-First order of business, the question on everyone’s mind: Betty Draper speaks Italian?
-This question becomes irrelevant at 0:31, when Betty – fresh from the beauty salon, done up in a bouffant, elegantly eyelined, and bedecked in jewels – purses her lips and sends a silken rope of smoke into the thick Italian air.
-The new question becomes, how can I live in a world in which 1) January Jones exists, and 2) I will never hold her bra-and-panty-clad body in an Italian hotel room, silhouetted by the dim lights of Rome?
-There’s a line in Harold Brodkey’s short story Innocence, “To see her in sunlight was to see Marxism die”… “It was because seeing someone in actuality who had such a high immediate worth meant you had to decide whether such personal distinction had a right to exist or if she belonged to the state and ought to be shadowed in, reduced in scale, made lesser, laughed at.” This is how I feel about Betty Draper.
-Language – both spoken and unspoken — is certainly a motif in this episode, from Betty speaking Italian, to the silent agreements (and disagreements) between Betty and Henry Francis, Pete and Joan, and Pete and the German au pair, to Sally’s failed first attempt at the persuasive language of love (and more successful attempt at the even more persuasive language of punching.)
-Italian is not the only new language Betty speaks. When Betty repeats Henry’s line about “When you don’t have any power you have to delay things,” Don silently stares at her, understanding that this politico-speak is not hers, and perhaps wondering whose it is.
-As stunning as Betty looks in her new Italian-do, and sexy as she sounds slinging bonjournos, she can’t quite keep a straight face, and there’s something slightly un-elegant and American in the way she holds out her cigarette to be lit. It is a performance – no different than her appropriation of Henry’s politico-speak – and one that she enjoys, but ultimately understands as farce. She can’t quite pull it off, can’t quite hide her girlish glee. The deep irony of Betty and Don’s public role-playing routine is that Don’s quiet-cool, mysterious American businessman is no performance, but how he truly acts when Betty’s not around.
-It’s hard not to compare this episode of Mad Men to the episode of Sopranos in which Carmela takes a trip to Paris. Unlike Betty, Carmela can’t allow herself to play make believe – she carries her baggage both literally metaphorically. Asleep, she dreams of Adriana. Betty is able to shed most traces of her American self with hair, clothes, and a new language. She finds it easy (and preferable) to forget her children and her suburban malaise. This says a lot about her character. Carm is older, a pragmatist, unable to mentally unhinge herself from the deep contradictions of her irresolvable mafia-wife existence. Betty is less grounded in the reality of her life (and less attached to it). She’s still young enough to push her cynicism aside for a garlic-glazed two-day romp on courtesy-of-Conrad-Hilton high thread-count Italian sheets.
-Did anyone else see Betty’s snubbing of Don’s gift as a passive aggressive commentary on the fact that Don failed to get the promotion that would move the family to London? She seemed to be saying: This bracelet charm will only serve to remind me of the European life we could have lived if you’d done your job correctly. Oh Betty, how Revolutionary Road of you…
Other notes:
-I didn’t think it was possible for Pete Campbell to come across as any more despicable than he already was. Mad Men, you have proven me wrong.
adam wilson
Adam Wilson’s first novel, Flatscreen will be published by Harper Perennial in Winter 2012. He is a former culture columnist for Blackbook, and a former TV blogger for Flavorwire. His journalism, criticism, and fiction have appeared in many publications ...
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