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“I could have had you in my life forever, if I wanted to.” Peggy tells Pete she’s not perfect on Mad Men

How awesome is Elisabeth Moss? When I’m watching Mad Men, I’m often distracted by the utter hotness of Jon Hamm as Don Draper, but damn, Peggy Olson is a great character. Along with her genteel ambition and mousy exterior, there’s a quiet desperation that runs under everything she says and does. It’s the yearning that I notice the most when I watch Moss play Peggy, but the scene in last Sunday’s season finale in which she finally tells Pete exactly what the result of their affair was, she reveals a strength that is pretty damn impressive.

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ESPN

My father is of the belief that certain old-school views of manhood ought to be brought back into our sometimes too-PC society. In fact, when he talks about my generation of men, wrapped as we were in the warm glow of mandatory self-esteem training, he uses words that rhyme with “Mussy” and “Bomo”.

There’s a laundry list of formerly male activities that have been protested out of polite society, but the thing my father feels we’re missing most is fighting. In the old days, apparently, if two boys on the block didn’t like each other they didn’t peer mediate; rather, they punched each other repeatedly until one boy learned his lesson. This taught you how to a) take a punch and b) not to be a sniveling little shit who made people want to punch you.

Watching Around the Horn today, it occurred to me that my father was right. Growing up without the threat of a ham-sized fist knocking the snot right out of them has created a generation of TV personalities that are almost unbearable. To paraphrase Michael Scott: I don’t blame them, I blame society. These five TV personalities might just become worthwhile human beings if someone could just get around to punching them square in the face …

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