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’re 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 episode — in which Peggy flirted with becoming Don, Don took an ill-fated road trip, and Roger took a trip of an entirely different nature — are after the jump.
1. Jane (to Roger): What do you want to do? Go home, open your vest, and yell at the TV for the next 20 years?
2. Megan (summarizing her and Don’s relationship): “Get in the car. Eat ice cream. Leave work. Take off your dress.” “Yes, Master!”
3. Roger (to Don, post-acid trip): I have an announcement to make: It’s going to be a beautiful day.
4. Raymond, the Heinz client: Stop writing down what I ask for and try to figure out what I want.
5. Roger (to Jane, before ingesting an LSD-soaked sugar cube): You always say I never take you anywhere.
Season 5 scoreboard
Roger Sterling: 13 Stan Rizzo: 7 Pete Campbell: 7 Megan Draper: 7 Michael Ginsberg: 5 Don Draper: 5 Bobby Draper: 5 Joan Harris: 5 Jane Sterling: 5 Teenage Rolling Stones fan: 4 Pauline Francis: 4 Civil rights protester: 3 Jenny Gunther: 2 Raymond Geiger: 2 Lane Pryce: 1