...and I thought the fact that she got the birth control pills at the beginning of the series could only add to that willful denial.

This was certainly how I saw it - and it* was set up from the first episode. I mean, now, you get this whole "start taking these on THIS day, and no later than THAT day, and back up with a barrier method for the rest of the cycle, and if you miss a pill, do this but if you miss two pills..." and on and on. With Peggy, it was "here's your magical script, don't be a whore."

* And I don't even think that the "it" here needs to be total ignorance that anything at all was going on -- just a route for her to deny, deny, deny.

And as the pregnancy advanced, she had more and more emotionally invested in sustaining that denial.

She was getting positive attention, praise, special assignments and scraps of privilege from the execs, and very badly didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize that (damn, "jeopardize" is a hard word to spell!). Her quasi-privileged position with the higher-ups completely isolated her from any of the women who might have been friends and confidantes, and, of course, despite her quasi-privilege, her femaleness nearly totally isolated her from the clubby world of the higher-ups.

And we got small hints that her mom wasn't thrilled to have her out there in the big city and wanted her safely home and married and domestic, adding yet another layer of "Everything in my universe depends on not admitting any weaknesses or screw-ups."

I don't find her very likable, but I still feel horrible for how utterly alone she is and how much she's having to fight her way through with no friends, no mentors, nobody really on her side but herself (and maybe, slightly, Don, but he seems more dog-dancing-on-its-hind-legs amused at her smarts than anything more seriously positive). And when that last plot twist hit, I found myself both personally repelled by it and nodding and saying, "Yeah, I can't believe it makes sense, but it completely does."

JZ has my proxy. I bought it entirely for those reasons. In fact, that was exactly what I thought was happening once they started putting her in the fat suit.

She was getting positive attention, praise, special assignments and scraps of privilege from the execs, and very badly didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize that (damn, "jeopardize" is a hard word to spell!). Her quasi-privileged position with the higher-ups completely isolated her from any of the women who might have been friends and confidantes, and, of course, despite her quasi-privilege, her femaleness nearly totally isolated her from the clubby world of the higher-ups.

Yes, so very much this! If it came out that she was pregnant, her career would be over.

Also, who is going to go back to a doctor who says "don't be a slut" about any concerns you might have about taking the pill?

So she's been taking these pills and either they didn't work or she didn't take them right,

Didn't she get the pills *after* her night with wassisname "Connor"?

Didn't she get the pills *after* her night with wassisname "Connor"?

I thought it was before, but you need to be on the pill for a full cycle for them to be totally effective.

Didn't she get the pills *after* her night with wassisname "Connor"?

Right before -- like, the day of. Certainly not long enough to be effective.

with wassisname "Connor"?

Pete.

I'd have laughed my ass off if his character's name had been some form of William.

You know, I didn't really like Don till I found out we both wanted to punch Pete in the face. Yeah, Peggy had lost all her girlfriends. In some ways I think Don does relate to Peggy's desire to have more for herself, but you're right, he will always sort of be thinking "Too bad she's a chick," so it can't really be a mentoring thing. Although he does seem to like "the career girls" but maybe cause they're more into no-strings affairs?

Hee. If I get nods of agreement from Corwood, sj and erika for the same post, I think my day has probably topped out and I should just close up my office and go straight to bed before something happens to ruin it.

I actually really kind of love that almost everyone on Mad Men is so hugely unlikable, but with so many flashes of heartbreaking wretchedness under the shiny, cigarette-stinky facade. Even Pete, who is basically a horrible little tick, has had brief moments where you can see that he's genuinely doing the best he can; he's just hopelessly fucked-up and wrong, and possibly even dimly aware of what a horrible little tick he is, just completely clueless as to how to make himself one iota better or different.

Betty completely breaks me. I've only seen the episode with (whitefonted in case Sail and other DVD watchers aren't fully caught up yet) her brief return to modeling once; it wrecked me. Her delight at remembering the freedom and adventures of her young adulthood and at bringing that self back to life, and then the abrupt end because none of that rebirth was ever real, for her, it was all just to woo Don through her and she herself didn't mean a thing to anyone --infuriating and insulting and heartbreaking. I really kind of can't wait to see her again and what she has or hasn't made of her life since Don sat down on the stairs of his empty house .