A character you “love to hate” is a cliché in the world of television. In general, I have low tolerance for such characters. Usually, I don’t love to hate them. I just flippin’ hate them. Hate. Them. Like, get them off my TV show. I especially hate them on sitcoms, where a hateful character is far too easy a foil for jokes that can leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth. But on dramas, they can be at least as bad, and they can chew up screen time, torturing your eyeballs between commercials.
There are a handful of characters I’ve genuinely loved to hate over the years. Miles Drentell on thirtysomething. “Rocket” Romano on ER. Cordelia Chase on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And Pete Campbell on Mad Men.
Are there human beings more poisonous than Pete? Pete, who will gladly prostitute his wife to get a short story published, who will push that same wife into an unwanted pregnancy to get a client, who fantasizes about wiping fresh blood onto his leg? Obsessed with parentage, pouting, jealous, angry, mean, adulterous, blackmailing Pete?
And yet, I can’t take my eyes off him.
P.S. This post was written and saved a couple of weeks ago (I do that), and now that we’re discussing Pete, it seemed the time to bring it back.
Basket of Kisses 
March 12, 2008 at 2:01 pm
You know, not only is she HOT for Petey, but the entire scene plays out like a sexual encounter.
She starts to get the sweats when he describes “throwing the legs over my shoulders”, and hanging the animal and draining its blood. All very erotic, in his telling.
Then he brings it in to “this woman”, which is a wierd phrase to use. Regardless, think of the selfishness and machismo contained in the story.
Watch her walk out of his office after it’s over – like she had to reset her eyeballs from being rolled back in her head.
Again, superbly written and acted.
Like how she calls him “Mr. Campbell” at the beginning.
March 12, 2008 at 2:28 pm
What woman doesn’t want to cook a big slab of meat for her man? 😉
Deborah, you hated Cordelia? I always liked her, because she was so honest in her utter devotion to self. Same with Anya.
Ironically, I always hated Connor. I understand that being raised in hell will have a certain effect, but I just felt like her hated Angel longer than he should,. Eesh, he knew what Jasmine really looked like.
That’s why I supported the writers recently. They have much of a hand in bringing a writer to life as do the actors.
Vincent Kartheiser is a good actor, and I am the hugest Joss Whedon fan on the planet, but Pete works for me in a way that Connor didn’t because of the nuances of character.
My ex, who is still one of my best friends, and also a Joss fan, didn’t realize that Connor and Pete were one. When I pointed it out, he said: I knew there was something about him which bugged me from the start. 🙂
Anyhow, my feelings for Pete change from scene to scene — as do my feelings for Peggy. I’m looking forward to season 2 to get a better handle on both.
dansj30, don’t forget that after the legs her thrown over his shoulders, he eats it while she watches. — that is no accident!
March 12, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Darkly, I didn’t hate Cordelia, I loved to hate Cordelia. Especially seasons 1 and 2. I enjoyed watching her but she was a mean bitch for sure. When she moved over to Angel, she became a much more likeable person.
Whereas Connor I just hated. Maybe it was a combination of bad writing and bad acting, except now it seems like VK can act, and we KNOW Joss Whedon can write. So that continues to puzzle me.
And absolutely, the most startling part of that scene for me is he doesn’t even let “the woman” eat!
March 12, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Good point, Dark.
BTW – SUPER Miles Drentell callback.
March 12, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Maybe that Connor was sympathetic to the writers in a way he wasn’t to us — a lot like Dawn on Buffy. Either you are the type to relate to whiny teens or you’re not.
The woman, after making the man his hunk of meat, went for a ham sandwich and a danish. 🙂
I understand about Cordie — that hate is different than love to hate. I abbreviated that too much. I still never felt that with Cordie — even when she made the softer side of Sears comment. I just always liked her.
Since I’ve shamelessly made this in some ways a post more at home on Whedonesque, I will say he did a better job showing Christina Hendricks to great advantage on Firefly. You couldn’t watch her there and miss the acting chops. That’s why I expect great things from Joan.
Anybody notice how much Peggy dwarfs Pete in that scene, even while going all sub?
I’d mentioned Secretary before. One of the best things about the movie was how Lee became a stronger person by discovering she was a sub. She stood up to Mr. Grey in a way she never could have at the beginning.
Peggy is clearly capable of holding her own with the men. She took control in the recording booth. But what does she want?
March 12, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Glass, I don’t think you were reading us when we had a whole debate over whether or not we thought Cartheiser could act based on Connor. I um, seriously did not. And now, because from the moment I met him as Pete Campbell, I knew he was a real actor, I question it, and I suspect, like you are saying that the fault lies with the writing.
Deb and I are both huge Whedon fans (as well as Zwick/Herskovitz, dan), but sometimes they got things wrong. Dawn was really a problem. She was 13 written like 11. Plus her chops… well, she didn’t have any. But Connor, as you say, he stayed angry for too long, and maybe Cartheiser could have made richer choices. And maybe he was directed not to.
March 12, 2008 at 4:29 pm
That sounds like an interesting discussing — I’ll have to go looking later. 🙂
March 12, 2008 at 6:11 pm
https://madmenmad.wordpress.com/2007/11/15/can-actors-act/ <– found it.
🙂
March 13, 2008 at 10:09 am
I realize that Connor did not work for a lot of people, but he worked for me, and Kartheiser broke my heart in that role. I don’t think it was a fault of the acting or the writing, I think that, much like Dawn, the character was an intrusion on the regular cast, and that there was resentment towards him (and her) for that reason.
I know I felt resentment towards Dawn – she didn’t belong and took time away from the characters I loved! But I only started watching Angel around the time Connor showed up, so I didn’t have that same feeling, that he was intruding on my friends and making a mess.
I thought Kartheiser made David Boreanaz a better actor, too.
I think he’s brilliant as Pete. He’s horrible and obnoxious and hateful, yet I can still feel sympathetic for him, even when his own choices are leading him to increase his misery.
March 13, 2008 at 10:25 am
Fans can’t stand precociousness designed to make adult characters look stupid (see: Wesley Crusher), and they can’t stand whiny interference.
It’s not that Connor and Dawn were intrusions on the regular characters, it’s that they were both characters who spent all their time whining and complaining about and annoying the regular characters.
In the final episodes of Angel, when Connor came back in a different way, I thought he was wonderful.
March 13, 2008 at 10:29 am
I thinki what I appreciate more and more about this scene is how sublimated Pete’s sadism is under all this hunting imagery. He really doesn’t know that it’s not about hunting–or at least not that kind of game! He truly has no awareness of what he’s doing or saying.
March 13, 2008 at 11:17 am
Deborah – I agree that Dawn was needlessly whiny and annoying. But I thought Connor’s past provided a reason for why he was the way he was, so I did not find him whiny and annoying. I understood his pain and I thought Kartheiser did a great job conveying it. He did have a few annoying teenage moments, but this was a seriously damaged kid, of course he wasn’t going to be sunny and chirpy.
So we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point, I guess.
I do think VK’s got chops, and Pete is a pretty rich character to dig into.
March 13, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I did see Dawn as an intrusion sure, but the problem was that she was an annoying intrusion. People I hated for JUST being intrusions would be The Potentials.
The beginning of the series was predicated on intelligent and capable teenagers. Dawn might be a realistic teen in the real world, but not in this universe. The people who would watch a show populated with people like “The Scoobies” are different than those who would watch a show with teens like Dawn.
I loved the idea of Connor. I would have liked to have had more of him as a baby or toddler, but we were on a schedule. It made sense to me that he would have issues — big ones, and I was okay with that. The actual execution of the character wasn’t pleasing,
That’s not to insult VK, because the people who point out the character was likable the last couple times we saw him are right.
Pete gets a really cold look in his eye and so does Connor, and I can understand (now) how VK nailed the audition.
I believe Joss casts people who are a lot like the characters they play, so someone can be a less-than-stellar actor, but nail the part. VK seems to do petulant very well. With Connor, unfortunately, the petulance was very one-note. People assumes this showed his range.
Now he gets to play a character that has more layers, even more shading to the petulance. Maybe some of it is how the characters here are trying to hide their real needs and desire, so the actors have to play conflicting emotions and a lot of complexity.
I know I’m bouncing back and forth. Perhaps the reasonson VK was so good as Conner at the end of the epi where he realizes Angel’s sacrifice is because it showed that he could handle conveying subtext. Conner should have (I love you Joss, I love you Joss) always been played that way. The storylines begged for it.
When Pete is trying to be nice, one of the guys, or smooth, you sense his inner weasel. When he is being a weasel you sense that there is a hurt child in him. You see that he has an interior monologue, a life of the mind, even if we are not privy to the details.
March 13, 2008 at 3:18 pm
When Pete is trying to be nice, one of the guys, or smooth, you sense his inner weasel. When he is being a weasel you sense that there is a hurt child in him. You see that he has an interior monologue, a life of the mind, even if we are not privy to the details.
Excellent.
By the way, I love how much we talk about Whedon here.
March 13, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I didn’t watch as much of the later Star Trek: TNG, which, I gather, is when most of the Wesley-hate accumulated. And I liked Dawn! I remember feeling relieved after her first few episodes that she wasn’t the Annoying New Young Character that other shows bring on somewhere along the line to “bring in the younger audience.” She didn’t seem whiny to me, and she fit into the storyline well. And if Michelle Trachtenberg wasn’t the greatest actress, she at least showed grief and pain well, which is most important in the Buffyverse. Joss loves pain.
That, as I said in the earlier thread
is where I though Vincent Kartheiser was woefully deficient. Connor should have been a great character, if only we had been kept aware of his pain, of the horror that he had lived through. I don’t know if it was a problem in the writing, the direction, or the acting. Since I knew at the time that the Mutant Enemy team could write and direct, I blamed the actor. I still think that was the problem. Behind the wit, Whedon shows ask for operatic, even Shakepearean emotion. VK may not be that kind of actor. Not that there isn’t powerful emotion on Mad Men, but it’s always restrained, muffled, controlled. Working closer to the vest, he can get across the complexities and contradictions of Pete Campbell far better than he could Connor’s.