This season has been tragically short on Pete Campbell, but "The Rejected" solved that in a big way. At the new firm, Pete may be a partner, but his name isn't in the lobby just yet. That means he still has to answer to Don and Roger and Lane, so when Fred lands a more valuable account that conflicts with Clearasil, he's ordered to break things off with that company. Well, the point man from that account just happens to be his father-in-law, and when the two sit down for a drink so Pete can break the news, Trudy's dad can't help but break some exciting news: Trudy's pregnant!
The Pete Campbell of the past might have come off as kind of a weasel, but that was only because he was trying to grab at power he had no business possessing. But now, he's a bit of a big shot, so his shrewd business sense doesn't seem so underhanded. It's welcomed. So before he sits down to a lovely pot roast dinner with the in-laws, he leverages his father-in-law's future grandchild to pull in the entire Vick's line (sans Clearasil) for Sterling Cooper Draper Price. And when Trudy's dad calls him a son of a bitch, he's tough enough to just shrug it off.
There hasn't been nearly enough Peggy for my liking this season either, so her move to the forefront this week was certainly welcomed. Peggy, both in the workplace and in her personal life, represents the changing times of the '60s. She's an ambitious copywriter instead of a secretary. She enjoys the benefits of single life instead of just setting her sights on finding a husband (even though she obviously does want to marry eventually, as evidenced by the way she played with Faye's ring and her reaction to Trudy's pregnancy). So naturally Peggy would be the one to give us our first glimpse of the counterculture (outside of Paul, Paul's beard and his freedom-riding girlfriend) that will dominate the decade. She goes to some hippie party filled with strange videos, lesbians and marijuana and feels perfectly at home. She meets some people that see the way more like she does and gets a chance to interact with people who won't just assume that she slept with her boss because she's a woman in a man's business. I really love it whenever Peggy shows her confidence in herself, and her rather smooth rejection of her lesbian friend's advances, coupled with the "He doesn't own your vagina," "No, but he's renting it," exchange gave her the chance to show off plenty of that.
I always knew we would eventually dive into the counterculture of the '60s, but I never knew when. We finally got a good look at it here, and it was like finally getting a glimpse into the world of The Others on "Lost". You just know it's going to be a big part of the show moving forward, and it's exciting to see it poke through. I definitely don't see Peggy becoming some pot-smoking hippy, but I'm sure she will use her experience with that movement to make her an even more valuable and indispensable part of the SCDP creative team.
Loved the last scene where Peggy and Pete stare at each other through the glass doors, each now running in there own, very different, circles. They're both on their way up, but for how long? The "changing of the guard" has always been a implicit theme of the show that's hung like a guillotine over many of the characters heads. Maybe my conclusion is ill-informed due to my lack of familiarity with the '60s, but I get the sense that while both Peggy and Pete are enjoying tremendous success at the moment, Peggy finds herself on the "winning" team that will come to define her generation as Pete masters the world world of the old guard. Sure, for a while the clients Pete needs to schmooze will be old, pre-WWII white men, but ten or twenty years from now, will that still be the case? And can Pete adapt to that new world? Obviously the series isn't going to take us that far down the road, but come 1970, I wouldn't be surprised to see Pete's life on the decline as his "old money" crowd goes by the wayside.
There wasn't as much Don in this one (especially compared to the first three episodes of this season), but he made his presence know by delivering the defining line of the episode with his statement that past behavior doesn't necessarily predict future behavior indicates that he really does want to change who he is. The question is now, who is it that he wants to become? Is it that old, cranky husband? Roger Sterling? Something completely different? The driving force of his personal life, besides sleeping with every fine piece of tail in the New York metro area, was always to be a better father to his children than his pop was to him. That's why he married Betty: she could give him children and he thought should could be a good mother. She was basically a means to an end. But once Betty kicked him out and he no longer could hang his hat on the fact that he was always there with Sally and Bobby (and Gene), that dream pretty much flew out the window. So will Don try to start another family now that he's realized he can't keep going down this path of drunken despair? I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon, but somewhere down the road (probably far down the road), I think we see a Don Draper with the wife, kids, living in the suburbs with a white picket fence, but this time he won't make the same mistakes that cost him his first family.
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