I DONE THUNK
HERE’S WHAT I THINK ABOUT THE SWITCH:
Okay, so I’m a woman. And I know I want kids, somewhere deep, deep down in my ovaries I know I want kids, and I want the father of those kids to be someone like Ben Affleck, who wears flannel shirts and can fix the plumbing and whose genes belong solely to my goddamn children.
So keep this in mind when I say that this awkward, too-long movie has some realistic moments thrown in, such as a feeling in the end that Jennifer Aniston is settling for the father of her child, yet somehow in a safe, stable sort of way which is refreshing considering the onslaught of romantic comedies where the older/working/single mother/troubled woman is awakened by a free-spirited man who encourages her to try new things and expand her life. Jason Bateman is not exotic or devastating, thank god. He is typical, if a bit more melancholic, in his role as a stricken-faced everyman.
In the end it was promising. It managed to portray a brave single mother finding happiness in a way that was actually quite subtle and sometimes oddly funny. I dont expect it to be a blockbuster, or to do well with any critics, but hey, I liked the fucking Lake House.
HERE’S WHAT I THINK ABOUT MAD MEN:
So I gotta say first of all, props for showing (okay, maybe more implying) a ten year old girl discovering masturbation while watching Glenn Corbett in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The scene was tastefully done, or as tastefully done as it could be. Mad Men wouldn’t work if it wasn’t edgy.
Honestly, the only character whose story really resonated with me this week was Sally’s sad state. When it opened, it was clear from her first few scenes on screen that Sally would be going through a lot this season. She is fighting some daddy issues that are coming on strong, as evidenced by her shearing off her beautiful wavy blond hair—with what I imagine to be those frighteningly large metal scissors of the 1960s—because the babysitter, who she thinks is “doing it” with her father, has a short hair style. It is heartbreaking to see Sally’s cold reception of Phoebe, especially as her poor brother Bobby expresses exaggerated delight at the doctor’s kit Phoebe has brought.
It has been abundantly apparent that Betty is going to be the antagonist of this season, a role which is usually filled by Pete (although I am waiting to see if his newfound fatherhood will create a maturity and sympathy for the character, or just make him more annoying). Betty slaps Sally across the face—just for cutting her hair!—and sends her to bed when Don brings her home. Betty promises to apologize, but only after Henry tells her to. She is good at obeying her husbands—as long as she still likes them. Betty also completely fails to defend poor Sally when she is brought home from the sleepover by her friend’s mother. She even tells the woman that she would have done the same thing. Later in bed with Henry, she acts as though the embarrassment of other people know what Sally did is worse to her than the emotion significance of a girl discovering her sexuality and immediately being made to feel shameful of it. Which of course, to Betty, it is.
But when Betty goes to see “Dr. Edna”—the therapist she found through Sally’s school—we again see Betty in the same sort of pitying light as in the first season, as she is spilling pieces of information about her life, each sentiment more haunting than the last, at which Dr. Edna seems to immediately realize it isn’t just Sally who is in need of therapy, and schedules Betty to come in once a month, under the guise of marking Sally’s progress. I notice that Sally herself is scheduled at four times a week starting out. Does that seem a bit high to anyone else?
Anyways, the last image of the episode is really what convinces me that the subject is meant to be Sally. As she walks into Dr. Edna’s office, leaving Carla behind in the waiting room. I couldn’t help but feel a huge wave of disappointment when I realized there wasn’t enough time left in the episode for us to see any of the actual session. We can only hope that we will get to hear Sally’s likely interesting thoughts in later episodes. I am also anxious to learn if Dr. Edna will be a figure of goodness in Sally’s life which she has greatly been lacking at home, or if she will turn out as cruel as every adult has been so far. She seems to be a forward-thinking psychologist, representative of the boom in a more liberated style of psycho-therapy. Her interest and possible sympathetic feelings towards Betty worry me, but at least she doesn’t seem the type of woman with whom Don is going to sleep. If she were a fit, intellectual brunette straight out of Wellesley I just wouldn’t be able to take it.
