When you get beyond the cocktails and the costumes and the showy emotional breakdowns, what makes any given episode of Mad Men memorable is the dialogue. Matthew Weiner and his staff are particularly wonderful at crafting one-liners — funny quips, penetrating realizations, earth-shattering statements that cause time to stop and personalities to crumble. This season, we’ll be keeping track of which characters get each episode’s five best lines, assigning points to winners, and posting a cumulative leader board to determine Season 5’s pithiest mad man (or woman). The results of last night’s über-bizarre episode — in which the witty Stan Rizzo takes the lead and Joan makes a triumphant first appearance on the leader board — are after the jump.
1. Joan (to Greg): I’m glad the Army makes you feel like a man, because I’m sick of trying to do it.
2. Sally (on the Richard Speck murders): Why did that man do that? Pauline Francis: Probably because he hates his mother.
3. Stan (on Michael, who has disappeared): I’m gonna go out there and find him. I’m going to start with the whole world and then eventually end up in my apartment.
4. Don (to Megan): I married you, and I’m going to be with you until I die — which could be this afternoon.
5. Roger (to Peggy): Hey, Trotsky, you’re in advertising.
Season 5 scoreboard Stan Rizzo: 7 Michael Ginsberg: 5 Bobby Draper: 5 Roger Sterling: 5 Joan Harris: 5 Teenage Rolling Stones fan: 4 Pauline Francis: 4 Megan Draper: 3 Civil rights protester: 3 Pete Campbell: 2 Don Draper: 2