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- Pete and Peggy has amazing chemistry.
- Season 1 episode 1, when he's at Peggy's doorstep he seems less concerned about another notich in his belt but instead desperately wanting a human connection that's all his own, and not borne of his ambition.
- Season 1 episode 8, Peggy's "mark your man" ad copy for Belle Jolie centers on a sort of code, and while she doesn't mark Pete, he leaves his sign on her via the torn collar which Don is quick to notice.
- Season 1 episode 8, Pete dissects her with his eyes at P.J. Clarke's.
- They obviously want each other so much. Desires are raw and mutual. Pete couldn't control himself. He's crazy about her.
- Sociopathic allure, the perversity, so strange it's fascinating
- Marked by surface indifference, brutal honesty, longing, and vulnerability. Desperate submissiveness, careful aggression.
- In 3x4, Peggy mentions she takes two hours to commute. Pete travelled that long on his Stag night just to see Peggy in the Pilot episode.
- Pete and Peggy's relationship is defined by its absence.
- Season 1 episode 2: Pete's honeymoon and Peggy thinking of him.
- Their relationship in most of season 2 is professional, although gradually becoming like a friendship.
- It was superb that their history from season one was never overtly referenced, but was evoked by the looks, pauses and emptiness of the words between them.
- Peggy is too good for Pete.
- Pete obviously has a lot of issues. He has serious self-esteem problems.
- He's a superficial asshole with more ambition than brains.
- Quest for approval lies with his father issues. He's looking for validation from a father figure.
- He's a hallow person who emulates others he highly regards: Roger, Don, Duck.
- He doesn't know how to act as a person. Pete is one of my faves. When his dad died, he asked Don what to do; like most people, he wants to do what is expected, but doesn't know what that is.
- Pete doesn't envy Don's power or paycheck; it's the respect that Don commands because of his intelligence and skills which Pete covets, and which he'll never have.
- Brawl ignited by Peggy. I also liked Pete repeatedly getting shot down in his attempts to celebrate his big triumph with the laxative/Nixon stunt, whether it was Don responding to Pete's "Are we done here?" with a simple "No" or Pete's poor secretary refusing to drink or even flirt with him and the other chipmunks. I don't read too much into him taking a swing at Kenny for trash-talking Peggy, as there was a definite "nobody picks on her but me" vibe to it all, as opposed to Pete realizing he had treated her like garbage last week. My reading is that it's the result of frustration that has built through the episode. He gets little respect from his colleagues, his secretary won't flirt or accept a drink (unlike Peggy recently accepting one from Don). I see the final insults about Peggy's appearance setting him off not because he felt a need to defend her or to be her sole tormenter, but maybe from his embarrassment that the only woman in the office who will have him is the object of ridicule by his peers. A ridicule he would also suffer if word of their relationship got out. So he slugs Ken. I am mystified that no one there has questioned why, but maybe brawls were just part of the advertising business.
- Pete is improving little by little during the course of season 2.
- Don and Duck even "affirmed" in their own ways Pete's development as an ad man.
- He shows the first "human response" in the show when Peggy confessed to him about their baby.
- Peggy is arguably the show's number one female character, the pioneer of the show's founding motif of the women rising to equal the men's ranks in society.
- Season 1 episode 8, "I don't like you like this." As Peggy gradually and discreetly moves her way to ranks, Pete doesn't seem to be fine with this. After all, he is a man. But maybe if he does some growing up over the next seasons, this will change.
- End of season 2, she gets her own office after achieving accounts. Don is her mentor.
- Pete obviously has a lot of issues. He has serious self-esteem problems.
- Peggy is Pete's sounding-board on personal matters. She's the person he's most comfortable talking with. They're the best of friends in the office.
- Pete's hate toward his mother and his anxiety over the trip to California. Also his consideration of adopting and perhaps it'd be better to stop the Dyckman/Campbell lineage. "The crucial moment for me was Pete drunkenly realizing that perhaps his in-bred selfish genes shouldn't be reproduced..."
- When Peggy got her office, he confided in her about Don abandoning him during the business meeting in LA.
- __Denial is a recurring theme.__
- Season 1 episode 3: Their agreement that "it never happened." But at the end of the episode, there were knowing looks and catching of each other's eyes. They KNOW what happened.
- Season 1 episode 8: A slip when they ended up doing it on the couch. Pete then continues the denial by flipping his cushions to hide evidence of what happened.
- Season 1 episode 10: Peggy says about lying on the couch to clear up Pete's marriage confusion. Pete then snaps back that Peggy has "some imagination," treating everything as make-believe.
- Another slip when both tried recreating the couch sex with Pete and the model, then Peggy with the college boy.
- Season 2: The biggest slip came from Pete, at the Cuban Missiles episode where he chose to stay in Manhattan and spend the end of the world with Peggy.
- Season 2: Peggy confessed that part of her is gone, that she had moved on. It's like she's had part of her body amputated and now there is less of her. She says it is gone and never coming back. After this confession Peggy has seemingly "moved on" the way Don told her to, but now Pete and Peggy both share this knowledge that there IS a part of them - living somewhere outside their perceptions - in the form of the child they'll never know. Somewhere there is living proof of what happened.
- Season 3 episode 3: Pete and Peggy barely looked at each other, then Pete left greeting everybody goodbye without acknowledging her. They are ignoring each other.
- Pete and Trudy is a career team.
- The well-rehearsed dance they did at the derby party that got Jane & Jennifer & Betty jealous.
- Trudy is very supportive of him with his work. He confides in him at all work-related matters. She gives him praises when he got promoted, and is there to comfort him when he's not being given enough recognition. She is also nice and friendly to his colleagues, bringing treats for them.
- Trudy knows him well now, not like she was in season 2 (Pete told Peggy Trudy doesn't know him like she does, Pete and Trudy preferring to be apart for their own interests, etc). This is apparent particularly in season 3 episode 13 when he gets riled up in front of Roger and Don, Trudy calls him from the bedroom to stop him and have his emotions in check.
- I honestly don't see them ending up with each other, although I'm hoping.
- How does Pete deal with Peggy's rejection? The fact that she let him realize that she has decided, and she didn't want him. She completely "won", at the end of the episode she crosses herself and goes peacefully to sleep, while he stays up, alone in the office, holding his gun in his lap like a security blanket. I really wanted to see that vulnerability fully explored, since ironically, the conception and birth of a child (largely a woman's concern), in this case might have been more emotionally disturbing for the father (albeit maybe mostly because of his immaturity?).
- Season 4, episode 4. The Rejection. "Their office is the same, but their worlds are not. But Peggy can still catch Pete’s eye through the glass and exchange a look with him that makes it clear that wherever their futures may take them, their shared past means they still understand each other on a level no one else does. Pete’s not going to leave his pregnant wife to go running back to Peggy, and Peggy’s not going to give up wild nights to have a family with Pete, but there’s still something there, and there always will be."
- Still Season 4, episode 4. It's an impactful moment. "It was not a sad moment, it was a life moment. It was two people with a history acknowledging everything that brought them to this point. There was regret, sadness, excitement, hopefulness, and most of all forgiveness, thanks, and understanding in that look. They did this to each other. They did this for each other. Peggy and Pete are on the same path, and different paths, because of the loss that they share. They are getting everything they ever wanted - Pete a career path befitting his bloodlines, and Peggy a life befitting the times and her ambitions. It didn't come without a cost though, and they both know it, and they know each other knows it too."
- What happens after it prematurely but poetically ended
- Pete ULTIMATELY decided to ignore Peggy and have NOTHING to do with her after what she told him: basically that she had decided and he couldn't even do anything about it but deal and suck it all up. He withdrew himself from any interaction and again with the denial. This only went on for the months right after the confession. Pete conspicuously distanced himself to Peggy (although this was no reference but only affirmed during the scene where Duck lured him and Peggy to Greys). It was revealed that this is deliberate, when Pete said, "Your decisions affect me." This implies that he will do anything at all costs to avoid her. "He wants no part of Peggy, which has driven him away from her at work and driven him towards Trudy at home."
- Better Trudy-Pete marriage after season 2.
- Back to normal when Duck's involvement "broke the ice." Pete and Peggy are back to season 2 pre-confession when they're professionally nice to each other and are office bestfriends.
- I like Trudy. Pete and Trudy look cute together. It's likely that Pete had learned to care for and love Trudy, genuinely.
- Pete and Peggy are getting along well as colleagues. This is evident in the premiere episode of season 4 where they staged the Ham Fight of '64.
- Pete and Peggy became "friendly" with each other after some time.
- Weiner is such a tease! Many times in the episodes where Pete and Peggy's relationship are strictly professional and absent, he puts in scenes that makes us do a double-take and think whether there's something else in it. In many episodes, we've been hinted several times of an underlying but very repressed bond between Pete and Peggy. It's probably Weiner's way of reminding us that it happened, and that will never be taken away.
- Season 3, episode 12. Elevator scene where Peggy was on the ground floor with her friend, and we KNOW Pete was on his way down to go home. They encountered each other when the elevator door opened, but a single glance and they didn't even acknowledge each other. Pete went on right ahead, and Peggy was all, "Oh, ok we're invisible to each other" and swiftly just gave way.
- Season 3, episode 13. Uh, hello. They were assigned the same desk by Joan? Coincidence? I think not.
- Season 4, episode 1. Pete being in Peggy's office brainstorming for the Ham Brawl of '64. "John!" "Marsha!"
- Season 4, episode 2. Christmas Party! When Peggy arrives with "fiance" Mark, how come camera turns to Pete and the velvet suit and Trudy for reaction? Why is that? And then, Don and Roger comments, "Who is that guy?"
- Season 4, episode 4. Trudy's baby news made the couple very happy, although it still stings for Pete and Peggy when their baby comes to mind. Pete was awkward receiving Peggy's congratulations, and Peggy headdesked three times after that scene.
- There are hints of a Don-Peggy possibility.
- Peggy also wants to be married.
- Asserted in season 4, to Freddy Rumsen. But she says she only wants company for New Year's.
- She tried out Faye's engagement ring. Don sees her with a surprised and slightly amused look.
- I can imagine how it will all end. Either they hook up way way way into the future when they're both on top of their fields (Peggy already Creative Director and Pete Campbell in Cooper or Roger's positions) and have gone through a lot... like maybe after years of their respective marriages and with their kids grown up, etc. Or maybe the show ends with them unfinished, like how they were dealt with in "The Rejected," -- that Pete and Peggy are merely (but rightfully so) anecdotes to each others' lives... like how most love stories go.
jan 11 2011 ∞
feb 23 2011 +
feb 23 2011 +