Plasma Pool

This essay is part of “Point-Hyperpoint: Mad Men,” a rollicking series of posts devoted to discussing AMC’s drama series. Spoilers abound. To read the entire series, please visit this page. To see all of Plasma Pool’s “Point-Hyperpoint” discussions, please click here.

Like all odd-numbered episodes, Sunday’s Mad Men was about the way that people’s best laid plans don’t always work out the way they want. As usual, we saw all sides of the situation: plans in their inception, as seen in Peggy’s belief that Don’s life is exactly what she wants; plans on the brink of being realized and all the terror that comes with standing on that precipice, as seen in the case of prison guard Dennis Hobart; and plans that have already been realized but haven’t worked, and yet they still get trotted out again in the hopes that this time will be different, as seen in Don and Betty’s hope that little Eugene Scott Draper will make everything better.

There have been complaints that nothing major has really happened in this season, and I suppose that’s true. This episode finally gave the haters what they wanted with the birth of the newest Draper, but Mad Men handled it with characteristic disdain for the standard importance of such an event. I can’t remember ever seeing a trip to the maternity ward without a scene of the actual birth of the child — it’s practically TV and movie law that there needs to be at least four shots of the mother pushing hard and nurses and doctors telling her to push. Hell, even Peggy got this scene back in Season One, and I’m not even sure we’ve learned that kid’s name yet.

But we never saw Betty’s labor pains, instead getting Mad Men’s first extended dream sequence, albeit one sadly devoid of talking fish, Annette Bening, or horses. (I will stop making Sopranos references when Mad Men stops being like The Sopranos, dammit.) Instead, Betty and the audience meet the new child at the same time, after a hazy period in which birth maybe the third or fourth most interesting subtext. Baby Eugene is almost an afterthought, someone who just happens to appear because it’s his time, even if no one really seems to be that thrilled about his being there. Dennis beamed with pride when he learned that his son was born, but we see nothing similar with Betty and Don — if it happened at all, it’s withheld, an emotion seemingly superfluous to what’s actually going on here. Their new child might as well be Geena Davis’s maggot baby in The Fly or the whatever-the-fuck from Eraserhead.

He was supposed to make everything better, or at least more tolerable. In his review of this week’s episode, Alan Sepinwall argues that Betty thought the baby would fix everything, and while I’m not sure I’d go that far, she certainly assumed it would bring her and Don closer to each other. That’s still possible, I guess, but with Don developing typical adulterous feelings for Sally’s teacher, it seems like only a matter of time before that falls apart. Even outside of whatever Don’s doing, though, Betty clearly isn’t too thrilled with the reality of having to care for another child. The fantastic final moments of this episode put Betty on the threshold of Gene’s room, in a pregnant pause before comforting him. It seems clear that the realities of caring for a baby never really entered her mind prior to this moment. Expect long days caring for Eugene as Don comes home right before bed time, Betty, because it’s unlikely Don will be attentive to three children when he hardly spends any time with Bobby as is.

And what of Eugene Scott’s name? In typical Betty fashion, she’s made a nice gesture because it seems like the right thing to do, but it’s not apparent that she has any clear conception of her relationship with her father. As we saw last week, Gene didn’t quite like what Betty has become, and she seemed entirely unwilling to face the reality of his failing health or care for him in any meaningful way. now Betty must take care of a Gene that can’t take care of himself; there’s no way she can shirk her responsibility without being seen as a monster. Naming the baby after her father is essentially a misplaced coping mechanism just like Sally’s hitting another girl in the head at the water fountain. Her daddy issues are bound to come to the forefront now. Here’s hoping it doesn’t end in television’s first simultaneous Electra/Oedipus complex.