Mad Men Roundtable – “Chinese Wall”

I’m thinking about Pete, and his continued loyalty to Don. I can’t figure out what’s going on with him, but I wonder if it comes back to his well-documented self-loathing. He’s seen the Box of Secrets, so he has a trump card. Bert Cooper didn’t care, but somebody at some point will. Pete doesn’t want to leave SCDP, because he has that insurance. If he fails elsewhere, he fails. If he fails here, he just may be able to play that card. And now that he’s seen how important Don’s secret is, that card just got more powerful. As long as he’s smart about how he uses this information, Pete has a free chance to save his skin at SCDP. Right now, it’s a matter of whether he thinks the agency will survive long enough for this power to be valuable. If SCDP goes down, his hold over Don doesn’t count for anything. There’s got to be a complicated cost-benefit analysis going on in Pete’s head right now. And by “right now”, I mean “45 years ago”.