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 — which featured somewhat uncomfortable guest appearances by Alexis Bledel (best known as Rory from Gilmore Girls) and Dennis Haskins, a.k.a. Saved by the Bell‘s Mr. Belding — are after the jump.
1. Megan (to Peggy): It’s so simple when it’s someone else’s life, isn’t it?
2. Beth Dawes (to Pete, about his eyes looking like satellite photos of Earth): It didn’t bother you to see the Earth tiny and unprotected, surrounded by darkness?
3. Don: I was raised in the ’30s. My dream was indoor plumbing.
4. Don: When did music become so important?
5. Peggy (answering Don’s second late-night call about Megan): Pizza House!
Season 5 scoreboard
Roger Sterling: 18 Megan Draper: 12 Don Draper: 10 Stan Rizzo: 7 Pete Campbell: 7 Joan Harris: 6 Michael Ginsberg: 5 Bobby Draper: 5 Jane Sterling: 5 Teenage Rolling Stones fan: 4 Pauline Francis: 4 Mona Sterling: 4 Beth Dawes: 4 Civil rights protester: 3 Katherine Olson: 3 Jenny Gunther: 2 Raymond Geiger: 2 Emile Calvet: 2 Lane Pryce: 1 Peggy Olson: 1