The virtues of mad men
Hail
We don't have any back story on the state of the Draper marriage in the year and a bit since the end of season one so it's up to us to imagine one. I think it is safe to say that Betty did not confront Don about his infidelities for the simple reason that she doesn't know about them in any definite way. What she has done is used her psychotherapist to channel the message that she wants Don to be faithful to her.
And I think we can assume that Don has tried. This is the episode where he falls off the wagon.
"She needs to be told what to do"
Betty is talking about a horse when she says these lines but she could just as easily have been describing Bobbi Barrett.
One of the things that the show fails to recognize is how much of the culture of the time was driven by male anger towards women. The anger is there but it is portrayed as a thing of the past not as what it was which is a major driving force of the 1960s. This anger is one of the things that did lead to the 1960s having to happen.Think of a songs like "Under My Thumb," "Day Tripper," "Stay With Me" and "All Right Now." An awful lot of the 1960s was anti-woman driven by male frustration that women weren't sexually available.
In retrospect, we tell a story about feminism, and this show is very concerned to do do that, but it was a male desire for easier access to sex and more open acknowledgment of sex that made feminism possible. You need Esquire and then Playboy before you can have Ms. We're understandably loathe to admit this because there is something frat boyish about this earlier male rebellion that feminism has never been comfortable with but it is an absolutely essential part ofthe story.
Without acknowledging this, the show still reflects it in many ways including the contrast between Betty and Bobbi's characters. Both push push men who show weakness around and both respond to some assertion on the part of those men positively although Betty always stops short of actual sex. (Don, unusually, comes off very passive vis a vis Bobbi.)
There is a touch where Don comes home and immediately washes Bobbi's scent off his face and hands and even washes his mouth out. It's all very meaningful I'm sure but Don is the sort of guy who keeps fresh shirts in his desk drawer at work. he'd have the sense to stop at a cocktail lounge on the way home and wash his face and hands and he'd get the inside of his mouth with Rye.
It's there because there is a parallel scene where Betty comes back from the stables where wimpy guy has been putting some moves on her and is obviously excited enough by the event that she wants to get upstairs and have a shower before Don discovers evidence of her excitement.
Which is odd in a sense for if Don were to make such a discovery, he'd be unlikely to worry about the provenance of his good blessing. We men are like that. In another sense, it's not so odd. We can easily imagine a woman behaving as Betty has here.
But this is also the source of much of that male anger of that period. Betty and Bobbi are more or less the same. Both are profoundly sad, both are addicted to endless sexual power games. The only difference is that Bobbi's games end in actual sex. Given the choice, who would you pick?
In the short run I mean. In the long run both women are despicable types and I refer you again to those songs.
Massive hypocrisy
There is a subplot revolving around an old episode of a really lame 1960s show called The Defenders that mentioned abortion and that had no sponsors as a consequence. It's another instance of the moral superiority fixation Mad Men has. We're all supposed to think how very far we have come. And yet the show is incredibly hypocritical on this front because it won't go there either. Abortion gets mentioned but they wouldn't dare have any character actually choose to have one because they'd lose audience in a big way and probably sponsors too if they did. (Update: I was vinidcated on this in season 4.)
Or do they recognize their own hypocrisy through Harry who goes home to his wife and can't bring himself to tell her what the Defenders episode was about?
The ending
Raymond Chandler famously said that a good mystery is one you would read even if the ending were missing. This episode would have been considerably improved if the ending had been left off. It's like someone pasted it on to try and disguise what the episode was really about.
Which is probably exactly what happened. No one really cares about Betty and they know it.
Odds and ends
Two characters evoke the fifties. Roger says he misses the fifties and then Harry's friend at CBS whom he calls tells him he misses the blacklist.
Season 2 blogging begins here.
The next episode blog will be here.
(Season one begins here if you are interested.)
Hail
We don't have any back story on the state of the Draper marriage in the year and a bit since the end of season one so it's up to us to imagine one. I think it is safe to say that Betty did not confront Don about his infidelities for the simple reason that she doesn't know about them in any definite way. What she has done is used her psychotherapist to channel the message that she wants Don to be faithful to her.
And I think we can assume that Don has tried. This is the episode where he falls off the wagon.
"She needs to be told what to do"
Betty is talking about a horse when she says these lines but she could just as easily have been describing Bobbi Barrett.
One of the things that the show fails to recognize is how much of the culture of the time was driven by male anger towards women. The anger is there but it is portrayed as a thing of the past not as what it was which is a major driving force of the 1960s. This anger is one of the things that did lead to the 1960s having to happen.Think of a songs like "Under My Thumb," "Day Tripper," "Stay With Me" and "All Right Now." An awful lot of the 1960s was anti-woman driven by male frustration that women weren't sexually available.
In retrospect, we tell a story about feminism, and this show is very concerned to do do that, but it was a male desire for easier access to sex and more open acknowledgment of sex that made feminism possible. You need Esquire and then Playboy before you can have Ms. We're understandably loathe to admit this because there is something frat boyish about this earlier male rebellion that feminism has never been comfortable with but it is an absolutely essential part ofthe story.
Without acknowledging this, the show still reflects it in many ways including the contrast between Betty and Bobbi's characters. Both push push men who show weakness around and both respond to some assertion on the part of those men positively although Betty always stops short of actual sex. (Don, unusually, comes off very passive vis a vis Bobbi.)
There is a touch where Don comes home and immediately washes Bobbi's scent off his face and hands and even washes his mouth out. It's all very meaningful I'm sure but Don is the sort of guy who keeps fresh shirts in his desk drawer at work. he'd have the sense to stop at a cocktail lounge on the way home and wash his face and hands and he'd get the inside of his mouth with Rye.
It's there because there is a parallel scene where Betty comes back from the stables where wimpy guy has been putting some moves on her and is obviously excited enough by the event that she wants to get upstairs and have a shower before Don discovers evidence of her excitement.
Which is odd in a sense for if Don were to make such a discovery, he'd be unlikely to worry about the provenance of his good blessing. We men are like that. In another sense, it's not so odd. We can easily imagine a woman behaving as Betty has here.
But this is also the source of much of that male anger of that period. Betty and Bobbi are more or less the same. Both are profoundly sad, both are addicted to endless sexual power games. The only difference is that Bobbi's games end in actual sex. Given the choice, who would you pick?
In the short run I mean. In the long run both women are despicable types and I refer you again to those songs.
Massive hypocrisy
There is a subplot revolving around an old episode of a really lame 1960s show called The Defenders that mentioned abortion and that had no sponsors as a consequence. It's another instance of the moral superiority fixation Mad Men has. We're all supposed to think how very far we have come. And yet the show is incredibly hypocritical on this front because it won't go there either. Abortion gets mentioned but they wouldn't dare have any character actually choose to have one because they'd lose audience in a big way and probably sponsors too if they did. (Update: I was vinidcated on this in season 4.)
Or do they recognize their own hypocrisy through Harry who goes home to his wife and can't bring himself to tell her what the Defenders episode was about?
The ending
Raymond Chandler famously said that a good mystery is one you would read even if the ending were missing. This episode would have been considerably improved if the ending had been left off. It's like someone pasted it on to try and disguise what the episode was really about.
Which is probably exactly what happened. No one really cares about Betty and they know it.
Odds and ends
Two characters evoke the fifties. Roger says he misses the fifties and then Harry's friend at CBS whom he calls tells him he misses the blacklist.
Season 2 blogging begins here.
The next episode blog will be here.
(Season one begins here if you are interested.)
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