Sally’s acting out cause Grandpa’s dead. I hope we get to see how Peggy’s getting along with her roomate even though this probally isn’t a Peggycentic episode. What ever happened to Olive? Will we get new insites into Betty, or more confirmation that she’s shouldn’t be trusted watching a dog? They had a dog in season 1; it attacked their neighbor’s birds so she shot them.
So 2 big questions; who’s the black man in Betty’s dream and does Duck have real jobs to offer Peggy & Pete or is it a trick? It sucks that Peggy is being underpaid, but she’s a woman and it’s 1963. She is not going to get equal pay by asking politly. The only way she will is to make them afraid, very afraid of her defecting to another company and taking clients with her.
Were the childbirth scenes accurate? I’d need to ask my mother, but I know fathers weren’t allowed anywhere near the delivery room (not even if they were doctors too). It doesn’t surprise me that women (like all patients really) were expected to lay back and do obery whatever the doctor or nurse said and not cause a fuss. “Don’t bother, she can’t hear you” when she’s clearly awake and speaking? :eek: Nice beside manner. I like how they showed how stressfull and terrifying being stuck in the waiting room without knowing anything must have been. Usually it get’s played for comic effect. That one nurse was Yeardly Smith right?
The man in Betty’s dream is Medgar Evers.
The question I have is…what was up with the look that the prison guard gave Don in the hallway?
Obviously, there’s more to come between Don and Sally’s teacher.
I think that look was that she didn’t have a baby in her arms- so something must have happened to it. At least I think that they both looked very sad and I did not see a kid :(.
Good episode- I am really starting to loathe Betty, although I did feel sorry for her. It’s bad enough when you don’t really want a baby and have no choice, but to have to go through that would be a very bitter pill to swallow.
It seems like Peggy’s real problem is that Don, who is kind of a mentor, is just not into work anymore and I can see her being really concerned that the only person there that seems to know her worth (as much as he can in that time, I guess) is really just barely there lately. I also think she was waiting for “hey, you were right about that Patio thing!”, so good timing on Duck’s part.
Damn it! You’re probally right. :smack: I was kinda thinking maybe Betty’s mother had an affair with a black man. Pete doesn’t strike me as a racist; he just had zero interaction with black people who weren’t in some kind of service. In one of the comentaries for season 2 Weiner points out that Pete even more so than Betty was raised by a black woman (he’d have gotten an actual nanny though, not a housekeeper/Jill-of-all-trades). He and Don were the only one who seemed uncomfortable during Roger’s blackface routine. I don’t think he even really understands the concept of racism. He couldn’t concieve why Admiral wouldn’t want
“black money”.
P.S. My new favorite line “You’re a house cat; you’re very important, but have little to do”.
The more and more this season goes on, it seems like all of the characters can be summed up as being either desperate or just about ready for death’s sweet embrace. Or both.
Except Roger. He’s still on his post-divorce high.
Were they leaving with a baby? I didn’t see a baby – just mom in the wheelchair.
Yeah, they telegraphed that, didn’t they?
alphaboi867, I can only speak for myself but the labor room scenes reflected my experience. Nurses and doctors bustling around a cold, barren room, not sharing any information that a laboring, drugged up mom could understand, acting like giving birth is routine (which it is, except to mom and dad of course), resulting in some distance from the experience. I had my first in 1964 and my fourth in 1970, and things didn’t change much in that time. Sometimes I think that this was good – pregnancy, labor and delivery weren’t supposed to be stressful and they weren’t, as long as there were no problems. Women (and men) are more involved now, more knowledgeable, but I think they’re more stressed out about it too.
The Admiral thing was interesting, with the company unwilling to pursue business from black customers. And I was thinking about the trip to visit London Fog, whose problem was that most people already had raincoats. So that touches on the idea of planned obsolescence and how you convince people to replace a product that’s working fine.
And that meeting with Lane about the expense report does not bode well for Sterling Cooper. Things must be going really badly at the parent company for them to be so petty.
As an Objectivist, I hope Bert Cooper is appalled that Admiral would go against their own best financial interest because of irrational bigotry. The money black people spend is as green as the money white people spend. I wish Pete had made that point, though he did his best.
Betty’s birth scene was troubling. So different from what birth is like now. I don’t care if a natural child birth is more painful, at least everyone is a participant in the process, instead of both parents being blotto for the whole thing. There was one funny moment in that whole story line, when Betty said, "We’ll name him Eugene, "and Don responded, “We don’t have to decide that now.”
How tense was that moment in the restaurant with Duck, Peggy, and Pete, when Duck comes out with, “It’s obvious that you two have a secret relationship.” Peggy and Pete were like :eek: what? I hope Peggy does get the recognition she deserves. Don is a big disappointment to her there days, and no one is really embracing her at Sterling Cooper-- they didn’t even think to ask her to pay into the gift for Don’s baby.
I don’t know. I think if I were giving birth, I’d want to be blotto for the whole thing.
Definitely no kid. I think the Draper baby died, and in the confusion of shift changes, the jailer’s baby ended up being mistaken for theirs. Remember the Drapers thought they were getting a girl, and the jailer was told they had a boy.
Nah, no mix-up. The Drapers had no reason to think they were having a girl, except that’s what Betty wanted. I don’t know when ultrasounds became common, but they weren’t around in 1963. You knew what you were having when you had it, not before.
Remember, too, the jailer’s baby was a breech birth, and he gave the hospital permission to do whatever they needed to do, so that’s not a hopeful thing.
But why would Nurse Lisa come in and tell the jailer that the baby boy was fine? Just to not cause a scene in public? Plus the daughter thought it was going to be a girl as well (though I suppose that it could be from the mother vocally speculating that it would be a girl).
On top of Betty’s present depression, I hope they don’t give her post-partum depression, too, or that baby’s a goner. I don’t like that her housekeeper all of a sudden has to go visit her family, leaving Betty to ‘handle it’ on her own - her friend says she knows a girl and Betty pooh-poohed it (probably doesn’t want ‘a girl’ in the house around Don!)…And WTF is with that schoolteacher apparently coming on to Don? I know he’s Don Draper, duh, and he’s a chick magnet, but still! I would think 40-50 years ago a schoolteacher was held to a high standard of conduct and an example to her students. Screwing around with a student’s parent - wouldn’t that kind of thing get her ass fired?
Duck is back. I knew he’d make an appearance and that ups my interest.
Betty and Don’s baby–now that storyline is kind of scary. Betty’s not much of a mother as it is. I gather she’s not still seeing the shrink.
But this episode was kind of boring. Too much of the hospital/childbirth thing. Betty’s dream should have been kind of interesting but, to me, it wasn’t. I like the office intrigues.
But they told him, “You have a boy.” They took him to the nursery. Breech birth was probably a C-section, which was a much bigger deal in 1963, I think.
Speculation was all anybody had in 1963. There was no way to know for sure until you had it.
What? You’re not supposed to match Don drink-for-drink; the episodes will never make sense.
As for Duck, I think he’s so weak he probably needs Pete and Peggy way more than they need him. He probably promised his employer that he had ins and sweep away young hot talent from SC.
Man, Don can change gears seamlessly. He practically lands his daughter’s teacher over the phone, smoothly covers the “who was calling” question (just in case), and goes right into get-the-wife-to-the-hospital mode.
I think the show enjoys showing us what life was “really” like in that era, especially with gender roles, so that is why they took so much time with the birth stuff. Although the conversations with the prison guard were pretty boring.
The weird thing about the prison guard in the hallway was that he smiled when he looked up, then gave an “omg” face when he recognized Don. Then Don looked all confused. Makes me think they didn’t lose the baby, something else weird happened. Anyone else see that or did I make it up?