I didn't find Betty one-dimensional.

I don't think she's one-dimensional, and I've read some reviews that complained that she's becoming a caricature of a bad mom, or not recognizably human. But having gone through a divorce I know that you are yanked completely out of balance and shit comes flying out of your mouth that you never would have said before. The whole experience is raw and jagged and you have no sense of who you are or how to see yourself.

So, here's hoping Dr. Edna works some magic on Betty.

David,

your point is well taken, but Betty was acting like this before the divorce. She said some crazy things (threats of violence in a mild voice) to her daughter before she knew of Don's past.

Back then, I thought she was clinically depressed. Maybe she is still.

I wish there'd been a Dr. Edna for my family back then. (Maybe she'll turn out to be Joan's long-lost mother?)

Back then, I thought she was clinically depressed. Maybe she is still.

Oh, I definitely think she's depressed. Even though her circumstances have changed, she's still got the same basic problem she had in S1. She's too smart for the life laid out in front of her, but she can't figure out why she's so dissatisfied. She's got it all. She's had it all twice. It doesn't make her happy.

Think about how much Peggy and even Joan have changed since S1 compared to Betty. She really needs to have all the support beams torn down and stand in the rubble and have an opportunity to recreate herself. I just can't see that happening in 1965, unless something goes wrong with Henry.

You see her trying to understand Sally a bit and the grief for her dad and her guilt. Lots going on there.

See, I actually didn't see her as trying to understand Sally so much as "look at MEEEEEE, look at everything I've had to endure!" Sally's yet another trial for her and she's trying to understand why she should be subjected to this torment. You'll note how quickly she turned the whole session into it being About Her.

She's agreed to Sally seeing a therapist not because she's hoping to get at the root of Sally's issues and helping her become a happier, healthier child, but because she wants to "fix" Sally enough so she's no longer a burden on Betty and learns how to control herself the way she did.

And I think Dr. Edna zeroed in on that right away.

I agree with Barb. Betty's not going to empathize with anyone who isn't herself. Whatever else she is, she's a horrible narcissist, and it would require an enormous amount of therapy for her to even acknowledge that she has a problem. I love that her psychologist is a child psychologist, too.

That's why I've got great hopes for Dr Edna.

So, in movies I posted a link about Garret Brown, inventor of the Steadicam and also a voiceover artist.

Turns out he had a quintessentially Mad Men yet odd career. First he was a folksinger, and then...

In 1964 I was newly married, but with no possible way to get a job. I had no skills that anybody wanted; I had no degree. Somebody had said to me that advertising is a great "bolt hole for ne'er-do-wells." A friend of mine who had gotten a job as an account man for McCann-Erickson put it that way exactly.

At that point I had fallen in love with an 8mm Bolex [film camera] that a neighbor of mine had. I started really getting infatuated with shooting film and thinking about film. That's when I went into the library. My wife worked; I spent three months reading all the books [on film in the Philadelphia Public Library]. [See "Garrett Brown: Inventing the Future -- along with a Few Handy Personal Gadgets".] I tried to get a job in one of the 30 or so film companies in Philly then. None of them would hire me -- not even to sweep floors, as the saying goes. I mean, they would say, "Well, can you A and B roll and cut negative?" [I'd say,] "Well, I know how to do it, [although] I haven't ever done it." [And they'd say,] "Get out of here."

So I decided to try and get a job in an ad agency as a writer. I made a resume, myself -- one resume of construction paper with photos from my folk days and reviews and all this stuff that I thought would be impressive to somebody. [It was] probably one of the weirdest resumes anybody ever saw. I showed this to people in the ad biz. I had only one suit -- a horror show from George Jacobs Big and Tall. I just looked like a clown to these guys [in the advertising agencies].

One guy decided to give me a junior copywriting job because, on the way out, I said, "Look, let me try and write some ads for you, just test ads. Will you at least look at them?" He said, "Well, all right. I'll look at them." I did a couple of ads, full of puns and what I thought was good ad copy, and showed them to this guy. He showed them to his subordinate and they said, "All right, we'll give you a try as a copywriter." So I came home triumphant that I had a job for $6,000 a year writing ads.

Then the agency producer left, and that job was vacant. Since I had all this chat about film -- I could talk about the grammar of film and so on -- I was the guy there who seemed to know the most about film. So they gave me the job of agency producer.

I turned out to be good at it. We won tons of awards. The agency suddenly was known for its TV output. And the agency [I worked for] was bought by a New York agency on the strength of these awards that we had won -- me and this very funny young woman who had become my writing partner.

His writing partner was Ann Winn, with whom he had a series of hugely successful radio ads in the 80s.

At the very end I think Betty showed a tiny sign of thinking beyond herself. When she asked the Doctor if she would share what Sally said, and the Doctor answered No, that that was between her and Sally and that anything Betty said to the Doctor was Confidential as well. And Betty "That's better". So Betty liked that the doctor would not betray Sally the way the Doctor who Don found betrayed Betty. And of course still selfish, because it makes the Doctor more competent to "fix" Sally. But still a longer term selfishness that requires a certain empathy with someone else, an ability to see the similarity between her situation and Sally's in that limited case.

Christina Hendricks shows up as a model on Etsy: [link]