Though I think she's not a very good actress, I've never encounted someone whose limitations actually fit the part perfectly. I think her Betty Draper is remarkable and iconic. I just don't think she really has much to do with that.
and her X-Men appearance was my least favorite thing of an otherwise awesome movie.
Back to the episode - I liked it (caught up last night). I enjoy this whole generation gap theme. Don acting like a father to the girl, who two seasons ago you would think he would've hit on....
Don still made me nervous because at the very least, Harry has devolved into somebody completely recognizable (but totally out of touch when trying to flirt with the girls). But I am glad Don sees Sally in the younger crowd now. That said he seems to fall into the 'I don't like this' older crowd about the younger generation rather than the Heinz guy who just wants to get 'the kids' to buy into his product.
The little detail of Megan knowing some of the Stones catalog makes me think she and Sally could bond together over music but not really on a motherly level. And also the fact there is about a 14-15 year age difference between her and Don could make their marriage has some bumps because of the age gap. But then again, in that dinner with the Heinz guy and his wife they seem to represent more of the generation of couples who met in the workplace and continued in the workplace after marriage.
I really want to see Betty sweating out the summer of 1966 in Henry's Gothic mansion wearing a muumuu but I think the next episode is going to jump to fall.
I'm sorry...but was NO ONE ELSE disappointed that we didn't get to see Don and Megan on Fire Island. You just KNOW Princess Nubia of the Red Hanky from episode one was holding court all day long on the beach!
I feel like this episode was made just to kick modern crime procedurals/true crime fixations with violence against women, and the people who love them, in the balls. So much imagery and symbolism! Weiner and the writers cannot get enough of the Francis house eeriness. Mother Francis seems like the kind of person who completely memorized In Cold Blood. She's an interesting character but I hope the split of the pill with Sally is just a one time deal.
I feel the sequence for Don, and to me it was a dream the moment hours have past and Megan was nowhere to be found when she told him she'd be there in an hour, was about fighting his urges and past indiscretions. This was a man who pissed himself while fighting in Korea so I wonder what are his capabilities of violence that is not limited to his dark subconscious and rough foreplay.
Don projecting an angel image on Megan when he wakes up, much like his vision of Anna going into heaven last season, does show he has placed her on a pedestal and he does not want to screw this up. Let's face it, his single life was depressing, his marriage to Betty was full of infidelity, and he is now married to somebody who works where he works and knows his reputation (he did cheat on Dr. Miller with her) far too well to accept it. She wants him for herself. I think he has put a Madonna complex on Megan that may be ill-advised for their marriage in the long run but it makes him want to be a better man.
Joan for the win!!! Awesome! And I love the call back to the rape (ok that sounds weird). Can't wait for her to get back to the office and start kicking ass.
I took him strangling her as killing that part of his life. He is happy and really doesn't want to ruin this relationship but his past keeps sneaking up.
The minute I saw Sally take the pill I was like "10 years later they will trace her addiction back to that moment".
The last three episodes have been great! Each intense in different ways while structurally very different but with the underlying theme of violence. The scene where Don is chasing Megan shows just that he is his own worst enemy in this relationship and I get the feeling if this relationship cannot work, it is all on him. He is suffocating her with all his needs. He loves her but oh boy, it is not the most healthy kind of love.
And then there was Peggy at the movie theater and Roger on LSD. I am getting this feeling that won't be Roger's last trip.
But I will say the Michael-Peggy conversation and revelation about his past was one of the most poignant, beautifully shot scenes of the season.
I was unsure how I felt about this season. I was enjoying it, of course, but could certainly feel a slightly more obvious use of text (as opposed to subtext) that was jarring at first. But (as the bloggers Tom and Lorenzo noted in their brilliant recap...google them...they're fabulous), we're going from a time (the late 50's-early 60's) when nothing was said out loud to a time where EVERYTHING starts to be said. And I adored the Rashomon-esque storytelling last night. It was a thrill when it dawned on me that we were seeing the same time period told from three different points of view. And I concur, strummergirl, that the Michael/Peggy scene was beautiful and slightly upsetting (though not as upsetting as Peggy's handy-dandy!)
This episode ranks up there with The Suitcase as the series' best. Oh, the 60's are f*cking up SCDP and it's denizens...ain't they?
I'm curious to know how people took Michael's Martian speech- I read the Tom and Lorenzo recap before I was able to watch the show, and they took it to be a sort of schizophrenia. However, when I watched it, I saw it more as a comment on Michael's otherness as a Jewish person in the world of SCDP; even when he was first hired, the fact that Michael is Jewish seemed fairly prominent.
I do agree that last night's episode was truly fantastic. I adored the scene between Roger and Jane. It was really a beautiful, heartbreaking scene- and I loved the visual of Roger in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around his head, haha.
I took it that his true origin story is so grim and as unbelievable as him actually being a Martian. Not to mention that he's so displaced he feels like he doesn't come from anywhere. He was speaking metaphorically.
This was the first episode in years that felt anything like the magical first season. I liked all of it except Peggy in the movie theater. Even after all she has been through, and the pressures on her, the scene seemed like an unmotivated bit of sensationalism.
It may be rather baldly stated, but she is turning into Don...without the benefit of being a man or being as magnetically attractive as Don. It was a perfectly crystallized moment that harkens back to both Don's love of movies (and sneaking away in the middle of the day to see one) and his sexual appetite.
Peggy has been hearing it for seasons that she acts too much like a man in the office and she has reiterated those anxieties to Dawn when she was drunk. Her pitch was Don-like but her gender seemed to drag her down in the pitch with the Heinz client patronizing her. She is Don and frankly she wants some semblance of control that she cannot seem to really have at that point. She's more married to her job than actually being involved with Abe and since neither are going particularly well, I think she wanted to turn tables and assert real control- no matter how seedy that was at the movie theater. She cannot be taken seriously during ad pitches without Don in the room which speaks nothing about Peggy's creativity but more on her gender.
I think Michael just feels to be in an identity crisis. He's a like Don too. Let's look at the possibilities within the impossibilities of him being born in a Concentration Camp. Camps were split by gender and the only men at the women camps were guards and Michael knows his father is not his actual father. It probably has crossed his mind that his biological father could have been a Nazi and him being conceived may have not been with his mother's consent. That personal knowledge of family history, especially when discussions on the Holocaust were non-existent at that point, would make anybody uncomfortable, distant, and displaced with their identity. I am also not sure that Michael is going to be happy that Peggy told Abe. That was a revelation that he probably has said to maybe just a couple of people.
This episode is why Kiernan Shipka rocks and why she has been kept vis a vis a carousel of Bobby Drapers. She is Matthew Weiner's stand-in for the show.
Why does Glenn have to come back and be the one given the lurid details of a sex act that Sally sees? The kid will never be un-creepy to me.
I see Megan-Sally parallels in their parent issues. Mothers are touchy-feely with guys they like and act out like clockwork, both much more daddy's girl, and both wanting to be appreciated in adult worlds but immediately being desensitized and deglamorized to it. Megan was not that enthused of the Heinz pitch success and Sally's time at 'the ball' (although Roger and her had a good rapport but I had Mrs. Calvet's wandering eyes on high alert even before they 'disappeared').
During the final scene, was Ben in a parka and his underwear??? That was far more disturbing than anything else he's done to date.
Spectacular episode...especially the reveal fab Mod Sally. The show is becoming much more lurid...which I love. The Summer of Love is about to happen...but it didn't come from nowhere. The entire culture was moving towards it, and I love how the show is delineating it.
How much do I love Sally!? My heart breaks for her. Just when you think Rodger can be a nice guy for just one evening.. I now even have some sympathy for Meghan. Her parents are another horror show.
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joined:12/10/09
Posted: 4/4/12 at 12:00pm