Well, the good news is …time has stopped. ~ Don
Liminal states are fascinating. We float between sleep and wakefulness, between dream and reality, and eventually between life and death. Hovering on the threshold in-between two opposing states, truths are revealed to us that might not otherwise be apparent or acceptable, and as a result breakthroughs can occur. Or we may turn over and go back into willful unconsciousness, even if that state is one that, paradoxically, we inhabit while walking through our seemingly conscious lives.
In the 5th episode of season 3 of Mad Men, “The Fog,” we see people choosing whether to stay awake, to hold onto the reality of their dreams, or to slip back into the comfortable numbness of their lives up till this point. In this they mirror American society as a whole, which is in a liminal state itself, on the brink of changes in race and gender relations, in relationships between the generations, in politics, business and, well, in just about every way you can imagine. Whether to wake up or to stay asleep will be a defining question of the coming years.
Some may wish for time to stop, but others will welcome the rush of the new, of the increasing possibilities of modern life, including of not choosing between waking or dreaming states but embracing both simultaneously. And the question of whose time it is now – men or women, whites or blacks, rich or poor, young or old – is already on the minds of those on the lower end of that seesaw, who are starting to rise up for the very first time.
Well, if it isn’t Martin Luther King. ~ Roger to Pete
More often than not, long-held prejudices and practices fall not due to a commitment to fairness or equality but simply due to human greed, which is why changes occur in business practices long before they do in social ones (if they ever do at all). This split is perfectly embodied in the socially clueless Pete Campbell, who tries to pump Hollis the elevator operator about black buying trends and sell him on the American dream of consumer goods while seeming utterly unaware of how out of reach that dream is for people like Hollis, not just because he’s an elevator operator (a job “with its ups and downs”) but because he can’t yet be anything more than that, no matter his talents.
Yet in the pragmatic, open-minded way he has when it comes to business, Pete does try to break the color barrier, and in failing to anticipate the issue with doing so, reveals that he’s more color-blind than the previous generation. Detecting that Admiral TV’s are selling well in black markets, he eagerly suggests to his clients that they advertise in black publications. While already aware of this market trend, his clients recoil in near-horror at his suggestion that they “integrate” their marketing plans, preferring to believe that blacks want what is marketed to whites and they’d only cheapen their brand by actively courting black customers.
Pete’s initiative gets him called onto the carpet with Bert, Roger and Lane, with Bert blunting telling him, “Admiral TV has no interest in becoming a colored television company” (pun intended by MM’s writers -- these being the early days of TV transitioning to color) and Roger saying the clients are so angry he’s going to have to say he had Pete killed, both reactions that seem utterly extreme (and idiotic) to us from our vantage point 40+ years later.
The only one to show common sense is Lane, who earlier had been given a pep talk by Don to stop busting balls over 38 cent tips to cabbies, an over-use of paper by Creative and credenzas that require a conspiracy to steal, and instead to show some leadership, and seems to have taken this idea to heart (even if he does accuse Don of stealing the speech from Bridge on the River Kwai). After asking in his dry British manner if the flogging is over (calling to mind Churchill’s claim that the British Navy was built on “rum, sodomy and the lash”) and getting Roger’s priceless answer that, “It’s never as good as you think it’s going to be,” he supplies the critical outsider’s view:
There’s money to be made in the Negro market. I don’t think it would be wrong of us to pursue this in some way. I just moved here.. I’m a stranger in a strange land. I can tell you there’s definitely something going on.
OK, so Marvin Gaye he may not be, but he shows far more vision than Sterling-Cooper’s myopic and calcified former owners, suggesting that the take-over might actually end up being good for the company, although perhaps only if this younger generation gets to assert itself.
But whether they’ll even be around to do so is in question. For the ousted Duck Phillips reappears, announcing he is now at Grey Advertising, and courts Pete, who reveals the limits of his open-mindedness by making a few cracks about Grey’s status as a Jewish-run advertising agency.
Duck: Have a nosh.
Pete: Two months at Grey and you’re already having a nosh?
But Pete’s real horror comes in finding that Peggy has been invited to the same lunch. The ever-confident but always slightly off-base Duck says he detects a “secret relationship” between the two of them, before revealing that he’s only talking about the way they work so well together, and saying he wants to hire them both. Despite spinning Moses-like plans to take them to “the Promised Land” where they’ll “sit on velvet pillows and be showered with riches and awards,” Duck fails to entice Pete, who stalks off in anger at being recruited alongside Peggy, telling Duck, “If you want to woo me, you’re going to have to buy me my own lunch.” So much for his talk of integration – it sounds like Pete is more into “separate but equal” doctrines.
Peggy, on the other hand, seems quite open to wooing, as Duck gives her the recognition that she is literally starved for in an office where she says no one ever buys her lunch (or even asks her to chip in for Don’s baby gift). Duck glibly argues that being young and having no family, she should take a chance: “You’re so talented. You should strike while the iron’s hot. This is your time, Peggy. “
Bringing Don her own baby gift when he returns to the office, she doesn’t tell him of Duck’s offer, but instead asks for a raise, saying she makes so little that her secretary doesn’t respect her because their salaries are too close (prompting Don to say they need to get her a cheaper secretary). When he tells her it’s not happening given the financial strains at the firm, she points out that things are changing.
Peggy: Paul Kinsey does the same work as I do and not as well. […] I don’t know if you read the paper but they passed a law saying women who do the same work as men should get paid the same. Equal pay.
Don: It’s not a good time. It’s not gonna happen. Not now.
I think MM is cheating a bit here, making it impossible to know if Don is actually opposed to equal pay, since it’s true that he’s being squeezed on costs. His treatment of Peggy has been mostly even-handed, but it was Freddy Rumson who recognized her talent and pulled her from the secretarial pool, and Roger who gave her the office that she had to ask for. You could argue that Don treats her in the same brusque and demanding way he does the guys (making his River Kwai leadership speech to Pryce a bit ironic) but I think we’re supposed to see real sexism in Don. To make him a feminist would be anachronistic and unworthy of the series, and it doesn’t mesh with either his womanizing or his treatment of Betty, which is consistently traditional.
What Don does have with Peggy, though, is an emotional connection that he doesn’t share with anyone else in the office, even if it is largely Peggy who pushes it. Here her disappointment over the lack of recognition from Don falls literally on the baby she gave up, the life she is choosing not to have in favor of career, as she looks at the baby gifts on Don’s coffee table and fingers the booties attached to one:
Peggy: Third time, must be old hat. […] I look at you and I think…. I want what he has. You have everything. And so much of it.
Don: I suppose that’s probably true.
It will be another quarter of a century before women will start to talk about wanting to “have it all” – and then the difficulty of trying to do so. Peggy’s wistfulness is over what seems and was nearly impossible in that time and place: For a woman to have a full demanding career and also a family. Instead she fears ending up with nothing, or close to it, and being alone in her separate-and-not-quite-equal status.
To the ladies room – you want to join me? ~ Peggy
She’s in the professional ranks but paid barely more than a secretary, and not included or accepted as one of the guys, or as one of the girls, either. She too is in a liminal state, caught between the status of being someone’s “girl” at the office and being a professional woman. She wonders whether to move ahead, take risks, or to stay in the now-safe comfort zone of her niche at Sterling-Cooper, as the “girl copywriter” who is begrudgingly accepted but neither loved nor appreciated.
I need to put my face on. ~ Betty after giving birth
The episode’s title refers most explicitly to Betty, who delivers her new baby in the fog of drugs that were administered in heavy doses to women in labor in that era, inducing what was literally called “twilight sleep,” from which women were supposed to awake to find a bundle of joy in their arms. In the same way, Betty wants to come out of the nightmare of grief over her father into a happier state, and she goes about this the only way she knows how: Repression.
During her drugged labor, our Sleeping Beauty (who we last saw eating a possibly tainted piece of fruit) has both beautiful and disturbing dreams, ending up by imagining her father is in her kitchen, mopping up the blood of the recently slain civil rights hero, Medgar Evers, while her mother admonishes the astonished and open-mouthed Betty, “Oh Elizabeth, shut your mouth! You’ll catch flies,” before pointing to the bleeding Evers sitting at the Draper kitchen table and saying, “See what happens to people who speak up. Be happy with what you have.”
We know from earlier episodes that Betty’s mother was the main force in shaping the repressed formal woman she’s become, one who carefully considers everything she does and rides her children to follow the same strict rules of decorum she grew up with. “Remember you’re creating a masterpiece,” she recalled her mother as saying about womanhood in an episode last season, a devastatingly succinct evocation of the literal frame that Betty has had put around her emotions and her behavior, the tight constrictions she feels compelled to live under.
Her dream-father is also true to the reassuring yet condescending person he was to her in life: “You’ll be OK. You’re a house cat -- you’re very important and you have little to do.” – the classic definition of a woman on a pedestal. Yet Betty loves her father so much she wants to name the new baby boy after him (a gesture that Don resists, for reasons not clear) and defies Don by doing so when he’s not around. One small step for woman, I guess. And so the baby now bears not only their genes, but their Gene.
Nurse: Don’t fight the urge to bear down.
Betty: I can’t. I can’t do it
Nurse: Either you can do it or we will. But it’s gonna come out some way.
As they were for Peggy, drugs also seem good for Betty, freeing her to curse at the nurses and doctors who are trying to control her, to give her that nice pubic shave and “quick lower enema” that just puts the cherry on the sundae of childbirth, and allowing her to complain about Don when told he’s nearby in the waiting room (“Bullshit. He’s never where you want him to be.”) Despite this anger, she wants him with her, and of course is denied that in this era when men waited smoking (and in this case, drinking) in the “solarium” after having been told by the admissions nurse, “Your job is done,” and shooed away.
Betty hovers between consciousness and hallucination throughout the episode, but also between sadness (in grief and in labor) and seeming happiness (with her newborn son), and of course between changing and staying the same. Starting the episode by literally being unable to fit into a child’s school desk at the teacher conference, she also increasingly can’t fit into the mold that life has poured her into, that of the perfect smiling wife and mother who has no feelings or needs of her own.
Yet Betty repeatedly draws her conditioning around her like a protective cloak, choosing over and over again to maintain the façade, “to put her face back on,” even when Don tells her (as he does after the birth) that she looks beautiful without it. Seeing Betty truly naked is a rare event both for him and for us, and her post-childbirth face reminded me of her “breakdown” episode last season when she came to Don in the middle of the night, freshly showered and without “her face on” in any sense of that phrase. Naked real Betty is something to look forward to, and a person that we sense Don longs for, in the rare glimpses he gets of her. And yet she thinks that he wants the made-up Betty, not knowing that while it may have attracted him in courtship, it’s now precisely what drives him away.
No, and it really should be, shouldn’t it? ~ Sally's teacher
Don is hovering in his own liminal state, between committed faithful married life and his free-spirited desires. He’s supposed to be happy, because as Peggy told him, he has everything “and so much of it.” But he also continues to attract women like honey attracts flies, and seems hesitant about shooing them away.
As expected, Miss Pre-Hippie Free Spirit Maypole Dancer, aka Sally’s teacher Suzanne Farrell (not coincidentally the name of a famous ballerina) reappears, informing Don and Betty that Sally’s been getting into fights and wondering if “something’s wrong at home” – a question which elicits from a tense Betty the confession that her father just died, and then a hilarious drawback when empathetic Suzie Maypole tries to touch her in sympathy.
Later, a slightly disheveled and provocative Suzie does some drinking and dialing to the Draper home, getting Don on the line and confessing breathily that she was probably taking everything too personally since her father died when she was eight. Sensing a connection, Don warmly reassures her and then when Betty asks who called, lies and says, “No one.” Stay tuned for more temptation.
It’s not but I’ll have one. ~ Don
Once at the hospital doing time in the Solarium of Paternal Solitude, with Medgar Evers’ funeral mournfully playing on the TV in the background, Don encounters a guard from nearby Sing Sing prison, one Dennis Hobart, who is nervously awaiting his first child. They bond over a bottle of whisky that the guard has brought (Don marveling with hilarious self-awareness that despite having been through this three times, he’d never thought to bring a bottle. Surely the only place he hasn’t ever had a drink in).
Assuming that Don wants to know what his job is like just as everyone else does (making the classic mistake everyone does about Don – that he’s like everyone else), Hobart proceeds to describe it in comically overconfident terms that Don (as he does with everyone) can’t help but deflate, even as we see parallels to his discussion of leadership at the office with Pryce:
Hobart: So what’s it like? You’re outnumbered but you got the power. You’re the king.
Don: Except your subjects want to kill you.
Hobart: They know I’m dangerous and I got a badge.
Don: How do they know you’re dangerous?
More parallels arise when, worrying about the breech birth his wife is undergoing, Hobart says he couldn’t love a child that killed his wife, causing Don’s face to darken. And when the child is born safely, he suggests he hasn’t been the best of husbands, but vows to do better:
Dennis: You’re an honest guy. I know it. I ‘m an expert. Why do they put up with us? We don’t deserve it. This is a fresh start. I’m saying this to you. I’m gonna be better. I’m gonna be a better man. Tell me you heard me.
Don: I heard you.
Don looks sympathetic and even moved but also skeptical, and the next day when he runs into Hobart at the hospital, the man looks sheepishly away, as if he’s already violated his vow and doesn’t want Don to read it in his eyes. Don himself has no reason to look ashamed yet, but how long will that last?
You so sure of that? ~ Hobart
At the end of the episode, we see Betty literally in the pink (of her coat) returning home with the baby, beaming with seeming happiness and contentment. It is only later, in the dark of the night, when the baby cries out and Don slumbers on unaware that Betty rises wearily to meet the challenge of motherhood once again, stopping midway down the hall to gather herself, like a soldier going into battle or a marcher for civil rights preparing to enter the fray. Squaring her shoulders, she finally goes on, into the solitary struggle that is her life.
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Comments
This episode analysis is outstanding!
LaSt- the baby is a boy! Don says it's a boy, plus in the hospital the baby has the traditional blue cap signifying a boy; if it was a girl it would have had a pink cap.
i love that this show exists in it's subtlety and mystery; in this deafening era it's so good to find a show that requires you to lean forward and pay close attention.
and for those that are falling asleep: download the next day and watch it with a cup of coffee and the curtains closed.
I thought Don's reaction to naming the baby Gene was simply (is anything simple in this show?) that he didn't like Betty's father and her father didn't like him either. It would be uncomfortable, at best, to constantly remember him everytime he called his son.
I was puzzled about why Hobart looks away rather than acknowledging Don, but your explanation works. Hobart and his wife were both smiling as they came down the hall and he only stopped smiling when he saw Don.
We had our children in the early 80s and the idea of natural child birth verses treating it like an illness needing medical attention was just making headway. There were still cases of children being pulled out with forceps because the mother was to drugged to push even in the 80s. Our first was born in the standard delivery room. Two years later the second was born in a birthing suit. As soon as hospitals realized it was a make or break point with potential customers (patients) they responded quickly.
As for Betty gathering herself before entering the nursery to quiet her baby, again, I'm left to wonder just how long Betty can continue to repress uncomfortable feelings and emotions, while carrying on under her veil of perfection.
What really strikes me about that era after watching the series thus far is the completely messed-up way everyone dealt with emotions. Not allowed to have them, express them, process them, nothing, not even in private really. The child wasn't even allowed to grieve for her grandfather, but merely sent off to stuff her feelings through the distraction of TV and derive what cold comfort she can from that. No wonder our culture is still so fundamentally screwed up.
“Naked real Betty is something to look forward to, and a person that we sense Don longs for, in the rare glimpses he gets of her.”
In everyone’s life, there should be someone to whom we can reveal our “secret selves”, the one we keep hidden from society, friends, colleagues, in order to fit in and appear as well-adjusted as the rest of them.
If we are lucky, this someone is our spouse, to whom we can be our real self, unvarnished, unguarded, vulnerable, yet protected and reassured by their unconditional love so much so that we’re able to reveal moments (good or bad) in our past that created the foundations of who we are now … eventually allowing us to move on from the painful experiences and become who we’re meant to become.
It occurred to me that Don is longing for this breakthrough with his own wife, the person he feels he should be closest to, the most “real” to in his life (he may not acknowledge this openly, but subconsciously, he does), and so craves for Betty to take off her “face” and be real with him too, so he can finally be comfortable enough, safe enough to reveal his painful past to her. As long as Betty continues to shy away from true, raw intimacy, the kind that goes beyond mere sexual passion and romantic love, then Don will continue to feel he must “don” his armour and uphold the charismatic ad man exec/family provider exterior and keep other untoward emotions related to his past in check.
I wonder weather or not it is that she is a good enough actress that she can so accurately portray a "Betty" as as suffering from the 50's & 60's malaise of many of the [suburban especially] women indicative of those eras. I remember, first hand, women of this generation.
When I first started viewing the series from its inception, I thought almost the same thing -- but I didn't attribute Betty's one-dimensionalness to Jones' weak acting skills. I saw Betty as a developing character/person -- someone who is supposed to be deemed "weak" due to her lack of personal fortitude, and confidence, her ability to allow herself to be taken care of; her overstated vulnerability, etc., that ironicall, men can find so disarming and attractive.. like a littel girl.
In effect, all those characteristics that women, and maybe some men, today find so abhorrent.
There was a point, briefly prior to her pregnancy, where Betty began devloping a sense of herself, beginning to grow up, challenge her loving but sexually deceptive husband, and not just see herself as an extension of Don Draper. Basically, women who look as mannequin-perfect as Betty Draper, [can] tend to be as mentally and emotionally vapid as they appear no one has ever required that they be anything other than physically alluring. Men [again, can]tend to see them as vulnerable and want to "take care of them" -- at least until they become weary of the childlike neediness the Betty Drapers of the world project.
Of course, I could be all wrong about this. But I am, nonetheless, a Mad Men addict! Been on every episode since day one..
~R504~
A few thoughts: we now know what's happened with Peggy and Pete's relationship since she told him about the baby. I think the telling moment came when Pete asked her if she had told Don about Duck's overture. Peggy replies that it's none of his business (and perhaps that it doesn't affect him -- I can't recall), and Pete says, "Your decisions affect me." I remember my mother's younger friends, who were having baby's in the early '60's and almost always said that they remembered nothing. One of them related that she'd been told that she became violent in the delivery room and used language that she'd never consciously used in her life. I later read an article about "twilight sleep," which said that it stopped being used in childbirth because of the frequent violent or at least severely agitated behavior of the mothers and the extreme lethargy of the babies. I thought there was some significance in Betty's first drug-enhanced dream, where she's walking down the street and held a catepillar in her hand. Does she crush the catepillar? From her body language in the last scene, I'm even more sure that we're in for a rocky post-partum situation.
And Don and Miss Farrell -- as soon as I saw her in the maypole scene, I knew that she'd be trouble for Don. She seemed to be looking right at him, and she's the Midge/Rachel type. I'm hoping for Sally's sake that Don doesn't act on his baser instincts this time.
Looks like something big is happening at Sterling-Cooper next week.
Rather than responding to each one of them individually, I'll just say a general thanks for everyone's compliments on my post -- they mean a lot to me. I write these off the top of my head right after the show, but yes, they are a lot of work and each week I'm up later -- 4 AM this time! -- getting them done, because I want to include so much (even though I always leave out a lot, too) that the episode said, did and brought to mind. So I appreciate the effort I put into them being noticed.
Now on to some specific comments people made about the episode:
Brian, I thought that sight of Joan was just enough to make us miss her, too. I disagree with you about January Jones, though. I think she's playing the hell out of that part. I think it's the part that people (at times at least) find shallow or unexpressive, but that's the character. I've been interested to read some interviews in which her fellow actors and Matthew Weiner extol her skill as well -- they think she's fabulous and under-rated. I think it can be a pitfall of playing such a recessive part so well -- it seems like the person isn't acting, or is acting badly. In fact, it's Betty who's acting -- and acting badly (she's not very convincing in her mother/wife role).
Lea, that's really funny! Kind of like being stoned while watching a movie in which people are stoned.
Jeanette, ha!
Teresa, you raise an interesting question that I feel I can answer generally from being a writer and having been in a ton of writers' groups and classes hearing other people's work -- I think writers are often unaware of at least some of what they put into their work, all the levels of symbolism and meaning, until someone points them out. It's happened to me, and I've often pointed things out to other writers that they didn't know they'd done. My comment in them when they seem surprised is, "You don't know how brilliant you are!" I think beyond our conscious mind, a lot of our best work gets done. (Think of how creative your dreams can be vs. waking thoughts.) That said, I think an awful lot of what I pick up on in MM is deliberately put in there, although maybe not all of it.
re: the prison guard. I think the guess you and others made that he might have been embarrassed after opening up so much to Don is probably nearer right than mine (that he'd already done something to be ashamed of). I saw no hint his baby died - they seemed happy.
MaryT, I think given your profession and interests, you'd find this show fascinating if you got into it. I highly highly recommend starting at the beginning with Season 1 on DVD and going thru it chronologically. There's a lot there to catch up that will help it all make sense. It's like a novel -- you don't want to come in halfway through.
LaST, yes we're told it's a boy. Betty says "She" and Don corrects her.
PB, I agree with you about finding it refreshing to have a show that requires thinking. Although I suspect that's precisely what keeps a lot of viewers away (it still doesn't have that many despite all the acclaim).
Suz, I think you're probably right about the baby's name. I just didn't see that we got any real hint what Don's problem with it was so said it was unclear. But it's the most likely reason for his reluctance.
Mariposa, I loved that scene with Sally, too, for many reasons, and was originally going to include it somehow. But it eluded me late last nite. I do think it was a rich scene on many levels, and very touching. And yes, that quote from Don is important: "Not all surprises are bad." He'll need to keep that in mind as the 60's go on!
MTodd, always appreciate your ad biz insights! Yes, I knew even from working in the biz briefly that poaching is common and people move around a lot. MM is being somewhat unrealistic in showing the same people staying on for years, actually, so it's good they are at least giving lip service to that reality. Although I can't believe any of our fave characters will be leaving, or if so, not for long -- perhaps Peggy will leave for a while and then get wooed back once they realize how much they've lost? I could see that.
But you know...I wouldn't trust Duck with a crust of bread. He doesn't exactly have a reputation for delivering what he thinks he can.
yeah, the childbirth stuff is pretty horrifying. I could have written more about it but given I've never gone thru the process, I decided to go light on it. But it did make me think of my mother's childbirth stories from the 50's, all of which made Betty's experience look like a walk in the park. I think they actually did a good job showing what a typical upper middle class woman went thru in those days in a "good" suburban hospital. Other women (e.g. poorer ones) had it far far worse. But the process was horrible. My partner K and I were speculating on why they even did the pubic shave on women -- probably it was ostensibly for the episiotomy, but K's take was that it probably was more about some squeamishness about sex and wanting to "medicalize" that area of the woman's body and I'm thinking that's about right.
Karin, I wonder how long Betty can hold it all in, too. That's why I included that exchange with the nurse when she says to B that it's all going to come out some how -- meaning the baby, but I think alluding to B's repression. I think she's going to blow - the question is only how and when. A lot of suburban women in that era turned to substance abuse (and we've seen Betty drink an awful lot of wine) but many also suffered from depression and other ills. As we've speculated here, the latter course seems quite possible for her.
Dcvdickens, I only wish I had the script! I frantically type quotes on my laptop while watching then try to make sense of it all later. By the end, I probably do nearly have the script written down.
Lorelei, I agree that a major theme and revelation of the show is how people were dealing with emotions at that time (and prior to it -- repression was the norm for most of human history after all). We're on the cusp of the era of people "letting it all hang out" and "getting in touch with their feelings". MM is setting up what a radical change that will be. If you are younger and didn't live thru this era even as a child, it might be a bit shocking to see how locked up people were not that long ago. There's been a huge change in the accepted way that we deal with our feelings in the past half century.
Scheherezade, thanks for your long juicy comment -- almost a blog commentary in itself! I completely agree with your analysis -- that Don, esp having opened up to some degree (in Calif etc) is hoping Betty might meet him in that, and thus allow him to open himself to her as he never has to anyone. I think it's one of those infinitely tricky things, where each person may be waiting for the other to go first. But also an example of people changing in the course of relationships, and the person chosen at an earlier point not meeting later, more evolved desires. This certainly happens all the time to people, especially when they partner relatively early in life, as Don and Betty did. Many marriages didn't survive that era, as easier divorce finally made it possible to start over with someone else.
And I loved your pick up about him having to "don" his armor -- fantastic! I do think Don longs for authenticity (again, the Calif episodes were I think in service of us learning that about him, and him learning it about himself) but I see absolutely no evidence yet that Betty longs for it. She is intermittently miserable and never truly happy but doesn't seem to identify a different path that would make her happier. She just wants Don to be a better husband and seems to think that's the problem. But it's the least of her problems!
Connie, that's a very funny story and I love that your mother had the "fog" excuse. Although I've known several people whose mothers regretted what name they chose in the haze of that drugged experience. And the babies were drugged, too, you know, when they were born, from being exposed to all that stuff during labor. It wasn't good!
I think Don resists naming the baby "Gene" for a number of reasons, honestly. He clearly didn't like Gene. He also observed Gene undermining parental authority with the kids. And I'm reasonably sure he didn't like what Gene was doing with Sally--driving cars, using large knives, reading to Gene about the debaucheries of the late Roman Empire. Gene was, in a way, stealing Don's "little girl;" Dad's don't really like that.
Just a couple of thoughts.
Robin, you addressed the JJones/Betty issue far more eloquently than I did! I agree with everything you said. Betty is a bad actress, and I think we're very much meant to see that. I found it interesting to read an interview with Matthew Weiner in which he talked about auditioning her and how as well as hitting all the notes they had written for the character, she brought in this element of childishness/childlikeness that they hadn't envisioned for the character and he loved that and felt it was so right. She is meant to be seen as unformed to a large degree. Her shrink in Season 1 says to Don, "you have to understand, we are dealing with basically the emotions of a child" and at first you think wow, what a sexist condescending pig! But then you realize -- well, yes, of course. And not just because everyone is dealing with the emotions of a child -- the child they once were and still are inside -- but because she hasn't been allowed to be a full real adult, just as most women weren't then (and still aren't in much of the world).
I also agree with you that Betty began to blossom while separated from Don -- she has that wonderful conversation with the divorced neighbor who says husbands aren't missed as much as you might think and later B says as much to Don when he returns. But she can't sustain it, either financially or socially or emotionally, and Don writes that heartfelt letter to her, so she takes him back. But very realistically, I think, it doesn't mean their relationship has changed at all. They just pick up where they left off.
Adele, you flatter me! I love that - keep it up. Seriously, I also wanted to say more about Peggy and Pete in this episode but just finally had to stop writing in the wee hours. I agree that there was important stuff in there, including that exchange when Peggy says, "It's my decision" and Pete replies, "Your decisions affect me." Things are tense and unresolved and clearly more will happen there in future episodes.
I also pondered the caterpillar in the first part of Betty's dream/hallucination. We shift from the scene before we know what happens to it -- deliberately so, I assume, because we don't know what will happen to Betty. Will she become a butterfly or will she be crushed by a callous hand? it remains to be seen.
Latethink, by all accounts from those who were there, the rampant drinking portrayed in the show was the norm in that era in advertising - and by businessmen in general in most or all other industries. I can say that working in business up till at least the mid-1980's there was a lot more drinking than we'd find possible now. People didn't have liquor in their offices like on MM (at least not in banking - they did in the ad agency I worked in in the early 80's) but drinking at lunch was just fine. Not like now where that would be considered bad unless you were celebrating something. It was in fact, fairly normal to have a drink or two at lunch.
I don't know that Don has a real drinking problem, beyond the social aspects and coping with pressures of his life. I think, for instance, that we don't see him drink much at all when he's on his Calif escape. An alcoholic would need to drink no matter what, but for Don getting away from his normal life seems to have alleviated most of that need, and he only drank a little, socially, IIRC.
certainly there were many many alcoholics in that era. But there were also many people who drank a lot because it was the norm, and were able to scale back or quit if they wanted to.
I miss the tiny details that you explain on your blog, but I was watching this program for entertainment, not intellectual insight. Totally missed the Death of Evers connection.
Maybe there is a bit too much symbolism, what does this mean, what does that mean that feels a bit like "Twin Peaks" which is a great deal more interesting than most of what is on TV these days, but also tends to be distracting from the enjoyment of the show, but it is also very interesting to read this blog which fills in the blanks.
I just wish I didn't need the Cliff Notes to get the full message of the episodes!
"Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" The Brit boss' comment reminded my Dylan-loving significant other of this...we think the writers are just as Dylan savvy and may have had this allusion in mind...given the allusions to Civil Rights, women's rights and the accompanying stubborn tunnel vision of the powers that be at Sterling Cooper (think also of the ad image for this season...Don sitting in rising water: "Come gather round people whereever your roam and admit that the waters around you have grown...for the times they are a changin')
What of the "dreamy," romantic music during Betty's dream and at end? Did anyone recognize it? Was it composed for show? Sorry if I missed someone's comment on this.
Finally, am I alone in seeing some parallels to the current craziness on the part of the so-called birthers and deathers etc? I agree with Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd that there is no escaping the racist under or overtones of some curent political rhetoric (a la Joe "You Lie" Wilson--South Carolina) and the fear it represents--fear of change, fear that/refusal to acceopt that we have an African American POTUS?
o) Ms. Free Spirit notes that Sally needs attention, and Betty's birth gives her a chance to have some with Don
o) There are echoes of Gene spending time with Sally when Don spends time with her
I hope Don doesn't have an affair with the teacher. I don't mind if he is unfaithful to Betty. I just want the teacher to honor boundaries. It's wrong to go after married men of your students.
Plus if she is a ditz and a lush, she's not really on Don's level. He needs a good, strong woman. If he can't turn Betty into a good one, I hope he finds one but it won't be an alcoholic, much younger school teacher.
Maybe Eugene the baby will die. I was hoping the baby would die in childbirth. that would stir folks up.
Maybe Betty will get depressed again, get locked in the nut house and Suzanne Farrell will start helping out, slide into Betty's life because someone has to help with Don's three kids.
I can't wait to see what happens next.
I read your post after the first episode Season 3, Silkstone. In the comments, you indicate that you aren't clear that Joan married Greg the rapist doctor. She is definitely married to Greg. She tells Betty, when she comes to the office and they talk pregnancy, that Greg has warned her that he will get her pregnant as soon as he becomes chief resident. And Roger, in that first episode, says to Joan, "Goodnight Mrs. Harris" . . and in 1963, it would have been virtually unheard of for an unwed couple to have a dinner party for a young doctor's boss doctor. Not many people shacked up in 1963, and remember they're in NY, not CA, which might have been ahead of the curve on cohabitation. Plus Joan is pretty conventional. It would have been extremely unconventional for Joan to live openly with a man. It was one thing to be sexually promiscuous when she was dating but living with a guy without benefit of marriage? Too far out for Joan.
Raven, I've heard other people complain that MM is slow. There were a couple eps at the end of last season where I felt it was a bit too slow. I don't generally feel that, but it is a very different pace than most TV, which has gotten increasingly frenetic. That and the cryptic nature of much of it (which you also note) puts a lot of people off. But I have to say that it's what attracts me to it - the depth of the series. Most TV feels very obvious and shallow to me (most movies too). I love that MM is like a novel that you sink into and has many layers. But it's clearly a personal taste!
Outerbanx, I agree - very moody ending to the ep! I have no idea what that music was but it was perfect. And oh boy, I think you caught something I didn't - it makes sense that Betty hesitates before going into that room as her father was there. I think it's mostly about the burden of motherhood, but I think you're right that it's also about Gene.
Hells, I think the guard thing was a bit obvious too. It stands out more in a show that is normally so subtle.
Doug, great catch about Don and Sally spending more time together. I was appreciating that they did, and the sweetness of their scene together, but hadn't put it all together as you did.
MaryCal, I think that Dylan song is probably lurking under there as well. I hadn't thought of it, but I did flash on Dylan while writing this and almost referred to the "times they are a changin'" but decided it was too obvious. It's interesting that he's popping up in our heads even though not directly referred to in the show.
Tizzie, it's becoming almost a joke that all women find Don irresistible. I wasn't sure if the teacher was "setting her cap for Don" or merely calling to apologize but I expect that they will have at least one more encounter, even if they don't sleep together.
Thanks, Nora and Theodora! Theodora, I think I'm doing more than recapping too (but also less -- I don't recap everything in each show) - I think of it as a combined recap and commentary on the show. As for JJ, I'll agree to disagree with you!
I haven't been able to confirm this, but someone said elsewhere that the music played during Betty's dream sequences is from a Spanish movie, Lucía y el sexo--a movie about a writer which apparently moves between the writer's fiction/novel and reality...if so, very apropos this episode indeed.