Paul Kinsey

Paul Kinsey is a copywriter at Sterling Cooper who fancies himself the office intellectual: pipe, Ivy League affectations, opinions on jazz and civil rights he's eager to share. He wants respect and recognition he feels the agency withholds from him, and he compensates with bluster, name-dropping, and a self-image as the smartest, most enlightened man in the room.

Michael Gladis plays him as a walking contradiction the show never has to underline: genuinely curious about the wider world, genuinely insufferable about it. Paul's pretensions are funny, but the writing keeps letting him be sincerely wounded underneath them, so the joke never fully closes off sympathy for a guy trying so hard to matter.