*SPOILER ALERT*
Last night’s season finale gave us a lot to talk about. Don and Roger kissed and made up, Betty set her divorce into motion, and Sterling Cooper Draper Price was born.
“Shut the door. Have a seat.” And let’s discuss.
PhDork: Well, *that* was delicious. The start was a little slow, but it delivered. Yeah, yeah, it’s a little artful that the whole gang ends up back together, but the individual scenes–esp. the ones with Peggy–were so yummy. High stakes, tactical shifts, lights going on either slowly or in a flash, just a whole lot of fun.
PilgrimSoul: I can’t remember the last time a deus ex machina took the form of an M&A deal, but I guess I will take it. “Too artful,” indeed. If I didn’t have a pretty good idea that the season was in the can before the first episode aired I would’ve said they sensed fan frustration with what I started to think of as a “diaspora” approach to plotting.
PhDork: It was just a series of little explosions: SC and PPL are being sold, no, PPL isn’t, yes, PPL is, will Lane get on board?, will they get the clients?, will Peggy leave for Duck and Grey?, Double-Standard Don learns about Henry Francis, holy shit is he going to beat up Betty? can they get the info out of the office?, and looking ahead, what does that mean for Pete and Peggy and Roger and Joan? Gaaaah, I’m gonna die waiting for next season.
PilgrimSoul: This season had way too long of a fuse, though, and that perhaps contributed to my impression that this was all a little too neat of a way to wrap things up. And this goes for more than the “and now back to your regularly scheduled Scooby gang” plot. For example, Peggy’s conflict with Don was dispatched with relative swiftness. Man, if only I could wrap up career angst with a few suave words about how someone is an extension of me.
BeckySharper: I don’t think this episode will do much for Betty in terms of gaining viewers’ sympathy. It’s not like she’s divorcing Don to become an independent woman–she’s divorcing Don so that Henry Francis can step into his shoes and take care of her instead. The whole way that Creepy Henry’s teeing up her divorce for her is masterful and controlling on his part, which really bugs me but which seems to suit Betty just fine–once again, she doesn’t actually have to DO anything because a man will do it for her.
SarahMC: Of all things to rip Betty away from Don, it’s… Henry Francis? I can’t imagine a life with him will be Betty’s ticket to happiness or self-actualization. I worry that the Mad Men story is becoming too fractured.
PhDork: I’m okay with the divorce, but not the let’s go to the lawyer with Henry, and let’s go to Reno and leave the kids with Carla stuff.
I’ve GOT to think that Betty is going to ditch Henry next season, and that Don and Betty will continue to have some kind of relationship. If they’re circling the wagons with the SC insiders, they’re not going to cast off January Jones. But I’m not sure if Henry is going to be revealed as a creepasaurus rex (he seems so mild and almost a non-entity), or is Betty just going to wise up that he’s just Don + 15 years?
BeckySharper: I don’t get that relationship. They don’t seem to have much heat between them, they still haven’t slept together…what exactly is this relationship about? She gets another man to take care of her and he gets a beautiful woman he can place on a pedestal? And is she just going to be stuck in another, different, stultifying suburban home raising the same three kids with a new husband?
SarahMC: I started getting nervous when Roger inadvertently told Don about Henry. The confrontation that followed was frightening. How dare he call Betty a whore! And, of course, it’s the fed-up woman who’s at fault for “breaking up this family.” A man’s infidelities don’t break up a family, just a woman putting her foot down. Not that Betty’s leaving is that clear-cut, but the double-standard is infuriating.
PhDork: Don can suck it. His calling Betty a whore is, I think, one part classic misogyny (angry at a woman? malign her sexuality!), and about six parts self-loathing about his class and birth origins as compared to hers (and Henry Francis’s). “White nose,” “Main Line brat,” etc. And she doesn’t deny it. But he’s totally wrong about her (or almost). “Everything she ever wanted?” How about a spouse who won’t dip his wick at every opportunity and actually comes home during the week to do more than change his shirt? I think that Henry’s appeal is based on the promise of his presence and the fact that he sorta kinda listens to her. Yes, there’s entirely too much steering going on, and I don’t know that he’s going to follow through, but I’m reconsidering that he’s Don 2.0.
BeckySharper: I thought Betty did a pretty good job defending herself during that scene.
Now, on to Joan! The Queen Bee is back, and hopefully she’ll make enough money to leave Dr. Rapey (or take care of herself when he gets killed in ‘Nam). But where is my beloved Big Gay Sal? Sterling Cooper Draper Price is going to need an art director, right? If Don’s eating humble pie for everyone else, surely he can have a slice for Sal and rehire him?
PhDork: And Peggy! Her spine is amazing. God, I hope I could be half that calm and self-possessed when faced with the Don And Elizabeth Moss is so great–you can see the thinking and feeling, but not in a labored way, just that it’s happening right then. And the “no [fuck you]” to Roger was a perfect little stinger for that scene.
PilgrimSoul: It’s true that the individual scenes are good. The problem (and this goes with this season generally) is that they are too individual. There are things I superficially “like” about the show – Peggy, Joan, Don, Roger, even Pete. I like them because they are being skillfully drawn and acted. But as I think has been apparent from my other commentary, I really find this show has started to drink its own critical Kool-Aid and stopped being self-aware, and I hope it stops. I can do without the hit-you-over-the-head wood-fairy nymph Suzanne who dances around a maypole and might as well, as a friend of mine said, be handing out tea and oranges from China. I can do without bizarre ersatz Dallas motorcades in the form of lawnmowers. I can do without so much bizarre mood swings in the characters – Don spent this entire episode oscillating between Zen buddhism and tears.
Becky, I agree, what is it about Henry that she’s so pulled towards? It’s not really passion. Yes he can “take care” of her but so can the man she’s married to, so I don’t get it. Frankly it falls into the “too neat” category that PS was talking about. I just don’t feel like the show worked hard enough to make this(her divorcing Don FOR Henry etc)all that believable.
I had a slightly different perspective on Betty & Henry than it seems like everyone else did. I was at the same time horrified and incedibly sympathetic; when Henry busted out the “you don’t need his money” business I felt chilled to the bone – that is not a “will be revealed as a creepasaurus rex” that is an actual creepasaurus move right there. She gives up control – even as she thinks she’s taking control. It’s horribly sad. I suppose some viewers might think that makes her seem unsympathetic but to me it makes her all the more so.
Oh, I just posted more to that thread not knowing this was up already. Herewith, more wordy thoughts:
The sudden erasure of Suzanne is puzzling, and this is what I mean when I say I feel like the writers are leaving a lot of blanks. I don’t think, in her case, we have any textual reason to believe that Don viewed her as just another disposable fling. And yet that seems to be how the writers viewed her, which fits with Weiner’s contention that she is some kind of avatar for Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. But I’m not fond of making people go outside the show to make sense of it. (I HATE YOU LOST.). It’s sloppy storytelling, plain and simple.
As for Betty: I actually thought the “whore” scene was one of the better drawn ones of the episode. I mean frankly, in the limited context of this marriage, I find both of these people horrifically self-indulgent, but I ternd to enjoy when Betty shows spine because I find the show hard on Betty generally. This season she got to be Bad Parent without any internal textual comment whatsoever. I mean, they basically painted Don as the Norman Rockwell Daddy, holding Gene, crawling into bed with Sally. Betty leaves the kids behind for Reno, which doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, esp. with Don staying in the city. (It looked Upper West side-ish to me but was a studio-lot, right?)
What I mean re dialogue is that I find it rather direct at times. I loved Don and Peggy’s emotional opacity of the first two seasons. I thought it was refreshing to see two characters who played their cards so incredibly close to the chest. They rarely said exactly what they were thinking. But now, they do it all the time. “You’re an extension of me.”. Hamm and Moss sell this stuff, sure. But on the page, as dialogue, I find it clunky and showy. Sure there are zingers on this show, but when I think of sharp dialogue, I think of Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon. But this show doesn’t need sharp dialogue; its strength is emotional resonance, not quippy quotability. I will, for example, always admire the season two scene with Don and Peggy in the hospital, in which, in fact, very little was directly said.
As a final thing I think the writing is a bit bipolar as to Don. One second he’s being sensitive, the next he is being racist/misogynist Don. This worked better in oither seasons. TNC once said of that hospital scene that it showed that Don could connect to others’ humanity despite being racist/classist/sexist. (I can’t find the link.) And I think he’s right, and that’s the core of the show’s emotional appeal. But this season they actually seemed to want us to believe that Don is sentimental, sensitive at heart – Suzanne, her brother, the kids, the grass-rubbing incident – and I don’t know that they sold it properly.
@kim: oh I TOTALLY agree about that line. It was chilling. I think that Henry has been pretty up front with his controlling nature. I think thats what has ATTRACTED Betty, she seems to have some daddy issues. What Betty really needs is a therapist who’s a woman and a feminist but she’s probably SOL for the next decade or so.
Kim, I agree about that being foreshadowing. Esp. when she noted that she had three children and he was all “whatever.”
@bluebears: Yeah, I think Henry Francis is totally Mr. Daddy Issues for Betty. She just wants to be someone’s little girl–because life is HARD and she’s not used to, y’know, DOING THINGS for herself.
Kim is totally right, IMO, that Henry’s whole takeover of Betty’s life–arranging her divorce, taking her to Reno, telling her she doesn’t need money (i.e. power) of her own–is VERY controlling and extremely suspect.
Yeah I was totally thinking, “Uh, he has six weeks to go to Reno? Isn’t there an election in like a year?”
Jeez, I hadn’t even considered that Henry might be up to something nefarious.
I sort of have this bad feeling that the show is going to make Henry be some abusive monster and thus force betty to go back to Don for help and this will allow the show to further paint Don as a Great (yet troubled) Man.
Oh Weiner is so in love with Don it makes me ill. I mean, I like Don, but I like him because of how Jon Hamm plays him. As written, he’s an ass. Frank O’Hara and all.
Don is fascinating, both because of the writing and because of Jon Hamm’s portrayal of him–which is undoubtedly why the producers cast Hamm in the role.
Is Don sympathetic? Sometimes, but rarely. Who cares? If the protagonists are just as fucked up as the rest of us, that makes them a hell of a lot more interesting to watch. Matthew Weiner knows this, which is why the show is so good.
@Becky: its not that I think Don should be written as perfect or non-fucked up but what irritates me is that he is written (in my opinion) as a pretty straight ahead out for himself asshole but then its like the show can’t help itself and has to make it known that he’s a good guy deep down. Not that people can’t have bad and good qualities but Don’s good qualities always seem so tacked on to me. Not true to the character. In my personal opinion. If that makes sense.
I don’t think that Henry Francis is as evil as some of you are making him out to be. In his mind, his taking control is helping Betty and making sure that she’s not worried. And that’s what Betty seems to want. I think she is divorcing Don because she thinks DON was the problem. She thinks that now that she will be with someone who is not Don, everything will be fine. Henry and Betty are likely heading for disaster without throwing anything nefarious or abusive into the mix.
Gawd, I hope y’all are wrong about Henry Francis.
And while Jon Hamm is absurdly handsome and charismatic, I’m not terribly interested in Don anymore as a character. I’m pretty sure I’ve got his number and can predict his responses going forward. The only time he’s interesting is when he’s acting, not just REacting to others. And not just because the dialogue is less opaque. Especially because dudes like Don are phasing out as we move into the 60s, he’s becoming what I refer to as a “tent-pole” character; the normal-ish straight white dude who stands in the center of a circle of a bunch of characters, weirdos, and loose cannons. He’s the central figure, but we’re too busy looking around the perimeter of the tent, where the action is, to be interested in him.
And now I’m wondering, will S4 start in ’65? All the other seasons had a time leap between them. That’s a big shift, zeitgeist-wise.
@PhDork: I think they have to make a pretty big time shift. It’s almost necessary to keep the show fresh, and the temptation to roll out the revelations one by one is going to be irresistible for Weiner & Co.
Also, none of us are interested in watching Sterling Cooper Draper Price built itself from the ground up, or watching the characters adjust to their new realties. It’s going to be much more exciting to be thrust into their new reality in media res, as it were.
I think Betty’s relationship with Henry Francis is less about giving up one controlling dude for another equally shite controlling dude, and more about her negotiating this tension between getting taken care of (what she knows) and being independent (what she secretly/unconsciously wants). She cannot recognize that she wants independence, because it’s not a concept that she’s even aware of as a possibility for her existence. Like, it wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that I Like Girls, but in retrospect I realized that I Liked Girls before leaving my hometown–it’s just that Liking Girls wasn’t within the realm of possibilities until I got to college. I think Betty’s relationship with independence is similar–she wants independence, once she has enough consciousness raising done she’ll be able to look back at her relationship with Don as defined by a lack of–and desire for–her own autonomy. But she isn’t there yet.
Henry Francis isn’t living with her, he hasn’t cheated on her, he has only been attentive. He’s all the good parts of an early relationship, when everyone’s on their best behavior. He’s giving her freedom, because obviously she’s married to someone else and lives with him and has kids with him. So she’s not under his direct rule. But he offers her to specter of male authority and comfort and direction, without the suffocation that she got from her father and Don. Or, not yet anyway. It’s coming, I think. But I also think that breaking away from Don was something she tried to do once before, before another man was there to take his place. I think she’d be trying to leave him even if Henry wasn’t there to catch her. Henry’s just speeding up the process. And also will be an interesting, although surely hard to watch and painful, plot line next season.
[Betty] gets another man to take care of her and [Henry] gets a beautiful woman he can place on a pedestal?
Exactly. See, Betty wants independence, but she doesn’t want to pay the price.
@ciji: I’m not sure it’s not that she doesn’t want to pay the price, it’s that for some insane reason she thinks she isn’t capable of standing on her own. I can’t help but think of Grandpa Gene chatting with Sally: “Don’t ever let her tell you you can’t do anything. Your grandmother worked for …” and that’s where I can’t remember the line. Betty was raised in the forties/fifties but apparently never saw or understood the wartime spirit of everyone working to earn their keep and whathaveyou.
<i.Also, none of us are interested in watching Sterling Cooper Draper Price built itself from the ground up, or watching the characters adjust to their new realties. It’s going to be much more exciting to be thrust into their new reality in media res, as it were.
I am! I’d love to see the struggles of the start-up firm, and the tensions that are sure to arise in such close quarters. Not to mention a chance of seeing some people come into their own for real, Joan and Peggy most of all. They have a golden opportunity to create a space for themselves and I want to see them do it.
@BeckySharper
I know this is late, but I’m not sure how they can bring Sal back because SCDP took the Lucky Strike account with them and Sal was fired at the the behest of the Lucky Strike guy.