Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Where Have You Gone, Dick Whitman?
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 08.22.2007
That night, I guess? Don and Betty enter the darkened house, each holding a sleeping kid; they've been having a little family Mother's Day celebration, if the balloons attached to the kids are any indication. They head up the stairs and disappear into one of the bedrooms, with a red balloon lagging behind for a few seconds. It would be cool if that signaled a smash cut to the streets of Paris, but somehow I can't really see where the story would go from there. The door closes...
...and then later Don, in those really sweet blue striped pajamas he has, is reading The Best Of Everything. Heh. Betty comes to bed as Don comments that the book is fascinating, and Betty snarks that it's better than the Hollywood version. "Joan Crawford is not what she was." And this way before Mommie Dearest. Betty goes on that Crawford's eyebrows are completely unnerving, "like a couple of caterpillars just pasted there." I hate to make fun of crazy dead actresses, but Betty's not exactly wrong here. Don, however, says that men like Joan Crawford. "Salvatore couldn't stop talking about her." Ha! I originally thought they weren't going to push Salvatore's swishiness any further than they already have, but now I see he's heading for Far From Heaven territory. Maybe he'll get lucky and bag Dennis Quaid. Don and Betty lie in each other's arms as Betty remarks, basically, that when she gets old and her physical beauty diminishes, she just wants to disappear. Don, I don't know if they had this term in 1960, so I'm going to tell you that what she just said qualifies as a RED FLAG. Seriously, though, this show is so great at letting us see beneath the veneer of marital happiness to the ugliness and paralyzing fear below while not letting the characters in on the secret. In an age when therapy was still taboo, it's not surprising that people played their roles while escaping into rampant adultery and alcoholism. And pursuant to that, the conceit that people's desire to be told that they're okay is at the root of successful advertising is both neat and brilliant; I think it still applies today despite society's changes, which makes the show a lot more relevant than just a simple period piece. I could go on and on, and probably will, but I'm at like, minute three here and I do have a deadline.
Anyway, Don jokes that at the first sign of crow's feet, he'll put Betty on an ice floe. I understand that's what Eskimos do as well. Betty reminisces about how her mother kept her looks even into her older years, but tellingly, she says she was "vivacious and positively cheerful" right up until the end, emphasizing the tie in her mind between beauty and happiness. Don wonders why Betty's dwelling on her mother, and Betty tells him that her shrink suggested a book that said it's healthy, and "part of the mourning process." She says she thinks the therapy is helping, but Don rather condescendingly opines that mourning is "just extended self-pity." He goes on that pygmies grind up their ancestors and consume the powder in a beer, which I guess means that I'll be drinking wine tonight. After some derisive comments about pygmy culture (fueled by the Intro to Anthopology course Betty apparently took in college) Don starts nuzzling Betty's neck; some flirtation about "Advanced Reproduction" gives way to Betty teasing that he failed the course because he got "caught cheating." A mistake he seems to be taking care not to repeat. At Betty's request, Don turns out the light; he starts to go for it, but Betty seriously tells him that she wants him all the time; it's all she thinks about, every day. She heartbreakingly goes on that everything she does in her daily routine is just like walking in a fog, because she can't stop thinking about him and when he's going to come home. Whether this is a conscious attempt to draw him closer (and rein in his vaguely suspected infidelities) is unclear and probably irrelevant -- it still signals the crumbling of one of the walls around her. Her voice breaks as she says she wants him so bad, and he takes her non-physical meaning as he tells her she has him. "You do." I know words are at a premium in your line of work, Don, so I'll hold my comments to this: Dubious. They get going as we fade out.