I don’t think Betty lied; I think the results she reported are legit.
I agree that the last scene represented her giving in, but not, I think to death. I think that while the possibility of cancer scared her, it also let her escape responsibility for letting herself go. Now that she knows that isn’t the case (although I, too, was under the impression that a thyroid tumor needn’t be malignant to cause something like that), she has to deal with the fact that she’s been doing this to herself. She’s unsatisfied with her situation, but basically doesn’t see any way of not turning into Henry’s mother. The cancer scare could have snapped her out of it, but it seems only to have increased her ennui.
Presumably if the news were bad, she would be asked to come in to find out in person under the guise of “more tests.” But I can see giving the all clear over the phone.
How would it be if the doc’s office called and said, “Please come in for your test results,” and you said, “Tell me now,” and they said, “Sorry we can’t discuss on the phone.” And then when you got there, they said, “Joke’s on you- you’re fine!”
In some parts of the country, “Don” and “Dawn” are pronounced the same (not where I’m from though). There is a rather lengthy discussion on this in the TWoP episode thread, and a month or so ago, there was a Jeopardy! question that said “Don” and “Dawn” were pronounced the same. I’m guessing it’s a regional thing.
Actually, thinking about it, I think the line is “It’s always darkest before the Don over there.” Because you get to the darkest (Dawn) before you get to Don.
I suppose I could go look up that thread, but I’m too lazy (like Roger). How would you pronounce “Don” and “Dawn” differently? To me, they sound exactly the same, and both rhyme with “gone.”
Hehe, clever. I think of it more as a pre-Chris Berman SportsCenter nickname:
“It’s-always-darkest-before-the-Dawn over there.”
Your version could apply to a dark-skinned person of any name.
If you pronounce Don and Dawn the same (like I do), then your accent is missing a vowel that exists in some New York accents, in other words, you have the cot-caught merger.
It’s impossible to explain with casual phonetics, and if you don’t understand I.P.A., that makes it difficult. Besides the fact, in different cot-is-not-caught (CINC) accents, the actual realization of the sounds can be different.
But anyway, the basic difference is usually noted in American English as /dɑn/ and /dɔn/. (In R.P., both vowels are rounded, /dɒn/ and /dɔn/) In very strong New York accents, “Dawn” might be realized more like /duən/
Here are some audio samples for the vowel notations.
See, this is why this kind of off-the-cuff phonetics is pointless. The “X rhymes with A” and “Y rhymes with B” doesn’t work when you don’t know how the other person pronounces A and B.
That’s how I read it- that song was teenagers in the eyes of adults at the time, while the Stones concert was (some of) what was actually going on in the life of a teen.
I don’t recall “progressive” ever being used to describe Strom Thurmond.
I’m all for hot sex and all that, but after four seasons of Don sleeping around, I should think that that particular storyline is played out. I’ll be kind of bored if this season again features Don’s infidelity as a major plot point.
I pronounce “Don” much more nasally than “Dawn”. In fact, when I say both, the corners of my mouth rise up saying “Don” (like a smile) whereas my mouth makes more of an “O” shape saying “Dawn”.
Guess I need to move from Chicago to New York to get Roger’s jokes
Last year I had the right side of my thyroid removed because of a benign tumor with pre-cancerous cells. My doctor told me the results of the initial test over the phone and we even discussed my options at that time.
Betty clearly has either an underactive thyroid or Hashimoto’s disease. Both make you fat, tumor or no tumor.
Yeah, but. But that means you missed the import of that excruciating five-minute* scene in which Harry lamely makes jokes about the similarity of Don and Dawn’s names.
How much do you want to bet that the closing song on some future episode belongs to the Four Seasons? “Dawn, go away, I’m no good for you…”
Got it. Thanks! I pronounce both Don and Dawn the same way the audio sample pronounces “dawn”. I’m not sure I pronounce any vowel sound the way the audio sample pronounces “don.” But I do hear the difference.
