Betty, to Mona: I don’t know if I told you, but my mother died three months ago.
Mona: (says nothing. Nothing!)
Ladies Room attendant, to Betty and Mona: I’m sorry. There are other ladies waiting to use the mirror.
So what you hear is:
Betty: I don’t know if I told you, but my mother died three months ago.
Anyone in the world who is finally responding to Betty: I’m sorry.
March 24, 2008 at 3:31 am
Why DID Mona say nothing? I never got that. She seems perfectly nice in subsequent eppies, but her reaction there seemed so cold.
March 24, 2008 at 8:16 am
Do you think she froze? Didn’t know what to say for a moment, and was then rushed out?
March 24, 2008 at 8:39 am
I will watch again, but I think the pause went on too long. While perhaps she initially may have frozen, she made a choice to say nothing.
March 24, 2008 at 8:50 am
how long was the pause … i can’t be sure without watching again, but could the flow of the conversation been interrupted by the attendant? maybe she was going to say something but couldn’t …
March 24, 2008 at 9:03 am
There’s nothing on youtube, dammit. But I am preeetty sure it extends beyond a pause.
March 24, 2008 at 9:05 am
I remember that and I’m with Roberta–Mona chose to say nothing. There was a long enough pause for Mona to react before the attendant said anything. In fact, Mona seemed downright cold at the moment. I could’ve understood Mona saying nothing if Betty’s revelation had been something of a more intimate nature but that’s not how Betty’s comment struck me.
March 24, 2008 at 11:03 am
What I remember is that Betty’s hands went numb, and then she talked about “it’s hard to hold onto anything these days” while Mona helped her with her lipstick, and THEN Betty said her mother died. So maybe Mona was starting to think that Betty was a little…not quite right.
March 24, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Maybe, but the revelation about her mother should make her not being quite right make sense. I would think the natural impulse would be to feel, well, maternal toward Betty.
Maybe THAT’S the problem. Mona just didn’t want to play mommy and she was already forced into the role by the lipstick request.
Maybe what Betty needs more than Dr. Wayne is an older female. Especially since she feels — rightly or wrongly — that Dr. Wayne was looking down her top, and is convinced that her looks are what she has to offer men.
March 24, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I think Betty’s conviction that Dr. Wayne was looking down her top is a power play. I don’t think we’re meant to believe he really did that. I think it’s more a wish than anything else. She only feels comfortable with men who are interested in her physically.
March 24, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Also, she only feels acknowledged by men who are interested in her physically. The guy doesn’t talk, and she has certainly noticed that. At least if she believes/fantasizes that he looks down her blouse, he is paying attention to her. Otherwise that silence could mean… oh, that he thinks she is a gossipy child, or something.
(I don’t actually believe that she takes it that far… she is certain that her concerns and discussions in therapy are not shallow.)
March 24, 2008 at 1:51 pm
“Maybe THAT’S the problem. Mona just didn’t want to play mommy and she was already forced into the role by the lipstick request.”
My thoughts exactly. Remember the scene at the end of “Babylon” where Betty’s putting lipstick on Sally? This was almost a mirror image of that scene. The pause was long enough that Mona could have said something, but she chose not to.
Mona’s probably dealing with her own issues–just being married to a man like Roger, probably makes her want to smack somebody on a daily basis. As much as I love the Roger Sterling character, he has to be one helluva man to live with. So to have Betty, who’s life is seemingly perfect on the surface, crying about how hard it is to be her, well, Mona just wasn’t having it.
We know that Betty and Don are miserable, but they’re both pretty good at outwardly keeping up appearances. It’s not until Marriage of Figaro that we see the facade of their happy family routine wearing down.
March 24, 2008 at 2:23 pm
This is all interesting. Mona also deals with a very difficult, depressed, eating disordered daughter, (and seems to think that both a psychiatrist and a haircut will help).
But it was still pretty cold.
March 24, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Or, it could be the patrician, “We just don’t talk about such things” face.
There is a psychiatrist who has written a book called “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.”
http://www.amazon.com/Bush-Couch-Rev-Ed-President/dp/006143065X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206388095&sr=8-1
There is an anecdote about how George HW & Barbara had another child, who died of leukemia at a young age. There was no funeral, and no discussion. The child went to the hospital one day, and didn’t come back. The next day the parents played golf.
This is horrifying, and obviously deeply dysfunctional. I am not saying that the rich all behave this way. But the don’t-talk-about-it, don’t-mourn paradigm is certainly part of the upper crust (here taken to an insane extreme).
So Mona is not as crazy or mean as Barbara Bush, but perhaps she comes from the same stock.
March 24, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Except I think that a child who dies in infancy is on a different scale in terms of denial and trauma than a dead parent (especially when one is already out of adulthood).
I buy the explanation that Mona was feeling Betty’s neediness too intensely but it was still a cold reaction.
March 24, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I tend to agree with Deborah on this; that it was cultural. I don’t like it, but I think it’s the bulk of what’s going on.
Remember, the theme of the season is Denial, and the theme of the episodes is Not Discussing Our Business. Betty really pushes everyone’s buttons.
And of course, everyone sets their own rules in their own moments. Mona is the one talking about Margaret needing a psychiatrist. (Or maybe it’s Roger, but it doesn’t seem stifled.)
March 24, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Didn’t Don say, about that very same dinner, that he was taught it wasn’t polite to talk about oneself? Maybe Mona was trying to cover Betty’s “gaffe.”
But geez Pete, people still should say “I’m sorry”!
March 24, 2008 at 4:15 pm
is all I’m saying.
March 24, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Okay here it is.
Mona was very nice about applying the lipstick; did not seem put out in any way. Complimented her lips and made a comment about it’s easy to see, with those lips, how you hold on to a man like Don.
When Betty says that her mother died, Mona held her gaze with a compassionate look, (sort of a sympathetic smirk) but with no words or intention of saying any. There was not a ton of time, but she was not speaking. But neither was she cold.
M’Kay?
March 25, 2008 at 7:37 am
FYI – today’s NY Post quotes an AMC source that the S2 will start mid-July.