Mad Men Season 4, Episode 9: "The Beautiful Girls"

This was the Sally episode I've been hoping for, but oh man, was it heartbreaking. This episode shifted gears so often I think I got whiplash, if whiplash was awesome. I'm floored, ecstatic, heart-warmed, and devastated. The different emotional registers this episode goes through: the satisfaction of seeing Don enjoy what is perhaps the healthiest and most mature relationship we’ve seen him in; the hilarity of watching Pete and Joan deal with Mrs. Blankenship’s corpse in the background of a shot (Harry on his afghan-turned-death-shawl: “My mother made that!”); the shock and anxiety of two characters getting robbed at gunpoint, and then the heat-of-the-moment passion in which Joan finally gives in to feeling good, even if it’s only fleeting (also, check out Roger’s mad deferential skills! You’d think he gets robbed at gunpoint all the time); the wonderful moments between Don and Sally, and finally and most distressingly, the terror Sally expresses at having to return to living with The Worst Mother in the World in her Palace of Ice and Terror.

“You see what it’s like,” Betty says to Don when Sally has foisted herself on Don for two days. That’s all we get of Betty’s awfulness this episode (she sees Sally as a burden), but coupled with Sally’s behavior near its end, it’s more than enough to drive home how awful Betty continues to be. Much like keeping the shark on the margins in Jaws, the show effectively reminds us of Betty’s tyranny without showing it. Watching Sally’s behavior change when she approaches Betty in the lobby was like watching Sally get stuffed into a bag. I’m tempted to say that Don is as good a father as Betty is a bad mother, but it’s not quite true, because if he were really that good, he’d try to do something about the way Betty treats Sally (perhaps even acquiesce to Sally’s desire to live with him – given how Betty views her, she might even agree, although given how petty she is, she might try to fight it just to spite Don). Perhaps his attitude toward Betty is a product of the times (concede all domestic authority to the mother), and Sally’s misery certainly seems to be eating him up inside, but he just can’t seem to push the issue with Betty, even with all of the other female characters at Sterling Cooper present as sympathetic witnesses to Sally’s plight (and it was the saddened looks of Joan, Peggy, Faye, and the swan-like lobby secretary whose name I don’t remember that truly made this one of the saddest scene in a season full of them). I truly fear for Sally now; she’s discovered her father can’t save her. Where might she turn next to escape from The Worst Mother in the World and her Palace of Ice and Terror? It can’t be anywhere good. “What a mess,” indeed.