See, I don’t think leaving Dr. Rape is even something that crosses Joan’s mind. Not only do I doubt that she sees anything particularly wrong with what he did to her, I’m thinking that she mostly buys into what everyone says about her fiance being quite a catch. It seems to me as though she simply doesn’t have the frame of reference available to conclude that her handsome, successful doctor of a fiance is actually a loathsome rapist bastard.
That seems, to me, to be where Joan differs from Peggy. Peggy has the ability to make unorthodox choices in her life that ultimately benefit her; Joan is stuck.
Of course it would be great if Joan kicked the asshole to the curb and got a Peggy-esque position in the TV department, because I love Joan. But I think she’s too old-fashioned to actually do that.
shy guy, I agree. Joan doesn’t see what he did as rape. But she was humiliated and she’ll make him pay, somehow. She may well end up marrying the rat bastard, but she won’t be the wife he thought he was getting. Did people talk about passive-aggressive behavior back then, or is that something new? I can see her subtly sabotaging the marriage, flirting with his friends, using his toothbrush to clean the toilet, etc.
I for one am grateful for this. I could see them starting a few months after the assassination, still dealing with some of the effects. But we don’t need a Very Special Episode about it.
Just asking for verification, e.g., if any of youse have HD. Are we sure that was Pete with the rifle? My first thought was Duck being the more likely suicidal one although Pete was the gun owner. We zipped back and forth but couldn’t tell at our resolution.
As for future timeline: Starting post-assasination, thru Beatles up to Gulf of Tonkin. The first period of major cultural shift of the era. Maybe they could do an ad for the '64 election with a kid plucking daisy petals and then an H-bomb goes off…
Nice! That didn’t occur to me until you just mentioned it, but I think that’s right on. Peggy realized that she had to “confess” to move on, but she also knows that there was no way she was going to tell weird stalkerish priest guy anything.
IIRC the final image we have of Peggy is her praying in bed, attempting to make her peace without going through a middleman.
Regarding the contract issue. I thought I remembered something and went back to the first season episode “Shoot,” in which Don was being courted by a larger advertising agency. At the end, when Don said he wanted to stay, Roger agreed to a salary of $45,000 and “no contract,” at Don’s request.
I don’t know. She kept making not-very-veiled references to getting an abortion, as if she was looking for an external okee-dokee to get one.
I think she took Don back because she won. The dynamic of the relationship has changed and she now knows her power. I don’t know if this will translate in to any kind of nascent feminism - I don’t think it will. But she’s no longer the junior partner in this marriage.
How will that manifest itself? I mean, Don has promised fidelity before and it never lasts. She is going to be pregnant, and then caring for a newborn. She doesn’t have a lot of options and it’s highly unlikely that she will kick him out once she has the baby. So, I don’t know about her power status changing in any real way. She won this round, but I don’t think she’s won the war. What are the chances that Don has really changed?
That’s a good point. Do people really ever change?
But even if Don hasn’t changed, Betty has. She’s likely to be more pragmatic about their relationship – her blinders are off. I want to say she might be more “adult”, not expecting a husband to live up to an ideal. But I hesitate to use that word, because there’s nothing “adult” about living with a cheater and there’s nothing idealistic about expecting a spouse to be faithful.
I think she’ll regret telling Don. It’s too late for her to get an abortion now. Then again I suppose she could tell Don she had a miscarriage. It just wouldn’t occur to him that she’d go out and terminate the pregnancy. If he came home to a tearful Betty he’d accept whatever she said at face value. Betty is not a good mother. Dealing with an infant and Don falling off the monogamy wagon is going to send her over the top. It’ll sure be fun to watch though.
Maybe Bar Guy isn’t the first affair she’s going to have. Maybe she’s changed her expectations for the marriage and is planning to do more than a little horseback riding to get her needs met. I agree that this is NOT a woman who should have 3 children. Or any.
Did I mention how devastated I am that this season is over? Waiting for the next one to start is going to be torture! I’m just going to keep trying to find ways to resuscitate this thread in the meantime sniff!
Not by today’s standards, but for that era, I think she’s doing fine. Generally, moms back then didn’t hover and fret and psychoanalyze like they do now. Except for the pearls and crinolines, Betty is in many ways like every mother I knew when I was growing up. She’s a bit distant, which might seem unconnected. There’s a connection, it’s just a different kind of connection.
In the immortal words of Stevie Nicks, “The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.” I think Don may, for a time (who knows how long?), treat Betty with more respect. But will he actually be a better husband? I don’t know. How dramatically interesting will a faithful Don Draper be? Also, will he ever come clean to Betty about the first Mrs. Draper and all that’s attached to that? Until he does, their marriage won’t be 100% real.
Now that she’s a cheater too, she might be less upset about the cheating. Hell, maybe she’ll do it more often too. Maybe they’ll become swingers. Who knows where they’ll go with it?
