Awards Season Watch: Sandra Bullock in Space!

After early praise on the film festival circuit, Gravity, otherwise known as George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as Astronauts, stormed the box office, breaking October records in its first weekend (grossing $55 million) and staying on top its second week of release, topping Captain Phillips.

The tension riddled events which make up the film are creating word of mouth buzz and combined with the special and visual effects, Gravity has created quite the spectacle.

Sandra Bullock has received praise for her performance. Many film critics and culture writers are quick to credit her with drawing in audiences, but it's doubtful the casting of Bullock is the sole reason movie-goers are lining up for Gravity. It's more likely the action and heightened suspense which is creating box office buzz for the film. Although critics are quick to heap praise on the film, the writing and character development felt flat and underdeveloped for an awards season film.

But first: The Box Office Phenomenon (Or Not)

Gravity is not the first female-led action film that has done well at the box office. Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver, cost $11 million to make, but grossed $3 million at the box office on its opening weekend in 1979. Its sequel, Aliens, directed by James Cameron, cost $18 million to produce, but made $10 million its first weekend. Cameron followed in the same tradition with The Terminator, a low-budget action film costing $7 million, which then went on to be one of the most successful franchises of the last thirty years. Terminator grossed four million opening weekend and three months later had made $38 million at the box office.

But even if audiences aren't going to see the film purely because of Bullock (or Weaver or Linda Hamilton), Gravity proves in the day and age of superhero trilogies and reboots and The Avengers universe, audiences will go see action films with women.

Studios seem determined to insist the success or failure of movies has to do whether it will draw in a male audience. To draw in a male audience, they cast male leads. But if a movie is well done, no matter the gender of the lead, not just male audiences, but audiences (men and women) will go to see it. For every Avengers or Batman reboot that does well at the box office, there are just as many flops like Green Lantern (2011), Hulk (2008), or Batman & Robin (1997).

Many seem to think Gravity is going to be the film which finally breaks the studio's vicious cycle of ignoring female moviegoers and convinces studios to greenlight more films with gender parity in mind.

Gravity's predecessors, both female-led and successful at the box office, haven't been able to break through the studio's hearts and minds, so to speak. There's always buzz in the press about whether current It Film is going to be the one, but then nothing changes and status quo resumes.

Look at Bridesmaids ($26 million opening weekend) or this summer's The Heat ($39 million). In January, Jessica Chastain was the lead in two top grossing films, Zero Dark Thirty and Mama. Kathryn Bigelow, who directed Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, which has now made almost $200 million worldwide, didn't receive an Academy Award nomination. Three years earlier, she'd won Best Director for The Hurt Locker but is still getting snubbed by the Hollywood boys' club. Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first film in the Twilight series, which grossed a stunning $69 million on its opening weekend, but then she was replaced by a male director for the sequel.

Certainly Gravity is a big step, along with Zero Dark Thirty, Mama, and The Heat. Any movie with a female lead which does well at the box office is a success, but changing the studio system is a long, slow process. With more directors like Cuaron and Bigelow sticking to their vision for the film, maybe studios will finally take note. In Cuaron's and Bigelow's cases, if they want a female lead, they get a female lead, and if the studios won't finance it for the gender reason, they find financing elsewhere.

Astronaut Ryan Stone: Feminist?

In the name of women, Gravity might be a box office success, but shouting about Ryan Stone (Bullock) as some sort of feminist revelation might be a stretch.

The film isn't a case study for strong storytelling. The script casts Stone as the rookie astronaut versus the veteran astronaut on the verge of retirement, Matt Kowalski (Clooney). The story of Stone's survival might not be quite as compelling if she wasn't a rookie—she'd have more familiarity with the shuttles and their systems—but the rookie/veteran trope was a little grating, especially since the woman was cast as the rookie and the man as the veteran.

One could argue that Stone relies rather heavily on a male figure throughout the first half of the film. Even later in the film, he reappears in a vision to offer her advice which will save her life. So are the decisions she makes purely her own or reliant on a male father figure?

In addition to the studios eventually getting the message that women leads are marketable, maybe they will also realize audiences are smarter and more capable than they once were. Moviegoing audiences also watch television and over the past twenty years, television writing has gotten infinitely smarter and deeper. If movie audiences demand a higher level of writing in films, it could take film, especially genre films, past the usual tropes and develop complex characters. Gravity has plenty heart-pounding tension but very little character development.

Alice Morgan and the Luther Effect: More Female Villains, Please.

With all of the summer tent pole movies premiering, there's been outcry from audiences (and critics) for the studios to make superhero movies with a woman as the lead. Wonder Woman, understandably, tops this oft-cited list.

While wondering where else in our pop culture there are a lack of female characters—the answer, sadly, is everywhere—something struck me upon viewing the third season of BBC's Luther.

There was something missing this season. It was harder to get invested in the characters and storylines, even though Idris Elba as Luther is charming and troubled as ever.

The thing missing was: Alice Morgan. In the first series premiere, Alice (Ruth Wilson) commits the perfect crime: the murder of her parents. DCI John Luther, a brilliant detective, who knows criminals' minds as well as he knows his own, engages in a game of wits with the deliciously evil Alice. Their intriguing relationship becomes the through-line of the first series, tying Luther and Alice together, even as he solves other crimes and deals with his marriage falling apart.

Even with the glut of crime dramas now on television, several of which have female detectives as a lead (The Bridge, The Killing, The Fall), none feature a woman committing crimes. All of these series involve women as victims of crimes perpetuated by men.

Maybe it seems a weird question to posit, in a day and age when women are not equally represented in Hollywood, in the boardroom, or in Congress, to ask why there aren't more female villains on our screens.

One common argument for more parts for women is women make up 51% of the population, yet in last year's top 100 grossing films, only held 29% of the speaking parts.

Out of homicide offenders (from 1980-2008), only 10.5% were women. White females of all ages had the lowest offending rates of any racial or age group, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's study of homicide trends.

So maybe choosing to have male villains over female is something Hollywood actually got right? You could look at it that way. But isn't the point to have more equality when it comes to every part of the industry (acting, directing, writing, producing, etc.) If there are well-written female superheroes, there should be well-written female villains.

Female villains are difficult to portray without easily falling into trope territory. Female 'baddies' tip over easily into emotionally unstable women—often stalkers--like Alex in Fatal Attraction (coincidentally, a role that earned Glenn Close an Academy Award nomination.) Women are often thought to commit crimes motivated by emotion rather than with a purely evil intent. Interestingly, in criminological and sociological studies, gender in regard to crime has largely been ignored. Until recently, the extent of female deviance has been marginalized. According to sociology professor Frances Heidensohn, one of the first to study female criminology, one reason for this is because female crime has been dealt with by mostly men, from policework to legislators.

But back to fictional female villains. Even as far back as fairy tales, evil women were often portrayed as obsessive. In Grimm Brothers' Snow White, Snow White's step-mother, the Evil Queen, is vindictive and obsessed with being the most beautiful in the land. According to John Hanson Saunders' book The Evolution of Snow White, when Walt Disney started to develop the fairy tale into an animated film, early concepts characterized her as “fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied”. Walt Disney was not satisfied with this concept and spent time further developing the character. He saw her as a cross between Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf and wanted her to be stately and beautiful.

For a character that is obsessed with her appearance, it is rather ironic that she would choose to temporarily relinquish her beauty when she transforms into the Evil Witch--also referred to as the Old Hag—undertaking an ugly demeanor in order to poison Snow White. In 2003, the Queen (Queen Grimhilde) was named by the American Film Institute as one of the 50 Best Movie Villains.

The transformation of the Queen into an 'Old Hag' speaks to other frequent characterizations of female villains by Hollywood. They must be either be ugly, sometimes old, women or they must be beautiful sirens. In 2003's Monster, a film based on the life of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Charlize Theron was cast to play Wuornos. Much of the discussion about the film circled around the choice of Theron, a statuesque model turned actress, as the lead. Rather than discussing the merits of her acting, many simply wondered how it was possible to make such a beautiful woman ugly. Theron won an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role.

On the flip side of old crones and hags, Hollywood uses beauty and the sexualization of women to make them acceptable as villains, most often as femme fatales. The most notable example of this in Hollywood is the use of these characters in film noir, but the archetype dates back to Greek and Roman myths, as well as Biblical figures. A femme fatale is described as mysterious or seductive woman, who uses her wiles to capture men and lead them into dangerous situations.

Luther's Alice Morgan has a bit of femme fatale in her. “Kiss me, kill me, something...” she tells him in the first season. She flirts with Luther, has red hair and large lips and eyes, but her attraction and fascination with John Luther centers around his intelligence. He deals with London's criminal minds every day, yet still believes there's good and love in the world. This baffles Alice. A child prodigy, she enrolled in Oxford at the age of 13 and holds a Ph.D in astrophysics, studying dark matter distribution.

After the murder of her parents, Luther is questioning Alice and discovers she's a psychopath through her lack of empathy. She doesn't yawn when he yawns, a telling sign to Luther. However, he is unable to prove she committed the murders and moves on to other cases.

The relationship between Luther and Alice is so well-drawn and complex because it is not simply a protagonist vs. antagonist relationship. Alice is a foil for Luther and becomes a trusted friend, despite her psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies. While DCI Luther is on the right side of evil from society's point of view, sometimes he uses questionable methods to get what he needs to solve a case.

An increase of female villains in film and television always edges on a slippery slope, as it may lead to characters embodying common tropes and archetypes. Even if there were more female villains, it doesn't mean they would be as carefully developed and well-written as Alice Morgan.

But just as there are those asking for superheroines, there are actors asking to play the villain. “I would like to play a villainess in some great big action movie. That would be really fun,” actress Allison Janney said during the press tour for The Help.

Wouldn't it be great if Wonder Woman was up against an evil female mastermind? And if the film was directed by a woman?

Mad (Wo)Men 6x13: "Well, aren't you lucky to have decisions?"

Everyone’s disappointed that Mad Men‘s clues and parallels between Megan Draper and Sharon Tate didn’t pan out in the season finale. But my question is: Didn’t it?

There was no physical violence or murder plot carried out, but if we think back to Don’s L.A. hallucination: Megan appeared to him. Surprised to see her, she explained to Don: “But I live here.” She then revealed to Don she was pregnant. So if Don and Megan become a bi-coastal couple, what’s to say Megan won’t move out to L.A., take on a little more of the stereotypical “relaxed” L.A. lifestyle, and get pregnant?

But for the meantime, Megan lets herself get jerked around by Don. First, Don announces he wants to move to L.A. so he can build a desk for SC&P on the West Coast.

“We were happy there,” he tells Megan. “We can be happy again.” He doesn’t want Megan to give up her career, but plans are made after that, and Megan tells the powers that be at work, who agree to write her off the soap. Just when everything is planned, Don gives the L.A. position to Ted, so he can sort out his affair with Peggy.

Of course, when Megan hears Don gave the position to Ted (she doesn’t know the why behind it), she’s pissed. “Fuck the agency,” she tells Don. “I quit my job.” Megan says if he wants to be alone with his liquor and his messed up kids and his ex-wife, that’s fine. Don tries to reason with her, saying they can be a bicoastal couple and telling her he loves her, but she won’t listen and storms out of the apartment.

But since Megan already quit her job and has meetings lined up in L.A., it seems likely she will, in fact, move with or without Don. And just may make Don’s hallucination come true. (And moving to L.A. also seems to extend the parallels between Megan and Sharon Tate even further, although Megan is older than Tate.)

Peggy Olson

From the beginning of Ted and Peggy’s flirtation, the relationship was set to end poorly, since Ted is a married man. But Ted, who Peggy claimed was a “good man” is almost as bad as Don, running off to California rather than confronting the complexities of being in love with a woman he works with, Peggy, and not being a man who can give up his family.

So after sleeping with Peggy, he tells her he’s going to California. “You can stay here and have your life and career and let this be the past.” Peggy thinks it was Don’s decision to send Ted at first, but Ted explains, saying Don gave up his spot for him. “I wanted this, but I have a family,” Ted tells her. “I have to hold onto them or I’ll get lost in the chaos.”

“Well, aren’t you lucky to have decisions.” Peggy replies. And in that sentence, therein lies the rub for the women on Mad Men.

The men are always running off, creating options where there may not have been options before, and the women are stuck where they were. Megan, although she has control of her own career, had given up some of that power to go along with Don’s decision. She gave up her role on the soap opera for a move to Los Angeles which isn’t happening because Don changed his mind.

Joan tries to make inroads at the firm, but she is stuck in her position as a glorified secretary, because the partners at the firm do not see her as anything otherwise.

Peggy, another who has made advancements in her career, can’t seem to break out of Don’s molding of her. At CGC, she thought she had broken free from him, but then her budding flirtation and relationship with Ted complicated whatever freedom she was feeling. Even if she had been able to make the St. Joseph’s aspirin commercial the way she wanted it, it was because of Ted’s support. She wasn’t rewarded the opportunity purely for her talents, but because of Ted’s infatuation with her.

Peggy tells Ted to get out of her office. Later, we see her working on Thanksgiving in Don’s office, because “that’s where everything is.” When Peggy sits down in his chair and looks out the window, the shot of her profile is the same shot as the profile of the ad man at the end of the show’s credits.

Mad (Wo)Men 6x12: "My father's never given me anything."

Sally Draper

After Sally walked in on Don and Sylvia, this week, unsurprisingly, she has no interest in visiting Don and Megan in the city. When Betty calls Don to tell him, he is expecting her to know everything. He’s waiting for the lashing that is to come, but Sally hasn’t informed Betty of the incident.

Instead Betty tells him Sally is interested in attending boarding school. The girls Sally stays with during her overnight visit are the stereotypical “bad girl” boarding school types. They expect her to provide liquor and smokes. Sally comes through by calling her friend Glen, who attends the boys’ boarding school down the road. He brings along a friend, and when Glen and the blonde girl go into her bedroom, it leaves Sally with Glen’s friend, Rolo.

No doubt Sally is going to have daddy issues after last week, but even despite that, her parents divorced and remarried other people, and it’s unclear what effect this has on Sally’s psyche regarding relationships. She seems less preoccupied with boys and more interested in activities and friendships. Last week, it was clear her friend had more experience with boys and Sally concentrated more on her memorizing for their Model UN event.

This week, Sally politely tries to change the subject when Rolo tries to get her to fool around. When that doesn’t work, she calls in back-up in the form of Glen, who abandons his make out session to physically defend Sally’s honor. “She’s like my sister!” He yells at his friend. Sally is pleased by Glen’s actions, but apologizes to Glen and the blonde for ruining their fun.

Some have claimed Sally was being manipulative in using Glen, but after Don let her down, she needs someone she knows will defend her. In this case, it happened to be Glen.

Peggy Olson

Peggy and Ted are more giggly at work together than usual and it’s obvious to everyone in the office, including Ginsburg, Ted’s secretary, and Joan.

It’s unclear whether Don had noticed their flirting previously, but when he and Megan run into Ted and Peggy at the movies, Don isn’t tricked by the flimsy excuse that they were simply seeing the movie as inspiration for the St. Joseph’s aspirin commercial pitch.

Once Don realizes the aspirin commercial is severely over budget, he informs the client, and watches the fallout happen. When Peggy confronts him about the situation, she claims he did it because Don can’t stand that Ted is a good man.

“He’s not that virtuous,” Don replies. “He’s just in love with you.”

Peggy is furious Don essentially, if not literally, called out her and Ted’s relationship. Her anger may be valid, considering Don is a cheating cheater who cheats, but if the situation were reversed, Ted would be PISSED that Don was withholding information from a client because of his feelings for a woman.

“You’re a monster,” Peggy tells him before leaving. When Peggy quit in The Other Woman, it was because she knew she had to get away from Don in order to grow in her role as a copywriter and she thought CGC, specifically, Ted, supported this growth. But now she is back at SC&P and she feels she can’t grow because she spends so much effort dealing with Don’s petulant behavior. However, in this scenario, Don might be in the right.

Over the past few episodes, Peggy has shown how she does not support other people’s  rule breaking. She didn’t support Joan trying to land the Avon account because by the rules, it was Pete’s account to have if Ted or Don deemed it so. She wasn’t supportive of her ex-boyfriend, Abe’s choice to move to the developing UWS neighborhood. Peggy wants things the way she wants them and her relationship with Ted is no different. She doesn’t seem to mind breaking the rules, not only at work, but personal ones–Ted’s marriage vows, for one–as long as it’s what she wants.

But if someone points out she’s in the wrong, she is loathe to admit it, especially if Don is the one doing the calling out.

Joan Holloway

Even though Joan’s appearance this week was brief, she was having none of Ted and Peggy’s flirting during the casting session.

Joan was the one who filled in Don on how overbudget the commercial was. While many think she did not have cruel intentions by doing so, it could also be a backlash against Peggy after the Avon situation.

Mad (Wo)Men 6x11: "Maybe I'll make it worth your while."

Peggy Olson

Despite Peggy’s quick progress up the corporate ladder as a copywriter, this season seems to be demonstrating how traditional Peggy’s values really are.

Last week, when Joan went against the grain to bring in a new client, Peggy chastised her for being in the wrong, which is the same argument Pete Campbell presented to Joan when he found out about the incident.

Both sticklers for the rules, this week, Pete and Peggy crossed paths once again, something that hasn’t happened all season. When Pete’s mom drops by the office, Peggy speaks with her while waiting for Pete. His mom apparently thinks Peggy is Trudy and mentions the child they have together. The comment hits a little close to home for Peggy, since in fact, Pete and Peggy do have a child together. Pete’s mom goes on to speak about her new (sexual) relationship with her male nurse.

Later, Pete, Peggy, and Ted are out to dinner after presenting to Ocean Spray and while Ted is settling the bill, Pete comments on the obvious tension between Ted and Peggy. Peggy is surprised Pete can read her so well, but says nothing can happen. “He’s in love with you, too,” Pete insists.

Peggy tells Pete about the conversation with his mother and they’re both laughing when Ted returns to the table. Ted must notice the chemistry between Pete and Peggy because he looks a tad jealous.

Back at her apartment, Peggy’s dealing with a rat problem. When she gets woken up in the middle of the night from sounds of its scrabbling, she attempts to rely on a guy to fix the problem for her. She calls Stan. When he won’t come over, she flirts with him, “Maybe I’ll make it worth your while.”

Stan says she won’t, but Peggy comes back with, “Then why are you using your sexy voice?” Stan tries to brush her off again, because he has a girl in his bed. Peggy gets that his brush off is code, though. “Oh. Why didn’t you say something?”

Sally Draper

Speaking of traditional values, when Betty finds out only one other girl is going on the Model UN trip to the city, she tells Sally she’s not allowed to go. She doesn’t want her staying in a midtown hotel with all those boys. Sally points out there will be chaperones, but Betty is not budging. Sally says she’ll stay with Don. “You hate that he supports my dreams,” she tells Betty, before flouncing off.

For their Model UN trip, Sally and her friend Julie stay with Don and Megan in the city. They meet the Rosens’ son Mitchell in the lobby. That night, they’re writing a list of “Why I Like Mitchell” when Megan warns them it’s past time for lights out.

In a cab on the way to their Model UN event, Sally is quizzing Julie about the country of Manila. “All the boys are going to think you’re dumb,” she chides.

“Don’t tell me how to get boys,” Julie replies. She informs Sally that she slipped the “Why I Like Mitchell” list under the Rosens’ door. Sally is horrified and comes back to the apartment building to find the letter. She gets the keys from the doorman and goes up to the Rosens’ apartment, sneaking in the back door.

She finds the letter there, waiting for Mitchell, but she also sees through a cracked door her father and Sylvia having sex. Sally drops the huge keyring in shock and they both look up to see her.

Don chases after Sally, but can’t find her. When he comes home later that evening, he finds Megan and the girls already having dinner. Sally won’t even look at him. When the Dr. Rosen and Mitchell come to the apartment to thank Don for fixing Mitchell’s 1A situation, Sally can’t contain her outburst. “You make me sick!”

Megan is about to go after her, but Don goes instead. Julie explains to Megan that Sally has a crush on Mitchell and unknowingly keeping Megan oblivious to Don’s cheating ways.

Sally won’t open the door to let Don in, but listens to him on the other said. “I was comforting Ms. Rosen. It’s complicated.” Clearly Don has no concept of how mature Sally is. Even if she isn’t experienced with boys, she’s probably smart enough to know Don wasn’t simply ‘comforting’ her.

It reminds me of back in season three, when Don was involved with Bobbie Barrett. The next morning, when he was home, Sally came in to watch him shave. “I just like watching you,” she said happily. Don gave the mirror a requisite thousand yard stare, presumably thinking of how one day, his little girl might one day be someone else’s sex object.

While that hasn’t happened yet, Sally is now a part of her father’s web of lies to protect not only his idenity, but his marriage to Megan.

Mad (Wo)Men 6x10: "I have to do it by myself."

Crossposted here. 

“I hope she didn’t make any promises,” Joan says to her lunch date.

She could almost be referring to the incident with Jaguar. Understandably, Joan may be hesistant to the idea of other people making promises for her. But in this case, Joan’s lunch isn’t a date or someone she’s going to have to woo to win company business, it’s a potential client. The guy works at Avon and is looking for an agency. And Joan’s determined to reel him in on her own, without having to bed him.

Once Joan realizes this is a business transaction, she wisely plays herself as more important to the firm than she is. She even picks up the check.

When she gets back to the office, she checks in with Peggy, to see what she should do about the potential client. “I thought it was a date, but turned out to be better!”

Joan says she would take the Avon news to Don, but she wants in on this account. Peggy thinks Ted will understand and help, saying he’ll make Joan the account man, if she wants. Peggy, however, just made Joan a promise she can’t keep. Ted calls in Pete to take care of the account side, putting Peggy on the creative side. The men are still wrapped up in the traditional way of doing things and can’t understand why Joan needs to be involved, since she’s not an account executive. “Don’t worry, you’ll get all the credit.” Pete says, trying to placate Joan.

At the breakfast meeting with Avon, Joan arrives instead of Pete. Peggy wonders how they’ll conduct the meeting without him. Joan confesses he’s not coming, because he wasn’t invited. Peggy is shocked Joan would break the rules that way, but Joan gives her an out, telling her she can leave if she’s not comfortable.

When Peggy and Joan arrive back at the office, Peggy is not pleased with the way Joan handled the whole situation with Avon. While Peggy has confidence that Joan could do the job, she advises Joan to play into the system. “I worked my way up,” she tells Joan.

Joan makes a comment about how Don carried Peggy into the deep end of the pool. “I never slept with him,” Peggy tells her in a rather tense moment. Peggy’s disgust that people would think this of her comes through, but her response and tone almost seem accusatory about Joan’s past sin with Jaguar.

“Congratulations,” Joan replies tersely. Joan tells Peggy she’s just like them–”them” meaning the men at the firm–and it’s hard to disagree. Peggy seems more concerned about Joan breaking the rules than helping her friend get an account. Peggy could speak up on Joan’s behalf, but whenever she has the chance, she bows to the system of the boys’ club. In the past, Peggy has been vocal with Don about various issues at the firm, so it’s curious she won’t speak up more for Joan. (Of course, she and Don are not getting along, and he’s in California, anyway.)

“I have to do this myself, Peggy!” Joan tells her. “This is the only way I could do it. Because all that matters now is who has a relationship with that client. Who is the client going to call?”

Once again, Peggy states her worry for Joan’s breach of the rules.

“I’ll be fine,” Joan replies. And knowing Joan, there’s no doubt she will.

However, when she gets called into the conference room by Pete Campbell, she doesn’t seem as sure. Pete has found out about the Avon meeting, because Avon sent a box of free samples to the office with a note. Peggy arrives as back up for Joan, but again, doesn’t speak up for her.

Joan stands her ground with Pete. “Isn’t the point to make Avon happy?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re making him very happy,” Pete replies, once again throwing Joan’s Jaguar incident in her face.

When Pete calls Ted in to mediate, he kicks Peggy out. But Peggy listens in via the PA in Joan’s office. Pete says he doesn’t even care if Joan takes the account, but he’s upset because of the breach of company etiquette. In this way, Peggy and Pete seem to be made from the same mold.

Just as Joan is drawing a blank on what to say, Peggy sends in the receptionist with a message saying Avon is calling Joan. Ted tells her to take the call. Via the PA, both Joan and Peggy hear Ted tell Pete that possession is 9/10ths of the law. “We’re all working together,” Ted tells him. “All agency business is your business.”

Joan thanks Peggy for tipping the scales in her favor. Peggy simply replies, “You better hope he really calls.”

Mad (Wo)Men 6x09: "Why didn't you say something?"

A lot happened in the world of women on Mad Men this week. I’d equate this episode with an episode in season 4 which I thought was called “The Women” but seems to have been retitled “The Beautiful Girls”.

Peggy Olson: Stuck in the Middle Again

‘Stuck’ has multiple meanings for Peggy this week. Not only is she still stuck between Don and Ted at work, but she’s stuck in both her relationship with Ted and literally ‘sticks’ Abe. (But that comes later.)

Don, Ted, and Pete are meeting about the Fleischman’s account. Don calls Peggy in for her opinion, but poses her with a rather old-fashioned question. Don assumes Peggy is the one doing the grocery shopping and asks why she would buy margarine: purely for the taste or would she base he decision on taste and price.

Don may not think of Peggy, per se, in a typical housewife role, but it does reveal Don’s thinking as rather old-fashioned. He’s accustomed to Betty, in her housewife role, or Sylvia, also a homemaker, as opposed to the woman he’s married to: a working, successful woman, Megan. But we’ll save the Betty vs. Megan debate for later.

When Don comes by Peggy’s office to check on the boards for the presentation, it’s clearly just an excuse to give her a hard time about not picking a side when he called her in earlier. Peggy calls him out on it, saying there’s not a right or wrong answer, there’s simply Don’s approach and Ted’s approach.

“I don’t know how I became in charge of turning this into a collaboration,” she tells him. “Isn’t that your job?”

Other than being stuck in the middle at work, Peggy also has to contend with her two romantic entanglements in this episode.

Her primary being with her boyfriend, Abe, with whom she recently moved to the Upper West Side. The neighborhood is still a little rough and Peggy comes home to find Abe was attacked outside the subway by two punks. Abe won’t comment on his attackers’ race, however, claiming they live in a police state.

Abe is viewing their neighborhood as a new social experience he can write about, but Peggy is more practical, simply worrying about their safety. When he asks her to help him type, after his arm is injured, she tells him she plans to sell this ‘shithole’ of an apartment and refuses to help him, going to bed.

Peggy and Abe have held rather different worldviews since they first met and just a few episodes ago, seemed accepting of each other’s viewpoints, but the Upper West Side apartment seems to be the boiling point for Peggy.

However, she did state she hates change, and Peggy’s life is going through a lot of upheaval. Not only did things at work change when SCDP and CGC merged, but things at home changed, too, when she and Abe decided to move.

Not to mention her rather newfound feelings for her boss at CGC, Ted. Ted complimented her work and they shared a kiss. This week, Peggy and Ted finally discuss their encounter. When Ted brings it up, Peggy says she assumed they were forgetting about that. She says she did. “Well, I haven’t,” Ted confesses. Ted asks if that’s all him. Peggy says she thinks about it. Ted says they can’t and besides, they both have someone.

“I didn’t know you felt this way,” Peggy says.

“I don’t want to, that’s the point. Now I realize I never should have brought it up.” Peggy asks if he would rather she work somewhere else. He says no.

Despite her feelings for Ted, they aren’t the reason things fall apart with Abe. In fact, Abe is the one who breaks up with her. After Peggy accidentally stabs Abe in their apartment, which in and of itself might be an event of note. Peggy treated drugged Stan’s stab wound last week, before drunkenly sharing a kiss with him. This week, she stabs her boyfriend. Perhaps just a coincidence both injuries were stab wounds, but perhaps not.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Abe claims Peggy is too careful and worries too much and he never knew that until they moved. Peggy, in shock from what she’s just done and what Abe is saying, asks, “Are you breaking up with me?” The scene ends before we get an answer, but when Peggy later shows up at work, she tells Ted that things are over with Abe. Ted tells Peggy she’ll find someone else.

As Peggy leaves Ted’s office to get to work, she sees Don arrive. Don asks Ted how the meeting with Fleischman’s went. Once the men fill each other in on the account, both go into their separate offices, leaving Peggy in the middle of the hall, stuck between both of them once again.

Betty (Draper) Francis

Betty has lost the weight. Although she was briefly in last week’s episode, back to her original blonde hair, during the scene where Don returned to find the apartment burgled, her weight loss wasn’t revealed until this week’s episode.

Since Betty essentially lost the weight for Henry, I did a quick calculation. Henry told Betty about his decision to run for office in April of 1968. Since Bobby is attending summer camp, we can assume this is August of 1968, meaning Betty’s weight loss occurred over the summer.

Although Joan is a sexual character, no female character places as much worth on their looks as Betty does. In earlier seasons, she talks about how her mother made her conscious of an early age about not gaining weight. Betty then worked as a model until she met Don and even after having three children, kept her slim figure.

In this episode, Betty is enjoying the attention she’s receiving from men because of her weight loss. A man who is attending a fundraiser for Henry flirts with her, saying he wants to spend all night with her, and Henry is jealous, asking Betty about it in the car later. Even Don, the ex-husband, finds his attraction to Betty has returned.

Her weight loss seems to have given Betty her gumption back, as after visiting their son at camp, Betty returns to her room and leaves the door open for Don, if he wants to come in. He does.

“What did you think when you saw me?” Betty asks as Don’s kissing her.

“That you were as beautiful as the day I met you,” Don replies.

A strange thing to notice six seasons into the show, but seeing Betty and Don together again made it clear how very Rock Hudson and Doris Day they look together. Odd how Don also has a hidden life, although much different than the lifestyle Rock Hudson was hiding.

Betty and Don seem to understand each other better now than they did when they were married. After they sleep together, they’re in bed together talking, and Betty comments on how she’s happy with her life. She says she knows she can only hold Don’s attention so long and she expresses pity for Megan. “She doesn’t know that loving you is the worst way to get to you.”

The next morning, Don wakes up alone, and when he finds Betty in the camp cafeteria, she has been joined by Henry. Don takes a table in the corner, but watches Betty with Henry. She does seem to be happy.

Megan Draper

Megan is now playing twins on her soap opera and in her first scene of the episode, she’s taking criticism from the soap opera’s director over a PA system, in front of the crew and her fellow cast mate, Arlene. The director refers to her as “honey”.

Megan worries about keeping her part on the soap opera as well as worrying about keeping her husband’s interest.

When she voices her concerns about her work to Don, he isn’t the most sympathetic ear. Instead of eating dinner with her, Don tells her he wants to lie down and watch TV instead. His only reassurance to her is: “Tomorrow’s another day.”

Since Megan doesn’t have Don to confide in, she invites over her cast mate, Arlene, when Don is away visiting Bobby at summer camp. Arlene tells Megan Don is old-fashioned and isn’t entirely comfortable with having a successful wife. “He’ll get used to it,” she advises.

“I think he did. And I think he got used to me not being around and having a bunch of problems he couldn’t solve,” Megan says. She tells Arlene she’s lonely.

When Don arrives home from the weekend, he finds Megan out on the balcony. “I missed you,” he tells her.

Megan confesses she misses him all the time. “I don’t know where you’ve gone, but I’m here. I keep trying to make things the way they used to be, but I don’t know how. And maybe that’s stupid or young to think like that, but something has to change.”

Don admits she’s right. “I haven’t been here.”

Joan Holloway

Joan seems to have gone from a sex symbol of the Sterling Cooper offices to a mothering figure. She is forever cleaning up the partners’ messes, even though she is a partner herself. It makes sense that Joan has made this transition, as she is now a mother herself. In this episode, she listens as Pete confides in her about his mother’s condition.

But Joan also struggles with the idea of a father figure for her son. While Joan’s mother is present, helping her daughter care for Kevin, Joan’s own father has never been part of the picture. It may have been mentioned in an earlier episode, but most likely he’s either deceased or left Joan and her mother when Joan was young.

Bob Benson, who escorted Joan to the doctor’s when she had stomach pains, now seems to be a frequent presence in the apartment. He is waiting, dressed in swim attire, as Joan packs up to take her son to the beach. When the doorbell rings, Bob answers it, expecting it to be Joan’s mother, but comes face to face with Roger. Roger is just as surprised to see him and doesn’t even recognize Bob outside of the office.

Roger tries to pretend he’s there on professional business and takes the hint when Joan tells him it can wait until Monday.

At the office, Roger drops by Joan’s office, giving her Lincoln Logs for Kevin. “You can’t drop in on me like that,” Joan tells him.

Joan says Kevin’s father is Greg. “But I’m here,” Roger replies.

“For now. But everyday Greg is some hero out there and I’d rather him think that is the man in his life,” Joan explains to Roger.

Joan understands that Roger wants to be around, but she knows better than to count on him. Roger only is there when it’s convenient and Joan, out of anyone, knows that from experience. Joan thanks him for the gift and opens the door for him to leave.