Something I did find interesting, whether it was intentional or not, was Hollis’s statement to Pete that “We have more important things to do than watch television”, and that being linked to the episode where Paul was on a Freedom Ride, and the boys were talking about it, and Harry’s comment that the Civil Rights movement was a bad thing because it meant that people weren’t watching television.
Yep, Roger Sterling’s daughter’s wedding is scheduled for the day after JFK was shot. Even if they are Republicans that wedding’s going to have to be rescheduled at the last minute. I like that we’re probally going to see Peggy either leave or trigger a bidding war over her. Presumably Sterling-Cooper has other copywriters besides her & Paul that we never see, but is Peggy actually their “top” copywriter? Clearly she’s taken for granted; I don’t even think it would occur to Don or anyone else (except Pete of course) that another agency would court her. After all she’s only a woman. Would they actually be afraid of losing her, or not miss her until she’s gone.
Nah, Peggy’s not going to leave. The actress is up for an Emmy. If she does “leave”, she’ll be back somehow. After watching Mad Men for two seasons, I don’t trust that little skamp Wiener to lead us down a clear, well-edged path!
Does Peggy know that Pete and Trudy are struggling with their childlessness? I don’t think so. I can understand being taken aback, but it was more extreme than that-- he hates her now, and I think that’s really unfair of him.
She did not tell him out of nowhere. Remember the context of the conversation was him professing love to her, totally inappropriately and out of the blue. I think she never would have told him, considering that he fucked her and got married anyway (she is just as culpable for bad judgment in that relationship, granted). She had suppressed the whole thing per Don’s advice, but then to have Pete open that whole thing up for her again, a day late and a buck short… she broke open and shared it with him. Who could blame her? And all he could say was, why did you burden ME with this? I think that’s a selfish reaction. I don’t admire him for it. I guess I understand where it was coming from, but a good bit of where it was coming from is the childish self-centeredness of Pete Campbell.
I don’t know that he really had the right to be angry at her for telling him. Maybe for telling him so late, but I don’t think she had a whole lot of choice. She used discretion, didn’t wreck his marriage/career/life as she could have, so maybe gratitude would have been a more appropriate, considered reaction. Honestly, would your first reaction be, “Why did you tell me that?” That makes it all about him, and his discomfort at knowing something that upsets him. If he were capable of imagining Peggy’s solitary suffering in that situation, and that it was for his benefit, I don’t think he would have said that.
I don’t think Pete hates Peggy at all.
He certainly seems like he hates her. He has been nothing but hostile, angry, and negative towards her this season. Remember his disgust at realizing that all his accounts were also Peggy’s, and his reaction at seeing her at Duck’s lunch meeting. I think he’s very angry at her, and yes, probably hates her. He may also still love her, but the two feelings are not incompatible.
Well, he’s probably still angry at her, but I don’t know that I really blame him. Wouldn’t you be angry if a woman told you she had your baby and then gave it up?
Pete would have been far more angry if Peggy had called him to the hospital after she gave birth. Without genetic testing, she could never legally “prove” the baby was his. Lying in the hospital bed half out of her mind, she was not the “perfect Peggy” he said he loved at the end of Season 2. Would he have gladly divorced Trudy to make Peggy an honest woman & legitimize his bastard? Hardly. He might have grudgingly supplied some child support to a jobless Peggy. But how much money would he have? If word got out, his rich wife would have every right to divorce him. And his indiscretion would not do his career any good. His harpy mother would surely erase him from her will–until she was reminded that the well was dry.
Trudy and Pete were not struggling with childlessness. Trudy wanted (& still wants) a baby. But Pete had no objection to life without children. He considered adoption because Trudy wanted it but rebelled when she & her father tried to force the issue.
Peggy did the right thing when she gave the baby up for adoption. And she was right to tell Pete–to deflect his profession of love. Did he say “Peggy, my love, how you must have suffered! Why didn’t you tell me immediately?” No, he thought of himself. It was a shock, but apparently made him realize that he & Peggy were over and he should appreciate the woman he had. A confident & successful Pete might even agree to adoption some day–to make Trudy happy.
What Bridget Burke said. If Pete were a little less childish and self-centered, he’d realize that Peggy totally took a bullet for him, when she could have ruined his life very easily. Honestly, I can’t imagine what she was supposed to do. There was no way for her to tell him without messing up his life, which she chose not to do. She did a very difficult and responsible thing, and she did it alone. When she finally did tell him, it wasn’t in a way meant to leverage a reaction out of him, or to use him, or even to hurt him. It was to explain to him why she no longer felt any love for him. I don’t think he has much place to be this dickish to her, but YMMV.
The proper time to tell a man that you have bourn his illigitimate child is before you send the child off forever to anonymous adoption. Had Peggy consulted with Jane, she probably would have passed along that important rule of etiquette.
Pete was justifiably mystified by why Peggy told him. Why did she tell him? He might have thought she wanted something from him, or wanted to punish him for what happened – but he certainly would have realized that had she wanted him to do something about it, she would have told him earlier.
We, as the viewers, can guess Peggy told him simply to break his delusion that he loved her. But there is no surprise that Pete would be confused – and hurt – at being told he had a child only once it was too late to do anything about it.
What Lightray said. And, like Pete said to Peggy in the last episode, “Your decisions do affect me.”
I can understand Pete being upset & confused. But he would have hated having to “do” anything about his child. He’ll continue to have his upset & confused moments–about more things than a kid who has two parents now. And he’ll continue to have some pretty good ideas at work, even if he has trouble putting them over. (I actually like his character.) Then he’ll go home to rich wifie & practice the Charleston.
(Surely, you don’t mean Peggy should have asked Jane what to do?)
This was my take as well. I also wondered whether he’d already broken his vow to be a “better man,” perhaps (though this is sheer speculation) with the candy striper he’d been ogling, or by regressing into whatever misbehavior had motivated his pledge to Don as God’s stand-in. Faced with the sight of his confessor in the hallway, he was overcome with shame and looked away.
Actually, I don’t know if anyone else caught this but I think that when Don and prison guard dude were in the waiting room the TV in the background was playing segments of coverage of MLK’s March on Washington on the news. That would make August 28, 1963 Lil Eugene’s birthday.
I’m really looking forward to how the show handles the Kennedy assassination. I feel a tear coming on…
If anyone can verify that I saw what I thought I saw…
You mean Joan, right? I would almost guarantee that Joan would tell Peggy to do exactly as she did-- take care of it and keep your mouth shut. Peggy protected Pete from having to make an exceedingly difficult decision. She took all the suffering on herself and carried the secret. Somehow she’s the villain here? I do not see it.
She didn’t want him to do anything, at any point. That’s obvious. And how could he possibly think she wanted something from him? No, in fact, it was he who wanted something from her-- he was pleading his troth, despite being a married man who chose to marry Trudy rather than be with her because that was the more socially acceptable, upwardly mobile thing to do. She wanted him to let go of loving her, and to know why she no longer loved him. I think her method of making that happen worked perfectly, don’t you?
Confusion is understandable, as is a sense of loss and even horror, but I honestly think Pete’s anger and hatred towards Peggy is excessive and irrational in this situation. She really had no choice besides the one she made, which put the onus entirely on herself, that would not ruin his life. I find that noble. It’s pretty obvious why Peggy told him. He had this idyllic concept of their relationship, but Peggy had a whole bunch of other, very painful shit that happened as part of their relationship, which killed her feelings for him but of which he was unaware, so he could continue to have this fantasy about her and him. When pressed by him, she told him the truth and destroyed that fantasy. Was that wrong? How could it be? How could what Pete experienced in that moment be worse than what she went through, right down to Pete himself mocking her for being fat with the guys while she carried his baby and sucked it up?
I’m not denying that in that moment of revelation Peggy might not have relished hurting Pete a little bit. And I don’t think it’s wrong that he feels that hurt, and confusion, but some time and reflection should make it clear that, in the big scheme of who suffered and who profited by the way things went, he has no place playing the wronged victim, which is what he’s doing.
From what my husband tells me, he doesn’t remember anyone getting smacked to “change” their writing hand. But then again he was in public school, not church-run school, so that might have been why.
Except she didn’t keep the secret…she told him. It’s not that she’s the villain. It’s just telling Pete when she did didn’t serve any point…there was nothing he could do about it, and she told him to hurt him.
That was my favorite scene of the episode, and really it summed up most of the show. Peggy is daring to be more ambitious than most women before her and of her generation, seeing all the downsides and drawbacks of being in Don’s position and yet not seeing any. It was just so incredibly sad to watch so many people imprisoned by their sex and skin color.
She kept the secret when it had the potential to ruin Pete’s life. You do realize how much she could really have hurt him if hurting him was her goal, right? She only told him because he pressed her with his inappropriate and completely unworkable profession of love, something that HE should have kept secret but didn’t. I think she felt, at that point, that she should destroy what was left of his illusions, since she had none left anymore.
Do you really think the entire purpose of Peggy’s revelation was to hurt Pete, and that she was just being spiteful? If that was the type of person she was, she would have fucked his life up good when she had the power to do so. Also, do you think she owed it to Pete to keep that secret forever? If so, why?
Let’s not make Peggy out to be a martyr here.
First of all, they didn’t have a “relationship”. She had sex with him once, like ten minutes before he got married. He didn’t marry Trudy “instead” of Peggy, there was no betrayal there. He didn’t “fall in love” with her the night they fucked, he “fell in love” with her over the course of working with her, AFTER he was married.
And it’s not like she carried out some complex plan to hide the pregnancy and spare him the pain, she never knew she was pregnant. And she didn’t want that baby. Keeping it from him was largely a selfish decision, because involving him would have complicated HER life. I’m not saying Pete would have been any help at all to her, he probably wouldn’t have. But it’s not like he ever had a chance to prove us wrong.
And while I don’t think her confession was calculated to hurt him, I do think that telling him was a selfish act, which we were *meant *to see as comparable to his profession of love, but IMO it was much worse. I mean, how is “she felt should destroy his illusions, since she had none anymore” NOT spiteful? If she just wanted him to snap out of the “I love you” thing, she could have at least *tried *a simple “No, I don’t love you.” first, donchya think?
Yeah, I think she should have kept the secret. (I mean, if they were real people. Obviously telling works much better for story purposes. 
) He didn’t place that burden on her, she chose it. She has no right to ask him to share it now.