Shrimp Cocktail

S1 E1: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Mad Men, 2007.

Written by Matthew Weiner during his time on Becker (you read that right), the script for Mad Men’s pilot meandered in development purgatory until AMC, then known primarily for black-and-white movie marathons, decided to take a gamble.

The network’s decision to greenlight the show would prove prophetic; Mad Men became the show that made AMC synonymous with prestige television instead of “that channel where your uncle watches The Magnificent Seven for the fiftieth time.”

Directed by Alan Taylor, also of Sopranos fame (and later the guy who made Thor: The Dark World, but let’s not hold that against him), the pilot introduces Don Draper, ad man extraordinaire, through the haze of cigarette smoke and moral ambiguity. Draper is immediately iconic: part mystery, part smirk, and entirely someone you know you shouldn’t trust but would follow into battle—or at least to a bar. The script achieves a rare alchemy, blending the suffocating cultural norms of the early 1960s with dialogue so sharp it could cut through your Brylcreem’d hairdo.

The episode famously builds to Draper’s pitch to Lucky Strike executives: “It’s toasted,” a slogan as meaningless as it is genius, much like Draper himself. Yet the real kicker is the emotional sleight of hand—just as you settle into his suave facade, the final scene reveals a softer, more fractured Don returning to his suburban home, wife Betty waiting. The curtain lifts, and you realize the man isn’t just selling lies; he’s living them.

Among the pilot’s most perfect moments: Rachel Menken, poised and unimpressed in a Chanel suit, walks into a boardroom full of men offering coupons and condescension. She bats away Pete Campbell’s smugness, calmly lights a cigarette, and—when Draper snaps at her one too many times—extinguishes it in a glistening shrimp cocktail, turning the glossy symbol of mid-century power-lunching into a personal protest. It's a detail so perfectly acidic it could only belong to Mad Men.

Weiner, ever the meticulous world-builder, reportedly brought his own suit collection to the wardrobe department, ensuring no lapel went unexamined. Taylor used authentic mid-century lighting techniques to give the office scenes their distinctive glow—think Edward Hopper but with better tailoring. The result is a visual and narrative time capsule, one that feels too perfect to be real, which, of course, is the point.

What’s most remarkable, perhaps, is how this episode feels like an entire series in miniature. The meticulous staging of characters, the unraveling of Draper’s duality, the casual sexism that makes you recoil and laugh in the same breath—it’s all there, waiting to blossom into the masterwork we now know. But at its heart, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes isn’t just a pilot. It’s a promise. And, like a well-crafted ad campaign, it sells that promise with absolute conviction.

Make it! Shrimp cocktail by Simply Recipes.