I was thrilled when Elisabeth Moss was nominated for an Emmy this year. I think that her subtle, nuanced performance as Peggy Olson is one of the best parts of Mad Men. I thought this was particularly evident this week, in the second episode of the new season.
All the characters in Mad Men are fairly complex, but I think that Peggy is right up there with Don in terms of depth. Like Don, she is a complicated individual, struggling with her identity. I love that the show is almost setting them up in a mentor/protege relationship.
This episode did a great job in showing us the struggle that Peggy is going through. She is obviously an ambitious woman, working her way up from the secretarial pool into her own office. She wants to be one of the guys; she wants to be respected at work. At the same time, however, she also wants to be wanted as a woman.
The Bye Bye Birdie ad campaign illustrated this perfectly. Peggy wanted nothing more than to make fun of the silly product and the overly girly concept. She complained up and down about how it wasn’t what women wanted to see, even though the product was targeted directly toward them. In her alone time, though, when no one else was looking, Peggy was singing to herself in the mirror, doing her best Ann-Margret impression.
It wasn’t enough for her, though; she needed to be wanted, and went out to a bar to seduce a young man. I thought it was very interesting that she felt the need to lie, or at least not tell the whole truth, about her job. She was perfectly happy to let the men in the bar believe that she was nothing more than a secretary, or that she worked for a “jerk.”
I loved the closing moments of the episode, with Don and Peggy sharing a moment together in the office, digging into work first thing in the morning. The two of them are so similar, both quick to dive into work to forget about the problems in their lives, and in their pasts. I’m looking forward to seeing how the relationship between Don and Peggy is going to evolve during this season.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Aug 25, 2009 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
So would you go as far as to say that peggy is evolving into a femme Don Draper? It seems that right now she is in the process offinding herself, just as Dick whitman “found” Don Draper. This episode is finally bringing me back into the deep train of thought the creates want me to be in :)