Betty on the phone with Sarah Beth
Discuss.
Betty: I haven’t seen you at the stables. I saw it in the paper that Tara and Arthur are getting married next weekend.
Sarah Beth: Yes, I heard that.
Betty: Well, I hope they’re very happy together.
Betty: Are you there?
Sarah Beth: Betty, I’m sick about it.
Betty: Oh, I’m sorry. That’s why they call them crushes.
Sarah Beth: It was more than that.
Betty: Really?
Sarah Beth: (inaudible) I haven’t been able to sleep. I keep thinking about him. I think Raymond knows. I can’t even look at Becky.
Betty: What did you do?
Sarah Beth: Oh Betty, I made a terrible mistake.
Betty: You did?
Sarah Beth: Don’t act surprised; he told me all the things you said about me. I was grateful.
Betty: Why would you do that?
Sarah Beth: What? You wanted him too. You know you did.
Betty: There’s a difference between wanting and having.
Sarah Beth: You did everything you could to encourage me.
Betty: I didn’t make you do anything.
Sarah Beth: My God, you’re an awful woman, you know that?
Betty: No one made you sleep with him.
Sarah Beth: (slams the phone down)
May 8th, 2009 at 10:12 am
That was such a good phone convo! That Betty is scheming and she totally set her up, then sandbagged her afterwards for it.
1960’s Mean Girls/Desperate Housewives
May 8th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Spock, Amok Time, Star Trek: The Original Series
May 8th, 2009 at 10:32 am
I could be projecting, of course, but I always got the impression Betty was really hoping Sarah Beth would resist temptation and restore her faith in marriage.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Melissa, that is SO INTERESTING.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:37 am
January says something similar in one of the behind the scenes clips on AMC, that everyone keeps disappointing Betty with infidelity. But still, testing people is equally duplicitous.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
You know, I re-watched the call hoping that maybe Betty didn’t seem so cruel. The dialogue on its own is not necessarily pointing to that. But the way it is played–Betty is so viciously relishing every moment, even before she has her answer.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I think Betty was planning for her own fling, to spite Don of course. If her friend did it, then she might have thought she had “permission” too. And she seemed happy to watch someone else’s marriage suffer. Betty is more like Veronic, isn’t she?
KIM
May 8th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I loved the staging of Sarah Beth in that scene – standing, out on the landing, outside her bedroom. So exposed and vulnerable, and straddling in and out of her home and marriage.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I don’t think Betty was deliberately testing her as much as she was assuming that Sarah Beth would play the game (the flirting game) the same way Betty would. Betty was speaking in the conversation as though she were surprised that Sarah Beth didn’t know the rules of the game.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Maybe Betty is also fulfilling her want to be in control of a situation by manipulating Sara Beth, since Betty was normally repressed in that area by Don?
But, obviously Betty didn’t have to be manipulative and mean to be in control…
May 8th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
BREAKING! Entertainment Weekly with a piece on 3rd season Mad Men dated (May 15!) includes a “small” spoiler:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20277437,00.html
Or, at least, one I hadn’t read before.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I think she set it up so she could hear the regret she needed to hear from Don. Betty felt temptation brewing between two people, one of them married, and she set the bait so she could hear what she needed to hear; the regret, the pain of betrayal by the cheater. She heard from Sarah Beth what she wanted to hear from Don.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Betty seems to be punishing Sara Beth for acting on her desires. It’s like a proxy war against Don. But obviously, she is also working through her own illicit attraction to Arthur through Sara Beth. It reminds me a little bit of the plot of Vertigo.
What I find most interesting is what you note, Roberta: how angry Betty is. It reminds me of a poem from Plath’s Ariel called “Lesbos.” It is an interesting poem because it reads like an address to Plath’s husband and/or his mistress, but also as an inner dialog with the parts of herself that she hates. A few Betty-esque lines: “Viciousness in the kitchen! …
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear
Why she is schizophrenic, …
Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak. …
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.
Even in your Zen heaven we shan’t meet.”
May 9th, 2009 at 12:37 am
It’s a little weird that Matt Weiner wouldn’t confirm something that was in an AMC press release.
May 9th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Sorry, that was a reference to judybrown’s link.
May 9th, 2009 at 4:21 am
@ #13 katiebug:
Interesting. I believe Matthew Weiner asked January to read “Ariel” as a homework assignment to prepare for season 2. Makes sense.
May 9th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I had read that too, Hullaballo. Like a lot of people, prior to seeing the second season, I thought the request to read Ariel might mean suicide, though (thankfully) I was wrong. Then I remembered that Ariel was the name of Plath’s horse. The titular poem is about riding (or riding as a metaphor for the oscillation between stasis and extreme movement or change).
Thinking through it again after having recently reread Ariel, it seems most relevant as a meditation on women’s anger. When are women allowed to be angry? What do we think about angry women? If we read Ariel as confessional and autobiographical, then we understand the speaker’s anger to be in response to her husband’s infidelity. Just like Betty’s.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Katiebug–Following up on what you wrote in your posting, then how interesting that Weiner had Betty taking up horseback riding this season. Like so much of what Betty’s been doing, the horseback riding is yet another catalyst for her to act out her feelings. The movement of riding is in stark contrast to the stasis in her domestic life where she’s trapped and can’t move ahead. And remember it was that particularly hard early morning ride which was the prelude to her finally confronting Don.
I think as a society we are very, very afraid of angry women. Are we truly ever allowed to own our anger? Why, for instance, are women always being told to smile–even by strangers on the street? (Surely I’m not the only women that has happened to–anyone else?) You never hear that being said to men, at least I haven’t. ) But to get back to the main point, I think so much of Betty’s expression of her anger is what’s been considered the typically “feminine” way–resorting to subtrefuge and using others to act it out for her rather than expressing it directly. She certainly used Bobby that way, and, of course, with Sara Beth. I think a lot of times women may need to “try on” their anger in this way before they have the courage to own it themselves.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Having grown up fairly well-to-do in Philadelphia, I think it’s likely Betty rode as a child. She probably hadn’t ridden for years while living in Manhattan as a model and then as a new mom. There is a real sense of freedom riding, especially jumping, which they show her doing in one of the episodes. She’s finally doing something for herself again after years of taking care of her husband and children.
SF Caramia, yes, I’ve been told to smile by a stranger, some old man at the gym. Excuse me, I’m there to work out!
May 11th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Ugh, to the “why aren’t you smiling” phenomenon. WTF is that? What gives a perfect stranger the right to invade my private space like that? Why must I smile for them, at them, with them, whatever, whenever. Can’t I have a bad day? Can’t I be absorbed in thought about some issue or problem I’m having? What have you done to make me so happy and cheerful that I have to smile at you?
I’m basically an easy-going person, but man, this annoys me to no end. And you’re right, SFC. Men are never asked to do that. Not in my experience, any way.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Re the cultural fear of angry women: you bet it’s there, in general and specific ways. Count me among those who have been commanded to smile by strangers — always (interesting detail) when wearing a dress. And, of course, always by men.
It’s this thing, I think, about the visual role of women. Some men want to see women — especially those younger than themselves — filling what they see as our natural role of enhancing the natural beauty of the world. It goes without saying that this role is not active.
Can you be absorbed in a private issue or problem you’re having, hull? Can you have a bad day? You know the answer to this: you can’t. The man viewing you has decided that it is worse for him to see you not smiling than it is for you to be feeling whatever you are feeling. You must change yourself, in order to make his landscape appear more pleasant.
These guys are bullies. But they get a pass, because of where we are: in a culture where women who get angry are seen as “angry people”, unreliable and out of control, while men in the same situations are seen as angered by circumstances: motivated and action-oriented. In a work setting, a woman and a man who react angrily to an identical situation would probably receive opposite performance ratings. She’d get dinged. He’d get promoted.
I am an easygoing person too, but I have begun asking the smile-commanders for money: “Okay, but that’ll be five bucks.” Models get paid for being told how to look. I should, too.
May 12th, 2009 at 11:58 am
The smiling thing happens to women all the time. I’ve seen several feminist writers address it. You’re right that it has to do with a terror of women’s anger, but it’s also about women’s bodies being public property; it’s as if men have a right to determine how our faces will appear, because our bodies are not exclusively our own.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
It’s also partly another way to infantilize a social minority … the same way you tell a child to “behave” or “stop crying”, because we know as adults that poor behavior and public crying isn’t appropriate.
By saying “smile,” it invalidates whatever thoughts a woman might be having at that moment. Like, “What could you possibly be unhappy about?”
At least that’s what’s running through my head when I tell random women I don’t know to smile.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
All of the above commentary just reinforces why it’s in fact so difficult for women to “own” their anger, and why Betty has been channelling hers the way she has.
May 12th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Happy birthday, B. Cooper!
May 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
B. Cooper: nice shot.
And happy birthday! (I am smiling, BTW.)
SFCaramia, exactly. Betty has been careful to direct her anger to specific people and circumstances.
She waited until Carla left to unload on Don, after the dinner party. She went after the dining-room chair when she thought no one was looking (either unware of, or heedless to, her stunned children in the next room). She ranted over the phone to Sarah Beth – whether or not she was directing her rage just at Sarah Beth — when, and only when, SB called her to speak about the encounter.
Betty is clearly still close enough to her own childhood to be aware of her temper, and remember certain lessons about controlling it. She still loses it, but public scenes like the one in the supermarket with Helen Bishop don’t happen any more. She’s more careful, now, to contain the damage and limit the number of witnesses.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Betty was jealous of Sara Beth’s happy marriage (when SB came to borrow the dresses she told Betty that her husband was so easy to please and that he loved her). Betty wanted to ruin it, so she threw Sara Beth and Arthur together.
And it’s not just angry women that men are afraid of, but smart women, too. (I used to get told to smile a lot when I was younger. My sister and I are fairly attractive, but we were raised to use our brains, not our looks.) I’m sure no one ever told Einstein to smile.
Did you see that total idiot Donald Trump say yesterday that if Miss California wasn’t so BEAUTIFUL, no one would care what she thought about gay marriage; according to him, it’s only because she’s so attractive that people care what she thinks? I couldn’t believe it.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:14 am
“Betty was jealous of Sara Beth’s happy marriage (when SB came to borrow the dresses she told Betty that her husband was so easy to please and that he loved her). Betty wanted to ruin it, so she threw Sara Beth and Arthur together.”
All Betty did was arrange a lunch between the two. Sara Beth and Arthur were the ones who had decided to have sex.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Uh huh…?
May 25th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
[...] words during her phone call to Sarah Beth were harsh but I see disappointment in Betty’s reaction. [...]
May 25th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Melissa & JS: you both bring up excellent points. I wonder why Betsy so relished having the moral high ground while condemning her friend. Does Betsy want to feel superior to those around her? Does she lack empathy for her friend’s unhappiness? If anyone should understand Suburban melancholy, it’s Betts. I know it’s cliche but what is her motivation? Can any Basketcases help me out? I find her one of the most enigmatic characters on television. She finds out she’s pregnant, drops off her kids, has a couple of drinks, does the wild thing in a back office, on the eve of nuclear Armigeddon. The silicon chip inside her head gets switched to overload . . .
May 26th, 2009 at 8:58 am
I know I don’t always see Betty the way my friends do, Frank, but it didn’t seem like relish to me. It reminded me of how my mother sounded after she’d warned me 100 times not to do something, finally gave up and said, “Go ahead; do whatever you like,” and then I did it and got hurt.
Maybe she didn’t have sympathy for Sara Beth, but then again **I** didn’t have any sympathy for Sara Beth either, so it didn’t seem odd to me.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I’m not exactly brimming over with sympathy for Sara Beth either. From the first moment we met her she was was complaining about how boring her perfectly nice husband was and lusting after Arthur. Fault Betty for stirring the cauldron but beyond that everything SB and Arthur did was of their own free will. They were both desperate for an affair and they got it.
Betty is a very disciplined/repressed person and a (un)healthy dose of moral superiority often comes with that. Plus she was angry at SB for whining yet again about her perfect husband. I think she saw herself in the husband’s shoes in that moment. She was also angry at Arthur for lying to her at the stables about having seen SB. Turns out Arthur wasn’t just after Betty, he was after anyone who would have him. Just two more people for Betty to be angry at and disappointed in during season two.
Betty doing the hot guy in the bar is the perfect example of just how damned disciplined she is. It takes her being pregnant, tipsy and in the middle of a personal and world crisis to for her to be unfaithful. She’s had the recurring fantasy of being taken by a stranger, the opportunity for an affair with Arthur, a perfectly healthy sex drive and a husband who doesn’t appreciate her but it still takes a major crisis for her to sleep with someone else. Betty always just represses represses represses until she can’t take anymore and it ends up coming out in strange bursts.
In the recent Harper’s Bazzar article about January, MW said something along the lines of how Betty’s actions are half impulse, half pre-meditated which is a good description of her.
May 26th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
bee, I love how you position Betty’s fling as an in-character result of the way she represses. Now I see it as a match for the chair-breaking incident.
Ha! And now I’m inspired to write a post.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I’m not exactly brimming over with sympathy for Sara Beth either. From the first moment we met her she was was complaining about how boring her perfectly nice husband was and lusting after Arthur. Fault Betty for stirring the cauldron but beyond that everything SB and Arthur did was of their own free will. They were both desperate for an affair and they got it.
Precisely.