What Mad Men character should die?

[shoutinfreud]

Serioulsy, Betty Francis Draper must die. Everyone in the show is written so that you hate them, but care about them for some reason. Betty has no qualities though. She's a lazy, freeloading, veangeful person and MUST DIE.

[blogslut]

1. I disagree

I think Betty is a very damaged person who doesn't realize it. Remember the era of the show takes place in a time where most people simply didn't question the way they were raised nor were women allowed to resent their lack of autonomy.

I believe Betty was likely sexually abused or at the very least, psycho-sexually manipulated by her father. She has a lot of simmering anger and she acts out - badly. Mind you, that doesn't excuse her awful selfishness and the violence she directs at Sally.

I just think that, if the show decides to put Betty in therapy - all hell is gonna break loose.

[shoutinfreud]

2. The show has been very open about Betty's past

And she clearly had a loving Father and was not sexually abused, though one episode made you think that was what happened, but in the end it did not.

Draper, when compared to Betty is actually a better human being. He's loyal to friends and isn't a totally abusive asshole when dealing with his kids.


Yes, he cheated on betty LOADS, but she did too in the end.

[blogslut]

3. Once again, I disagree

If the next season explores Betty, it's going to be through therapy. We're going to find out that Betty's childhood was not a happy one but rather one of lost opportunity and broken spirit. Like so many women of her generation, she was raised on the mixed message: You can do anything as long as you get married and give it all up for your husband and children. There was a lot of resentful moms in the 60s.

I have to admit, I missed the episode where we discover that her relationship with her father wasn't icky. Can you tell me which episode that was?

[shoutinfreud]

4. Don't remember off the top of my head

But he was hanging out with sally and it was a situation where you thought "Holy shit, this guy is a creep!" And in the end it was not that at all.

[blogslut]

5. I vaguely remember

However, that doesn't negate that Betty's relationship with her father was off in some way. That perhaps Betty's hostility toward Sally is two-fold: Sally has a better chance at being her own person and she, in essence, replaced Betty as her father's special girl.

Alls I'm saying is that, in my opinion, Betty Draper is the most complicated character on that show. Too many people blow her off as a demon but if the show allows us to dig deeper, well...

I don't want her killed off. She's the show's symbolic manifestation of The Feminine Mystique.

[targetpractice]

6. I think Betty has Narcisstic Personality Disorder...

It's fascinating to watch her... She reminds me of my mother. And, I'm convinced that writers intend for her to exhibit classic NPD symptoms and origins.

[blogslut]

7. She's got something

But I hold out hope for Betty. I think she's familiar to a lot of we women of a certain age. My mom was wonderful and very easy going but she had a secret bitterness. My sister and discovered that if we woke up in the middle of the night and quietly padded our way to the utility room, we would find our mother hunched over her sewing machine, quietly cursing: "I have to do everything! Ungrateful! God dammit to hell!".

No one was more supportive of my father. No one did more for her children than my mother. Just the same, she was a woman who knew she could have been someone very different, had her times been different.

[Bucky]

8. Ken. He's too noble and, frankly, doesn't bring a lot to the stories anymore

I'm convinced Dr. McRapey is gonna come back from Vietnam entirely intact... physically.

[shoutinfreud]

9. I think he's a deadman, cause Joan kept the baby she had with roger.

I never got the rape scene in that show..... they went ahead and showed it. Then they acted like it never happened and made him out into a nice guy.

I only think they did it to keep up the "everyone has something that makes you hate them" thing.

All the men are pigs as are the women in that show.....even Harry Crane cheated on his wife.

[Bucky]

11. Nice guy? McRapey? No way. They've always shown him to be a weakling & dipshit

I thought the whole point of the spousal rape scene was to reflect the lack of sexual enlightenment among men in society. They also show a number of women who don't have the power to say no (like that German au paire next door to Pete and even Peggy when she was with Pete & Duck). You see that in all the movies of the 50s & 60s. No meant pressure her harder. We forget just how in the 70s when they came up with "No means no" it was ground breaking. Today it's just a tautology, but back then it was a radical change of social awareness.

[nolabear]

10. Forget Betty. That is one hysterical screen name.

But back to Betty, I don't know that I want her to die but I FEEL your skin-crawly damn-that-woman's-dysfunctional disdain.