Or will she figure out a way to grow up?

I find myself constantly dating the characters' problems against the societal changes in place by the early seventies (after the sixties upheavals). Like, "Well, by then it's conceivable Betty would be in a feminist consciousness raising situation and therapy will practically be de rigeur."

They all seem so trapped by cultural expectations that won't change for another six or seven years.

But then I think about all the divorced dads in the seventies who went through their disco cocaine leisure suit phase and didn't seem to become any wiser for it.

The finale felt a little disappointing because Don's decision seemed like a big step backward for his character. It seemed in-character, though. I understand not only why Don made that choice but why it seemed like a really good, honest, true, forward-moving choice for him. But it's not.

Heh, Weiner's a fan of Aaang and Zuko and Toph.

********

A. And I have four little boys so I’m seeing everything. And they’re tired of going to the movies.

Q. That’s a sad commentary.

A. It’s a bummer. But we have things we watch together. We still watch “The Simpsons.” We watch “30 Rock.” We love that cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” We watch “Sym-Bionic Titan.”

And I'm with Hec in that Megan is no little naif/wallflower.

Me too. I think even dating back to when they first slept together. She knew she wasn't going to catch Don by putting any kind of relationship pressure on him, that it had to at least seem like it was all his decision. That being said, I'm not as convinced as everyone else seems to be that Don is making another bad decision.

You know everytime I'm using Read New and land here, I do a doubletake at all the Megans.

Rubicon--WTF. Now they HAVE TO renew it, just to tie up all these loose ends. Grant is the new boss! Who hired Andi? Tanya quitting!! Spangler is a loose cannon and ignoring the clover!!!1!!

Also, I want to have my way with James Badge Dale. Repeatedly.

The Katherine thing and the Andy thing are what bugged me most. Also, what happened to the DVD ?!?

Will knew the significance (or that there was a significance) to Meet Me in St. Louis, I'm hoping he snagged it from Katherine. Poor Katherine.

The loose end of the disk really bugged me. Seriously, where did it go? Katherine had it in her hand, Will ought to have seen it as he helped her to the ground. Everyone just walked away. So that means the police will end up with it??

Was the woman, "I'm here to protect you," ... is she the across-the-air-shaft neighbor?

Matthew Weiner on Tomorrowland: [link]

On Betty:

Why does it seem like there are no good mothers on Mad Men? Wow, that’s kind of harsh. The question of Betty Draper’s motherhood is very peculiar to me. Because we were all raised by women like this. And I know it’s easy to hate her and think she seems childish and impulsive. We’re all here because of women like that.

===

Yeah, hmm. I think MW has to defend JJones but that she isn't a good enough actress to give the character more than one note. Look at how uniformly awful she was on SNL, where other actors are terrific with the similar kind of sketches. This is going back a ways, but Gwyneth Paltrow -- some of the skits she was in were really dumb, esp. after Weekend News, as per usual, but she was terrific in all of them.

Somewhere else, MW says that none of the criticism would be lobbed at JJ if she wasn't beautiful. Sure that's true, people are affected by looks all the time. (Left field example: Aside from distaste for Scn., public sentiment turned against Tom Cruise when he got his braces off, which was around couch-jumping time. He literally does not look like the TC that everyone know from earlier movies and it's so subtle, most people don't notice it.) But back to JJ, I think she getting too much benefit of the doubt for her looks.

Because we were all raised by women like this

No we weren't. My mother isn't like this and neither was her mother, or my great-grandmother. My father's mother wasn't like this either. It is a straight up WASP justification. Not only is he going for this faux universal we, but he is also besmirching the millions of WASP mothers in the 1960s who weren't completely dysfunctional and fucked up.

Even Betty's friends (when we have had a peek at them) weren't this out there.

Weiner has to come to terms with the fact that Betty is so fucking unlikeable that she nearly can't be redeemed at this point.