's running you over with a lawn mower." -Emma Stefansky AMC "That's life," says Joan as she and Don sit in the hospital's waiting room.
During Joan's goodbye party, Lois careens the fateful lawn mower that Ken rode in on after he landed the John Deere account right over Brit Guy MacKendrick's foot. Joan's husband Greg comes home drunk the night before her last day and announces he's been passed over as surgeon and she'll have to get a new job after all.
Sally is terrified of baby Gene, who she thinks is somehow a reincarnation of her grandfather. Don and the boys are stressing out about what PPL's visit means for their positions-it turns out that, while no one's jobs were lost in the restructuring, only Don got a promotion. Joan's last day is on the horizon, and she's having a particularly hard time coping with the prospect of leaving. The hour chronicles the few days before the Fourth of July holiday, when Sterling Cooper's British partners Puttnam, Powell, and Lowe make a sudden visit to check on the state of the company. This episode will always be remembered as the one where someone runs over a guy's foot while riding a lawn mower through the office, but "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" is also one of Mad Men's great Joan episodes. From the slickly animated opening title sequence to the dagger-like final twist at the end-Don is married and has kids!-it's a suavely executed pitch that gets you hooked from the jump. Looking at the version of the Mad Men pilot that eventually got made after Weiner's run on HBO cut to black, you can see what Chase must've been drawn to: Supporting characters like Roger Sterling, Joan Holloway, and Pete Campbell emerge as fully formed comic creations, while the show's dueling protagonists, gruff creative Don Draper and ambitious secretary Peggy Olson, immediately draw you in with a potent combination of familiarity and mystery. The project didn't get made right away, but the pages impressed The Sopranos executive producer David Chase enough to bring Weiner aboard his incredibly popular and influential mob drama. After working on sitcoms like The Naked Truth, Becker, and Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Matthew Weiner wrote the spec script for what would become the pilot of Mad Men, his workplace drama about the smoke-filled hallways of a Madison Avenue advertising firm in the '60s.
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