Least of all for Betty, who called Don after she got the belated news that her beloved dad had had a stroke. Don did his best to play the role of perfect husband, enduring Gene's increasingly erratic jabs about his money and lack of people without flinching. When he tried to take care of Betty, though, fussing after her to eat, she shut him down fast. "Stop it, Don," she said coldly. "Nobody's watching." That night he dutifully took his spot on the floor, though the scene of the fractured couple undressing was strangely sexy and thrilling, so it was not a surprise when, in the middle of the night, Betty pancaked herself on top of Don for a little stolen comfort. But real warmth only came later with her childhood nanny, who took Betty in her arms as she mourned the fact that she was on the road to being an orphan. January Jones continues to amaze me. Her face went from crabby and imperious to chastised child to broken women in the course of that one scene. And, after enjoying a brief few moments of genuine compassion, she still wouldn't let Don come home. "I know how you feel about grieving," she said, and sent him on his way.
The next morning Betty found Glen looking his usual colorless self, hiding out in the backyard toy house. While she sent him off to change into clean clothes, she flipped through his comic books, where men in capes saved the day. When goofy Glen sat back down at the table, he looked like a shrunken Don after making a wish on the Zoltar machine — a black-haired, pale-faced child who hasn't yet let her down. "Why are you alone here?" he asked. "It's the middle of the day," she said primly. "It's lousy," he observed, nailing her malaise in those two little words. Betty looked like a prim and perky little middle schooler sipping innocently from her soda bottle with Glen on the couch. Just a couple of kids watching afternoon cartoons! The boy finally fessed up that he doesn't like her ham sandwiches after all, took her hand (squirm alert!), and announced his plan to rescue her, whisking her away with his piggy-bank savings. When Carla and the kids burst in the door, they released their hands like a couple of guilty teenagers who didn't expect the parents home before dark.
For all of Betty's clumsy steps towards some self-actualization, it seems like she'd give about anything to go back to just being a little girl. It's what she was best at. When she got married, it was to a man she didn't know but wanted to charm and please, to make him proud with her swishing skirts and tasteful conversation skills. But then Don went and ended up only being a shell of Prince Charming. And now her dear daddy is degenerating towards helplessness, a child himself. The only person promising to do what she desperately wants, to rescue and take care of her, is hopeless Glen.
When he realized that she had called his mother, he was shocked by her betrayal. "I hate you," he cried. Betty, so somber and mature and beautiful in that moment, said that she knew and that she was sorry. It reminded me of the scene when Betty woke up Don in the middle of the night and asked her husband if he hated her. Don was shocked by her question but part of him must hate Betty. He married the most perfect woman a man with dreams of upward mobility could ever want on his arm and still she has not saved him from his dark side. And part of Betty hates him too, for rattling their pedestal and so unapologetically flicking her to the ground.
NEXT: Taking flight
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