Pete Campbell’s chronic inability to have one single, unsullied good thing happen to him basically functions as a Mad Men running joke. A freak hunting accident drops the Chevy account in Pete’s lap, but he’s forced to share it with the mysterious gay man who knee-nuzzled him an episode earlier. He doesn’t get fired when the company downsizes, but he’s forced to share his new promotion with the supercilious Ken Cosgrove. He met a nice, sexy lady, but ohbytheway, she’s craaaaazy and doesn’t remember him after her electroshock therapy. Pete might not get all the good things all the time because he has a chip on his shoulder, or he might have a chip on his shoulder because all the good things elude him, but it’d be doing Pete a disservice to think of him only as a bitter, grimacing man with a hairline receding faster than a treeline during a forest fire. That’s because Pete Campbell is also something of a civil rights pioneer.
One the eve of the Mad Men season finale, Pete Campbell’s alter-ego Vincent Kartheiser spoke about the deep, psychic complexities of Pete Campbell. In case you weren’t aware, Pete Campbell isn’t just a smarmy corporate dick with an outsized sense of entitlement who can’t manage his affairs properly — he also has a strong sense of social justice. See, the show’s other white characters don’t give a shit about black people, but Pete Campbell is different, insists Kartheiser, because Pete Campbell, as a New York blue blood, was raised by black people.