Roger Sterling

A founding partner of Sterling Cooper, Roger drifts through the office on charm and inherited money, more interested in a good line and a stiff drink than in the actual work of advertising. He mentors Don Draper with a mix of affection and self-interest, and treats the whole business as an extension of his own comfort.

John Slattery makes idleness look like an art form, delivering the show's driest one-liners with the timing of a man who has never once doubted himself. Roger is the counterweight to Don's brooding seriousness, and the writing uses his glibness to expose, comically and then not so comically, the rot underneath the era's easy privilege.