조앤 홀러웨이

From season 1 through season 3, Joan is the office manager at the advertising agency Sterling Cooper. Her primary responsibilities are to manage the secretarial, steno, and telephone operators pools; attend to the needs of the executives; and organize agency events. She is also seen during meetings with the heads of departments, implementing Robert's Rules of Order, taking notes, and reminding the male staff of their duties to their clients, and assisting creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and CFO Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) with Sterling Cooper financial duties.

Joan is also the original supervisor of Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who starts at Sterling Cooper as a secretary and eventually becomes a copywriter. Joan and Peggy do not get along at first; Joan is contemptuous of Peggy's demure attitude and conservative dress, while Peggy is intimidated by Joan's beauty and assertiveness. Over the course of the series, however, the two become good friends, and support each other through their personal and professional struggles, with Joan being supportive of Peggy's evolution as a copywriter in the male-dominated culture of advertising.

Joan is a hyper-feminine and charming woman, with a pragmatic view of sex and attraction. Though skilled in her career, her ultimate goal is to find a promising and devoted man to marry, and then become the strength and motivation supporting him behind the scenes as he achieves success. To this end, Joan has carefully prepared and practiced, learning the social and housewife skills necessary to be a helpful, upper-class partner, while maintaining a beautiful appearance through self care. She has many playful affairs with powerful men who adore her, but whom she discounts as marriage material. They have already achieved their success, and with most of them being married, do not fit her romantic ideal of devoted husband. Joan has little desire to be a trophy second wife.

Joan had a lengthy romantic involvement with Roger Sterling (John Slattery), which started when she was his secretary, cooled when she rose to office manager, and ended after Roger's heart attack. After Marilyn Monroe's death, Roger walks into his office to find Joan lying on his couch and crying. Realizing she is upset over the similarities she sees between the actress's life and her own, Roger comforts Joan by assuring her she will not end up alone and in despair like Monroe.

Sometime before the start of the series, Joan was briefly married to a man named Scotty. Though Scotty is never seen, she mentioned to a friend in the season 6 episode "To Have and To Hold" that her marriage to him was the "worst six months of my life."

Joan had also had an intimate relationship with copywriter Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) sometime before the series began. Joan ended the relationship because Paul had "a big mouth," implying that he bragged about the relationship to others. Her roommate, Carol (Kate Norby), who Joan knows from college, expresses romantic interest in Joan in the episode "The Long Weekend," although Joan gently rebuffs her advances.

In season 2, Joan becomes engaged to Greg Harris (Samuel Page), a resident physician at St. Luke's Hospital. Joan is in a difficult place when it comes to marrying Greg, as she struggles to balance both her sassy, independent personality and the traditional vulnerability of a woman being dependent on her husband. As the season goes on, Joan is clearly torn between wanting to be a well-off, married woman (the pinnacle of her ambition) and the fear that she will become a bored, lonely housewife. Joan chose Greg over the stereotypical rich men she has affairs with because he is handsome and a promising young doctor just about to launch his career as a surgeon. Greg needs her support, and seems like a good bet that he'll become a successful, romantic, and devoted husband. He turns out to be a poor choice, when his delicate ego, anger issues, and sense of entitlement clash with his utter lack of professional skill, preventing him from being either a successful husband, or a successful doctor.

Her mixed feelings about her future are exacerbated when she is briefly given additional responsibilities at Sterling Cooper reading television scripts to determine ad placement, which thrills her. However, Media Director Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) ultimately hires a young, unqualified man to take over the ad placement job, to her disappointment.

In "The Mountain King," Greg meets Joan at Sterling Cooper to take her on a dinner date. Joan introduces him to Roger for the first time, and Greg picks up on the fact that Roger knows Joan's likes and dislikes. Joan attempts to dismiss his suspicions by claiming that Roger only knows her well because of how long she has been with the agency. As she's locking up for the day, Greg follows Joan into Don's office, closes the door behind him, and tries to convince her to be intimate with him. When she playfully declines, he forces her to the floor and rapes her.

When season 3 premieres, Joan and Greg have recently married, and she's preparing to leave her job to become a housewife just as soon as Greg is promoted to chief resident. In "My Old Kentucky Home," they host a dinner party with Greg's colleagues where Joan learns that not only has he not made chief resident, but that his sk