10 Most Memorable TV Drama Moments Of The 2010s
4. More Like Sad Men - Mad Men (2010)
Throughout its run, AMC’s stylish, sophisticated advertising opus was capable of eliciting a wide array of feelings from its always engrossed audience, who'd sip chilled glasses of Canadian Club so as to match the apparently suave players on the screen.
Yet, the show rarely packed a greater punch than in the simple act of tugging at heartstrings to the point of devastation, which it did by lifting the illusions its own immaculately layered characters would spin to distract from the wounds that lurk, poignantly, within their hearts.
Nowhere was this effect more powerful than in “The Suitcase”, the centrepiece of Mad Men’s triumphant fourth season.
Ostensibly stuck in the office, a prison of his own making, Don Draper buries himself and protege Peggy Olsen in work overnight, pushing reality further and further away with a phone call that he knows contains bad news always lurking in the distance.
Don goes to any and all lengths to postpone having to make the call, as his and Peggy’s night slowly morphs into a woozy, boozy dream from which part of him seems to hope he won’t need to wake. Yet, of course, eventually he must.
Reality always hits home - and when he finally takes the call and hears the shattering news that Anna, “the only person who ever really knew” Don is gone, all of his pent up emotion is released as his own carefully constructed mask briefly crumbles.
It wasn’t the type of scene to break the internet, but it was a truly unforgettable moment of immense, human pain.