Comments on: New Baby

By: gypsy howell

gypsy howell — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:24:08 +0000

Betty tried "addling" that baby when she went horseback riding. It didn't take. Of course, Don & Sally don't know that.

By: Matt Maul

Matt Maul — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:43:24 +0000

@ 25framesaminute…that is a great observation and ties in nicely with Sally's "addling" reference (which she learned in Miss Farrell's class) later on.

By: Susan M

Susan M — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:41:39 +0000

@ 82 CPT_Doom. I seriously see this show as being so close to real life, it can be very, very unnerving.

I am glad your mother survived that horrible incident–how cruel people can be in the name of their beliefs.

By: Deborah Lipp

Deborah Lipp — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:59:45 +0000

25frames, that's awesome!

By: Bobbi Pins

Bobbi Pins — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:35:53 +0000

Betty's heavy sigh before she goes to her crying baby says it all for me. She's in a fog and simply going through the motions, never following her heart, never really having a sense of self. She does what society expects her to do but with no real passion or joy.

I missed being in the office for most of this episode. The series is always at its best when the story is focused at work.

By: 25framesaminute

25framesaminute — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:43:46 +0000

The nurse gives Betty the needle and says, "think of the beauty parlor." Betty got the abortion information from Francine at the beauty parlor. Also, beauty parlors historically were sometimes fronts for abortions, or places you could make contacts for one.

By: TJHinNYC

TJHinNYC — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:24:07 +0000

Apropos of nothing…

…but the name of Sally's teacher is Suzanne Farrell, the very same name as the world-famous ballerina. AND the same dance teacher under whom Elisabeth Moss studied as a child at the American School of Ballet in New York. Coincidence?

By: brenda

brenda — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:31:59 +0000

â€œI can see Betty suffering a debilitating post-partum depression, smoking, not eating, retreating inside herself (like she did before being sent to the shrink), but not necessarily hurting Sally, Bobby, or Gene. She already tends to withdraw into herself â€” trying to preserve that perfect image of wife, mother, hostess.â€

Yes, yes, yes. Did you see her coming home outfit? Pink, with ruffles? Did you see that Norman Rockwell scene that they put on for Francine — who knows the actual truth about this baby, that Betty did not want it?

Betty is all about appearances, and we the audience are like Francine — we know the truth behind them. She's about to go into a breakdown worse than the polka dotted dress one.

By: workingmom

workingmom — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:46:04 +0000

Anne B: I have a theory about childbirth. I think itâ€™s incredibly heroic, even on todayâ€™s terms: itâ€™s the closest a woman ever swings to mortality when sheâ€™s in her prime. Yet weâ€™re somehow all expected to do it. Several times, even!

The other advantage to the present era's practice of having your mate in the delivery room with you is that he will come out of it convinced you are a hero. The glory lasts a little while.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:34:33 +0000

After long nights spent in the waiting room with my mother's other births, Dad talked Mom into waiting when it was time for me to arrive (and I was nine days overdue).

The procedure for the first two births had been to get Mom into a "labor room" which was like a regular hospital room, and then they'd go get Dad to pop in and say goodbye before they took her to delivery and he returned to the fathers' room.

Well, he made her wait so long I crowned in the elevator on the way to the labor room, so they took her straight to delivery instead. When they came to get him, he thought it was just the beginning of the wait, but it was the end. The nurse thought he was going to faint.

(Mom says if I'd been a boy she'd have named me Otis after the elevator company.)