A Pete and Peggy Discussion
"Pete...I understand...It never happened." (Peggy, 1x3)
I'm sure I can't be the only MM fan who is feeling the absence of the Pete/Peggy story so far in S3. Please consider this discussion post a little support group while Matt Weiner leaves us in suspense. I know MM has a habit of making fans wait for the storylines we really want them to get back into, but four whole episodes with barely a hint of follow up on the Pete/Peggy confession scene is getting to me. I find myself thinking Pete & Peggy thoughts even when their interaction isn't there anymore....
...like when Peggy mentioned in 3x4 that it takes her two hours to commute. I was thinking how Pete must have travelled for those two hours on his Stag night just to see Peggy, a girl he didn't even know. And how Peggy let Pete into her room; a boy she didn't even like. It could be said that Pete and Peggy had an instant chemistry and connection; that they knew each other instantly. It could alternatively be said that they were strangers and they only thing they knew was what they wanted from each other at that moment.
Lately I've been thinking that the Pete/Peggy relationship is strangely defined by its absence.
Pete is absent from the second episode, though clearly present in Peggy's thoughts. When Pete returns in the third episode the golden rule of Pete/Peggy is immediately established - they agree that "It never happened". Yet before the end of 1x3 Pete and Peggy are catching each other's eyes again, sharing knowing looks, the first of many looks between them. In every look they share, they know what happened.
Don is the second person to say "This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened." when he visits Peggy at the hospital in the 2x5 flashback. Don doesn't know that he is indirectly referring to the night Pete/Peggy had sex and that Peggy became pregnant and gave birth to Pete's child. But Don unwittingly offers Peggy an escape from the relationship and the mess of what happened through denial.
In S1 it is Pete who wants that denial and Peggy who offers it to him. Their denial slips when they find themselves alone in the office, having sex on the couch, but it soon comes back when Trudy arrives and Pete is flipping his cushions over to hide any evidence of what happened. Later in S1 Peggy makes a crack about lying on Pete's couch to clear up his marriage confusion. Pete snaps back that Peggy has "some imagination". Their relationship is now treated as a thing of makebelieve. But since the imaginary couch sex we have seen Pete with the Playtext model and then Peggy with the college boy, having more couch sex, as if trying to recreate it.
When Pete finally tells the truth about their relationship and his feelings, Peggy tells him that part of her is gone; the part of her that loved Pete and wanted to be with him. 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.
For me, that unknowable baby has become a metaphor for the state of Pete/Peggy's relationship. On one level, they know each other. The archiac definition for "knowing" someone literally means to have sexual intercourse, but more than that there is all the secret knowledge of what happened between them. Now the defining aspect of their relationship is what they can never know - their child and how they could have been together. Both are gone. They have to go back to pretending it never happened.
I'd love to hear other MM fans opinions about where the Pete/Peggy story might go from here. So far they have been conspiciously kept apart. In that one scene they were in together at the start of 3x3, Pete and Peggy barely looked at each other and Pete left saying "Goodnight Gentles", not even acknowledging Peggy was in the room. It makes sense that they are ignoring each other but at some point we'll have to see them working together. Peggy is said to be assigned to many of Pete's accounts (including Pampers...ouch). Personally I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Pete/Peggy to confront what happened and to be shocked by how much it happened.
Any further thoughts?