1. The Gypsy and the Hobo
2. The Hobo Code
3. My Old Kentucky Home
4. Shut the Door. Have a Seat
5. The Mountain King
6. Babylon
7. Maidenform
8. 5G
9. Flight 1
10. The Inheritance

but my S1 dvd is with my son. he gave me a video game to play (which I didn’t) and I gave him S1 to watch (he watched the first few episodes.) then we found common ground watching old Arrested Development episodes together via Hulu.

ah, the great American electric (pixilated) hearth.

mari – it’s true. there are so many ways to watch this series.

falafel – I don’t know if Glen will be back, but his story was a gem. I enjoy reading your posts, btw, if I never said anything. Jet Set was weird. I think Don was weirded out to be asked to be a kept man by Joy’s father. The two kids of the eurotrash guy sort of put Don on a mental trajectory that led back to Ossining.

he didn’t want to be a hobo after all. not even one that got great digs.

#24 I put Maidenform in my Top 10 and I do think Red in the Face is underrated. Pete's Chip-n-Dip adventure alone makes it very memorable.

#28 I loved 'The Fog' too. It was a little uneven but had some excellent individual moments. 'Mountain King' is great too even if it didn't quite make my 10. 'Jet Set' is a difficult one for me. I don't think it's bad but it didn't feel like an episode of Mad Men. As a weird one-off it was very absorbing, but I wouldn't know where to place it on a favourite list. I loved the Kurt scene too, but found the Joy character terribly pretentious.

Depends on which characters. It’s always going to be a watershed episode for Peggy, even if it’s less significant for Don (other than to demonstrate his talent).

The climax of Pete revealing Don’s identity in NvK doesn’t resonate the same now as it did then.

Maybe not in the same way, since other people (Betty, maybe Henry?) know, and that knowledge has already blown up the Draper marriage. But Bert Cooper’s behavior in Seven Twenty Three gives his behavior in NvK a new dimension. He may have feigned indifference to Pete, but we know now that the old man was squirreling the info away for when he’d need it. And boy, did he find a use for it.

But for me, a punch in the face plotwise won’t hit me as hard as the capturable still images of an episode. Peggy in her bathwater, Don unable to shave. The little curl of Don’s lip over dinner with Roger that reveals how deep his rage was.

God I love those episodes!

I probably like The Fog more than most people do; it's a very "girly" episode, which I actually like, but for me what cinches it is Pete doing "market research" on Hollis in the elevator. That scene for me sums up everything that's right and everything that's wrong with Pete Campbell.

I rank Mountain King number one, though, because it shows a side of both Don and Joan that you can't really watch this series not knowing about and still appreciate it fully. And my love for Anna knows no limits.

So here's mine:

1) The Mountain King (see above)
2) Nixon vs. Kennedy ("Mr. Campbell, who cares?")
3) The Wheel (Don gives the pitch of his lifetime, Peggy directs a commercial, sends an actress home crying, and gives birth on the same day — practically a whole season in itself!)
4) Shut the Door, Have a Seat (more laughs and war whoops than any other episode, despite the disintegration of the Drapers)
5) Meditations in an Emergency (the Peggy-Pete scene alone places it, but the rest of it ain't cold rumaki)
6) My Old Kentucky Home (all singing! all dancing! all toking!)
7) Babylon (Peggy's hidden talent is discovered — did she know exactly what she was doing when she said, "Here's your basket of kisses"?) Maidenform (Peggy learns the price of fitting in)
9) Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency ("the doctors say he'll never golf again"!)
10) The Fog (see above)

But really, none of them stink.

Some really great episodes got bumped this year (Wheel, NvK, Gold Violin); the reasons have to do with how they play now versus a year ago. Jet Set, for instance has greater importance to the story now, and greater impact on the characters, than Wheel does. The climax of Pete revealing Don's identity in NvK doesn't resonate the same now as it did then.

Important middle episodes, like 5G, Babylon and The New Girl, tend to have more lasting moments and show us the kind of depth that we sometimes only recognize in retrospect.