All that and I haven't even gotten to Pete Friggin Campbell. Every time we think Pete Campbell's face can't get anymore punchable, when we assume he can't get any less satisfied with his life, when we believe he can't get more entitled, self important, and self loathing, Pete Campell proves us wrong. He has every bad quality of Don Draper without any of the charisma that allows Don to carry the title Anti-Hero. Pete Campbell is just Anti.
So it is fitting that he gets punched out by a dead man and falls in love with a women who has no clue who she is either. His speech in the finale, while not as poetic as Don's readings about the "catastrophe of his personality, or Roger's cynically existential quips about the nature of human selfishness, carried a weight that might have been heavier because of who he is as a character. He has spent so much time dodging the actuality of his existence through incorrigibly licentious escapism. First he tried to be like Don, until he realized that he never could, that Don was just better. Then he tried to beat Don but with the same result. Then he tried to be Don's equal only to be chastised by Dick Whitman. He wanted his younger teenage girl to prove that his growing age came with some kind of beneficial knowledge that could cure the indignation of his past, only to find out its only cure came at the end of a stiff bed and 500 volts.
So, yes, he has placed bandage after bandage over a wound that needs stitches, and it finally bled everywhere when his wife gave him what he's always wanted. His ending will be tragic, there is no other way out for Pete Campbell. He will be the blank man in the blank suit falling from the edge of the world. And as he's falling, he's going to look back and give 2 middle fingers to god because the building he office he jumps from won't have a window big enough to bring everyone with him.
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Realo won gold at the Sex Olympics with a BROKEN FRIGGIN NECK.-Voltch