Let's start at the end, that is with the last two shots of the "Mad Men" Season 4 final episode, "Tomorrowland." The penultimate image is a beaut, with Don and Betty in the dark, empty kitchen of the house they once shared. Don is there to meet a real estate agent. Betty, the blonde in the blue Disney Evil Queen coat, has returned to box up some things she "forgot" from the cabinets in the guest bathroom. Don, characteristically, has a secret he hasn't forgotten about -- a fifth of whiskey stashed in the cupboard above the oven. They share a few sips from an old ornate bathroom cup and Betty, ostensibly speaking of the kitchen in her new house which she will probably have remodeled, looks Don in the eye and says, "Things aren't perfect."¹
Yeah, it's a cliché (Betty almost always sounds like she's reading a script), but in this context it's also a wonderful moment, poignant and funny. Because she says it almost as though a) she believes "things" actually could achieve a state of perfection; and b) she thinks imperfections are shameful secrets and this is an intimate confession -- never mind that Don knows perfectly well what a mess she is. His reply -- which could be read as tender (letting her off the hook) or pointed -- is delivered/deflected with a gentle smile and received with understanding: "So, you'll move again."
Don tells Betty he's engaged to Megan, and the two leave the kitchen in opposite directions, Betty with a box under her arm and Don with her keys to his house in his hands. The camera lingers for a while on the bottle and the flowery yellow cup on the counter, all that's left of the "Don and Betty" who once occupied this space together.
Dissolve to: Don and Megan in bed in his Greenwich Village apartment. She's asleep, her head on his side. He's awake in the dark. As Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" comes up on the soundtrack, Don turns his head toward the window and the camera floats away from the bed, looking out his window at the window across the way. More frames. Out that window, that's where Season 5 is, and neither he nor we know where that's going to lead. "Tomorrowland," indeed. Is Don already having second thoughts about proposing to Megan? Is he just contemplating their future? Or, as Faye says to him, does he only like the beginnings of things?
The lyrics, about two poor young kids in love, just starting out, play against the reality of Don's life (the prospect of a second marriage to a younger woman), but maybe he feels like he's getting a fresh start -- despite Betty's husband Henry's insistence that there's no such thing:
They say we're young and we don't know
Won't find out until we grow.
Well, I don't know if all that's true
'Cause you've got me and baby I've got you.
It's the epitome of the sentimental teen music, with its melodramatic Spector-esque wall of sound, that Don joked about earlier, in his meeting with the American Cancer Society board. And now it's part of the soundtrack to his life.
"Mad Men" is always suggesting directions the story and characters might take, whether they eventually do or not. (Remember when Sal and Kitty had Ken over for dinner?) People make decisions, take risks, have epiphanies, take action or don't, and live with the consequences. This season it seemed to relish finding those moments in which there's no clear distinction between right and wrong, because they are inseparable. Like when Peggy fired Joey for his disrespectful attitude toward Joan (after Don told her that if she thought it was a big deal, she had the authority to act on it). But the way Joan saw it, Peggy was just confirming her own power -- and confirming to the young guys in the office that Joan was a mere secretary and Peggy was "a humorless bitch." And both women were right, and both women were wrong. Because, as they say in "Chinatown," they have to swim in the same water we all do.
So, is Don questioning his impulsive offer to marry Megan? I think he first fell for her when he saw the way she and his daughter hugged each other after Sally, running from Don and refusing to go home with Betty, fell in the hallway of Sterling Cooper Draper Price (in "Beautiful Girls"). No coincidence, then, that the proposal comes right after the scene in which Sally spills her milkshake and Megan handles it without getting flustered. Don, conditioned to Betty's overreactions to everything, is about to yell... and then takes his emotional cue from Megan who, at 25, seems in some respects more emotionally mature than he is.³ In the very next scene, he offers her a ring.
Remember how demeaning Don thought it was when Roger married his (Don's) secretary Jane? "No one thinks you're happy," he told the smug Mr. Sterling in Season 3's "My Old Kentucky Home." "They think you're foolish." Now, Don either doesn't remember, doesn't care, or sees no similarity between what he and Megan are doing and what Roger and Jane did. And perhaps the decision was not so impulsive after all. Recall the way he looks through his office doorway at Megan, putting on her makeup, at the end of "Hands and Knees" (to a cover version of the Beatles' "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"). And the persistent presence of Megan, framed between Don and Faye during a meeting in the glass-walled conference room in last week's "Blowing Smoke."
Once Don gets to California (Disneyland!) with the kids and Megan as a last-minute nanny (Betty having fired Carla for reasons even she herself doesn't fully understand, having to do with Glen Bishop), everything just starts going... right. Director/creator Matthew Weiner creates an almost satirically idyllic vision of Southern California perfection, from the French song Megan teaches the kids to perform for him, to Don and Megan's dreamy kiss on a balcony (capping a conversation about her imperfect teeth), with a movie-moonlight-on-the-ocean backdrop.
Don doesn't even entirely lie to the kids when they see "Dick + Anna '64" painted on the wall in the living room of the house that belonged to Anna, the only person in the world who ever really knew him. This is the trip he'd promised Anna, only she's no longer here and Megan is. Then he learns that Anna wanted him to have her engagement ring -- the one he gives to Megan with the explanation that it's a family heirloom.
The dissolve from the California restaurant to Don's bedside proposal is like waking from one dream into another. It took me a few moments to realize they were back in Don's apartment and not in the motel. From Don's point of view, we can understand why he says to Megan, "Did you ever think of the number of things that had to happen for me to get to know you?" In "Mad Men," these kinds of epiphanies are almost always both genuine and delusional, and/or manipulative, at the same time. (And, essential to Don's notion of who he is, he says she makes him feel like himself, the way he always wanted to feel.)
The last time we saw him in this bed, it was with Faye -- he was in Megan's position (just waking up) and Faye was in his, dressed for work, sitting on the bed. She told him that if he can resolve some of his feelings about his past -- and he doesn't have to do it alone -- he might be feel "more comfortable with everything," after which he'd just be "stuck trying to be a person like the rest of us." A week later, Faye is part of the past. She's yesterday and Megan is tomorrow.
- - - -
Don: You don't know anything about me.
Megan: But I do. I know that you have a good heart. And I know that you're always trying to be better.
Don: We all try. We don't always make it.
One of the mysteries of the episode: Don knows that's not true. We don't "all try." Roger Sterling? Pete Campbell?⁴ Do they try? How much does Don even try? Is this just another sales job? What "Mad Men" shows us is that we all have ingrained patterns of (self-)destructive behavior that we try to overcome. This conversation, which is both modest and self-serving on Don's part, is the result of the last thing Allison, the secretary he slept with before Megan, said to him: "I do not say this easily, but you are not a good person." Don says that Anna, and now Megan, make him want to be a better person. How hard will he try? That's one of the big questions for Season 5.
One key moment is a shot from the inside of Anna's barren living room -- another house, like the former Draper home, that is being emptied out. A big black slab moves disturbingly across the screen, as the camera passes behind a post to reveal Don, Sally and Bobby framed in the screen door as in a family photo. What first seems ominous becomes comforting -- as the scene itself does. In that image, it seems, some dark barrier between past and present is wiped away. (Thank you, Mr. Chabrol.)
This episode is full of words that don't quite sound the way they're intended, or meanings that circle back around on the speaker -- like Faye's advice, Joan's new Director of Agency Operations title (without additional compensation), or Don's heartfelt statement to Peggy, the one woman who knows him better than anyone, including Megan: "You know, she reminds me of you. She's got the same spark. I know she admires you just as much as I do." This sets the stage for a rapprochement between Joan and Peggy, who vent their frustrations over cigarettes in Joan's office.² Joan (still pregnant, she and Peggy have more in common than either of them knows) snipes that Don will probably make Megan a copy writer because he's not going to want to be married to his secretary. Peggy is both hurt and offended: "Is that what he meant?" (Remember that the night Megan had sex with Don in his office, it was on the pretext that she wanted to learn more about the business. Was she sincere? What are her ambitions now?)
The lines between personal and professional are getting all mixed up. Pete tries to get Ken to use his future father-in-law as a connection to a high-level executive at Dow Chemical. Ken doesn't even know how ironic he's being when he congratulates Don: "I hope you have all the happiness that Peggy and I had signing this account." Peggy tells Joan, exaggerating for dramatic effect, that she has just saved the company by signing the first new business since Lucky Strike bailed: "But it's not as important as getting married. Again." When Joan claims that she learned "a long time ago to not get all my satisfaction from this job," Peggy calls bullshit -- and they both crack up. Like Faye in the first scene, they're both referring to a "Chinese Wall" (title of Episode 11) -- this one between work and... whatever non-work is called. (And Ken is the only one who declines to breach it.)
And then there's the ice. In "The Rejected" (Episode 4), Don scolded his secretary Allison for not having his office bar stocked, then sarcastically asked Peggy and Faye if they'd brought any ice with them. Later in th same episode, Pete melds his work and home life in the presence of his father-in-law when he calls out to newly pregnant Trudy, off-screen, to ask if they have any ice. And when Don and Megan announce their news, leave it to Roger to quip, "Let's have a toast. Megan can you get us some ice?" (beat) "I'm teasing!"
If only Jane had been there.
_ _ _ _
It's been a lousy year for feature films but "Mad Men" and Olivier Assayas's "Carlos" and "Breaking Bad" have shown that rich, creative cinematic work is being done for television in the long-form series and mini-series formats.
_ _ _ _
¹ This echoes what Pete said to Peggy in the Season 2 closer, when he told her she was "perfect" and he loved her and wanted to spend his life with her because Trudy didn't really know him, but Peggy did. And then she told him that she could have had him, could have shamed him into being with her, but didn't want him.
² Remember that the episode's second scene was a meeting with the American Cancer Society board, whom Don impressed with his "change the conversation" letter/ad in the New York Times announcing that (after the near-fatal departure of Lucky Strike) Sterling Cooper Draper Price would no longer represent tobacco companies. Afterwards, he describes his role: "I just looked him in the eye and convinced him I was some kind of idealistic businessman." Always playing parts, that Don Draper.
³ Do not underestimate Megan. Faye was history the moment she slept with Don after having stood up to him so spectacularly ("I think you're confusing a lot of things at once"). Even violating the "Chinese wall" by getting him a meeting with Hormel Heinz made him appreciate her devotion to him, and simultaneously diminished her in his eyes. Megan has been straight with him: she wanted to have sex with him and promised it wouldn't be awkward. She never acted like she expected anything more. She let him come to her. The question now, of course, is whether Don will continue to want her now that she's agreed to be with him.
⁴ Pete is such a sadistic prig. Notice how much he enjoys putting Ken through exactly the same father-in-law wringer Roger put him through in "The Rejected." Of course, he still sees Ken as his competition, even though he is technically his inferior. But I keep remembering what Lane said about the two of them. Pete does a fine job of making clients feel he is meeting their needs. "Mr. Cosgrove," however, "has the rare gift of making them feel as if they haven't any needs."
Above: Betty in her doll house.
Above: Don's California casual look.
Above: If these walls could talk... Well, they do.
33 Comments
Fantastic, Jim. I've loved reading these analyses of "Mad Men" episodes. The fourth season definitely beats everything I've seen in the theaters this year so far. (And I'm glad you mentioned "Breaking Bad." This year's season impressed me as much as any film I can think of in the past ten years. It's just so incredibly......cinematic, you know?)
This episode was a massive disappointment. The whole season was about the struggles of the whole firm, then out of nowhere this happens? And the stuff with Sally and Glenn was all just to give them a reason to move? And what about all the stuff with that actress in L.A.? She was eying Don seductively, but then nothing came of it. It was completely random.
I went to a Q & A with Matthew Weiner a few weeks ago. Someone asked if he thought "Mad Men" had a moral message. This was Weiner's response (I paraphrase):
"Absolutely it does. What is the message? It's that being a person is really really hard, so we should give everyone else a break."
The final episode (especially Don's line, "We all try. We don't always make it.") seemed to address that idea directly. I think Don believes in this moral message. I think he does try. So does Roger. So does Pete. They just suck at it as much as everyone else does.
Jim, your eye for detail and head for analysis are in prime form as we've come to expect. You're especially right to focus on how MAD MEN is honing in on the essence of all real drama, those situations in which there's no clear right or wrong, or better yet in which everyone's kind of right. Another couple that occur to me: Don's NYT letter; Peggy's beatnik boyfriend's left-wing diatribe.
I think Matthew Weiner has a much more positive--or perhaps less cynical--take on Don than you do. Have a look at his recent NYT interview or his talk with Elvis Mitchell. I'd say he definitely sees Don and a lot of his other characters as trying to be good. That dialogue you quote above comes pretty close to encapsulating Weiner's position on the world he's created. They all try. But not all of them get there.
And the ones that don't aren't necessarily bad people, they just may not be equipped to understand their choices fully. Even the least self-aware characters, Betty, for instance or Roger, don't generally do things they consciously think of as bad for themselves and their loved ones. Most of the grief Betty has caused Sally this season, for instance, comes from a misunderstanding of her own rigid internalized senses of propriety, morality and tradition. She's mixed all that up with what's truly best for Sally. But you can't say she's not trying. That's part of what makes her a tragic character. The intense energy behind her desire to do good and the messed up way it all comes out. And a few of her best moments this season have come when the best parts of her have momentarily won this struggle, as when she doesn't object to Don's being at baby Gene's party. Or when she almost realizes she's complicit in her problems with Sally while she's talking to the child therapist.
Or sometimes characters do the right thing for (some of) the wrong reasons. Like Peggy's firing Joey. Or Don't NYT ad/letter.
Finally, I've heard Weiner state repeatedly that the best marriage on the show is Pete and Trudy, because they have a real partnership. What do you make of that?
Perhaps one reason I love this show is that I don't fully believe in "bad people," either. (Though I could give you the names of a few who are bad enough.) Whether they're trying to do good, or just aren't aware of the damage they're doing, or are being intentionally harmful in one part of their lives (perhaps out of fear or insecurity or competition) while trying to do good in some other part... I appreciate that the show doesn't judge its characters. Even Betty. Her behavior (like Don's) is sometimes monstrous, but that doesn't make her a monster -- just a deeply screwed up human being. I do think Don is trying, quite consciously, to "be better" -- and often fails. We all have certain (self-)destructive patterns that we seem doomed to repeat, like addicts perpetually relapsing, but we try to surmount them -- even if we may repeatedly fall off the wagon. (No, I'm not saying Don is an "addict" -- though he's a smoker and has something of a drinking problem -- but that he obviously has his own deeply ingrained patterns of behavior.) I'm really glad you mentioned the NY Times ad and that conversation between Peggy and the lefty guy from the Village (I forget his name), because they're both excellent examples of how the show gives you multiple ways of looking at things, and you can see validity in them all. I'd love to do a line-by-line analysis of all the things I as a viewer, and Peggy as a character, go through in that conversation with the lefty guy.
As for Pete and Trudy -- who'd have thought? They really have become partners. At the end of season two, Pete had cold feet and told Peggy he wanted her, and that Trudy didn't really know him, but that's no longer the case. I think their relationship is making Pete a better person, whether he is consciously aware of it or not.
That's the thing I wanted to point out: People don't always try to better their behavior; most of the time they're not even aware of what they're doing or why. So, maybe what Don says (and really he's speaking about himself) is meant to be modest and optimistic (and just a little-bit, indirectly, self-flattering) all at the same time. (It reminded me of the last thing Allison said to him: "I do not say this easily, but you are not a good person." I think that actually had an effect on him.)
Excellent write-up! You've helped me to see Don/Megan in a new light--I just assumed it was Don deciding to be IMPULSIVE! and remake himself, and reacting to the delirious high he got from the (very mild) bit of honesty he had with his kids about who Dick was. I think that's still true, but you're right that there are other factors at play. You've also put your finger on the difference between Megan and Faye, and why I've somewhat felt that Megan seemed more admirable and even stronger of late. For my part, I thought Megan's interest in copywriting was genuine; Don's interest in making her a copywriter is as cynical as Peggy and Joan imply.
Your point about the show's particular mode of storytelling--""Mad Men" is always suggesting directions the story and characters might take, whether they eventually do or not. (Remember when Sal and Kitty had Ken over for dinner?)"--bears repeating. This show plays with narrative expectations, to state the obvious, but it also gleefully sets the groundwork for anticlimaxes. Sal's firing was the loss of a major character and remains uncommented upon directly to this day (though with Lucky Strike gone, who knows?). Another example is the way this season has drawn attention to Civil Rights again and again. The payoff? Betty's firing Carla for no good reason at all, because she's not enough of a person to Betty to be part of the family. We're still in privileged white America's POV, and so we have to read deeply between the lines to see the arc of the minority characters at all. (I love how Henry seems to have reached the breaking point with Betty over the firing of Carla--partly, perhaps, because he doesn't want to have to deal with the kids himself, partly because he knows Betty's firing her is wrong, partly because he doesn't want to see already poor relations between Betty and the kids worsen. And partly because Betty doesn't make any sense, and I think he can't handle that anymore.)
This has been an incredible, moving, hilarious, ludicrous season.
I had forgotten how much of a part little Glen Bishop played way back in Season 1 (Episode 2, "Ladies Room"), when he and his divorced mother Helen move into the neighborhood and the sight of them deeply disturbs Betty (she loses control of the car and hits a birdbath). In Episode 4 ("New Amsterdam"), while she's babysitting Glen, he asks her for a lock of her hair, and she gives it to him. It's creepy and sad that she enjoys being the object of a nine-year-old's crush. In Season 2 (Episode 10, "The Inheritance"), he runs away from home and Betty finds him hiding in Sally's playhouse. She washes his clothes, they watch TV together, and he tries to hold her hand. When Helen comes to get him and he realizes Betty has called her, he says: "I hate you." Betty says: "I know." She's afraid of this kid -- and I don't think we know the whole story of why, or who he reminds her of...
And of course there's that scene at the end of...was it season two?...where Betty sees Glen in the car, and tells him that she's *just so sad*...a confession much more meaningful than the one to Don, and one that she probably regrets ever giving.... Betty is such a child, playing at being a porcelain doll, herself, so maybe that's why she relates to him. I think it's conceivable that there's some child abuse, hence her inappropriate boundary crossing with Glen (and there was that scene where Betty's father, very out of it, hit on her, in season two I think?)...but I hope that's not the case, ultimately, because it would seem too television cliche an explanation for why Betty is in such a state of arrested development.
Agreed, Warren. Weiner's take echoes a quote I saw a number of years ago and still reference a lot: "Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." Might sound simplistic or sort of naive at first, but I think it only sounds that way. It takes a pretty good-sized empathic leap to remember (and continue to remember during every encounter one has during an average day) that everyone else is making their way through this same world, dealing with not only an overarching societal message but all the mixed messages that spring from that message - in reaction to it, in misunderstanding of it, in agreement with it, in relation to what all the many parts of one's own inner being feel about it, and how all those factor and many others combine to make the flood of moment-to-moment input so difficult to deal with.
"The whole season was about the struggles of the whole firm, then out of nowhere this happens?"
Wasn't this season really about Don gazing into the abyss more than it was about the firm? Didn't we finally get a payoff for that enigmatic title sequence that filled me with a sense of foreboding for three seasons? To me, this season was the Don show. And I wouldn't say this (the proposal) happened out of nowhere. The impulsiveness of it took me by surprise, sure, but looking back on the season there were plenty of signs.
"And the stuff with Sally and Glenn was all just to give them a reason to move?"
Come on, really? Glen has been as important as the psychiatrist for Sally's character development this season, and he's served as the cataclyst for a lot of the conflict between Sally and Betty, and to some extent Betty and Henry, too. Plus, he's an interesting character in his own right.
"And what about all the stuff with that actress in L.A.? She was eying Don seductively, but then nothing came of it. It was completely random."
Random, maybe, in a Robert McKee sense of storytelling, but definitely not the first time Mad Men misdirects us like that. And still, there really wasn't that much "stuff" with her.
If you are as smooth as Don and incline toward the new adventure, the desert fling demonstrated that there is enough to Don to turn down even a most inviting opportunity.
Mr. Emerson, I just have to say that your articles on Mad Men are terrific. Please don't stop now. There's plenty more to say about this season!
I hope you don't take offense by me saying so, but it is so much more enjoyable and inspirational to read about why something good works than why something bad doesn't.
Keep it up!
Great piece. Just one thing: The meeting was with Heinz. Not Hormel.
I thought the final shot, of the window in Draper's apartment, was oddly reminiscent of the painting: the last thing you see before you close your eyes. I didn't rewind to compare it to the painting, but it resonated for me.
I hope this is the first of many posts about this last season, which has proved to be my favorite of the four. I would be lying if I said I didn't expect more out of the finale (after "Close The Door, Have a Seat", who didn't?) but it was still a great episode.
Also: the proposal wasn't completely surprising, as I've read many people say. Megan's importance in Don's life has been on the rise since she hugged Sally in "Beautiful Girls."
Your shot-by-shot analysis inspires me. I will be reading more of this.
When you described the final shot of the episode -- "More frames" -- I immediately thought about Sally's impression of the Land-O-Lakes butter package, with image after image reducing into itself. I'm pretty sure it's unintentional, and I wouldn't have thought of it myself until you said "more frames," but... hey, I just thought of something that ties into that. The song we hear is "I Got You Babe," which of course was used in "Groundhog Day," about day after day folding in on itself. I know, I know, I'm really stretching to link the Land-O-Lakes box, Sonny and Cher, and Bill Murray, but I love the fact that this is a show that COULD make those connections. Thanks for the analysis!
Thank you. I have to go back to look at that Land-O-Lakes scene again. It struck me as being about those patterns of behavior we all have that we keep trying to overcome, or break free from -- like the "Groundhog Day" comparison, which I hadn't considered. That's really interesting...
That is REALLY interesting David D.
That is, interesting in light of everything Jim has written here about characters trying to break their cycles and, hopefully, become slightly better people before they die... death being their vanishing point... in which case, the vanishing point of the frames within frames could work as metaphor for or maybe it has something to do with people's blind spots... or just what we don't know in general... or maybe something even more mysterious... or all of the above!
I dunno exactly but I like that idea and I'm also amused that it's imagined by Sally. When she mentioned it in that episode I thought of that scene in The Dreamers (2003) where the young American (Michael Pitt, forget the character's name) gets distracted during a dinner conversation by the notion that his lighter fits in all the squares on the table... and can measure his host's nose... and, with a little imagination and optical illusion, seems to fit perfectly anywhere he wants it to depending on perspective...
"It's been a lousy year for feature films but "Mad Men" and Olivier Assayas's "Carlos" and "Breaking Bad" have shown that rich, creative cinematic work is being done for television in the long-form series and mini-series formats"
I threw out my TV a few years ago but you posts on Mad Men make me think I need to buy a new TV. Thanks for the encouragement.
If Mad Men is cinematic, as you suggest, and I've no reason to doubt the accuracy of your description, I can't help wondering where that leaves auteur theory, which has been so prominent over the last 4o years.
A quick look at IMdB tells me the first 13 episodes of Mad Men had 8 different directors. Contrary to auteur theory, this would suggest dirctors are as interchangeable as cinematographers or editors or grips or tea-ladies. I'm probably wrong about this and I would appreciate you putting me right, whenever you get a free moment, of course.
Everyone who has worked on "Mad Men" says there's no doubt the auteur here is Matthew Weiner, the creator, head writer, executive producer and showrunner of the series, who also directs. He goes over everything with the director, cinematographer, costumers, production designers, casting directors, etc. He's like David Chase was for "The Sopranos" or David Milch for "Deadwood" or David Simon for "The Wire" or David Lynch for "Twin Peaks" (although, curiously, his name is not David!).
Director Tim Hunter ("Tex," "River's Edge" -- and veteran of "Twin Peaks," "Deadwood," "Breaking Bad," "Dexter") says in the show's Wikipedia entry:
(Or Joss Whedon for Buffy the Vampire Slayer!)
Mad Men may use various directors, but, in addition to Matt Weiner, DP Christopher Manley (seasons 2-4) has certainly refined a "look" for the show.
How many shows stick with one director through their whole run? Off the top of my head I know Jimmy Burrows stuck with Cheers and Will & Grace. Pamela Fryman's been with How I Met Your Mother all the way. Edgar Wright's 14 episodes of Spaced are masterful. Who else?
I think you're absolutely right about suspecting that Betty has suffered some kind of child abuse. I've thought that for a long time and if its true, I think the show is handling it very well. Many of her troubling behavior patterns seem to hint at it. She is still extremely childlike and her relationship with Glenn (first trusting him and confiding in him and now being ashamed of that) is just a reflection of her own fears. She also seems to be projecting a lot of her own childhood trauma on poor Sally. It's easy to forget that Don treated Betty so poorly that it could qualify as mental abuse (the lying, the affairs, the secret calls to her first therapist, etc.) and it's amazing that she hasn't fallen apart yet but she's not very sympathetic so it's easy to forget.
I thought it was obvious that Betty made a point to "leave things at the house" so she could meet Don when he stopped by to see the relator. She was clearly trying to look good for him before he walked in and finally admitted that her new marriage wasn't "perfect." I couldn't help thinking that she may have been considering a reconciliation with Don but those hopes were smashed quickly when he announced his engagement.
That shot of Betty laying in a fetal position on Sally's bed really disturbed me. Betty seems to be headed toward a breakdown but I hope she has a breakthrough instead.
Enjoyed your write-up, Jim. It's such a great show!
Yes, I'm glad you brought that up, Kimberly! That's another reason I found it funny and poignant. It adds a whole other layer to the scene that after Henry tells her that "nobody's on her side," she intentionally arranges to "accidentally" run into Don. She's definitely feeling very alone again (as she confessed to little Glen Bishop back in the first or second season). We never see Henry again in this episode after he yells at her for firing Carla. Nothing is resolved on that front. I don't think anybody can blame her for leaving Don (whose secrets were driving her insane -- like Rita on "Dexter"). She's often photographed as a porcelain doll (fragile and brittle and cold). I hope we find out more about how she got this way, and what she was like before she met Don.
The possibility of her being abused brings another dark undertone to that scene from last season of her father coming on to her while suffering from dementia.
OOps! I was trying to reply to the conversation you were having with William B above but I managed to hit the wrong reply button. I'm glad my comments still made sense and weren't too out of context.
I do hope we learn more about Betty's past soon too. She wasn't very present this season and I might be one of the few that actually missed her but I do sympathize with her character as much as I do everyone on the show thanks to the great writing. I also probably sympathize with Betty because she reminds me a lot of my own mother (who also happened to have the name Betty!). I think January Jones' mannered performance really does capture a particular kind of '60s woman. One that is hiding a whole lot while trying to project the "perfect housewife" image to the rest of the world. I suspect Betty will start popping valium regularly at any moment!
I just took a look at the Land O' Lakes scene with Sally and Glen from the previous episode. It's frightening how much Sally can sound like her mother at times. And that reminds me that I hope Dr. Edna -- the child psychologist -- can help Betty. In some respects Sally is more grown up and self-aware than Betty is: "When I think about forever I get upset..."
I think this season of "Mad Men" was, possibly, my favorite to date. I've really enjoyed how you have treated each episode as a mini-film and your in-depth analysis. Anxious to hear more of your thoughts on "Carlos," which I saw last weekend and thought was great.
The final shot of season four also seems to recall the ad pitch Don gives to the board of the American Cancer Society, wherein cigarettes are physically standing between loved ones. Considering all the problems alcohol has caused throughout each season, it's possible Don doesn't quite understand it's damaging effects like he does now with cigarettes.
He's just lived his own ad. Same problem, different perpetrator.
Did you watch the season finale of Rubicon? If so, what did you think? Michael Cristofer deserves an Emmy. He's so creepily charming.
It was inconclusive, in a rather satisfying way...
"..., Don either doesn't remember, doesn't care, or sees no similarity between what he and Megan are doing and what Roger and Jane did."
The difference, and it is a big one, is that Roger busted up his marriage to run off with his secretary.
But, that still doesn't make Don much of a mensch.
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