I was rewatching FTWTY and when Joan is on the couch with him, she wants to watch the White House special, she even says to him "you've got to see this" and tries to get him to watch the tv. But he doesn't listen and pushes her down on the couch. She is willing this time, but she does turn her head to the right to see the tv which parallels her turning her head to the right during the rape scene. She gave in and appeared to be okay with it, but he was forceful and would not listen when she said she wanted to watch tv. I think that he is in the habit of forcing sex when he wants it and doesn't care whether she does or not. And behavior like that keeps getting worse and worse until it culminates in the rape scene. But she won't leave him because she's used to him treating her like that. And I think that is very sad.

Are you certain that is what Matt Weiner said? Because in an interview with Alan Sepinwall, he said that Joan had been raped:

"It's crushing, but all I think about is that scene when she tells Peggy she's getting married at Christmas, which is very painful, which shows she's still devoted to this fiancé despite him raping her, nine years, she's been there nine years and she's back on Don's desk and Peggy is getting her name on the door."

"Matthew Weiner Q&A for Season 2"

"Weeds" did. This is why I can't in good conscience watch the show again.

There is a way to treat the topic that allows for either a male or a female perspective of "what just happened". The producers of "Weeds" had that choice to make — and last night, they went with the male.

That was their prerogative. But they lost this viewer when they made it.

I don't know what to say.

I don't know where the rape as a part of romance thing came from. Maybe hundreds of years of women not being able to choose their spouses? I am sick of it.

I did not watch The Soprano's, but I remember the debate around Dr. Melfi's rape. I like B. Cooper interpretation of how it was about revenge. So many people wanted a revenge plot for Joan too and she would not even think of it. It is so much resignation it is tragic.

The actor who played, plays, Luke said that they could call it whatever they wanted, but he played the role as a man who had raped a woman and who was always trying to make it up to her.

This was the early eighties. Both the principle actors left, only to return. When they returned, they did so with a teen son in tow. Rumors began that they were going to revisit the rape storyline minus the euphemistic terms for it.

Luke and Laura's son's friend — Elizabeth — was raped in the park. Lucky found her and brought her home, and Luke (hello, subtext, my old friend) startled her.

Lucky spends weeks struggling with what happened to his friend, questioning his father on what kind of sicko got off on doing that to a woman. You know, inadvertently twisting the knife a little more.

The actress who played Laura was on a seemingly never ending maternity leave, but one of the first scene she played when she returned was Luke telling her he needed to discuss raping her, and her telling him that she considered what had happened one bad night. Of course, when they discussed it, it became clear that Laura has suppressed a lot of pain and confusion as to why Luke hurt her like that — her reliving off it was very graphic and emotional.

(Even so, and even in the "let's fix it, be PC, and get some ratings" version, there was still some screwed up stuff. Ten years later, this scene would have need another pass to make it acceptable. http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/UNRevised/transcript…

The point that the writers seemed to be making is that whether you called it rape, forced seduction, a really craptastic night, or Friday, didn't change the nature of the act.

The writers of the original storyline, including one who became executive producer and then revisited it, were of the mind that if a woman came back for more it couldn't be really rape — but rather something the man made her do for her own good, and because he was desperate. The beginning of a romance that led to a marriage that led to the highest ratings in soap opera history.

Joan would be in her fifties at the time of the first version of the story, and she would be elderly by the time that Laura spoke of the pain and betrayal of what happened. Next to her during the first go around could be a stack of romance novels in which a hero taking a heroine by force was the norm.

The writers of those novels and of General Hospital didn't spring up out of nowhere. They didn't randomly or radically come up with the concept that rape is sometimes okay and romantic. They weren't orphans who learned nothing at their mother's knee about the birds and the bees and the way of these between men and women. The readers and viewers who embraced these stories and made them profitable were not some crazy fringe group — they were housewives and office managers.

If rape can be called a forced seduction in 1979 and not called rape again until the late 20th century, would it be possible that a woman in the early 1960s might be raped and unable or unwilling to accept that?

I think what most are saying here is that Joan doesn’t call it rape, but we would today because women have made progress. What you seem to be thinking is that the people who feel that way are indulging in revisionism. However, revisionism isn’t possible for a show that is currently in production and is meant to be filtered through modern day sensibilities.

Joan’s inability to call it rape is not because there’s a gray area, but because she has neither the frame of reference nor the support of society which would allow her to match the label to the experience.

It’s not unlike an child who is abused by someone she knows, but hasn’t the words to express it, because the rules are about not talking to strangers. Strangers hurt, strangers rape, but people you love and trust and who have power over you don’t do that — so whatever just happened is something else.

I am fully amenable to the message that it’s hard being a man, too, but this is not a circumstance that I could reasonably label an example of that. What made him feel sexually inadequate was the threatening concept that Joan was more experienced — that his woman was more the man in the relationship. While there were societal reasons for why he would feel that way, his reaction was to punish Joan.

If both of them are victims of rigid gender roles, then the punishment wasn’t anywhere near equal. He got to prove his manhood and vent his rage, and she got violated.

I hope no one minds if I go off on a rant here, but may I please clarify — hopefully for the last time — that there is, again, no such thing as "practically raped"?

This brings my cable total of rape surprise scenes, last night, to three:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/06/weed…

Context: These two characters, Nancy and Esteban, are dating. Nancy has in the past dealt drugs from her suburban home. It's not clear whether she still does. Esteban, her boyfriend, is a Mexican drug lord and the mayor of Tijuana, and the father of her unborn child. Last season, Nancy told a friend in the DEA about an underground tunnel between Mexico and California, where she lives. Esteban's people suspect she is the one who told.

In the final scene of last night's episode, she confronts him at his office after drinking and eating sushi, and asks him if he's going to kill her. He says he hasn't decided. Decide, she says, and hands him his gun.

He responds by raping her. Then he says that she "doesn't dictate the terms" of their arrangement. (Duh.)

After that scene last night, I felt: ambushed. Cheated. Stupid. Angry. And I saw, for the first time, what a very male channel Showtime ("Nurse Jackie" notwithstanding) is.

I think what is making me angry is this clear evidence, still, of public and media-sanctioned cognitive dissonance. Maybe I didn't really hear Nancy say no; surely, of course, she and Esteban are dating. But what else I know about these things is that THEY DON'T MATTER. There are things people just can not do to one another. Rape is one. And that was rape.

I feel pretty sick about this, actually.