||SPOILERS|| We're rapidly approaching the end of season 2, and it's safe to say this year hasn't been quite as immersive as the first, although it's still damn fine entertainment. For me, the lack of a background mystery to equal Don's identity crisis has been disappointing, especially as the seed of something was sewn in episode 1 (with Don sending a poetry book to someone), but perhaps there's still a chance the final episodes of season 2 will throw up something..."The Inheritance" takes a look at Mad Men's most immature characters: Betty (January Jones) and Pete (Vincent Karthesier), with a supporting plot for Paul (Michael J.X Gladis). Pete is being pressured by wife Trudy (Alison Brie) to give adoption a try, now they've discovered she's infertile, but he's not keen on the idea of raising someone else's baby. A visit to his mother, organizing his dead father's estate, reveals where Pete's outright rejection of the idea lay, as she considers the whole process "pulling from the discards."
Anyway, Pete's too focused on a business trip to California with Paul to care about Trudy or the mother he despises, and Paul himself is using the trip as a fortunate excuse to get out of a civil rights march in Mississippi with his black girlfriend Sheila. As Joan (Christina Hendricks) inferred earlier in the season, is Paul's relationship just something to outwardly prove his sense of moral superiority? There's a lovely scene where Paul and Sheila board an elevator at Sterling Cooper, only for Paul to remind the black attendant to call him by his first name (which he's clearly never insisted on before, but does in Sheila's presence to look good.) By the end of the episode, Don (Jon Hamm) has decided to replace Paul on the L.A trip (to escape his fraught homelife for a few days), so Paul is forced to travel with Sheila to Mississippi anyway – regaling the coach of demonstrators with awkward notions of Marxism and a "consumer has no colour" attitude.By far the best subplot involved Betty, whose father had a stroke, necessitating the temporary return of Don to the Draper household, so they could both pretend their marriage was in full health for a visit. Betty's dad Gene (Ryan Cutrona) was rather confused (mistaking his daughter Betty for his dead wife, rather inappropriately when he groped her breast), and Betty was in turmoil throughout the visit. She took solace with a black housekeeper Viola (Aloma Wright), who has quite clearly been more of a mother than anyone else in her life.
"The Inheritance" also saw the return of creepy Glen, the introverted little boy who has a crush on Betty. He was discovered hiding in Betty's backyard, inside their Wendy house, and Betty once again found herself curiously drawn to the boy. Both are of similar emotion age (rather sadly, in Betty's case), and Betty once again took things a little too far – giving Glen one of Don's shirts to wear, sitting next to him to watch cartoons, and generally finding pleasure in being with someone who appears to actually "get" her. Too bad Glen's less than half her age. Luckily, Betty manages to pull herself together and call Glen's mother Helen (Darby Stanchfield), and reasserts her adult self to confide in her estranged neighbour about her separation from Don. It feels likely that Helen (a divorced woman, wrongly shunned for that fact by many) will be just the person Betty needs to negotiate her troubled marital life.Overall, this was a very insightful look at Betty and Pete's families, who have both been instrumental in (mis)shaping their personalities. Betty's far too dependent and childish, while Pete doesn't really have a fully-formed personality and just copies whatever he perceives as being normal, manly behaviour and follow in successful footsteps. For Paul; well, even he's perhaps not quite as interested in the civil rights movement as he pretends to be, and maybe Joan's right to think he just likes to date Sheila because it reflects well on him as a liberal forward-thinker.
14 April 2009
BBC Four, 10pm
Writers: Marti Noxon, Lisa Albert & Matthew Weiner
Director: Andrew Bernstein
Cast: Jon Hamm (Don), Elisabeth Moss (Peggy), Vincent Karthesier (Pete), January Jones (Betty), Christina Hendricks (Joan), Bryan Batt (Salvatore), Michael J.X Gladis (Paul), Aaron Staton (Ken), Rich Sommer (Harry), John Slattery (Roger), Alison Brie (Trudy), Mark Moses (Duck), Robert Morse (Cooper), Darby Stanchfield (Helen Bishop), Eric Laden (William Hofstadt), Rich Hutchman (Bud Campbell), Ryan Cutrona (Gene Hofstadt), Megan Henning (Judy Hofstadt), Channing Chase (Dot Campbell) & Aloma Wright (Viola)
