November 05, 2009 By: Karl Category: Season 3
Nettwerk Music Group thought we would be interested in the uncredited music playing over the Season 3 finale trailer. They were right; I got e-mail about it. So here’s the trailer, featuring “Aphelion” by Moving Mountains:
You can stream the full track at Moving Mountains’ MySpace page.
They want us to hate each other. I refuse to participate in that.
— Kenneth Cosgrove, Out of Town
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November 5th, 2009 at 4:48 am
*Just speculation*
What with the numerous allusions to suicide this season and the not-so-subtle use of that “Bye Bye Birdie” song, I have a strange feeling that Betty might die in the finale.
She was taking PILLS in the last episode. When have we ever seen her do that before?
I mean, Adam hung himself in season one, and while there had to be multiple other reasons for his decision aside from being turned away by a brother he hadn’t seen in years, the audience accepted it as natural/logical to the story’s arc (and Don blamed himself). So it won’t be a shock to me if Betty dies. Her unhappiness isn’t based entirely off of Don’s lies and infidelities; she’s always been a cold and repressed individual in her dealings with others, largely a by-product of how she was raised. In her letters to Henry, she voiced doubts about her ability to express herself.
Anyhow, death by overdose is open to more ambiguous interpretations, since it’s often accompanied by an element of accidentality.
(Oh, and in that video, that last close-up of Betty lying down makes it seem as though she’s in a casket, doesn’t it? And the fact that Don gently runs his finger along her makes it seem as though he’s “saying goodbye” for a final time.)
Just speculation, like I said.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:53 am
By the way, anyone who’s into that song should check out music by The Appleseed Cast, Red Animal War, and Planes Mistaken for Stars, who were labelmates of Moving Mountains at the time they recorded “Aphelion.” The label’s site is http://www.deepelm.com , and they have a bunch of mp3s for sampling purposes. Their prices are also dirt cheap in comparison to filthy major labels, as their ongoing “20 CDs for $24″ sale hopefully demonstrates…
November 5th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Also related to Mad Men and music…
The catchy new Amazon Kindle commercial “Fly Me Away” features Annie Little, who was stewardess Lorelei in “Out of Town”. She also co-wrote the song, so maybe the song title/MM role tie-in is intentional! (Sorry if this has already been posted.)
November 5th, 2009 at 9:04 am
#1 I’m seriously doubting Betty will die in the seasons finale. I know there are allusions to a suicide but i think they are throwing us some red herrings in there as well. If someone is dying im thinking a secondary character might bite it…like say Rogers young wife…..then he could go to Joan.
Just my 2 cents….or is that my wishful thinking?
November 5th, 2009 at 9:32 am
How about the slightly crazy, newly rejected teacher? That would be a bit of a surprise, but kind of not.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Where Betty is laying on the fainting couch, I thought she was fantasizing about Henry and that it was his hand touching her?
November 5th, 2009 at 9:41 am
#1 – I think in that last scene in the video Betty is lying on the fainting couch dreaming about Henry.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:08 am
I’m kind of hoping Betty plays Henry Francis in the end and just uses him to get a good divorce attorney to take Don’s money. I feel like they keep pounding us over the head with the fact that there is more to her and that would certainly impress me. Suicide seems unlikely…for Betty, anyway.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Does anyone else think the S3 finale trailer above will be the “previously on Mad Men” for this week? I know that’s a lotta ground to cover in one episode, but there’s so much good stuff there. Just wondering . . .
November 5th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Betty doesn’t really strike me as being depressed enough to deliberately take her own life. I could certainly see her getting careless with the pills and booze and ODing by accident, though.
Reality of it is, though, they could kill off (or permanently write out) any of the characters except Don, who’s in every episode. It’s also not likely (though not impossible) they would kill off Peggy or Pete. Also, since they’ve already had a suicide (Adam) it’s hard to imagine they’d go to that well again.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Just because nobody else has mentioned I don’t think Betty would commit suicide when she has three young children. I don’t think she’s the ‘horrible mother’ she gets branded as. She’s never abandoned her kids.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:49 am
My best friend’s mother was “Betty,” and while she would never have set out to abandon her five children, an accidental overdose accomplished that. Family doctors, often friends of the family, routinely prescribed all sorts of pills for close friends during the era currently depicted in MM. Very common among the country club set–easy access and it was socially acceptable. “Take a pill and lie down” was one of the coping mechanisms of that socioeconomic group. Like Betty, my best friend’s mother lived with the knowledge of an unfaithful husband (an oil executive) whose business entertainment practices included call girls for clients, in which he participated (just the way it was). My friend can’t watch MM — entirely too personal and painful and at 61, she is still trying to put the pieces back together. And her father? He went on to marry again (and again and again and again and yet again). Unlike Don, he married his affairs. Am interested to see if the writers manage to convey the lasting consequences of the parental choices of the MM characters.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:49 am
I don’t see it being Betty either, although there have definitely been suicide hints. I could maybe have seen it in the first two seasons, but Betty has a lot to live for right now.
If anyone commits suicide, I can see it maybe being Sal, although it would break my heart. Or maybe Jane?
November 5th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Nooo, not Sal! I still say Miss Farrell.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Oh please not Sal. Jane maybe by accident (booze plus pills unless that’s too Valley of the Dolls) but I don’t see Suzanne as suicidal either as she’s been this route before with other men. Maybe Adam gets hit by a truck while hitching and the police call or come to Don’s office because of the business card in Adam’s pocket. Final shot, Don leaving with the police to identify Adam as Colleagues speculate why the cops are there…
November 5th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
#11 falafel –
You don’t have to abandon your children to be a horrible mother/parent. I’d say the emotional disconnect Betty has with her children is almost more damaging than if she just up and left. Betty’s there, but she’s really not, at least not in regards to the children.
You really get both sides of abandonment in the Drapers. Don is the physical side, as we know he’s capable of just leaving, and Betty is the emotional side.
I also think, if she does stay, Betty’s discovery of Don’s secret will do nothing but drive her further from the children. She will now see anything connected to him as circumspect at best, and I don’t see how that won’t extend to the children.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I guess I didn’t make it clear enough in my initial post, but I was implying a careless accidental overdose on pills, not an explicitly suicidal act. Perhaps some kind of fatal chemical reaction based on an unsafe mix of booze and pills. I dunno, if Betty is going to be leaving Don — and I can’t envision any scenario by which she would stay — is the show really going to still follow her around in season 4? While she’s a well-written character, her arc for the most part has consisted of repressed domesticity. She’s grown into someone who was partly able to “unshakle” herself and confront her husband, but I still see her as somewhat distant and damaged. I can’t, for instance, ever see her turning into an attentive mother to her kids. Where else is there for her to go in a show whose aim is to show us the movements of the 1960s? If Don is a bit old-fashioned (pun?) in his ways, then Betty is a relic.
And I don’t think a second suicide on the show would be overkill, even for a show like Mad Men which rarely depicts physical violence. A bunch of main characters died on The Wire and the Sopranos at very “convenient” times (i.e. penultimate episodes of a season, so the audience got to see how their deaths affected things), but I don’t recall anyone complaining about it. While Mad Men doesn’t present many situations in which people could potentially die, it remains a show whose storyline is ultimately controlled by a man that’s dealt before in deaths. We’ll see…
(I’d forgotten that that was Henry’s hand touching Betty on the fainting couch. But I still think it’s a creepy image to place in the montage.)
November 5th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
#16. I just don’t see Betty that way. There are many flaws in her mothering, but I don’t consider her to be emotionally abusive. When Don ran off to California, Betty was a more honest and responsible mother than ever before. So I don’t think divorce would be a bad thing. Putting some distance between herself and Don might improve both their relationships with their children.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I don’t think she’s being outright emotionally abusive either, but I do think she is ambivalent at best, outright contemptuous at worst, towards her children. I’ll point to the episode where Betty gives Sally the Barbie ‘from’ Baby Gene. First of all, she clearly doesn’t understand why Sally is upset about the new baby arriving and Grandpa Gene dying being so close together. And then, at the end of the episode, when Sally is clearly emotionally distraught at the reappearance of the Barbie, all she can think to do is get angry. Don, while he may not have completely understood why Sally was upset, still had enough of a paternal instinct to comfort her.
And let me be clear, I don’t think Betty is trying to be a bad mother. I just don’t think she was meant to be a mother. She clearly doesn’t even understand her children most of the time, let alone have the capacity to care and comfort.
The point about her being a better mother when Don was in California is an interesting one, and I do agree, I just think that overall, from what we’ve been given, Betty was just not meant to be a mother. But in those days, you didn’t have much of a choice.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Floretta, I think you’re referring to Suzanne’s brother Danny, right?
November 5th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I don’t think I’ve really seen Betty be contemptuous towards her children. She’s not like Pete Campbell’s parents. She isn’t a cuddly mommy either, but then neither is Mona. I thought Betty giving Sally the Barbie was well-meaning, even if the gesture didn’t hit the right note. It showed Betty had considered Sally’s unhappiness. I think between grieving for her father, just giving birth and Betty’s usually burden of paranoia over Don, I can cut her some slack for not judging that situation correctly.
I don’t think mothering is something you’re meant for or not meant for. Sometimes divorce makes people better parents, because then they have more focused time with their kids rather than neglecting their kids in favour of their marriage problems and/or affairs.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Except that Mona and the Campbells are dealing with full-grown adults, not literally children.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
BTW, at the beginning of this season, there was speculation, and in an
‘Ausieillo Files’ article on Entertainment Weekly.com that there would be a major character dying in a popular series, and that it wasn’t a fake and that the character would still be dead next season. MM was listed among the shows that this might happen on. This week, there was an update in the same authors weekly piece stating that a significant character will die on ‘The Mentalist’ — so maybe MM dodges a bullet? hope so. It’s driving me crazy that there was no preview of the finale last week, the only clue we have is just one picture of a smiling Don Draper on the AMC site.
http://blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/mad-men-season-3-episode-photos/don-draper-ep13.php
However, I would not be surprised if there is an attempted suicide by a MM character, guessing maybe Suzanne, Betty, or Jane.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Would it be too soap opera for Suzanne to take her life over Don?
November 5th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
#22 – Correct. We don’t have the benefit of seeing Mona/The Campbells interacting with Margaret/Pete & his brother when they were children. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Campbell was cold toward her children, and look how they turned out. One is a manchild, stuck between childhood and adulthood, and the other is just an asshole.
But Mona – no, Mona is not a ‘cuddly mother’, but you can still see the genuine affection she has for Margaret, even when she’s frustrated with her. And again, we don’t have the benefit of seeing how Mona dealt when Margaret was a child, this is all based on what we’ve been shown.
Betty is fine when the kids are behaving, but the slightest misbehavior brings out this completely different, ugly person. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you have to be a mother/parent to truly understand (I’m a 21 year old guy with absolutely no thoughts of children any time soon) but I just don’t see it.
Maybe the ’she wasn’t meant to be a mother’ thing was a little harsh, but you have to admit that some women are just better at it than others, or at least are more mentally equipped to deal with it.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
#22. I certain agree with that. You’re right that wives became mothers just because they saw it as the next thing to do. In a way I see Trudy’s infertility and Peggy giving up her child as a mixed blessing. They have the chance to develop strength within themselves, not having to be strong for their kids. Betty must’ve had Sally when she was 20, 21? She wasn’t mature enough herself and she’s still really struggling with it now.
But I don’t think the Draper kids are suffering any real damage at the moment. They still seem to love their parents. When Betty came back from the hospital they were hugging her and saying they missed her. Betty can bark at them, but they seem pretty resiliant to it.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
#25, Andrew: thank you.
I’ve held off on saying this because I have a hunch you know whereof you speak. But you are right: some women are not meant to be mothers. Credit those in the present day who know this, listen to it, and do not allow anyone else to change their minds.
I know a few women who flat-out admit that they should never have had kids. Their children are adults now, but not parents themselves. (I find this interesting.)
One of these women is bright and funny, very attractive, always the center of attention. But she admits that she was “a lousy mother”. The one of her children who will discuss the subject agrees.
Another I know just always loved working; still does. When her child came along, it halted her progress. They have both had to work past her resentment. They are okay; but when you’re a kid, you know if your mom loves something more than she loves you. Imagine if that thing were a job.
Listen, one size really doesn’t fit all. And being a mother has nothing to do with a tendency to hug. It has to do with making space in your life — permanent space — for other people: letting them in, then letting them go, but never letting go of that tether of love that connects you and them.
Betty didn’t have a choice. Some women I know didn’t, either. Having kids was just what people did, like it or not. And once they were there, everyone — mothers, fathers, and especially kids — made the best of it.
Thanks again, Andrew. And I’m sorry.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I actually have a pretty great mom and dad, but I’ve seen plenty of kids who didn’t, friends, classmates, etc.
And Betty certainly isn’t the worst parent ever, not even top 100. The Draper kids certainly have more of a chance at a healthy emotional life than those who have been outright physically or mentally abused. But just because she’s not hitting them, or screaming insults, doesn’t mean she’s not doing any damage.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I definitely don’t think it will be Betty. Betty has shown us to be a too strong & resilient woman this season. The way she’s stood up to Don totally depicts this. And she has 3 kids, one of which is a newborn. No way she’s offing herself.
If it will be anyone, I think it will be either Greg (is that his name? – Joan’s hubbie) or Sal.
Greg was devastated when turned down for a surgical position. And the whole joining the army thing was a weak attempt at saving face. He will quickly realize this, if he hasn’t already.
As for Sal, well it would be devastating. But suicide would be the show’s way to depict the difficulty of being gay during those times. It did cost him his job & eventually his marriage. Not to mention what is psychie is going through right now.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
The only character I ever saw as a potential suicide was Freddy.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:39 am
The opening credits is a suicide. I think all the references allude to that fall, and that story will take place over the next few seasons. Constant references are being made however. Anyone notice they have been lighting scenes so dons profile is a silhouette. But what if they pull a ultimate Alfred Hitchcock and kill the lead 1/2 way through the story!