beyond the barricade

Pete’s an interesting character, because though he’s a complete lout on a personal level, he’s much more progressive and traditionally liberal than the other characters. He, alone, understood the appeal of demographic research back in the day, and he’s also usually seemed to be at least somewhat sympathetic to the youth culture swirling around the country at this point in time. (Though you just know that if he tried to go to Woodstock or something, he would be laughed off the grounds.) Pete, because of his need to belong or his upbringing or something, has this intuitive sense of what it’s like to have a majority stepping down on you at every turn. When he barks that King’s assassination made for a “shameful, shameful day,” it’s a laughline, sure, because Pete rarely gets so serious, but then you immediately realize he really means it, and it becomes one of the more empathetic moments for the character in the run of the show.Harry, meanwhile, just wants TV to get back on track. Not having Bewitched and The Merv Griffin Show on is killing the company’s bottom line, because the networks are running with constant news reports that don’t have advertising in them. (CBS president William S. Paley famously complained around this time about how much special coverage of major news events cost him, and very few of his fellow businessmen took it as particularly ghoulish to think that way.) There have been moments of coded racism throughout the hour, but they’ve mostly been shut down very quickly, stopped by the fact that nobody wants to behave like an overt racist anymore (perhaps the most noteworthy success of the civil rights movement for someone like Don, who’s far removed from segregation and probably doesn’t encounter too many African Americans in his day-to-day life). Yet Harry plunges right in, talking about how things are just going to get worse, because you know how “they” will react. It’s a horrifying moment, and Pete is right to be horrified. Yet it’s also when Bert makes sure everything gets calmed down. These people still need to work together, even if Harry seems an increasingly unstable powder keg.
—Todd VanDerWerff, The A.V. Club

Pete’s an interesting character, because though he’s a complete lout on a personal level, he’s much more progressive and traditionally liberal than the other characters. He, alone, understood the appeal of demographic research back in the day, and he’s also usually seemed to be at least somewhat sympathetic to the youth culture swirling around the country at this point in time. (Though you just know that if he tried to go to Woodstock or something, he would be laughed off the grounds.) Pete, because of his need to belong or his upbringing or something, has this intuitive sense of what it’s like to have a majority stepping down on you at every turn. When he barks that King’s assassination made for a “shameful, shameful day,” it’s a laughline, sure, because Pete rarely gets so serious, but then you immediately realize he really means it, and it becomes one of the more empathetic moments for the character in the run of the show.
Harry, meanwhile, just wants TV to get back on track. Not having Bewitched and The Merv Griffin Show on is killing the company’s bottom line, because the networks are running with constant news reports that don’t have advertising in them. (CBS president William S. Paley famously complained around this time about how much special coverage of major news events cost him, and very few of his fellow businessmen took it as particularly ghoulish to think that way.) There have been moments of coded racism throughout the hour, but they’ve mostly been shut down very quickly, stopped by the fact that nobody wants to behave like an overt racist anymore (perhaps the most noteworthy success of the civil rights movement for someone like Don, who’s far removed from segregation and probably doesn’t encounter too many African Americans in his day-to-day life). Yet Harry plunges right in, talking about how things are just going to get worse, because you know how “they” will react. It’s a horrifying moment, and Pete is right to be horrified. Yet it’s also when Bert makes sure everything gets calmed down. These people still need to work together, even if Harry seems an increasingly unstable powder keg.

—Todd VanDerWerff, The A.V. Club