(image from Tom & Lorenzo)
I love these images of Peggy. Sitting on her desk, drink in hand, feet resting on the chair, the way she was shown early on in Public Relations.
This piece of blocking was almost entirely indicative of where Peggy is as of November 1964. On Mad Men, of course, small things can mean big things, and that scene showed us everything we need to know about Peggy.
Comfortable, relaxed, poised to do her best work.
The move from SC to SCDP was a new start for everyone. But for Peggy, it may prove to be as big a change as had she taken Duck’s offer to move to Grey – Don’s vindictive Jantzen move notwithstanding. A secretary that moves to copywriter will still be viewed as a secretary until the day a pencil literally grows out of her ear. It’s the same everywhere.
But you can tell the change of environment has allowed her to re-establish her credentials and take her place as a bona fide writer. She not only orders the art team around (“chop-chop”), but can direct creative discussions and work with accounts. You can just sense how much she’s absorbed by watching Don. In fact, her professional relationship with Pete will probably help her work with accounts better than Don ever has.
One thing is for sure – Peggy’s at the right shop at the right time. If PR‘s closing moments tell us anything, it’s that Don’s ready to solidify SCDP as a creative-driven firm, in perception as well as reality. As the #2 on the creative team, that’s a great place for Peggy to be.
18 Responses to “Peggy Olson: Writer”
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Good morning. And yet as Peggy is asserting herself at work, she has to lto her boyfriend that she's a virgin to live up standard of what a man expected in a wife. Her work is 1966, her love life "was" 2006 as she bedded many men, including Duch, and now it's 1926. Very interesting pre-regression.
For me, watching Peggy was the best part of that episode. I'm also watching season one with my husband (trying to get him hooked), and the difference between that Peggy and this one is night and day.
This Peggy could be running her own firm someday.
Peggy does seem a lot more confident and I like that she stood up to Don after he unjustly criticized her and Pete for the ham scheme (and then promptly pulled his own stunt – such a hypocrite). That said, it's interesting that her confidence in writing has not extended to the bedroom. Mark seemed really lame – not a jerk, but just way way way out of her league intellectually and maturity-wise. I was actually wondering why they showed a few scenes with her and Duck from last season (in the "previouslies")…I assumed that suggested that Duck was coming back, but obviously he didn't. If the point was that Peggy isn't a virgin, well, we knew that from back in season 1.
Very interesting. It seems though like last night's episode undermined that a bit, not only in seeing her relationship with Freddy but also her relationship with her little boyfriend. She still has some struggles ahead and still has to fight to not be pushed back into a pink "ghetto"
I think that it was a smart move on the writers' part to have Peggy let her bf believe that she was still a virgin. Just like the post says, Peggy has come a very long way since the start of the show. However, if she moves to rapidly the show becomes less believably. She is in fact still in 1963 no matter how high she has risen in the company. If she suddenly became all powerful both in her place of work and in the bedroom then the show would lose its historical credibility and would fall into anachronism. I'm not saying that I don't want to see Peggy raise her status in life. I applaud her achievements. I'm only supporting the writers decision and want to point out that we want the show to stay realistic to the time period.
http://ology.com/screen/mad-men-recap-season-four… I found this recap to be pretty insightful about what happened in this past episode.
I thought the point of showing Duck's "give you a go 'round" scene (in which Duck treated her like a grown-up sexually mature woman, and which Peggy obviously enjoyed physically) was to juxtapose that with her relationship with Mark. Mark is trying hard, and fairly unconvincingly, to come across as suave and sexually experienced, and he was clearly getting off on the idea that Peggy was a virgin and he'd be her "first." Peggy can't bring herself to tell him that SHE'S the one with the experience, but her expression as they lay in bed said it all. She's been with a man who knows how to make love (I know, I know, it's Duck and all…) and with Mr Swedish Sex, for all his assumed worldliness in the ways of love, there's no magic there at all.
I think Peggy had to test out for herself whether Freddy was right — would Mark only respect her if he thought she was a virgin, and would the attraction disappear if she gave in to his advances? Again, her face at the end said it all. Goodbye and good riddance, Mark, or at least I hope so for Peggy's sake. I hate to see her settle in on a terrible relationship like Joan did. But this being MM, we'll probably have Mark around for a good long time. Sigh.
I so love this more mature Peggy, and much of her wardrobe is an improvement, too. But Peggy's conundrum is an age-old one for working women. How many of us know completely together, confident, talented women whose personal lives are a mess? Even now, when so many options are open in the workplace, it's difficult for people to balance the two sides. Peggy's life is even more of a challenge given that her female role models are few and far between.
But is Peggy's work life perfectly together? I'm on pins and needles to see how the Peggy-Freddy dynamic works out. As Brenda says, Peggy's female role models are few and far between; she's made do with male role models like Don and Freddy. But it's perfectly clear from the brain-storming session she and Freddy had about Pond's that Peggy has outstripped her old mentor Freddy.
Freddy probably thought they would go back to the mentor-apprentice relationship they had before (with him calling her "Ballerina" and "Princess"), but Peggy is Creative #2 now. Worse, she calls Freddy on his shop-worn ideas and seriously hurts his feelings. I'm interested to see how Peggy Olson: Writer handles this very thorny office politics problem.
When Mark brings Peggy cookies as a prelude to what he hopes will be a Swedish seduction, she shushes him and he says something like, ". . . don't want to wake up Rasputin." I missed a bit of this scene – can someone clear up this line for me?
What's Peggy's current living arrangement?
Peggy is "screaming" power and I love, love, love it.
Might "Rasputin" be a roommate? BTW, whatever happened to the roommate we briefly saw in Season 3? If that's "Rasputin", the comparison doesn't seem apt.
I said this on the East Coast thread, but it bears repeating here, I think the best line of last night's episode was "You're never going to to ge me to do anything Swedish people do." And given that Peggy's Norwegian, it's even funnier.
Was it "Rasputin?" I heard it from another room, and my DVR was full (of Phineas & Ferb, sigh), so I could not go back!! Have to wait for tonight's re-broadcast. Rasputin implies a man, tho', no? Wasn't Peggy loving in her own apt by season 2, and a nicer one in Season 3?
I know this is totally a tangent but:
Peggy is supposed to be Norwegian, but she's Catholic. I never got that. Perhaps the writers need to visit Minnesota and talk to some real Norwegian-Americans?
@Kerry, perhaps Peggy's mother is an Italian- or Irish-American? If Peggy's father wasn't very religious, or was absent, then her very Catholic mother would have instilled her values into the girls, and Peggy as a nickname for Margaret is very Irish.
If that were true, it would also be a telling detail to note that Peggy would identify herself with her Norwegian father, not her mother.
I agree…although when she moved in with a Swedish roommate, she told her mother that the girl was actually Norwegian. It would be unusual for a non-Scandinavian like her mother to care (or even know the difference!). As a Norwegian, I laughed at the joke…but it made her religion all the more confusing.
#13, we discussed and researched that a lot last year. There was a community of Norwegian Catholics in Bay Ridge.
Yeah, plus the fact that if a non-Catholic married a Catholic at the time, they had to agree to raise all their children as Catholics. So even if Peggy's father was a Lutheran (like my German grandmother), he probably consented to have his children raised in the faith of his Catholic spouse (such as my Scots-Irish grandfather).
Don's state of shamble has had me wondering just how much of his creative workload Peggy's carrying right now.
I absolutely love the work relationship she and Pete have developed – even when they don;t agree, they seem to understand where the other is coming from, and use each other as sounding boards.
As far as Mark I've got to say I can see the appeal at this stage in her life. Apart from the sex-pressure thing, I imagine she doesn't have to try too hard or always be "on" with him. Maybe he's not too exciting, but he seems comfortable. Nor Mr. Right, but Mr. Right Now. He seems to be more serious about the relationship than she is, so I predict that if one of them gets hurt in the end it'll be he.