Spoilers from Mad Men, “The Milk and Honey Route,” below:
Why wouldn’t Betty just go away? At least since the Draper marriage broke up at the end of Season 3, there has been a strong anti-Betty refrain among the Mad Men fandom — people found her cold, childish or, most damning of all, superfluous. It was a rare thing, after all, to end the protagonist’s marriage in the middle of a series. What do you do then? Maybe there should be a divorce settlement: Betty gets custody of the kids, Don gets custody of the audience.
In defense of these viewers, Mad Men has not always seemed to know what to do with Betty in the post-divorce years. Sometimes she was stranded in tertiary plots (say, her reconnaissance mission to a hippie tenement in search of Sally’s violinist friend). Sometimes the show seemed actively hostile to her (the whole “Fat Betty” arc from Season 5). Sometimes she seemed to exist for the sake of scenes that demonstrated, as Matthew Weiner has said of her, that she “should never have had kids.”
The 10 Best Outfits From Mad Men
Betty’s floral dress Her outfit for lunch with future husband Henry is quintessential Betty, with soft colors and a fitted silhouette.Carin Baer—AMCJoan’s pen necklace There are few television accessories as iconic as Joan's pen, always dangling over her chest and eventually insulted by a snarky young copywriter who sees its placement as a power play.Michael Yarish—AMCMegan’s metallic dress
Megan has all the glamour Peggy lacks, with a more fashion-forward sensibility than Betty.Michael Yarish—AMCTrudy’s floral dress
Trudy’s garden party outfit is put to good use when she and Pete impress guests with a mean performance of the Charleston.Carin Baer—AMCPeggy’s pantsuit
Peggy may not be a style icon, but she was well suited for ladder climbing in a loud vest and trouser set at a pivotal moment in her professional ascent.Jaimie Trueblood—AMCMegan’s Zou Bisou Bisou dress
Megan surprises Don and her party guests with a performance as sultry as her little black dress.Ron Jaffe—AMCJoan’s accordion-playing dress
Dresses are like armor for Joan, who wears this form-fitting number while entertaining her husband’s colleagues on the accordion—despite their marital problems.Carin Baer—AMCSally’s go-go boots Sally tries on a very grown-up look for an awards ceremony with Don and Megan, and finds herself in a grown-up situation when she witnesses Roger in a compromising position with Megan’s mother.AMCRoger’s blue suit Roger always looks sharp in a suit, but his sartorial gifts look even more impressive when surrounded by hippies on the farm where his daughter joined a commune.Michael Yarish—AMCBetty’s Italian dress For a trip to Italy with Don, Betty gives herself a makeover more befitting of her days as a model than her life as a Westchester mom.Carin Baer—AMC
But writing Betty off would have been the TV thing to do — driven by story concision, neatness, budget — not the Mad Men thing to do. Mad Men has always been committed, first, to the messy, complicated reality of life. (Though I wonder in retrospect if Weiner didn’t consider this end sooner, when Betty had her cancer scare in Season 5.) It doesn’t get messier or more complicated than divorce, and the reality of that is, once you are tied to people through children and history, they remain part of your life one way or another.
Betty’s devastating story line in “The Milk and Honey Route” proved that those connections were still sunk in deep enough to tear at our hearts. Of course, a terminal diagnosis is an easy way to do that. (Sally getting the news in her dorm room, her Peanuts calendar hanging behind her: I died.) But this wasn’t just medical-drama manipulation: Betty Hofstadt/Draper/Francis moved us because she earned her place, because Mad Men needed her:
She connected Don’s work to life (and death). Among many parallels to The Sopranos, I suspect that Betty — like Carmela, Meadow and A.J. often did — got on fans’ bad side because she wasn’t involved in the business story lines they preferred. The office is where Mad Men’s action is, but it’s not all the show is about. And yet there was a heavy sense of vocational irony in her illness: after all those years of shilling tobacco, the bill came due, yet it was not Don or any of the ad men who had to pay it. (Not to make Betty’s diagnosis all about Don, but it’s noteworthy that three of the significant women in his life — Anna, Rachel and now it seems Betty — would die of cancer.)
She was essential to Mad Men’s feminism. It’s not controversial to say that, title aside, Mad Men is largely a women’s story. And it’s not surprising that, especially for a modern audience, it’s easier to identify with that story through Joan (who goes from accepting the boy’s club to actively fighting it) or Peggy (whose attitudes are closer to those of our own time). With few exceptions (hoisting her gun in the first season), Betty gives us few you-go-girl moments to cheer for. (And so what? We don’t need Mad Men’s male characters to be “likeable” or “relatable” to justify their existence.) But that’s exactly why we need her: the suburban Republican housewife may not have been a feminist but she was a case study for feminism all the same. Watch the scene where she gets her diagnosis: Weiner’s camera pushes in on Betty, in focus, but it’s men doing the talking, the doctor discussing treatment options with her husband. The world treats her as a secondary character even in her own death.
She showed that people don’t change … Of course, for much of Betty’s life, she’s accepted, even embraced, living life as an adornment to the men around her. See her heartbreaking letter to Sally, concerned first with how she’ll look at her funeral: “Remind them how I liked to wear my hair. Will you show them the picture?” She is a construct of a certain set of social expectations, and she’s asserted her worth and strength by trying to be the absolute damn best at living up to them. This may not make her a hero from today’s perspective. But no less than with Don, this is part of Mad Men’s belief that change is a lot harder than TV makes it look.
… Except when they do. And yet when we met Betty at the beginning of this final season, she was attempting change, in her small way, going back to school in psychology. Is it too late? Maybe. (Even before she gets her diagnosis, her fellow students are mocking her as “Mrs. Robinson.”) Is it misguided? Possibly! (Let’s say she’s more than halfway down the list of Mad Men characters you’d seek psychological counsel from.) But it’s an assertion of independence, more so when you remember that in the first season she was confiding in a therapist who was secretly reporting to Don. “Why would you do that?” Henry asks, as she continues to go to class for a degree she won’t ever be able to complete. Her answer: “Why was I ever doing it?” Betty did not wholly own her life. But she damn sure intends to own its ending.
Because the past is the mother to the future. It’s not a happy ending, and yet it’s a kind of hopeful one. Not to play psychologist myself, but it’s worth noting that Weiner’s own mother went back to school — in her case law school — late in life. And in that final letter to Sally, there’s a sense of a generational passing. Sally may have “marched to the beat of [her] own drum” (I like the cliché here; Mad Men isn’t going to pretend that cancer has made Betty a poet), but the result of all that pushing, fighting and struggle is that Sally’s life “will be an adventure.”
No, people don’t always change, and when they do, it’s not always dramatic. And yet — this is the contradiction that Mad Men shows us over and over — the world changes anyway. Occasionally people break their patterns. More often, they’re lucky enough if they live to see the pattern change in their children. Sometimes the adventure comes in the next life. In Betty’s case, that next life will have to be Sally’s.
Volkswagen, April 11, 1960 Early in Season 1, Don Draper comes across this Volkswagen ad in an issue of LIFE Magazine. He tells his colleagues he doesn’t know what he hates more, “the ad or the car.” But after discussing Volkswagen's strategy at length, he’s forced to concede, “Love it or hate it, we’ve been talking about it for the last 15 minutes.” VW’s Lemon ad, along with its “Think Small” campaign, was widely considered some of the most innovative advertising of the 20th century for its honesty, irony and freshness.LIFE MagazineCoca-Cola, April 11, 1960 Although Sterling Cooper never counts Coca-Cola as a client, Coca-Cola nearly counts Betty Draper as a model. The ad she models for, later ditched when the agency decides to go with an Audrey Hepburn look over Betty’s Grace Kelly countenance, is a shot of a picture-perfect picnicking family, a counterpoint to Betty and Don’s troubled real-life family. This real Coca-Cola ad from the same year focuses not on familial love but on innocent romantic love, with words by a copywriter who dealt heavily in exclamation points.LIFE MagazineMaidenform, May 16, 1960 One of Sterling Cooper’s clients in Season 2 is Playtex, whose executives are envious of the head-turningly sexy ad campaign by their competitor, Maidenform. Sterling Cooper comes up with an equally sexy campaign that shows the two sides of every woman, at least as contained within the male fantasy: her Jackie Kennedy and her Marilyn Monroe. In its real ads at the time, Maidenform did, in fact, play up the sex factor, though they also included a substantial amount of copy touting the materials and construction behind the seductive product.LIFE MagazineAmerican Airlines, May 16, 1960 Sterling Cooper pitches American Airlines in Season 2, ultimately failing to win the account. Though the pitch meeting is never shown, some of the ideas appear in the meetings leading up to it. Taglines include the rather generic “American flies the world,” “Let’s fly away” and “This is American Airlines,” the latter accompanied by a watercolor of a plane taking off against a darkening sky. This real ad from 1960 tugs at the heartstrings, playing up American Airlines’ role in bringing families together when it counts, at great speed and an affordable price with stewardesses that “keep you feeling at home.”LIFE MagazineLucky Strike, December 12, 1960 Lucky Strike is one of Sterling Cooper’s most important clients throughout the series. The pilot episode focuses on the challenges of advertising for cigarette companies amidst a growing public awareness of the health risks associated with smoking. Don proposes emphasizing the taste and unique quality of a Lucky Strike cigarette (“It’s toasted!”). This real ad similarly focuses on taste, promoting the pleasurable experience of smoking as a distraction from the health-related drawbacks.LIFE MagazinePlaytex, June 30, 1961 Though Playtex is a client of Sterling Cooper’s, we only see the agency’s work for the company’s undergarments division. In 1960, Playtex began selling tampons, baby products and other goods. This ad for disposable diapers takes a different approach from Sterling Cooper’s usual strategy, attempting to blend in with LIFE Magazine’s content by taking the form of a pictorial essay. The arrangement of photos and captions mimics the layout of a reported photo essay, making it easy for a reader to miss, at first glance, the fact that he or she is looking at an ad. LIFE MagazinePepsi, August 31, 1962 In Season 3, Sterling Cooper produces a commercial for Patio Cola—rebranded in 1963 as Diet Pepsi—in which an Ann-Margret look-alike sings “bye bye sugar” to the tune of “Bye Bye Birdie.” This real print ad for Pepsi, from the same year that the episode takes place, relies on the same youthful glow Sterling Cooper was hoping to achieve by alluding to newly crowned superstar Ann-Margret. Youth, the ad suggests, is less about one’s age than one’s attitude (assuming it’s accompanied by a bottle of Pepsi).LIFE MagazineLufthansa, June 28, 1963 Whereas Mad Men’s pitches for airlines tend to focus on the planes and the journey, many aviation companies put their stewardesses (or at least the models playing them) front and center in their ads. This 1963 ad for Lufthansa advertises flights to “darkest Africa,” where Bob Hope had recently completed shooting the film Call Me Bwana. The flight attendant, or so the ad would have its target audience believe, is prepared to treat customers with the same gentle touch as she does George the chimpanzee and Tony the lion.LIFE MagazineBethlehem Steel, June 28, 1963 Don’s pitch for Bethlehem Steel is a picture of the Manhattan skyline with the tagline, “New York City, brought to you by Bethlehem Steel.” The company’s real-life ads also advertise not the steel itself, but things that can be made from it, in this case, soda cans. Whereas Don’s idea played on the notion of reverence for the modern metropolis, the real ad is more lighthearted and playful, imagining a day at the beach made easier by replacing bottles with lighter, smaller cans. LIFE MagazineSamsonite, July 12, 1963Mad Men’s pitch for Samsonite coincides with the legendary Muhammed Ali vs. Sonny Liston fight for World Heavyweight Champion. Don’s last-ditch idea is to play off the photo of a victorious Ali that appeared in newspapers across the country following the fight, comparing the suitcase to the boxing champion. This real Samsonite ad mentions the luggage’s durability in the copy (“dent-resistant body, strong magnesium frame”), but visually prioritizes its value as a handsome fashion accessory to take on exotic trips.LIFE MagazineHeinz, February 14, 1964 Don, Peggy and the team throw around a lot of ideas for Heinz, a hard-to-please client, from “Home is where the Heinz is” to “Heinz beans: some things never change” to “Heinz. The only ketchup.” This 1964 Heinz ad is much less sentimental, though the images it uses emphasize familial togetherness with Heinz at the center. Here, it’s the notion of variety, and the excitement of a dual-identity brought about by multiple ketchup flavors, that’s used to entice customers.LIFE MagazineAccutron, September 11, 1964 In the first episode of Season 7, Don pitches Accutron, using Freddy Rumsen as a mouthpiece. His tagline: “Accutron. It’s not a timepiece. It’s a conversation piece.” The pitch is meant to suggest that the watch makes its wearer interesting. This real Accutron ad from the mid-1960s favors simple design and a briefly stated plug for the watch’s best feature: its accuracy. The copy describes the technology that elevates the watch to best-in-class for timekeeping, so sophisticated that even the government relies on it for satellites.LIFE MagazinePhilip Morris, January 29, 1965 Philip Morris is a recurring player in Mad Men, a desirable client due to its sizable share of the cigarette market. In Season 5, Peggy is asked to brainstorm ideas for a top-secret ladies cigarette, and later, the partners pursue Commander, a Philip Morris brand. This 1965 ad, echoing both Don’s Lucky Strike pitch and real-life Lucky Strike ads, places flavor at its center. Targeting women, it sends the dual message that Philip Morris cigarettes are simply enjoyable and flavorful.LIFE MagazineSunkist, July 2, 1965 When Sterling Cooper & Partners pursues Sunkist during Season 6, Don makes a big push for advertising on color TV, which he believes will be the most effective way to advertise a fruit whose name itself is a color. This real Sunkist ad, though it’s in print rather than on television, uses bright color to its advantage to snap readers’ attention into focus. From bright orange lettering to the shiny oranges to the use of a redheaded model, the ad creates a visual counterpart for the experience it’s meant to sell: “real citrus excitement.”LIFE MagazineHonda, August 13, 1965 Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce only pretends to shoot a commercial for Honda Motorcycles, so we never see any completed work on the show. Honda’s actual campaign at the time took a friendly approach. This ad’s copy suggests that nice people ride Hondas, which the well-dressed couple in the photo reinforces. Playing up its ease of use (“Almost anyone can handle it”), the ad conveys the message that motorcycles are not just for those who prefer leather—white gloves and a knee-length skirt will do just as well.LIFE MagazinePond's, August 22, 1965 In the show, results from a focus group suggest that the best way to target potential Pond’s buyers is to play on young women’s dreams of getting married. This Pond’s ad from 1965 targets a slightly older demographic, as the model, French actress Jacqueline Huet, was a married mother. The visual choices contribute to a sense of elegance and maturity, not least of all the use of a Parisian backdrop, European architecture and a sophisticated gown. The ad is imbued with a slightly modern sensibility, appealing to busy working mothers.LIFE MagazineJohn Deere, April 7, 1967 When remembering the Season 3 episode featuring John Deere, viewers will think first of the gruesome office accident involving a lawnmower. We never actually get to see the agency’s work for the company. The company’s real advertisements, later in the decade, sold lawnmowers by emphasizing how little time those who bought one would end up spending on it. It’s a bold way of circumventing the problem that the company’s product, for many customers, is something they need but don’t necessarily want.LIFE MagazineChevrolet, October 27, 1967 Sterling Cooper & Partners works long and hard in an attempt to secure Chevy’s business, but the company proves a tough customer. This two-page spread from 1967 takes on a lot a once: It introduces the next year’s models, targets a specific demographic (youthful, affluent) and uses significant copy space to tout its use of computers, explain new features and highlight safety, including a brand new safety measure: the seatbelt. LIFE MagazineHeineken, September 12, 1969 Don pitches Heineken on targeting suburban housewives by advertising in grocery stores. Conversely, this ad from the late 1960s is explicitly aimed at men, and not just any men: the model is bespectacled (intelligent), suited up (a businessman) and bejeweled (married). In contrast to ads like Chevrolet’s that rely on ample text, this one is simple, offering two straightforward takeaways. First, that Heineken’s product is distinguished from its peers. And second, that it simply tastes good.LIFE Magazine
