"On the Tube" Reviews - Mad Men

On the Tube Reviews
by Mark Loewenstern

Television – Mad Men (**spoilers!**)

episode: “Respect Betty”

Don Draper’s ex-wife Betty has generated so much hatred since the new season of “Mad Men” started, you’d think she shoved a cat into a trashcan. But those who cringe every time she comes on the screen are missing a simple and elegant truth that lies at the core of this excellent show, which is this: Betty was the ultimate victim of Don’s genius for advertising; he ruined her life.

Just as Don has temporarily escaped from New York to California, where he could drop his false identity and as Dick Whitman literally “be himself,” Betty was at her most authentic when she was in Italy…both in last season’s vacation episode and, more importantly, in her previous life as an artist’s model and starlet. But Don convinced her to give all that up to be a housewife in Ossining… literally selling her on the same version of the American Dream that he sells every day at the office, a dream that Betty didn’t know that she didn’t want until it was too late. If she is a terrible mother now, consider that she didn’t want to be one, or at least, not while she was still in her early 20s.

Worse still, Don didn’t actually give her what he was selling. When Betty married him, she thought she was getting a stable provider. Now she knows the truth: her ex-husband and the father of her children may be a master of the world in some quarters, but as an army deserter he is also one phone call away from a long prison term.

And this brings us to the heart of the matter: Betty’s role going forward.

“Mad Men’s” famous title sequence, with a man falling from a disintegrating skyscraper, clues us in that a great fall is coming for Don Draper. And Betty, who both knows Don’s sordid past and also has the motive to do him harm, is uniquely placed to bring about this fall. She is Don’s nemesis, the avenging fury who will one day call him to account for all his past sins.