Pete, despite his smarmy abrasiveness is usually prescient in his observations (Elvis/hat, Clearasil/Boomers, avoiding false claims, use of research, more that I can’t think of right now).

Peg-ster with her career focus, talent for writing copy, and generally bucking the system (not parallel, I know) – as has been noted elsewhere – is sort of a pre-feminist canary in the coal mine.

That’s why they pair up, and ostensibly belong together, creepy though that may seem. They share unrecognized talent and capabilities that are striving to be set free (cue the music).

Interesting to contrast this with Don (and Joan, for that matter). Don, charming as he is handsome, actually represents the past. He’s a dinosaur but doesn’t know it – rejection of research, wears a hat, eschews technology over nostalgia (Carosel pitch).

Don’s a human inflection point – slowing down as he approaches the top.

Joan too. Still considers sleeping with the boss as career insurance – a lot of good that’s doing her by end of S1, with Roger laid up. By decade’s end she’ll be in sorry shape, guaranteed.

So, foreshadowing, anyone?

Robert Morse wasn’t in this episode.

* I completely agree with Don being a man of fear and improv, all there in the first episode. He also, as a sales technique, uses his nasty side. That sarcastic ’sorry we’ve wasted your time, there’s the door’. He went way too far with Rachel, though; that was appalling, and I don’t think he ever really knows that.
* Very very interesting about Pete not looking at her. I have to say that, after a season of getting to know this bastard, I found that moment to be moving and genuine. Genuine what, I have no idea, but something about that girl certainly drew him to her. Specifically her. Maybe not so much from her angle; she really just, I think, was drawn to being drawn to. She has no idea at this stage what-all she wants or is supposed to want. Thus the inappropriate hitting on Don. I saw this as more of a ‘giving herself’ to Don (as opposed to trying to get something), because she thought (per Joan), it’s what she was supposed to do.
*When Don and Pete ‘make up’, and Pete pushes it a little too far, Don says something along the lines of ‘you’ll get pregnant tonight’. I can’t check. I loaned out my tape. My horse-and-buggy VHS tape.
* Robert Morse was whistling This Old Man. I had to check that… I had thought, as weird as it sounds, that Richie Valens wrote it… there was something in the credits of the movie La Bamba that made me think that, even though it sounded like crazy talk. I checked; he didn’t; the dates are fine.
* I believe, Deborah, that our very father saw My Fair Lady on the eve of his wedding day to our very mother. I remember him saying that he watched the guy getting drunk and singing I’m Gettin’ Married in the Morning instead of doing it himself. The dates check out for both. It ran from March 15th, 1956 to September 29th, 1962.

That is all.