You know the rules.
That was terribly depressing. There was justice to the whole Betty and Don thing but it really was depressing.
Infidelity is a constant source of conversation among men. The paradox for so many of us is that we want families, we want life-partnership, but the act of never sleeping with another woman tugs at us like a kind of death. It almost feels off to commit, like something deep in your DNA is saying Don't do this. And the voice isn't evil, it's an essential part of you.
There's a lot of debate, not so much over whether women feel the same pull, but over the strength of the pull, and its exact nature. I've never had much interest in that conversation because it feels so unanswerable. All the women I've ever talked to honestly, who I believed were confident, self-assured and sharp, said that they struggled to commit also, that something deep inside them also said, No. Did they feel it as most men I know felt? Not really--it seemed less common. Was the pull as strong? I don't know. Maybe it's stronger How much of it is nature, and how much of it is nurture? I can't, with any amount of intellectual humility, claim to be able to answer that.
What I do know is this--the men I've known in my life who've fallen down, if that's how we think of it, almost always underestimate the longing and desire of their spouses. Many of us think we can't be got. We don't necessarily see our spouses as fully human, as people with particular needs, whether different or the same. And when those needs go unmet, we don't actually believe that they'll step out on us.
This is the arrogance of gender power, it's blinding. Tonight, Don Draper looked like Mike Tyson after Buster Douglass took him down. I thought of Johnny Taylor. We think we're invincible. Then they cut you. I don't know if we can make total and complete peace with that deep paradox--the hope is for detente. But one thing I got very clear on, and at a relatively young age honestly, was that women are human in all the evil ways that men are human, and that there is a kind of justice in the world. It's not so bad that we violate--it's that we don't understand the costs of violation, or maybe we're gripped by a kind of fatalism. It never occurred to Don that his wife might leave him, or maybe it occurred to him all the time.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
...the purse and the jewels or the 11 o'clock news.
I'm a little worried about getting too deep into stereotypes, but its how they play out on Mad Men, so I'll go with it. Men cheat sexually, women cheat emotionally. So while Betty hasn't had sex with Henry, her affair has been going on with him for quite some time -- even before they even kissed.
This isn't even Betty's first affair. Of course there was a sexual liaison in season 2 with the stranger in the bathroom, but I also think in a sense her incredibly inappropriate relationship with the divorced neighbors boy was kind of an affair. We all kind of assume that Don has been "stepping-out" on Betty since well before the show started, and I question whether Betty hasn't also been seeking out these emotional bonds with other men for quite some time too.
With respect to Mad Men, it seems that Don was more surprised that he gave a shit that Betty might leave than anything else. Had she not known his most essential secret he probably wouldn't have cared. In that case, I think his concerns about the end of his marriage would have been wholly centered on his kids.
Commitment is frightening and I know from experience and from talking to my boys that the "Don't do this" voice is very strong and very influential. It's weird, you can in no way be unsatisfied with your partner and the thought that she'd be the last woman you ever slept with can still be frightening.
Re: infidelity. Not having your needs met is not an excuse for cheating. Its a reason for leaving. There's so much that has to be dealt with in a relationship that that core thing that holds couples together, what I think Miss Farrell was talking about (ironically) when she said "as long as you're with me", which is most easily expressed through fidelity, needs to stay strong and unviolated. I'm ranting again. I swear this makes sense in my head. If anyone can explain what I'm grasping at more eloquently, I'd be grateful.
I knew there was trouble when Betty exhaled after hearing the woman with Francis introduced as his daughter. I don't know whether Betty loves him or is just looking for a come-up from her marriage. I do know how easy it is to stray and how hard it is to stay committed and present in a relationship. Is it harder for men not to cheat? I've never been a man so I can't speak to that experience. I do know that as a woman I sometimes long for a new romance, a new thrill, a new name to linger on my lips.
On another note: when Carla sat beside Betty and lit up that cigarette, her pain was palpable. In that moment, they were just two women sharing an almost unbearable pain.
I don't know if I'd attribute Don's cheating to gender power. He was certainly blindsided (and Jon Hamm did a great job of conveying that emotion once he got upstairs). But to attribute it to gender power means that Betty never cheated before that guy in the bar because she was gender-powerless. That seems to run counter to the agnostic position you took on the issue in general earlier when you said: "Was the pull as strong? I don't know. Maybe it's stronger How much of it is nature, and how much of it is nurture? I can't, with any amount of intellectual humility, claim to be able to answer that."
I'd say gender power doesn't so much create blindness as much as the means to exact certain punishments and responses after the fact that the other gender can not (as easily/readily) - public stoning, medieval draconian punishments, etc.
If anything, men who openly engage(d) in lop-sided gender power are and were possibly way more suspicious of their wives extra-curricular love-lives than the average man who resists his own against gender power and privileges.
Don is arrogant because he's just thinks he's *that* fly.
I think Don is arrogant partly due to that and partly because the circumstances of his background (son of a rural, remote whore reinvented as a captain of industry) have so shamed and frightended him so as to have almost left him an existentialist--i.e, he has desperately avoided a search for deeper self-knowledge morally or in terms of life meaning.
I think you're right. He thinks he never could get women before but now that he has the confidence, prestige and money he can and so he will. He used to be a car salesman right? His steady progression up the ranks to New York elite seems to be positively related to his philandering. There probably is more to it but I haven't come up with any good theories. I'm not sure what Juba means by his existentialist comment. I see Don as being a very independent and libertarian person and in that sense he has some existentialist quality, but I think the existentialist might say that he has failed to overcome his mundane family life. Plus he hasn't come to grips with the conflict between his bootstraps pulling self and the fact that he stole someone's identity.
Small note on father/daughter dynamics.
Seems like the new Mrs. Sterling isn't trying to replace his wife; she wants to replace his daughter. Jane is not worried about Mona, but she'd be happier if Margaret would step aside.
Betty Draper isn't looking at Henry to replace Don; she wants him to replace her father. Don cannot convince her ever again that anything is going to be all right. Maybe if he had gray hair?
Of course, Mona's a grown-up and Jane and Margaret are clearly not.
Dead on with Betty.
I forgot to ask: Is Duck old enough to be Peggy's father?
I think so, yeah.
It never occurred to Don that his wife might leave him, or maybe it occurred to him all the time.
Oh I think it occurred to him. I think a lot of the systems of control (remember him shutting down her modeling career and secretly getting inside info from her psychiatrist) and most of what he did to hide himself was to forestall the possibility, no?
Moreover, her (potential?) infidelity really seems entirely beside the point to me. The whole thing with Henry's proposal seemed especially weird because, as far as I can tell, they barely know each other. She doesn't know him any better than she knew Don before his big revelation. He is just an idealized and romantic notion of what she thinks she wants. Something to run toward so she doesn't feel like she is just running away.
Maybe she doesn't love Don anymore. Maybe she never did. But what has become clear to her is that she can no longer live this particular lie. Henry is essentially irrelevant. In other words, IMO the question of whether she wants to be in a committed relationship is really just a sidebar in her own search for truth. If or when she answers the question of who she is and what she wants out of life, the issue of commitment may be settled as part of that but that wil not be the most important result.
I've seen a number of complaints about the proposal, that it seemed absurd, given how little they know each other. But this is how betrothal often used to happen. The length of current engagements is what is historically off. A century previous to Henry and Betty, it was only a few supervised evenings in the parlor before a decent man would be expected to declare himself. For who Betty is and how she's been groomed, a proposal wouldn't seem at all unusual to her as a sign of seriousness and commitment.
Sure. But I don't think my disbelief is about the length of the "engagement." A brief engagement between two young adults is one thing. Even an arranged marriage involves some sort of "getting to know you" period between the families. Its my impression that these two, who have the added complication of having their own children, barely know each other. Really. In the context of the show they have had like two or three very brief conversations and a couple of stolen kisses. From what I can tell, before this episode, Betty didn't even know Henry had a daughter or maybe she didn't know what she looked like but no matter, she clearly knows almost nothing about his life. In other words, this doesn't even rise to the seriousness of an 1860s' courtship. 1960's? I am mildly skeptical that this sort of thing could have been very common. I know for sure that it is not at all true of any of the married couples I know of from my mother's generation which would have been right around the same time.
Oh, of course, most marriage alliances were building on long acquaintance, family acquaintance, etc. But you're talking about prudence. Of course it's not prudent, but people even now decide that their unique passion justifies marriage after two weeks. I see people questioning the proposal as a plausible plot point, and I'm saying it's very plausible, especially to someone like Betty, with her expectations of how men will properly pay her her due.
I see. Well I don't think we exactly disagree. I wasn't really commenting on the proposal as an issue of narrative plausibility. I was just making the point that it was an odd moment that really wasn't about the issue of commitment so much as it was about Betty and Don's, and to some degree Henry's, dysfunction
Did anyone else who lived through the JFK assassination have some emotional surges during the recreation last night? I realized I had tears in my eyes a couple of times. I was in the eighth grade when it happened, and I'm still trying to figure out what that event did to us.
It's certainly not like Kennedy was the first president to be killed while in office. Lincoln's assassination probably had a more profound impact on history than JFK's because it changed the course of the aftermath of the Civil War. Yet somehow, to me, the JFK assassination seems to have hit the nation at a much deeper emotional level. Or am I wrong and only displaying my Baby Boomer narcissism?
I think so, w/r/t Lincoln. The country thought the war was over, then that.
But w/r/t Kennedy and last night's ep, your reaction was at least shared by this child of the 70s.
I was thrown, b/c I (mis-)understood last night to be the finale. Wasn't until I saw "Next Time On..." that I figured it out.
IMO, Don's crushed because, in spilling the Dick Whitman beans, he finally really committed to Betty 100% (at least in his mind, and at least for now). And it got him rejected.
I think this last is a really strong point. And I think we're going to see (if not next week, then in season 4) that this is the "all is lost" moment for Don. Because not only has he revealed his past to Betty, he's also signed a three-year contract with Sterling Cooper almost solely for her (yeah, it was Hilton demanding the guarantee, but I think Don might have held out if Betty hadn't gotten in his face about it). Now he's probably lost Hilton, he's losing Betty, and he's trapped in that contract! Without the contract, he might have bailed out and gone solo, maybe taking some choice talent with him (Peggy, Sal, Harry Crane). Instead he's going to be stuck while the rising stars get to move on. I think that's the reason why super-cool Don has been acting first atypically irritable, then overtly panicky around the office.
Don can't escape anymore, and he's about to lose his biggest reason not to want to. It's going to feel to him like being trapped under a collapsing building.
Or in a building that's falling apart underneath him.
I'm not looking forward to next week's episode. I'm afraid there are going to be a lot of tears.
Somehow, to me, the JFK assassination seems to have hit the nation at a much deeper emotional level.Or am I wrong and only displaying my Baby Boomer narcissism?
I think the episode dealt with your question pretty well by noting the parallels between the deaths of JFK and FDR, in that everyone then saw the death of FDR as a not-that-long-ago traumatic event. Today, while we may remember that FDR died at the end of WWII, as an event, it barely makes a blip in national memory. Do you know what day it was? Any idea where your grandparents were when it happened? As a stand-alone event, JFK's death was obviously more out-of-the-blue and immediate thanks to television and telephones. It certainly has had more staying power thanks to the Zapruder film and conspiracy theories, and yes, boomer self-absorption. But it will over time recede in American national memory to more proportional size.
There's absolutely no comparison to Lincoln. Lincoln had just led the nation through the most violent and devastating war in its history, a tormenting slog that would claim 600,000 lives and free four million people from bondage, and what's more, he had been a central voice in convincing a significant portion of the nation that the war was just and worthy, then just days after peace had finally been achieved, he was slain on Good Friday.
In terms of mythic significance, emotional resonance, and larger meaning for American narratives about national salvation and slavery, Lincoln's personal sacrifice is without parallel.
JFK's assasination has more of an emotional impact on contemporary Americans than Lincoln's for 2 reasons.
One, the simple passage of time makes Lincoln's assasination less resonant than JFK's; Lincoln's death in 1865 is undeniably a matter of history, while JFK's assasination in 1963 is an event within the living memory of many Americans still, or of our parents and grandparents. In 50 years, however, the assasinations of both Lincoln and JFK will have the same emotional impact, since most of the people who witnessed and experienced JFK's assasination will be long dead, just as the people who witnessed and experienced Lincoln's death are.
Two, JFK had the advantage of being assasinated in the modern electronic mass media age of television and radio, while Lincoln was killed during the age of print. News coverage of JFK's assasination was brought into American homes via television, delivered by Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley and Chet Huntely, just as coverage of the 9/11 attacks were delivered by Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, as well as the folks at CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. (In fact, Mad Men's depiction of how the nonstop tv news coverage of JFK's assasination played out in American society reminded a lot of how the nonstop tv news coverage of the 9/11 attacks played out also.)
Eltoro, I wouldn't necessarily dispute that as an event, perhaps more people at this moment "remember" the event of JFK's death (either by living through it or by hearing first-hand experiences of living through it).
But to the extent that we have a constructed national memory of the Civil War, its causes and purpose, Lincoln's death looms large, as it enabled him to be transformed into national Christ figure whose death is at the very center of popular narratives of American history, particularly regarding race and slavery.
Yeah, JFK's death was and is a huge deal, and does have plenty of mythic meaning attached to it, but however wrenching the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and the cultural turmoil of the 60s was, they do not compare to the Civil War.
I'd also suggest reading David Blight's Race and Reunion, and Drew Giplin Faust's This Republic of Suffering just to get a sense of how traumatic the Civil War was and how its memory was constructed. Also cause they're great books that will cure you of your silly presentist notions that Television changed Everything. Who is to say that events are more immediate when you see them on a television or when you read about them in a letter from your brother?
I suppose I've just outed myself as a historian, but really, people, think about this for a second before spouting lazy teleological narratives that Technology Intensifies Everything.
"Who is to say that events are more immediate when you see them on a television or when you read about them in a letter from your brother?"
They are more immediate when you see them on television live or moments after the event happenned as opposed to receiving a letter a few day or even a few weeks after the fact. Now the letter from your brother will have a deeper and more long-lasting effect for sure, it just won't be as immediate. Even then the letter from your brother won't have the same impact as you personally witnessing the event through your own eyes unfilitered by a tv camera, and that witnessing will pale in comparison to being an actual participant in the event.
"But to the extent that we have a constructed national memory of the Civil War, its causes and purpose, Lincoln's death looms large, as it enabled him to be transformed into national Christ figure whose death is at the very center of popular narratives of American history, particularly regarding race and slavery."
I agree with you completely on this, but emotional resonance doesn't always correlate with importance. Viewed through an intellectual lens, it is clear that Lincoln's assasination is a far more important historical event than JFK's, but that the very fact that Lincoln's assasination has taken on such mythic proportions that Lincoln can described as a Christ figure robs the event of its emotional resonance. It has become a moment of history recounted in our history books about a figure who most of us visually experience as a statue, and not as a seemingly living person captured on film or video. However, that emotional resonance can be achieved through dramatic recreations of the event. It is one thing to read about Lincoln's death; it is another thing to witness an actor faithfully embodying Lincoln, and portraying Lincoln experiencing a brief moment of joy and relaxtion while watching a play in Ford's Theater, before being deprived of his life by a political fanatic.
"I'd also suggest reading David Blight's Race and Reunion, and Drew Giplin Faust's This Republic of Suffering just to get a sense of how traumatic the Civil War was and how its memory was constructed. Also cause they're great books that will cure you of your silly presentist notions that Television changed Everything"
I am not arguing that television changed Everything, but yor are a bad historian if you are arguing that television (and radio) changed Nothing. You as a historian should know very well that the widespread adoption of mass media such as television and radio did change the way we experience and consume news events compared to the newspaper only environments of the past. Look at the central role that Roosevelt's fireside chats on the radio played in immediately influencing public opinion and reassuring public confidence during the Great Depression. Look at the difference that television coverage made in how the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates were received compared to radio coverage. Look at the difference that televison coverage of the Vietnam War on the nightly news delivered by Cronkite and Brinkley made compared to newsreel coverage of World War 2. Can imagine the difference that it would have made if Lincoln had tools such as radio, newsreels, and television at his disposal during the Civil War (both good and bad)?
I thought the Henry/Betty scene felt weirdly off. No chemistry there and just bizarre that he is proposing to her after being only 1/2 hour or maybe 1 hour together. Unless the affair has gone on off camera--which I do not think it has given the tenor of their conversation in the car--it's just very very weird. Before Henry seemed realistic to me--now he seems insane asking a woman with 3 kids to marry him on the basis of 3 meetings.
I think the Kennedy assassination was a catalyst in his proposal. When something big and scary happens, we want comfort and assurance that life is going to be okay. Betty realizes Don and his lies can never give her that now. Francis realizes that Betty fits his physical ideal so she must be ideal for him in all the other ways that matter.
I love XeemXeem's point about the father-daughter dynamic upthread. Maybe when life gets too scary, we want our mommy and daddy. I always felt that need spurred Dennis Miller's Republican conversion after 9/11.
Henry knows that she does not like tawdriness. I'm surprised we're all taking him at his word.
Word up. He knows she has to hear that stuff to get with him, but I doubt he's actually serious.
Yeah, Henry talking marriage struck me as very odd. I wondered if he'd said it to a dozen other women before, knowing it sounded like it was safe to go to bed with them, knowing he wasn't going to follow through.
He's playing her! He's still trying to get her into bed. Don't believe him, girl!!
Yup, standard line.
Betty just annoys the crap out of me. This seems more like a power play than love, even though she likes the excitement of kissing Mr. Politico. It's a revenge mode because , to use a James brown phrase, SHE'S GOT THE POWER...I feel so much more simpatico for Don, despite the past philandering, because he is so much more real, and follows a certain spirit. Betty is devoid of spirit. All is callow, self-centeredness. Her reaction to JFK doesn't even move me, but watching Huntley-Brinkley/Cronkite again, I got surprisingly choked up over that scene. That day still hauts me.
Meanwhile the only funny line last night was Mrs. Sterling Cooper (first) to her daughter: "Just because she went to India doesn't mean she isn't stupid."
It was so depressing--and the Skeeter Davis song was so perfect for Don's emotion
I agree with you. Betty has always rubbed me the wrong way and I could care less about her emotions struggles. It seems to me that her lust for Henry is based more on the fact that she want to fairy tale version of her life to return. Don's emotion vulnerability last week scared her because she would finally have to be a grown up. It's easier for her to go with Henry who promises her movies and "Singing in the Rain" than deal with the realities of having a real relationship with her husband. Her emotional reaction to the Kennedy assasinations seeems to be more about the death of Camelot, i.e. her fake marriage, than anything else. I wonder whether her relationsip with Henry will end up being just like Peggy's relationship with Duck.
Re: Peggy and Duck. I was unaware that the term "nooner" was in use in the early 60s.
For some reason I couldn't stop laughing at that scene. Peggy's appalled reaction was especially humorous to me ("You're a pig!") considering that Kinsey absolutely nailed it. We all know what a "nooner" sounds like and her attempt to hide it from another adult was an utter failure.
If it was, it must have been outside the NYC area. I grew up and still live in the kind of suburbs shown on Mad Men, and I never heard that. Quickies, they were called quickies, and I think "love in the afternoon" was popular due to the 1950s movie with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper.
Nice tie-in to the Camelot and wedding cake quip hints.
Betty will always annoy, it is a part of her breeding, she is still playing sorority girl as a grown up. She was not allowed many other choices in her circle. Also remember the number of suburban housewives in the 1960 on prescription drugs and alcohol, hence the vacuous look on her face. This was long before the other Betty (Ford) was so ‘courageous’ to talk about the drug and alcohol abuse epidemic in white suburban women.
Camelot was a post assassination construction even JKO said she tried too hard to manufacture. The JFK assassination did make many people reassess their lives.
I couldn't help but feel like the JFK assassination and Betty's take down of Don were meant to be paralleled. In one instance a Jackie is literally scooping her (philandering) husband up and trying to put him back together. Whereas Betty played the man on the grassy knoll shot Don in the head. Or maybe she's more like Ruby getting Don, the patsy in her affair (although that isn't fair given is wandering eye), in the gut. I wanted to have a wee cry for Don at the end of the episode. Despite his caddish ways somehow he seems not to deserve such treatment.
I am sure I will be accused of misogyny, but Betty does seem far crueler than Don this season. She has been petulant and childish and now going out of her way to hurt Don all to exact some sort of adolescent revenge. Conversely Don is becoming more and more sympathetic, with the exception of his dalliance with the teacher he has been a tender husband and caring father in season 3.
I agree with you and the others who've said that Don is far more sympathetic that Betty.
Don's philandering is cruel to Betty, no way around that. But I think Don is showing the behavior that people who have survived traumatic or abusive experiences sometimes show. They develop a weird sense of entitlement. I get to break the rules because I suffered so much, and it's only fair.
I think anyone who endured the kind of childhood that Don did would have grown up with an emotional pain that is very difficult to ease, and he would have been constantly looking for ways to escape it if only briefly. But I think Don's experience also made him more self-reliant and better able to reassure others in times of crisis. He's the guy who keeps repeating that everything will be OK during the aftermath of JFK's death. He's the guy who can sit down and explain to the kids what happened and what will happen. "Everybody will be sad for a while," or something like that.
Betty can't touch that kind of emotional stability.
Remember Betty's childhood wasn't great either; her mother sounds emotionally abusive, and considering how awful her brother turned out, her father was her only stability.
I think you're right about Betty and I hadn't thought of that. In some ways, both Don and Betty are damaged goods. But I think Don has been much more traumatized than Betty. She may have had lousy parents but at least she knew who her parents were and wasn't handed around to whoever would take her. She may well have been emotionally abused, but she apparently always had the best of everything else, and plenty of it.
Don's childhood was pretty much awful in all aspects. The military draft was still in effect during the Korean War, so Don may not have had any choice about going into the Army. And what he saw in Korea was pretty awful as well, there may be some PTSD in his emotional makeup that we haven't really seen yet.
Oh yeah, Don had it worse. But people have their own resources for dealing with things, and some people just come out better on that scale than others. Don's brother, who arguably had an easier childhood, committed suicide, after all.
To be fair to Betty, though, it is easier to be tender and caring when you are not angry and dissatified with your life and marriage like Betty is. Betty's anger over Don's lies and infidelity, mixed with the pain of losing her father, make it difficult for her to be tender and caring. Don, on the other hand, was blithely unaware how deeply he had alienated Betty's affections for him, while carrying on a affair with a hot teacher. Let's see how well Don handles the pain of not only being rejected by Betty, but of having her leave him for another man.
She has been petulant and childish and now going out of her way to hurt Don all to exact some sort of adolescent revenge.
Perhaps its about revenge and sure, she is being petulant but, for me, one of the key themes of this show has been that the problems that Betty has in her marriage are really a symptom of a much larger dissatisfaction with her life, a situation for which Don is far from blameless. She lives inside a complex set of social expectations which leave her feeling unfulfilled as a human being and Don's expectations of her as a wife and mother are a contributing factor. It seems to me that she is feeling her way through that and trying and mostly failing to come to some resolution of her place in the world.
She may be being cruel to Don but what she says to him rings true. She doesn't seem to really love him. Really, she only took him back the last time because she was pregnant and felt she had no choice. Again, she felt backed into a corner because of societal expectations. This, I would argue, is about her trying to find a way out of that corner and her actions toward Don are really just a part of that.
Yeah, I have never loved Betty the character, but I think it's not her being cruel at all. At long last, she looks at the situation and finds herself left with very little feeling for him. I don't think it seems at all as though she wants to hurt him out of revenge. She's just done.
listen I am not trying to justify Don's behavior but I see a gigantic difference between his dalliances and Betty's attacks on the Draper family. First, I believe (and perhaps this is more telling of myself then the show) that if Don would be a skirt chaser if we was married to Betty or Rachel or the Teacher. It seems to be a part of his structure. Christ, he's the son of a prostitute and has been treated as such since day one. That said, he would likely be chasing tail like Roger does (i.e. for sport) if he was married to Teach or Rachel. Instead, he stuck chasing a women to love since there is so little love in Betty. Look no further than the Italian trip. Betty in Rome is very lovable, Betty on Long Island is cruel, petulant and a terrible mother. I would find it very difficult to love a women if she was not at least pleasant or kind or a wonderful mother to my children.
Now granted, Betty on Long Island is angry and hemmed in by expectations etc. But I can't help but feel that those are poor little rich girl tears. I don't deny her existential crises but I beg that she can man up and face them without lashing out. The difference between Don's existential crisis from seasons past and Betty's is that Don did his best to only bring himself down during his crisis (although surely he failed on that front and hurt Betty in his wake). Conversely, as Betty is struggling to extract herself from the quaaludes and cocktail boredom of her suburban existence she is actively taking Don down with her (not to mention the children). This is the essential difference between Don and Betty; he is trying to good by his wife and family as he unravels his internal struggle, she is trying to good by herself and is disregarding the kids and Don as she unravels her internal struggle.
This is the essential difference between Don and Betty; he is trying to good by his wife and family as he unravels his internal struggle, she is trying to good by herself and is disregarding the kids and Don as she unravels her internal struggle.
Well I don't know about that. First, whatever her character deficiencies, Betty ends their relationship in really the only way that was available to her. That is, she knows what is true and doesn't want Don to put his persuasive spin on it and confuse her clarity. That is why her statements are so stark and she explicitly says so. That is besides the fact that she is more dependent on him as a provider than he is on her and that changes the dynamic of how she can extricate herself from the situation.
Second, I certainly agree that she does not qualify as mother of the year, but I don't really evidence of her intentionally trying to harm her children in this context, certainly not in the same sense that one could argue she is trying to hurt Don.
Third, I know you say you are not trying to defend Don, but lets not forget that this was a man who was absolutely prepared to run away from his life and family entirely last season. He certainly has his moments where he is fiercely committed to maintaining his relationship with his family, whatever it means to him exactly, but he also has one eye on the door at all times. Aside from the fact that he is quite capable of his own verbal cruelty, he has also shown himself capable of abandoning his family altogether if it comes to that.
I don't really care to think of it as a contest between Don and Betty over who's more awful but if it is a contest, Don has certainly held his own.
Not Long Island. Westchester. Big difference if you're from there, IMO.
That is to say, Westchester feels much more boxed in and homogeneous.
Is Don more upset about losing Betty, or the carefully maintained facade.
I thought the scenes with Roger talking to his ex wife were interesting in 2 ways.
1) Roger seems to realize he has a connection with her as a peer/partner that he will never have with Jane.
2) Roger and Mona have a connection in a way that Don and Betty never have.
They struck me as real friends. I would even say that he's not really friends with Joan, even though his connection with Joan is deeper and realer than that with his current wife. He hasn't found a woman that has all three: sexual appeal, friendship, deep emotional connection.
I guess I don't see the philandering (on either side) as being really at the heart of what has gone wrong between Bets and Don. Don revealed himself to Betty, and although she seemed to accept that last week, we see that this week, she can't. The JFK assassination and the world falling apart represents the demise of the "Don Draper" fantasy persona. It turns out Betty wanted the fantasy all along. She isn't interested in getting to know Dick Whitman. Without fantasy Don to manage her, keep her a little girl, make her believe everything's going to be ok, she can't handle it. It would require her to grow up, just like the death of her father. So, she runs to fantasy guy #2, Henry, who she barely knows and can thus project all over. He tells her to think about singing in the rain, really? This is supposed to heal the wounds of a nation? Gene Kelly? Henry treats her like a child as well, which is the comfort that she craves. She and Don are equals now that she knows his secret and it turns out that isn't what she wants. What I hope is that she just doesn't want this right now and will come to see the light, but I'm not sure.
This. Betty doesn't want a relationship of equals, she wants a relationship where she is taken care of. Now that she's on equal footing with Don, she's off to be taken care of again.
Don, meanwhile, seems to take solace with women who are his equals. Well, maybe not Miss Farrell. But all his other long-term affairs have been with women who could hold their own with him.
Yeah, I agree with this.
Yeah, I agree with this, and with CitizenE's point that Don would ultimately be better off without Betty.
I find this analysis rings absolutely true to me. Exactly. Hell, I know women like this today.
As for the Kennedy thing, I was 5 (I turned 6 on Nov. 24) when it happened. I was just home from morning kindergarten and it was my mom screaming and then crying uncontrollably that got my attention to what had just happened. I was also watching with my mom when Oswald was killed right in front of our eyes. I remember my dad telling my mom that perhaps the "kids" shouldn't be watching and her reaction was the same as Betty's. There really was no way to keep the national trauma from us, especially in our nice, suburban neighborhood filled with Catholics, most Irish Catholics. I remember the outfit I wore to school the day of the assassination. I remember going to a novena for the president with my mom. I remember watching the funeral procession and being so, so sad for Caroline and John, Jr. The only moments in the show that even came close to ringing an emotional memory bell for me was when Betty and Carla were weeping on the couch and when Betty screamed when Oswald was shot. That was pretty much exactly how my mom reacted.
Nailed it.
It's been pretty clear to me that Betty and Don don't love one another all season. They have settled for a different kind of space that befalls doomed marriages or marriages in which the two people are willing to settle for a non soulmate kind of relationship.
Both are attractive, so it's no problem finding attractive interested others. For Betty, it's pretty clear that Henry's proposal gives her the cover to say out loud something that she's been conscious of for some time. I don't see her as cruel, but I do think she's in trouble. Henry proposes to her without knowing a damn thing about what living with her, her three kids, and their father entangled in their lives could possibly entail. He's seen the girlish and outrageously attractive Betty, not the one we all get to see. Now at least she's learned that she needs to have a man who is more than just attracted to her, but someone who is interested in who she is and what she likes, but going to see Singing In the Rain will not quite cut it when all three kids are ill, and two of them are playing Don off Betty and vice versa.
Don, if he only realized, would be better off without Betty; certainly the teacher down the block gets him and would turn him into a grown up when it comes to women, instead of this guy who lords it one day, and puckers his mouth the next as he does with Betty. But this would entail a big, difficult divorce, which was not all that common in 1963, and the kids afterwords.
We'll see. I'll try if I have time later to post on Kennedy; I was around then and have my own memories of course.
When i was in my twenties, for about 2 years i was a magnet for women who were stepping out on their boyfriends. of the five women who stepped out with me, there were several common threads than ran through all of their situations. initially, it was never about sex with any of them. it was always about their partners not paying them any attention. the second thing was that all of those men were of the mentality that their women would not step out on them. the most ironic thing though is that all of those men found out yet still took those women back.
there was an episode of californication in the first season where there was a flashback to how hank and karen broke up. during that episode, when karen was trying to tell hank about this guy and how she stepped out, hank kept asking her, "did you sleep with him? did you sleep with him?" finally karen says something along the lines of, "i could talk to him so of course i slept with him." that's pretty much the mindset i see betty in right now. since the time she's met the other guy, there's definitely been an ease of communication with him that she's never had and never will have with don. imo, that's the reason don's losing/lost her.
Very beautifully written TNC and all of you for that matter. I love this thread and how much it is enriching my enjoyment of that show.
On 'deep paradoxes' and 'detente': I forget where I read it but I remember someone writing some where that paradoxes 'can't be solved' only 'resolved'. Which I gather means trying to make a deliberate decision in the face of an aching, uncertain and powerful mystery and then hoping and working for the best - which is really the best that anyone can do. With no guarantees of course.
I was struck by all the black/white imagery on last night's episode. Though I've seen it many times before watching the footage of Jack Ruby murder Oswald again last night was a revelation. When the news anchor pointed out that Oswald was being brought out in between two law men - one wearing white and the other wearing dark. I had never picked up on that before. Ruby was wearing a 'black hat' and was wrestled to the ground by the law man in the white hat. As they watched Don was wearing a black sweater over a white shirt and Betty was dressed in a white bathrobe. I remembered that ad campaign from Season 2 with the image of the two women, one brunette, one blonde, one dressed in black against a black background, the other dressed in white against a black background. The talk then was how men basically wanted a woman who was both 'Jackie' and Marilyn - and then asking the women who they identified with more. (And this incidentally, I do believe, is the image that Kinsey pulled out of his drawer and masturbated to a couple of episodes ago). Then there is Don with his blonde wife and parade of brunette mistresses.
I would like to compliment somebody's earlier comment about how Betty's rejection of Don now hurt deeper as she was now rejecting his real self. A crushing body blow, for sure. And yes, Henry's proposal to her is very weird as they don't really know each other. But as someone wrote here once: 'she is Happy Rockefeller'. And what does Henry say to her: 'I think I can make you happy.'.
I really wonder if people had been saying nasty things at the office about the JFK assassination or if Pete Campbell was just making that up as he talked to his wife as a way to augment his own feelings of rejection and humiliations. We have already seen Pete himself make jokes about a tragedy when that plane crashed - albeit before he knew that his own father was on board. And he just seems like that kind of guy, in keeping with his own narcissism. But it brought home to me just how much people often do project their own selves into great public tragedies, I saw lots of that going on during the days after 9/11. Maybe we just can't help it.
The funniest line for me last night had to go to Jane, just before Roger threw her on the bed and she passed out: 'He was so handsome, and now I will never get to vote for him.'. I just found that hilarious. A reference to either previous Republican leanings, or the fact that she really is just so young that she couldn't even vote the first time Kennedy ran.
I noticed that Don was to take a meeting with a man from United Fruit in the last episode. That could be interesting for the future of the show if the creators choose to stay with that story.
I think the break up of Don and Betty is incredibly rich with dramatic potential. Of course this is what was going to happen in parallel with the assassination of JFK. In retrospect it seems so obvious. As the whole Aquanet thing seems so obvious now, though I missed it at the time.
I think he'll probably get back with the teacher, but who knows. Don is truly heading off into the great unknown. Betty - not so much
correction: 'dressed in black against a WHITE background' of course. whoops.
People said astonishing things the day JFK was shot. When the announcement was made at our school, the principal halted classes and we went down to what passed for the "audio-visual" room in those days -- a large room with a single B&W TV in it. It was there that we heard the official announcement that he had died.
A kid near me, a kid from a poor family, said he was glad Kennedy had died. I remember looking at him and being astonished by both what he'd said and the expression on his face. That anyone could be glad the president had died was beyond my comprehension at that age. But I'm sure this kid was just saying what he'd heard from his parents about JFK.
Cuz when a woman's fed up
It ain't nothing you can do about it
(Nothing you can do about it)
It's like running out of love
(No matter what you say, no)
And then it's too late to talk about it--R. Kelly
I understand why you are all saying that Betty seems vengeful, but her actions are not revenge. This woman's just done. What you saw was total apathy toward Don. She doesn't love and she doesn't hate him. Betty's done fighting for the marriage; she's been done since she had sex with that guy last season. because of the bby she stayed and went through the motions, but she hasn't really responded to Don during all of season 3.
Don's sudden interest in season 3 is just plain too late. Let's keep in mind what happened in seasons one and two. Let's not forget that Don was someone who'd be gone for days at a time, that he came thisclose to abandoning his family to run off with Rachel Mencken, that he publicly hmiliated Betty with Bobbie, that he abandoned his family for weeks in California, that he keeps a stash of running away money in his office, and that he lied to his wife for ten years, and even in the midst of trying to be closer to his wife, he's still sexing his daughter's teacher.
Don's no monster, and I feel for him, but he had this coming.
EXACTLY.
My thoughts exactly.
She was raiiiised in Haverford,
right outside of Philly.
Some of the best scrapple you ever had.
And I miss heeeer.
Hey women, if you're listening
I say I miss you baby.
I didn't live through JFK's assassination, but I was hit by how similar their experience of finding out the news was to my finding out about 9/11. Peggy and Duck excluded, of course. I was in the office and had heard a little bit of buzz, but thought nothing of it. Then heard a touch of panic from some people at another office. Then we all started finding radios and TV. And by the end we were gathered in the conference room, watching TV and crying.
There's a great theme in that episode about how news breaks and how we all react to it. That even if 9/11 is going on, life still goes on otherwise with its muted successes (the wedding) and its heartbreak (Don).
I thought the same thing. The constant drone of the television and the anxiety of it all. Brought me back to 9/11.
This season is really turning me off of the show. It's all so sour and the plotlines are getting so formulaic. I'm not saying I want Two and a Half Men every show but this is ridiculous. Here's the thing: I no longer care about these people. I no longer care what happens to them, good or bad. They're all so emotionally closed off and angry, they just grunt at each other. When they're not doing that, they're having affairs. No one's thinking, no one's being thoughtful. Why should I waste my time thinking about them?
I get it: The early 1960s wasn't all peaches and cream. So what? Like TNC says, Tell me a story.
While we're complaining, can I just say, even if it's slightly off topic, that the line "I don't know what to say" has been uttered way too many times by way too many characters. It's truly weird. Betty said it last night at Henry's proposal, and in the first season there was hardly an episode where someone said s/he didn't know what to say. Then why say it?
Because that's how people actually speak; not like scripts, but like people.
At the end of the episode, it was SC's two most talented people, Don and Peggy, who were alone in the office. It is all that they really have right now. It was a poignant moment.
why is Don so sympathetic and Betty not?
I dunno, but Betty just isn't sympathetic, but I was shocked that SHE did what she did.
Roger phoning Joan two weeks in a row....hmmmmmm
He's warm, charming, and an amazingly good liar. Of course he comes across as sympathetic, he's spent his entire life honing the skill.
By contrast, Betty is Nordic cool, aloof, and *bad* at disguising dislike as anything but more coldness. She's spent her entire life being the unattainable desired object, and being sympathetically mortal would ruin that.
She's stuck at home. Her world is circumscribed by expectations, ignorance, and the walls of that claustrophobic house with its claustrophobic rooms--compare that to the spaciousness of Don's office. She's responsible for 3 small children, while having to look good while being so. Her life is packaged into her next long, slender cigarette. Her friends are boring and shallow. The most interesting person she has to talk to she views, as if from an enormous distance though she shares more time with her than she does with her husband, through the wrong end of the telescope of that place and time's filter of race and class. Decorum is the only skill she's been trained to bring to the table, and who really cares about decorum?
Don gets to excel. He has access to the world. He hobnobs with smart, successful people. He is a self made, self invented man, who, unlike (ugly) Betty, has freed himself from the shackles of the life he grew up in (even though he's paid a price to do so). He is free to drive around in that space ship of a Cadillac, Captain of his own destiny, picking up hitchhikers or women in the middle of the night, and the next day minister to Conrad Hilton. He's a player with more going on than the bush leaguers that surround him.
And as a result, Don has personality. Betty has no personality. Now maybe that's just the way they are, but Don can be charming while superficial. But Betty is just dull when she's superficial. This is privilege and gender among the white folks of certain persuasions, 1963. We think Don has a chance to reinvent himself; we wonder how in heaven can such a hot house orchid like Betty escape the artificial environment in which she is on display, especially when she will continue to attract men like Don or Henry, who think they can woo her into "happiness" and she yearns from her vast ennui to believe them.
Ennui vs. engagement: Betty vs. Don.
Interesting title for this episode - "The Grown Ups." When Roger makes his toast to the young couple at their badly attended wedding reception, he says something about how they - this new generation - will show the grown ups a thing or two. I think this theme of who is a grown up was sort of woven throughout this episode in ways both large and small. The JFK assassination is so often referred to metaphorically as the end of America's innocence, as if the bullet was the opening shot of a new, more chaotic, cynical time. Jack and Jackie represented youth and hope - he was so young and modern compared to the grayish, older presidents who had gone before him. Then there is the child/grown up divide among the show's characters. Betty, for better or worse, is a child. She has never been one of the grown ups and it doesn't seem like she has much interest in becoming one. She isn't really interested in adult emotional intimacy. She's looking for a caretaker. She's looking for a man who says it's going to be alright and then it will be. Don Draper was supposed to be that knight, but Don failed the test. He didn't measure up to her father. He brought uncertainty into her life. Betty seeks out adolescent intrigue in affairs and impulsively buys fainting couches. She does not like to wobble, or confront unpleasantness, or muddle through a set of decisions on her own. I don't think it's an accident that Henry (despite the two actors' total lack of chemistry) is a take-charge, self-confident man with gray hair. Those qualities reassure her. In my view, as for him raising the subject of marriage, Henry didn't float the marriage proposal because the mid-60s represented some distant era when three visits by the gentleman caller to the lady's parlor were sufficient. The 60s weren't THAT long ago. He did it because first, he understands that for a woman at that time (unemployed, economically dependent, about to weather the scandal of divorce) it was a huge leap to leave her marriage, pick up her newborn and two young kids and uproot everything for a casual fling or an undefined romance. He also understood something specific to Betty: she's looking for - a daddy. I think this suits him fine. He's an assertive, controlling alpha dog only too happy to be her hero. She's a prize and he wants to win it.
I think the "grown ups" theme popped up elsewhere in the episode, too.. in the stark contrast between Mona, the poised, droll, womanly wife #1 versus Jane, the sloppily drunk, petulant and childish wife #2.
And even Roger the playboy is acknowledging his appreciation for the art of being grown up. There was his lovely toast to his ex wife at the wedding. And then there's what we know about his romantic history. Roger's first love was the dog food heiress, and Mona and the Sterling Cooper career were his attempts to move forward and construct an adult life after she married someone else. When the dog food heiress returned and tried to get him into bed, he referred to finding Jane, and he described her as a "carefree girl." At the time, I thought it was an odd sort of praise, to describe Jane that way to Miss Dog Food. It's almost as if Roger wanted to find a partner who wasn't complex, who wouldn't be emotionally taxing or mysterious - the kind of simple, adoring girl he could pacify always with a shiny new bracelet and a fancy dinner. Mona is his equal, but she wasn't the love of his life. Jane isn't either (that floppy drunken hand during his phone call...ha), and I think he knew that from the outset. When he married Jane, he was settling again - this time for a pseudo-teenager. But I do think that Joan IS the one, and he's just now realizing it. When they had their affair, he was full of himself as an alpha dog in a man's world. Office affairs and 4-martini lunches were perks you enjoyed but then 5 pm rolled around and you went home. In a sexist and clueless way, it never occurred to Roger to really see Joan as partner material, but now he does. And he misses her sexy, warm and totally grown up presence. (Joan herself is a grown up married to a little boy).
Pete is not getting the plum job he wants...how does that fit into the episode theme. Does that mean that he will grow up?
One more item for your grown-up list: Don engaged in actual nurturing, protective behavior toward his children. Of course, he snapped out of that before the end of the show, but even a few minutes of it struck me as pretty impressive.
I'll agree that Betty is done. I'll disagree as to the reasons why.
Don is very much an angry child; he's a bully on the playground. I think he's still in love with Betty, especially as she moves away from him. However, it's too litte and way too late. He treated Betty like crap for years and now the game is over.
Betty, OTOH, is a spoiled child and she's going to right the ship, come Hell or high water. She's sold on the fantasy of a powerful, attractive husband. Don was probably a fling that went too far, as she "married down." In this, they used each other. Betty was everything a poor boy like Don could ever hope to get, while Don was everything her father did not want her to have.
Betty's not going to ruin Don. She's not going to force him into the open, but Henry might. Or Pete could do it inadvertently, if he runs to Duck for a job. I haven't "had it" with Betty; she is who she is. And it was only pretty on the outside.
I think Don probably is angry. Don't at all see him as "a bully on the playground." (Funny how easy it is to forget that these are not real people we're talking about and that coming to their defense when we feel they've been unfairly judged is silly. I guess that's a testament to the skill of the show's writers.)
Anyway, I just don't see where your bully comment comes from. I think Don has shown too much empathy for others -- for Peggy, for Salvatore, for his kids, even for Campbell, in some ways -- to be considered a bully. And he's never used his knowledge of others' missteps or indiscretions to try to take advantage of them or hurt them, and a bully would do that instantly.
If there's a bully in the show, I think it's Campbell. He's a coward, and bullies inevitably are cowards.
The Oswald murder hit me hard.
Having been three when all that happened, I didn't see it on television but I knew about it from older people long before I was ten. Almost for that reason, I'd never thought about the separate emotions that brought out.
The hotel-kitchen-scene at the wedding, with people watching reporters talk about a live Oswald and his history, suddenly put me in that moment. I could feel everyone slowly letting their breath out, starting to try to figure out the details and motives, starting to think they knew how to move on. I felt a huge urge to run in and warn them that it wasn't over.
It struck me that though one shooting was clearly tragic, it took two shootings to get the full feeling that the world was turning upside town By dragging it out with clip after clip and conversation after conversation, this episode made a story I've known "forever" into something I could finally feel.
(One plane could be an accident...)
isn't it weird that henry wants to marry betty before they even had sex? we know they did not because she wouldn't do it in the office and then she said she saw him next at the wedding. i mean that is an odd thing to want to marry a girl before you have had sex with her. just saying.
As someone pointed out above the promise of marriage is really a must for her securitywise. They had a pretty good reminder of how little rights a woman actually had back then when she visited her lawyer a couple episodes ago. Unless she can provide absolute proof that Don committed adultery she is totally at his mercy if she asks for a divorce she wouldn't even get custody of the kids.
This was definitely not weird circa 1963. In certain circles, it's not weird even in 2009.
The above comment was meant as a reply to Raph.
1963 was not an era featuring divorced, single moms, particularly in white suburban or middle class neighborhoods. It was a time of 1% taxation, Mom staying home and Dad going off to work. Mom didn't just take the kids and announce she wanted a divorce and was getting half--Dad being the breadwinner could get the better lawyer, and unless there were the tawdry photographs and evidence of an affair, she wasn't assured of anything except custody of the kids, a modicom of alimony, and child support. However, if it is proven she has an affair going on, then she may be proven unfit and he gets everything. Out of 32 kids in my elementary class that year, only 1 was from divorced parents. I remember one televised celeb divorce: Herb Kohl, now a US Senator and owner of the Bucks. His ex-wife to-be slammed him upside the head with her purse. That was great theatre! Then there were the Hollywood divorces...So much more fun than 50-50!
Betty doesn't love anyone but Betty. That is how she was brought up to be. She is better than anyone else, after all...I have a feeling her chickens are gonna come home to roost, too...
It was 1963 when my mother told us she was divorcing our cheating, abusive, alcoholic father. I was 5, my sisters 8 and 9. I didn't know what a divorce was; and my sisters' first reaction was how embarrassed they would be. It would make us freaks.
My mother went back to him. The seventies set her free.
I was struck by how fractured relationships seemed to be after the assassination, as if everyone was standing on ice that began to crack. Duck rushing to call his kids, Betty grabbing on to the older (and more politically-connected) authority figure, and even Trudy siding with intemperate Pete against the SC crowd. Everyone seemed to realign, finding their essential tribe...Don and Peggy, always defining themselves by their work, going to the only place where they find validation.
Some great "Mad Men" stuff over at Vanity Fair .... blogs .... articles .... that people who like this thread might also enjoy reading ....
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/11/mad-men-reaches-its-appointment-in-samarra.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/11/mad-men-mini-recap-things-fall-apart.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/bios/bruce_handy_/search?contributorName=Bruce Handy