Last night's Mad Men...
Sep. 20th, 2010 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalSpoilers under the cut, so if you haven't seen it... what the heck are you waiting for?
We haven't had an episode that was all about the women in a while, and alas, it's 1965, so it's kinda depressing. I think this is the most overtly we've had feminism being discussed thus far, am I right? (It actually felt a little stilted when Peggy was giving her speech about the things women can't do, like it was a speech she'd rehearsed - or that someone put in her mouth - rather than something she blurted out in the middle of a conversation/argument.) I admit, I rolled my eyes a lot at the douchebag reporter completely blowing it with Peggy twice - and, having screwed up by being obnoxiously opinionated, thinking the solution is to be MORE obnoxiously opinionated, lol. He may have prompted her to think about race a bit, but he sure as hell isn't getting a date with her. :) Despite her poor matchmaking skills, I also am enjoying Peggy's lesbian friend Joyce, if only because she teases chauvinist Stan mercilessly. :)
Oh, man. Sally is by far the most sympathetic character on this show, and she was totally breaking my heart last night. How awful it must be, living with Betty, to be so unhappy and so desperate as to get on the train all by herself, with no money, trying to escape to Don. And when she said she wished she could live there all the time, and offered to babysit her brothers in exchange. Oh, the poor little thing. But of course, she gets there and Don doesn't know what to do with her. This episode is a really interesting view of Don's parenting, because on the one hand, he's not much better at it than Betty - more than once, we've seen him hand off the kids to a babysitter (in this episode Faye), and he doesn't know what to do when he's around them. Even before the divorce, children never really fit into his life. But I also think it shows - as other moments have shown, though few and far between - that he could be good at it, if he'd let himself. I think really he's just afraid to try.
Not that it makes much difference, because there's no way Betty would ever let him have custody - much as she clearly hates Sally and sees all the children as a burden, she'd never suffer the horrible embarrassment of them living with Don, and she'd never allow him to "win" in that respect (though I'm not sure he'd see it as winning). And so Sally, so grown up in demanding pizza and making french toast (with rum! lol) and bargaining with Don over the day's activities, suddenly becomes the child she still is and throws a monster of a temper tantrum. How sad that the only person who shows her affection is some random secretary - and oh, break my heart a little more when she says everything's going to be all right, and Sally responds sadly, "No, it's not." I did love that Don had the back-up of all the women when he finally handed Sally over to Betty, who could not have been colder to either of them.
I felt bad for Faye, since I'm not good with kids, either. I certainly don't think Don was deliberately testing her - I think he was just at a loss and needed all the help he could get - but it's also the simple truth of dating a single parent. At some point, if you want the relationship to go anywhere, you have to get along with the kids. I can see how that felt like a momentous event for them, and from her perspective, she did everything wrong.
And Joan. Oh, poor Joanie. I always find myself wanting so much more for her. I miss the days when she pwned everyone with her awesomeness. I want her to have the husband and the life she deserves. I don't want her ending up like poor, dead Miss Blankenship. But at this point, I'm not sure that what she wants, what would make her happy, is even still possible, with the world changing so quickly around her. As the comparisons in this episode and many others have shown, Joan's way is the past and Peggy's is the future.
On the subject of Miss Blankenship, may she rest in peace, I loved Cooper's line - it was very poetically Bert Cooperesque - but I have to quote Alan Sepinwall here, who said it better than me: "She was an astronaut." But there were no actual female astronauts in 1965 America, and a life of answering phones and following the orders of men like Bert and Don was the highest job Ida could aspire to. It's uplifting and depressing all at the same time. Oh, Mad Men.
We haven't had an episode that was all about the women in a while, and alas, it's 1965, so it's kinda depressing. I think this is the most overtly we've had feminism being discussed thus far, am I right? (It actually felt a little stilted when Peggy was giving her speech about the things women can't do, like it was a speech she'd rehearsed - or that someone put in her mouth - rather than something she blurted out in the middle of a conversation/argument.) I admit, I rolled my eyes a lot at the douchebag reporter completely blowing it with Peggy twice - and, having screwed up by being obnoxiously opinionated, thinking the solution is to be MORE obnoxiously opinionated, lol. He may have prompted her to think about race a bit, but he sure as hell isn't getting a date with her. :) Despite her poor matchmaking skills, I also am enjoying Peggy's lesbian friend Joyce, if only because she teases chauvinist Stan mercilessly. :)
Oh, man. Sally is by far the most sympathetic character on this show, and she was totally breaking my heart last night. How awful it must be, living with Betty, to be so unhappy and so desperate as to get on the train all by herself, with no money, trying to escape to Don. And when she said she wished she could live there all the time, and offered to babysit her brothers in exchange. Oh, the poor little thing. But of course, she gets there and Don doesn't know what to do with her. This episode is a really interesting view of Don's parenting, because on the one hand, he's not much better at it than Betty - more than once, we've seen him hand off the kids to a babysitter (in this episode Faye), and he doesn't know what to do when he's around them. Even before the divorce, children never really fit into his life. But I also think it shows - as other moments have shown, though few and far between - that he could be good at it, if he'd let himself. I think really he's just afraid to try.
Not that it makes much difference, because there's no way Betty would ever let him have custody - much as she clearly hates Sally and sees all the children as a burden, she'd never suffer the horrible embarrassment of them living with Don, and she'd never allow him to "win" in that respect (though I'm not sure he'd see it as winning). And so Sally, so grown up in demanding pizza and making french toast (with rum! lol) and bargaining with Don over the day's activities, suddenly becomes the child she still is and throws a monster of a temper tantrum. How sad that the only person who shows her affection is some random secretary - and oh, break my heart a little more when she says everything's going to be all right, and Sally responds sadly, "No, it's not." I did love that Don had the back-up of all the women when he finally handed Sally over to Betty, who could not have been colder to either of them.
I felt bad for Faye, since I'm not good with kids, either. I certainly don't think Don was deliberately testing her - I think he was just at a loss and needed all the help he could get - but it's also the simple truth of dating a single parent. At some point, if you want the relationship to go anywhere, you have to get along with the kids. I can see how that felt like a momentous event for them, and from her perspective, she did everything wrong.
And Joan. Oh, poor Joanie. I always find myself wanting so much more for her. I miss the days when she pwned everyone with her awesomeness. I want her to have the husband and the life she deserves. I don't want her ending up like poor, dead Miss Blankenship. But at this point, I'm not sure that what she wants, what would make her happy, is even still possible, with the world changing so quickly around her. As the comparisons in this episode and many others have shown, Joan's way is the past and Peggy's is the future.
On the subject of Miss Blankenship, may she rest in peace, I loved Cooper's line - it was very poetically Bert Cooperesque - but I have to quote Alan Sepinwall here, who said it better than me: "She was an astronaut." But there were no actual female astronauts in 1965 America, and a life of answering phones and following the orders of men like Bert and Don was the highest job Ida could aspire to. It's uplifting and depressing all at the same time. Oh, Mad Men.
