You’re never going to get that corner office until you start treating Don as an equal. And no one will tell you this, but you can’t be a man. Don’t even try. Be a woman. It’s powerful business when done correctly. – Bobbie Barrett.
The boys in the office might think the new piece of eye candy sitting outside Don Draper‘s office is the new girl, but we know it’s Peggy. Peggy is Don’s protege, his wingman, and his project, but tonight she asserts herself as her own woman. It takes a kick from a former dancer, but she finally knows she has to treat Don as an equal.
That’s easier to some extent now that she and Don have both covered for each other and both helped each other through trying times. We have a much clearer picture of what happened to Peggy after last year’s finale, finding her in the hospital unable to accept or comprehend why she was there. Don’s words of advice, as true to his nature as any he’s ever uttered, could have been stolen from the hobo’s code.
But if Peggy followed Don’s advice and did whatever the doctors wanted, did she ever actually accept that she’d given birth? Or has she been going through the motions for over a year, smiling and nodding whenever her mother or sister bring it up?
Don’s best line of the night, possibly of the series, was his final comment to Peggy at her bedside: “Peggy, listen to me. Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.” That sums up his entire life, a series of disconnected events with no past and no real future; it also adds resonance to his heartfelt, nostalgic presentation to Kodak last year. He has no nostalgia, no strong desire to look back on his past, because it’s completely forgotten.
In sharp contrast to Peggy willingly or unknowingly giving up her child, Trudy Campbell wants a child. Whether her biology demands it or, more likely, she’s driven by her desire to fit in and do “the next thing they’re supposed to do,” Trudy needs that baby. And now she knows the failing is not Pete’s as she’d always assumed. It must have come as a horrible shock, since all failings in her marriage have always been Pete’s.
Pete of course is just happy to know his swimmers are strong.
Peggy finds a kindred spirit of sorts in Bobbie Barrett. Unlike the women around Sterling-Cooper who define – or want to define – themselves in terms of men, Bobbie does not. She is not, like Joan, finally settling for an engagement ring. Neither is she like Jane, the newest office fixture driving men to distraction with her decolletage. Peggy is a modern woman learning to find her way in uncharted territory; Bobbie is a guide of sorts, having picked her way through at Jimmy’s side for many years.
Peggy will not become Bobbie, but she can learn from her.
And finally, the funniest joke of the night: Roger whacking away at his paddleball while Pete’s filling his sample.
What did everyone else think?
R.A. Porter is an aspiring television writer who currently toils away in the software mines. He can be found at his personal blog and stalked on Twitter.
