Notes on Pop Culture: Mad at 'Mad Men,' Don Draper & Co. in Cartoons, 'The Big C' Finally Comes Clean

Mad at Mad Men

After allowing myself to stew about the Mad Men season four finale for a few days, I wrote this piece over on Mommy Tracked. The more I thought about the fourth season in its entirety, the more I became annoyed with how Betty Draper Frances was depicted as a distinctly unlikeable, unsympathetic character, as well as with Don’s choice of a substitute mate.

Other critics, including New York Magazine’s Emily Nussbaum, likewise weren't overjoyed with what has become of Betty ("While the ladies around her bloom, Betty hardens. Her character . . . gets even icier, vainer, more alien – nearly camp at times") and the New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante observed, in light of Don’s proposal to Megan, that the show exacted “vengeance on Faye for her lack of maternal instinct” and that Betty was portrayed negatively because of “her horrific one.”

The most interesting thing I discovered while researching my column: In season one, Don told Betty that she was a better mother than “anyone else in the world,” adding, “I would’ve given anything to have had a mother like you, beautiful and kind and filled with love, like an angel.”

Don Draper & Co., Cartoon Style

I’m still trying to figure out if this is some kind of a joke . . . but the internet is buzzing about these picture books that the UK's The Poke has created based on chain-smoking, expletive-spewing Mad Men characters.

The Poke has posted images of "Mr. Draper," "Little Miss Joan," "Mr. Campbell," "Little Miss Betty" and "Little Miss Peggy," and has posted the complete 17-page version of a book called “Mr. Sterling Gets Angry” in which there’s a debate over who drinks more whiskey, smokes more cigarettes and has more “inappropriate sex,” Roger Sterling or Don “I’m a goddamn sex machine in a suit” Draper.

I’d love to get these in print.

The Big C Finally Comes Clean

It finally happened, 10 episodes into The Big C’s freshman season on Showtime. Laura Linney’s Cathy Jamison character, who has spent most of the season not telling her husband and son that she has a serious, fatal case of melanoma -- and instead of getting treatment she had an affair, got her first bikini wax, bought a red sports car, took Ecstasy and punished her husband to the point where he finally asked for a divorce – finally told her husband, in the closing seconds of the episode, that she has cancer. NOW, things are going to get interesting. I reviewed this episode, “Divine Intervention” on CliqueClack TV.

Image credits: The Poke.

'Mad Men:' Public Relations (Season Premiere)

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Who is Don Draper? Someone who was almost unrecognizable during the season four premiere of Mad Men.

His confidence in everything appeared to have been shaken: Don screwed up an interview with a reporter from Advertising Age, that was meant to promote Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, by refusing to say much of anything at all. He appeared to be flailing around in the sleek, glass-walled confines of SCDP as the face of an underdog firm with money issues and no conference table. He hasn’t been eating, according to his housekeeper. He was being set up on dates by, of all people, Jane Sterling and even got shot down (as far as walking her up to her apartment) by her young friend in a cab at the end of their date. And, most shocking, Don has been hiring a woman to have sex with him and repeatedly slap him in the face, because, apparently, he’s been a very bad boy and deserves to be punished.

Don Draper is now into being dominated? (Don, the child of a prostitute who was nicknamed “the whore child,” wanted to be slapped around by a call girl? Freud would have a field day.)

It seems as though his postcard-perfect (on the outside) family, with wife, kids and the house in the ‘burbs, really was important to him after all – though he realized it too late – and he now knows, deep in his core, that his deceitful and duplicitous ways are responsible for that. No more trying to shift blame onto Betty. When the episode began, Don was still allowing Betty and Henry to live in the Ossining house for which he was paying the mortgage (so much for Henry saying he didn’t want Betty to owe Don anything) even though the divorce agreement says they were supposed to have moved out a month ago.

I literally was dumb-founded watching this version of Don Draper walk around, lonely and disconnected. He was almost like a foreign character who I didn’t recognize, save for Jon Hamm’s face. Even in the first three seasons of Mad Men, when Don had tremendous difficulty allowing people to capture a glimpse of his true feelings (Midge, Rachel, even, to some extent, Miss Farrell got to see them), he wasn’t THIS inaccessible, just going through the motions of life. Observing a depressed Don Draper was disorienting. It made everything, from SCDP to his dark apartment, feel unstable, different.

Was this dour episode – where the fit he threw over Jantzen’s two-piece bathing suit campaign that his clients rejected – the catalyst for Don to finally say, “Enough of the self-flagellation?” For him to evolve? The Wall Street Journal interview, where he promoted himself with vigor, seemed like a turning point.

Meanwhile, I loved – LOVED! – what a year has done to bolster Peggy’s confidence so much so that not only would she pull a caper like hiring two actresses to stage a faux fight (which evolved into a real one that necessitated bail) over ham so that they wouldn’t lose their account without consulting Don, but Peggy was willing to talk back to Don as good as she got. When Don was feeling extremely down, he tried, as he has in the past, to direct some of his ugly hurt onto Peggy, but this time, Peggy was having none of it. It was a glorious site to behold.

By the way . . . Joan in her own office, a vision.

As for Betty and Henry, all I can say is . . . ick. The two of them, together, have zero chemistry, and are extremely unsettling to watch, particularly under the attentive eyes of Henry’s calloused mother who later referred to Betty as a “silly woman” and chastised Henry for “living in that man’s dirt.” (“Silly,” maybe so, that sweet potato/pinching incident was embarrassing. But “dirt?” No.)

What did you think of the season premiere? Of sad Don? Of Betty and Henry?

Salon Takes on 'Mad Men's' Women: They Disappoint and Depress

Do the Mad Men women frequently get punished and and constantly let us down while the men behave badly yet skate away with their money, privilege and social standing in tact? That’s what Nelle Engoron asserted in her Salon piece, “Why ‘Mad Men’ is bad for women.” This one-time “champion” of Mad Men says she’s now jaded about its depiction of women:

“I’m increasingly disturbed by the striking difference in how men and women are portrayed . . . Even as it depicts rampant sexism, the show sides with the men. The men get off scot-free (if not scotch-free) while the women are subjected to repeated humiliation and misfortune, which is invariably attributed to their own flaws and poor choices.”

While saying that Don continues to be the “suave hero” of the show in spite his many bad acts, Betty, despite having insisted on divorcing Don, is considered a feminist disappointment:

“Being stuck in a life of mind-numbing domesticity is tragic only when the person is capable of — and desirous of — much more. But Betty seems less limited by her situation than by her intellect and character. We have no sense of what she’d do with her life if she hadn’t married, other than perhaps be a Holly Golightly party girl in Europe. Even when she finally leaves Don, it’s not to become independent but only to go to another man who wants to marry her and take care of her every little need.”

Even Peggy’s shyness – which I think she uses as a shield of self-protection as she tries to make it in a world ruled by men – takes a hit:

“While smart, creative and brave, Peggy isn’t allowed to be a full, rounded person and is instead portrayed as socially inept, humorless and utterly unable to connect with either men or women, remaining friendless and loveless. Her stiffness, introversion and social missteps are painful to watch, and her awkward attempts to be more ‘feminine’ fall flat.”

I don’t see things quite the same way. I believe that Don has indeed been penalized for his bad behavior. He lost something he coveted, though didn’t act as though he valued it because he’d never really had it growing up: His family, his educated and stunning trophy wife, their enviable beautiful home in the ‘burbs. He even sacrificed contact with his brother – for whose suicide Don feels responsible – in order to preserve his life with Betty and the kids. But since Betty said, "No mas," Don has been booted from the all-American suburbs, where Miss Farrell said all the dads looked the same, and back to the city to live the life of a bachelor again, a life which, according to the New York Times review of the season four premiere, isn’t all that fun, glamorous or satisfying.

Roger lost his daughter’s and his colleagues’ respect, plus they had to sell Sterling Cooper in order to pay for Roger’s divorce. A handful of Sterling Cooper's core staff – under the threat of having the firm sold to McCann – had to reconstitute itself in a new firm in a hotel suite, starting all over again largely because of the dominoes Roger and his affair (then marriage) with Jane set in motion.

Then there was writer Rachel Shukert who, in her piece ‘I Was Betty Draper,’ said she, a work-from-home writer who was frustrated with how her work was progressing, “empathized with” Betty on many levels, particularly when her own spouse was off working and earning the lion’s share of the household money:

“I understood the icy rage when she coldly offered her cheek to Don to kiss in the mornings. It wasn’t because of the lipstick on his collar or the empty bottle of rye – or at least, not just because. It was because he got to go off to be busy and brilliant and essential, while she got to stay at home, lining the drawers with stupid contact paper. The Drapers’ spats reminded me of the fights I had with my husband when I asked why he was at work until 2 in the morning, why it seemed he had to leave the country three weeks out of the month. ‘You don’t understand,’ he would answer angrily. ‘You don’t have to be financially responsible for another person.’ And I would shout back, more furious with myself than him: ‘God! Don’t you think I wish I was?’”

These characters certainly got under people’s skin.

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC.

Giving 'Mad Men's' Women the Last Word

The folks from PopSugar have put together a video collection of one-liners uttered by the women during the first three seasons of Mad Men, proving that Roger Sterling doesn't corner the market on snarky commentary.

One of the best lines came from Midge, "You know the rules, I don't make plans and I don't make breakfast."

Do you have any favorites that are missing from this video?

A commenter on BuzzSugar asked where Betty's "My people are Nordic" quote was. Also missing, Betty's "Only boring people are boring" and any of the terrible one-liners she has directed at her kids. Surely there must be some Trudy one-liners that should've made it too.

What's In Store for 'Mad Men's' Women in Season Four?

Leading up to the Mad Men series premiere on Sunday night and in preparation for my pop culture column about the fourth season of the drama, I gave some thought as to what I hope the fourth season will bring for Betty Draper, freshly divorced from Don and married to Henry Francis; Joan Holloway Harris, back as the office manager for the newly formed ad agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce; and Peggy Olson, who got her emotionally and praise-withholding boss, Don Draper, to grovel in the series three finale in order to lure her to his new firm.

While working on the column, I also read a dense, academically-oriented, yet fascinating book, Mad Men and Philosophy which examines issues such as whether Don’s a bad person and why the self-confident Joan is the least progressive of the three main female stars, as well as examining the overall ethical/moral framework of the show.

If you were on the Mad Men writing staff, what scenarios and stories would you cook up for the ladies of Mad Men?

Image credits: AMC.

Huzzah! It's 'Mad Men' Week!

*Warning: Mild spoilers about Mad Men season 4 ahead*



I haven’t had this much anticipation about a TV show since I sat down to watch the series finale of Lost – which, I still can’t discuss rationally because I remain pretty steamed about it. Mad Men commences its fourth season on Sunday at 10 and there’s all manner of media attention being paid to this critical darling of a drama with the small but influential viewership.

The New York Times had a big Mad Men spread in the Arts section yesterday in which we learned a few tidbits about the new season, like when it takes place and where our favorite characters are in their lives: “. . . [I]t’s a year later, and the executives of Sterling Cooper Draper [Pryce] go on cattle calls to woo clients. Contracts melt away. The business is precarious and copywriters stoop to publicity stunts to gin up business.”

Most interesting to me was this tidbit about Betty’s new, married life with Henry Francis, “Henry, who has grown children from a previous marriage, promises Betty a better life – though this one comes with a scornful mother-in-law.”

Mother-in-law? Betty didn’t have to deal with any in-laws when she was married to Don. Given that her own parents are deceased, this’ll be fascinating to watch, as will this shocking detail about Don, who, the New York Times says, “finds himself along in a dark Greenwich Village apartment, shining his own shoes and going out on blind dates.”

The blindingly handsome Don needs blind dates? Wow. Apparently Miss Farrell wasn’t interested in picking up where they left off.



Meanwhile Salon ran a provocative piece which took a meta-look at the show’s place at this particular point in time and why it resonates so powerfully with some viewers. Citing the recession and an “American dream” that currently seems “less attainable than ever,” Heather Havrilesky wrote that given the current economic crisis:

“Somehow Mad Men captures this ultra-mediated, postmodern moment, underscoring the disconnect between the American dream and reality by distilling our deep-seated frustrations as a nation into painfully palpable vignettes. Even as the former denizens of Sterling Cooper unearth a groundswell of discontent beneath the skin-deep promises of adulthood, they keep struggling to concoct chirpy advertising messages that provide a creepily fantastical backdrop to this modern tragedy. Don (Jon Hamm) sighs deeply and unlocks the door to his lonely apartment, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) whiles away her waking hours trading casual quips with co-workers, but happiness is still just a shiny kitchen floor or a sexy bikini or a cigarette away.

As the American dream is packaged for mass consumption, these isolated characters find themselves unnerved by its costs.”

What are your big hopes, storyline-wise, for season four?

JibJab Guys Jump on 'Mad Men' Bandwagon

Love the JibJab guys, the ones who make those snarky online videos featuring caricatures of real people. (My favorites are their political ones and the year-end wrap-ups.) Now they've leapt into the wonderful world of Mad Men, as we get ever-closer to the fourth season premiere later this month. (Sunday July 25 at 10 for those of you keeping tabs at home.)

You can either watch the Mad Men JibJab video as they've designed it:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

OR, you can personalize it but uploading your own photos so that you can re-envision what Don Draper, Betty Draper, Joan Holloway Harris and Roger Sterling's faces look like.

It really amazes me to see in how many different ways people take something like a single TV show and then add their own creative twist to it, like with the Mad Men Yourself images and the book I'm reading in advance of the new season, Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing is as it Seems. (A very scholarly read, though with many cool observations.)

Matt Weiner, 'Mad Men' Cast Talk About Show, the New Season, the 'Rules'

In a new video Mad Men creator/writer Matt Weiner, along with cast members, ponder the meaning and impact of the series, as well as its informal "rules" and what viewers can expect in the upcoming fourth season. But alas, no spoilers, no real info about the season -- like when it takes place for example -- other than Vincent Kartheiser, who plays Pete Campbell, joking that we'll see Don Draper au natural.

An interesting thing about this video was that after Weiner said Mad Men is about "human weakness and impulse," he made an analogy between the characters and criminals who wantonly flout the law and do whatever they want. In the end, however, he said, "Crime doesn't pay." (Former Sopranos writer is he.)
Also of interest, both Weiner and January Jones say that Betty Draper's a woman "who probably shouldn't have had children."

'Mad Men' Season 4 Promos Highlight 'Fresh Starts'

It’s never too early to start thinking about the fourth season of Mad Men, which kicks off on Sunday, July 25.

Though series guru Matthew Weiner has been reluctant to reveal anything about what the fourth season will bring – season three concluded in December 1963 with Don toting luggage to a new apartment, Betty on a plane with Henry and baby Gene to get a quickie Reno divorce from Don, the formation of the new ad agency (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) based in a hotel suite, and Sally and Bobby Draper chillin’ in their Ossining home with Carla – these promos that are floating around emphasize the “fresh start” angle.





Meanwhile the promo below highlights Betty’s supposed “fresh start” with Henry. But Betty's still got Don, the father of her three children, to deal with, so how “fresh” can all of these starts be with these folks toting around some significant baggage, literally and figuratively?

Has 2009 Been 'The Year of Women Fighting Back'?

The Daily Beast’s Rebecca Dana was able to shoehorn Betty Draper, Taylor Swift, Jenny Sanford and Tiger Woods’ wife Elin Nordegren into the same column, lauding them for not taking adverse events that befell them lying down. Dubbing 2009, “The Year of Women Not Taking Sh**,” Dana wrote that Woods’ wife taking a “golf club to his Escalade” was only one among many instances of women striking back.

On Jenny Sanford – wife of the South Carolina governor who famously traveled to Argentina to visit his “soul mate” lover – Dana said that in the wake of the sex scandal, Jenny Sanford “declined to pull a ‘Silda Spitzer’ and saddle up next to her over-tanned Republican spouse for his meandering mea culpa. Instead, she released a sternly worded statement and took off with her sons to a house in the country. She gave a strong, unapologetic interview to Vogue and looked lovely in the accompanying photo. Eventually she packed some boxes, called some friends, and moved the hell out.”

After being dumped by a JoBro and then enduring Kanye West storming up onto the stage to interrupt her acceptance speech at the VMAs, Dana wrote that singer Taylor Swift then landed an SNL hosting gig, enjoyed the mammoth success of her hit CD, won a trunk full of awards and is now dating the werewolf from Twilight.

A woman who didn’t do so well hosting SNL, January Jones, fared better when she inhabited the persona of Betty Draper on Mad Men and “finally left serial womanizing husband, Don.” But, as one person mentioned on Twitter, Betty did leave Don to run right into the arms of another guy.

Other women mentioned as kicking some butt this year:

Kate Gosselin whose estranged husband was openly messing around with the daughter of the plastic surgeon who did Kate's tummy tuck and subsequently told ABC that he "despised" Kate, Bristol Palin soldiering on as a single mom -- using her teen pregnancy as a cautionary tale while the dude who impregnated her is making an idiot of himself, and the wife of the Italian prime minister who wouldn’t put up with his philandering any longer and lashed out at him in public.

Is Dana right? WAS 2009 a good year for women standing up for themselves? Anyone else you could add to her list?

Image credit: Illustration by Dyna Moe/Nobody's Sweetheart.

'Mad Men' Monday: Shut the Door. Have a Seat.

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the season three finale of Mad Men.*

This was everything I expected and nothing I expected. I spent the hour saying, “Oh my God” and being pleased that while I could anticipate some of the plot turns, the way in which they were executed were creatively interesting and loaded with unexpected twists.

First of all . . . is Betty actually going to marry Henry Francis, a man she barely even knows?! Can this be possible? How can she trust him? How can she not worry that she could be being duped a second time because she doesn’t know Henry that well? To see Betty, baby Gene and Henry on that plane headed to Reno while Carla was home in Ossining with Sally and Bobby (for what, six weeks?) and Don was in Manhattan toting suitcases into a furnished apartment . . . was surprising and yet somehow not.

Clearly Betty felt irreparably humiliated by the discovery of Don’s Dick Whitman information, more so than she did when she learned he was screwing Bobbie Barrett and countless other nameless women, and, when coupled with the emotional iciness Don displayed after the Kennedy assassination, that solidified for Betty that she and Don were history. She decided her best option was to run away with a man who was willing to upend his entire life and accept three children, including a baby, into his life in order to be with her. Betty did all of this coolly and effectively. She was uncowed by Don and his typical attempts to wear her down pin the blame for the collapse of their marriage on her. (“Come on Betts, what are you doing seeing a lawyer?” he said, trying to tell Betty that maybe she was just upset about Kennedy and perhaps should see a psychiatrist. “I want to be civilized about this, please don’t act surprised,” she replied.) Man, it was as if Betty had tapped some of that ice water from Don’s veins and injected it into hers.

Their angry confrontation after Don learned that Betty and Henry had some kind of a romantic relationship, simply allowed Don to verbalize his deepest fears: That someone like him, a poor farm boy with his sordid conception and screwed up family, couldn’t ever get an affluent, educated woman from an established society family like the Hofstadts to love him and be his wife. (“You got everything you ever wanted! Everything! And you loved it! What, now I’m not good enough for some spoiled, mainline brat?”) To watch Don hypocritically call Betty a “whore” -- after his well known, epic philandering, plus given the fact that his mother was an actual prostitute -- was devastatingly sad.

When it was clear that the Draper family would be no more, Don watched as everything else around him crumbled, and he couldn’t help recalling dreary moments of his hellishly bleak childhood, including witnessing his father kicked in the head by a horse. (How poignant was it for Don to come home late one night to find Sally -- who hated and feared “Grandpa Gene’s” room but braved the scariness in order to sleep in her dad’s bed – and to snuggle beside her?) Don lost his wife. He broke his children’s hearts by moving out of the house permanently. (Money says Sally’s going to go haywire next season. Imagine her response if Don openly started dating Miss Farrell?) He lost his major account who called him a “prized pig” when he learned that Sterling Cooper was going to be no more after it, as well as PPL, was being bought by McCann.
 
And from this we saw the birth of a new Don, one who had to be humble again, like the boy from the farm. Don had to admit that in order to form a new ad agency – in that wonderfully espionage-like story about stealing all the clients away from PPL before they knew what hit them – that he had weaknesses that he couldn’t paper over. He wasn’t good with numbers. He wasn’t good with accounts. He couldn’t always see the ways of the future coming at him (the way Pete did). He didn’t value relationships. (“You’re not good at relationships because you don’t value them.”) In order to get the freedom he wanted – to not be part of McCann’s “sausage factory” – Don, ironically, needed people and relationships and humility. And he needed to be plain about it all.

So while Don lost Betty, he had to make amends and appease people, like with Roger Sterling. Don had to go, hat in hand, to Peggy’s apartment and apologize for acting like a Neanderthal toward her, admit that he took her for granted, beg her to come with him to his new company, and say he didn’t think she’d just follow him around like a “nervous poodle,” as she put it. (“I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you,” he said when Peggy asked if he’d never speak to her again if she turned him down.) He and Roger even set foot in Pete Campbell’s apartment – the domicile of the man who threatened to reveal Don’s secret identity to Bert Cooper as a bargaining ploy in order to secure a promotion – and plead with him to bring his portfolio of accounts to join them.

Joan – yay Joan! – was pulled out of the department store in order to prove how savvy and valuable she is. Trudy – hey, new partners at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, hire this lady – was a source of brightness and light as the new members of the just-born ad agency commenced work in cramped hotel quarters. It was a great scene, seeing the Sterling Cooper refuges – Roger, Bert, Don, Lane, Joan, Peggy, Pete and Harry Crane – in that hotel room, starting from scratch, a humble beginning, all together. Likewise, it was delicious to see not only Lane blithely allow the patronizing British snots of PPL to sack him (as he stabbed them in the back), but to see the rest of the folks not asked to join SCDP wonder if the Sterling Cooper offices had been robbed. When they figured out what was happening, the look on Paul Kinsey’s face when he realized Don had asked Peggy to join them and not him – once again, Paul was on the outside looking in – was priceless.

However, hands down, one of the best scenes was when the SCDP folks were pilfering company files and Roger said, “Peggy, can you get me some coffee?” Peggy -- who eloquently and fearlessly stood up to Don (who rightfully she said Don used her to kick whenever he failed and feeling badly about himself) earlier in the episode – quickly and flatly said, “No.” A new era was been born, for everyone, and now I’m unreasonably curious to find out how the new era of Mad Men will unfold next summer. (Bert Cooper jokingly threatening to lock Harry in the store room was a close second for comedic relief.)

What did you think of the Mad Men finale? Did it meet your expectations?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

Is This the End?

* Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men*

Upon seeing this pointed scene between Don and Betty Draper last night, what did you think? Is this the end of the Draper marriage? A speed-bump? Betty's revenge for feeling betrayed and hurt?

'Mad Men' Monday: The Grown-Ups

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*


The latest episode -- built around the assassination of President Kennedy and the destabilizing impact that violent act had on everyone in the Mad Men world -- was unexpected and outstanding.

I would’ve never imagined, for example, that the combination of losing the senior accounts post to Kenny-boy Cosgrove and watching the news coverage of the Kennedy assassination would've prompted Pete Campbell to retreat into his apartment with Trudy where they clung to one another, to opt not to attend Margaret Sterling’s wedding (a risky professional gamble) and to seriously consider Pete jumping ship to Grey with Duck Phillips.

Betty Draper became unmoored, especially after seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Don Draper -- who has appeared distinctly uncomfortable with outward, expressions of deep emotion and sadness -- responded by glibly telling Betty to take a pill and go to bed the night Kennedy died, and continued repeating the line, “Everything’s going to be all right,” as though it was a mantra that would fix everything. But it didn’t. Kennedy was still dead, as was Don's marriage and Betty's trust in him. But, ever the ad man, Don seemed as though he was trying too hard to push the "Everything's going to be all right" pitch, thinking that if he said it enough times, it would be so.

I absolutely did not see coming that witnessing Oswald’s murder on TV would send Betty running to Henry Francis, particularly after the doting behavior Don displayed toward her at the Sterling wedding. I was likewise stunned to watch as Henry proposed marriage to a cash box-hurling woman he doesn’t even know.


The more I thought about the varied reactions to the Kennedy assassination, the only parallel I could make that resonated with me personally was 9/11. On Sept. 11, 2001 and in its aftermath, not only was I, along with millions of other Americans, riveted to news coverage for upon days and days as we sat there feeling stunned and shocked, but there was the lingering fear that we were no longer safe (something Trudy mentioned when she said that if they could get to the president, they could get to anyone). There was an instinct to draw closer to the things and people who were important to you. Thanksgiving 2001 was particularly poignant for Americans as we remembered and cherished what was dearest to us.

Perhaps Mad Men mastermind Matt Weiner was trying to convey that same powerlessness and fear created by Kennedy's and Oswald's public deaths as he had his characters do things that they otherwise might not have done, like ask a veritable stranger to marry you, tell the spouse who’s been lying to you since the day you met that you no longer love him and feel nothing when he kisses you, call your former lover on the phone – your voice brimming with longing -- when your shallow young thing of a second wife is passed out drunk on the bed beside you, and blow off opportunities to advance your career at work when you determine that there’s no longer any future in it.

While darkness and gloom swirled around each character – in particular around a broken Don who sat alone in his shadowy bedroom after learning that the thing he always feared would happen if the truth about his identity came out, had actually came true: that someone like Betty would never love someone like him – there was a bit of lightness in the person of Margaret Sterling in all her bratty, self-centeredness. As the scenes switched from location to location depicting people’s reactions to news that the president had been killed, mostly with tears and astonishment, there was Margaret, in a heap of rich, blindingly white fabric crying, “It’s all ruined!” Mourning her wedding, not the president.
 
Mourning . . . doesn’t that seem like a common thread throughout “The Grown-Ups?” Don was mourning the death of love. Betty was mourning the president and the death of her marriage. Pete was mourning his once promising career at Sterling Cooper and the fact that people at work cared more about business than what had transpired in Texas. Roger seemed to be mourning the fact that he no longer had Joan as a confidante. Margaret was mourning the disintegration of her parents' marriage. And there were Sally and Bobby, their childhood innocence shattering, bit by bit, as they sat in front of the TV and learned that the president’s young children had lost their father.

What did you think of “The Grown-Ups?” By the way, was anyone else miffed that the preview for the season finale contained no new footage? I'm unwilling to accept that next week is the last new Mad Men episode until next summer.

UPDATE: Just saw someone mention on Twitter that there was a similarity between the Aqua-Net storyboard in Peggy's office (four people in a convertible) and Kennedy's limo. I didn't catch that.
Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' Creator and Stars Analyze 'The Gypsy and the Hobo'

Watching the AMC video below -- featuring interviews with Mad Men creator/writer Matt Weiner, and stars Jon Hamm and January Jones -- doesn't really answer fundamental questions about the impact of Don's admission of his life of lies to his wife and whether Betty's going to leave him or try to make it work. If anything, it spawns more questions:

'Mad Men' Monday: The Gypsy and the Hobo

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*


I don’t entirely trust Don Draper and how he reacted to being caught in his web of lies as his carefully crafted image was smashed to smithereens by his wife. When I watched “The Gypsy and the Hobo,” after a tough-as-nails Betty called Don on the carpet and refused to back down in the face of his attempts to bully her, I kept wondering if Don and Betty were trying to play one another and whether an actual emotional connection was being formed between them as a realignment and a leveling of marital power was unfolding in front of my eyes.

Why so cynical? Several reasons, chief among them was that Betty had no reason to raise the issue of Don’s serial deceptions with an attorney unless she was seriously considering divorce, particularly in the wake of Don asserting financial control over her, refusing to give her more money when she knew for a fact that stacks of cash were sitting in his desk. Betty doesn’t usually respond well to feeling like someone’s made a fool of her. At the end of season one, she told her therapist that she knew Don was cheating on her, but didn’t directly confront Don. The reason she tossed Don out of the house in season two was because Jimmy Barrett told her Don and Bobbie Barrett were sleeping together and Betty felt publicly humiliated, so much so that she vomited shortly after Jimmy told her. When Don tried to make her feel as though she was an idiot and fabricating a Don-Bobbie affair in her head, she booted him.

When Betty learned from the Hofstadt family attorney that if she sought a divorce she’d get nothing, could lose the kids and everything else to Don unless she could prove his infidelity, I got the distinct impression that Betty started mulling how she could accumulate evidence to hold over his head and use at her convenience. Now she’s confirmed that Don broke the law, stole someone’s identity, went to California during his marriage to Betty to stay with his ex-wife Anna, plus Betty knows about Bobbie and has a witness in Jimmy Barrett, who hates Don.


When Don was cornered and ‘fessed up about the tragic truth of his family background, Betty tentatively put her arm on his shoulders to indicate that she isn’t without compassion. But regardless of Don’s tears, I think Betty’s going to continue to compile a dossier of information about his misbehavior, just in case. Betty’s so miserable, so betrayed, so tired of Don’s lies that I could definitely see her trying to get Don’s money and attempt to keep her parents’ home for herself so she could start over, maybe with Henry Francis, someone who’d trust her with his heart and wouldn't erect walls of deception between them.

My husband, however, argued that Betty’s decision to accompany Don and the kids trick-or-treating is an indication that she’s going to find a way to make peace with all of this, now that the power dynamic between Don and Betty has now been leveled. Don has to take Betty seriously because she has information that could destroy him. I’m just not as certain of Betty’s desire to remain married to Don as my husband is. In season two, for example, I don’t think Betty would’ve let Don back in the house had she not been pregnant. If she learns about Suzanne Farrell, I think it’s curtains for the Drapers.

As for Don, when he was caught with his box of deceit, I kept wondering if he was simply executing a hastily-made, desperate pitch to try to convince Betty of his sincerity amid his tears and throw himself at her mercy. Think about the way in which he revealed his personal backstory and his emotions to Betty as compared to how he came clean with Rachel Menken in season one. The post-coital revelations to Rachel were genuine, from the heart. His emotions weren’t manufactured and had no ulterior motive other than in forging an emotional connection. He’s held Betty at arm’s length and hasn’t been honest with her because he didn’t have enough faith in her love to tell her the truth, whereas he trusted Rachel. With Betty, he had to be compelled to tell the truth, once she had the hard, cold evidence. Don wouldn’t have come clean willingly because he’s never really let Betty inside, as he admitted to Anna Draper last year, yet he’s been willing to allow at least two of his mistresses, including Suzanne Farrell, closer to him than his own wife.
 
While his tears were real, as were the regrets about his brother and the shame he feels about his conception and lineage, I don’t foresee Don suddenly feeling comfortable with being himself with Betty as he has with Rachel and Suzanne. He seems like he simply wants to preserve his hollow, stolen identity, no matter what.


Another reason why I’m suspicious about Don’s sincerity is because when Suzanne asked him if he’d called to tell her he couldn’t see her anymore, his response was, “Not right now. No.” Was he telling her that they had to cool things temporarily until Betty gets less wary, or was he really breaking it off?

However I must say that Don’s dramatic dropping and releasing of his clenched fist in which he held the keys to his desk drawer and all his secrets after Betty said she knew what was inside, the tears he shed over Adam, all made Don seem like a shattered soul. (Jon Hamm was fantastic.) The next morning, though, with his suit of armor back on, it was hard to tell if this event will really fundamentally transform the Draper marriage.

What do you think? Were Don and Betty were being sincere with one another and do they really wish to make their marriage work, or do you think one or both of them is playing games? Will this change anything?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

The Ambivalent Mother . . . on Your TV This Fall

Noticed a mini-trend in TV shows this fall featuring an ambivalent mother?


Desperate Housewives has Lynette Scavo, the married, full-time ad exec, mother of four, who is distinctly unenthusiastic about the fact that, in her mid-40s, she’s pregnant with twins. In fact, during her first ultrasound, she didn’t even want to look at the screen and later said that there was a voice in her head telling her not to do this.

On Private Practice, single psychiatrist Violet Turner -- a recent victim of a violent crime where a maniac former patient cut Violet’s unborn baby out of her belly and left Violet for dead – said she feels so emotionally dead inside that she doesn’t feel as though she can care for her baby Lucas. So she brought the baby to his father’s home, Violet’s co-worker Pete, and left him there. When Pete has brought Lucas to work in the hope of getting Violet to engage and bond with her infant, she simply couldn't because she sees the baby as a living, breathing reminder of the attack that has traumatized her.

On Mad Men, set in the 1960s, Betty Draper just gave birth to her third child and hates her life. Parenting is the last thing she wants to be doing, particularly when it comes to dealing with her young daughter who’s acting out in anger because she misses her grandfather who recently died and everyone seems to think she should be “over” it by now. Betty doesn't realize she's still mourning too, even though she named her baby after her father and has seemed like she's favoring her infant over her two other kids.

On ABC’s new comedy The Middle, Patricia Heaton’s Frankie Heck does her best to work and parent, but winds up, out of sheer exhaustion, tuning out a lot of what her kids say, including when her awkward teenaged daughter talks to her and she only half-listens. She also forgets things all the time and her kids face the consequences.


Maybe it’s not a trend, but I’m finding these characters to be a breath of fresh air, mothers who aren’t all phony rainbows and unicorns when it comes to parenthood. They provide a nice balance.

Image credit: Karen Neal/ABC.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Color of Blue

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

So now she knows. Someone named “Don Draper,” whom she knows as her husband, was once married to a woman named “Anna Draper,” for whom Don has the deed for her California home. She knows that Don has a secret shoebox tucked away in a locked drawer, next to piles of cash, and contains two sets of dog tags for Donald Draper and Richard Whitman, as well as photos with a younger Don being referred to as "Dick."

Betty knows Don’s hiding from her. More than about being unfaithful and rerturning to his sneaky ways again, not coming home, being distant, just like he did when he was sleeping with Bobbie Barrett, and the other women whose names Betty doesn’t know. The question is: What’s she gonna do about it?

Is Betty going to call him on his box of secrets and his lies, or does she hold all of this in reserve, as a weapon to be wielded at just the right moment? If Don had come home the day she found the box when she waited up, it seemed as though she was going to blast him with both barrels, as I, for one, was desperately hoping. But, when he didn’t come home, she put her trump card away. Why, I wondered.

If Betty was smart, she’d do her research, look into Anna Draper, the California deed, etc. to learn the truth. Then she’d have some power over Don, something he clearly has over her, though, I’m hoping, that that’s about to change. Think about how much power Mona Sterling had when Roger left her for Jane and everybody knew it? The specter of the Sterling divorce and Mona taking Roger to the cleaners is what prompted the sale of Sterling Cooper, after all.

Another observation:

“Nobody feels as good about what they do as you do,” Don said to Suzanne Farrell as they were lying in bed and she was talking about something funny that happened with an 8-year-old student in her class.
This got me wondering, is Don only attracted to women who have passion in their lives, people who love what they do? Midge had her art and her bohemian life outside of Don, plus other lovers. Rachel had her department store and her money. Bobbie had her work in the entertainment industry managing her famous comedian husband. Suzanne has her idealism and her teaching (although I suspect the moment she becomes needy -- like she did on the train -- Don will find that unattractive).

Betty hates her life and has no interests. She’s bored and unenthusiastic about everything, her passion extinguished. Does this repel Don? Think about their trip to Rome. Betty was thrilled to be there. She used her Italian and her cosmopolitan ways. She flirted. She felt sexy. She was desired. And this made Don want her. But the moment they got home, he realized she was “stuck” in what she saw as boring suburban hell, she rebuffed Don’s sexual advances and was distinctly unenthusiastic about his gift of a charm from Italy, by telling him she hated their home, their friends and their life. Soon thereafter, Don was running into Miss Farrell’s arms.

I’m not blaming Betty for Don’s infidelity, just trying to understand it. Where Betty clearly longs to be desired, doted upon and pursued (she told Sally that every kiss after the first one is a pale imitation), Don wants a happy, confident woman. They seem to be at a crossroads. Plus they're a bad match, one that I now believe cannot survive in the long term, not happily anyway, not without one of them – Betty – feeling miserable for the rest of her life.

What did you think of “The Color of Blue?” Think Betty will call Don on his lies? Use it to her advantage?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men's' Betty in Rome

When she's not hurling metal lock boxes filled with campaign donations for the New York governor's re-election at his top political aide for whom she has the hots, Mad Men's Betty Draper likes to spend time vacationing in Rome, donning mod attire, speaking Italian and flirting with the local men at an outdoor bar.

Dyna Moe of Nobody's Sweetheart created this fab illustration. See all of Dyna Moe's fabulous interpretations of Mad Men scenes here. I'm hoping that she offers a 2010 calendar as I was too tardy in ordering a 2009 calendar and missed the boat.

'Mad Men' Tuesday: Wee Small Hours

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*


“I want what I want when I want, when I want it. You don’t care what it does to the rest of us.” -- Betty Draper, about her baby waking up in the middle of the night crying in hunger, but it wasn't really about the baby.

"I want you. I don't care. Doesn't that mean anything to someone like you?" -- Don Draper, to a young woman he's about to bed after she warns that they could get caught.


I don’t understand Betty and Don Draper. No matter how hard I try.

I can understand Betty’s distaste for the dullness of suburban life, her intellectual boredom, her jealousy that Don gets to work in the city, mix it up creatively, dine in fine restaurants with “clients” and live an exciting life outside of the home. I can also understand that Don doesn’t seem to think he deserves a beautiful wife and an idyllic family who live in a beautiful home in the ‘burbs because of his background, and that thing with the stolen identity. A multi-millionaire who’d appeared on the cover of Time Magazine told Don that he was "indecently" lucky, so why didn’t he feel that way? And almost all the women on the show (except for Peggy Olson) seem to be trying to get what Betty has but she doesn’t seem to want it either.

However when it comes to Don and Betty’s romantic lives, I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that I don’t completely get them and am not sure I ever will. Don and Betty just shared a wonderfully sexy jaunt to Rome, proving that they’re still hot for one another, but the moment they entered their suburban home all of that just evaporated, like their home and their kids serve as one big, cold shower dampening their affections for one another. So they turn outward instead of inward in an attempt to satiate their deep unhappiness, instead of working together.

Betty, who seems like she’s just waiting for the feminist revolution to start, wants to feel desired and senses that Don’s distracted (or doesn’t like being Don’s housewife, a possession) and looks elsewhere for affection. In Mad Men’s second season, Betty looked to the young, handsome equestrian to dote on her, to desire her, but the moment he tried to forge a real romantic connection and kiss her, she cut him off and directed his affections toward her married friend. At the end of that season, before allowing her unfaithful husband to return to the home, Betty evened the infidelity score with a fling with a stranger in a bar. This season, it’s been Henry Francis, the powerful aide to the governor who has made it plain he wants a relationship with her, which she seems to be seeking (by writing him letters, going to his office to chuck a heavy box at him) and then rebuffs Henry’s attempt.


“I don’t know what you want,” Henry said to her. What does Betty want? Does Betty even know? Is it all just about the satisfaction of the chase and when the chase is over any potential relationship is kaput, like when Betty told Sally that every kiss beyond the first is but a mere shadow by comparison?

Speaking of loving the chase, there’s her husband Don, who has this beautiful Grace Kelly wife and, after she threw him out last year, seemed to be on the good husband/good daddy road to redemption. Don has not acted on his sexual impulses since the near-fling with the flight attendant in the season premiere (though he did run away like an angry teen when Betty asked him why he didn’t sign the Sterling Cooper contract). Then he fell off the faithful husband bandwagon during this “Wee Small Hours” episode where he consummated his simmering desire to have the idealistic, young elementary school teacher whom he asked whether she’s “dumb or pure.”


What’s curious is his selection of conquests. In season one, with Don’s affair with Bohemian artist Midge there was little chance of Don getting caught or Midge running into Betty or anyone Don knew. But as his time has gone on, Don has selected women who are more likely to meet and have run-ins with Betty. Bobbie Barrett was a client’s wife and a person with whom Betty would run into at events. Miss Farrell, Sally’s former teacher who said she sees Betty at the market and lives close by, is even one degree closer. Is he trying to get caught and be punished like the bad boy he thinks he is, deep down inside?

Other storylines:

-- Poor Sal. He was acting in all manner of social correctness with the drunk and aggressive Lee Garner Jr. If Lucky Strikes Lee had made a move on Don which Don rebuffed, do you think Don would’ve been fired as easily as they disposed of Sal? As I watched Sal photocopy his work, I wondered/hoped he and the other “misfits,” Sal and Peggy, would jump ship to join Duck.

-- By golly, is Connie Hilton a nut? The moon stuff, the telling Don he’s like a son and an “angel” and then reprimanding Don for not actually pitching a Hilton on the moon, that whole exchange was baffling. “You did not give me what I wanted. I’m deeply disappointed Don,” Connie said after Don presented a smart Hilton campaign. “. . . [W]hat do you want from me love? . . . When I say I want the moon, I expect the moon.” (Betty could just as easily have said those words to him.) All the moon talk made me think of It’s a Wonderful Life’s George Bailey promising to give Mary Hatch the moon. Anyone else get the feeling that this odd relationship between Connie and Don will end badly?

What’re your thoughts on what Don and Betty really want? On Sal’s termination from Sterling Cooper? Connie’s Hilton on the moon?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

‘Mad Men’ Monday: Souvenir

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men*

Whenever I tell people that -- regardless of what they’ve heard about lead character Don Draper -- Mad Men is at its best when it’s about the women, this latest episode will make a great addition to my list of examples, right behind the episode where Betty was shooting the neighbor’s pigeons with a BB gun.

It’s crystal clear that Mad Men is going to go down the Betty Friedan/Feminist Mystique road. Betty Draper not only shares a first name with the author, but definitely suffers from the malaise and disappointment of feeling trapped in the staid life of a housewife, after having received a college education and having led an exciting single life. Everyone told women of her time that what Betty has is what all women should aspire to – a beautiful house in a leafy suburb, money, a successful (handsome) husband, healthy children, household help, nice clothes.

Joan told Peggy in the first episode that if she was lucky, she’d find a husband at Sterling Cooper (like Jane eventually did with Joan’s former lover) and become a housewife. Joan, who wielded authority in a high-powered New York City advertising agency as the office manager (though her ambition was frequently thwarted because of her gender), wanted a life like Betty’s. She found herself a handsome man, a doctor, and became engaged and married him, even after he date raped her when she was at work. Joan planned on “being happy” as an affluent housewife, only her husband’s failure to become a surgeon pushed her back into the workforce where she’s now a manager in a department store and looking quite despondent about it.

However Betty hates her lot in life. She wants to live like Joan again, live in the city, have excitement, have a purpose. Betty seemed thrilled with her work with the Junior League, as it gave her a reason to get out of the house, put on her best clothes, flirt with a man (even receive a kiss from him) in order to get him to do her bidding.

To fly to Rome with Don, to deftly utilize her Italian, to flirt with some men who tried to pick her up and then seduce Don, only amplified Betty’s hatred for her lot in life back in Ossining, a life that’s now about taking the kids to the pool and redecorating the living room. When she returned home, it seemed as though the spell that had been cast in Italy had been broken. And she didn’t like it.

Consider the lead paragraph from The Feminist Mystique and tell me this isn’t where Betty’s headed:

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question – 'Is this all?'”

Betty feeling desired by Henry Francis, by the Italian men, feeling powerful and being able to laugh while men called Don “old” and “ugly” in Italian (given that Don’s such a babe magnet, I’m sure Betty found that highly amusing that Betty was the object of affection) these are things Betty craves, itches that aren’t being scratched, at least not enough for her tastes.

In other stories, the parallels between Henry Francis and Pete Campbell were stark. Both men helped a damsel in distress whom they found attractive and needy and whom they wanted to bed. They both expected something in return for their help, however one was somewhat restrained and let his payment be a kiss, while the other one was a boorish man-child who forced himself on a young, powerless woman who didn’t feel as though she could rebuff him.

While his wife Trudy was out of town, Pete acted like a child, eating cereal in front of the TV while watching cartoons, staying up all night. And he, once and for all, cemented his place in the world of Mad Men as a cad after he pressured a timid au pair – who was frightened he’d rat her out to her bosses for wearing the woman’s dress and staining it – into having sex. You just know that the Peggy thing isn’t over and is going to come back to haunt him.

I loved this episode, for the sexiness of Don and Betty’s Italian sojourn and her Junior League foray into local politics, to the forlorn look on Joan’s face after she saw that Pete found her working in a department store.

What did you think of “Souvenir?”

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.