Meemaw's Watchin' Her Stow-ries

Major dilemma, ya'll! As a haughty, intellectual liberal, I can't afford have eschewed cable service in this little bitty small California apartment; we just drag transport our Roku player from coast to coast in a suitcase and stream the movies--I mean, films--from Netflix and Amazon. All us elitists think television is pure tee trash a vast wasteland anyway; we stick to quiet little British films and cerebral documentaries.  A-hem.  So what am I gonna do when my stow-ries start up again Sunday and I cain't watch!?  Help!!

Mad Men, Season Eye-Vee, honey!  The season premiere is July 25th, Sunday 10/9c! We get to find out if Joanie gets back with Roger Sterling; if Pete divorces that fool Trudy to be with Peggy Olsen, who is such a total prig; and--I cain't hardly STAND it--if Betty and Don Draper wind up getting the parenting classes they so desperately need!


I've been worried about their children for months, poor little tykes.  Their mother, Betty Draper, fits the profile for what, in the sixties, we used to call the Refrigerator Mother--the very type who got blamed for causing schizophrenia in their children. The only loving those kids get is from their nanny and there's a brand new baby in the family?  I know perfectly well they had birth control back then, so what's Betty doing having another child when she hasn't got two seconds for the two she's got?!  Questions like this are gonna get on my last nerve if I can't get hold of a television in time.

Celia Rivenbark, who writes a syndicated column that I just love to pieces, admits to envying Betty's parenting style. Celia looks at her own kids who beg, plead, ignore, pout, and act Twenty-First Century normal, and asks herself WWBD?

I don't think Betty Draper's a very good mother but there's one thing she does every week on "Mad Men" that I truly admire.

At her terse command to "Go upstairs," Betty's children wordlessly untangle their legs, stand up, turn off the TV and do exactly that. Not even so much as a "Just two more hours of Mario Kart, pulleeeeeezzz." (Although, to be fair, the show is set in 1963 so it's not like the kids are being asked to give up that much.)

She says it all the time, even if the table is set for dinner and you know the kids are going to have to amuse themselves for at least another hour while she swirls a drink at the kitchen table with moody husband Don, and smokes a cigarette or 12.

When the kids are outside playing and it's time to get cleaned up, Betty steps onto the front porch, puts her hands on her hips and says, "Go inside." And they do. No back talk. No rolled eyes. No negotiations.

At first I figured they were just scared of her - Betty Draper is about as nurturing as Drano after all. In fact, she often looks at her kids with utter curiosity as if she can't quite figure out how these short people came to live in her house. 

I don't know what it is about Betty but right after I call Child Protective Services on her I hope everything turns out okay and she and Don who's such a hunk get back together because you know they have been through so MUCH together and it would just be wrong for them not to reconcile seeing as how they make such a cute couple an' all and I wonder how come Don hasn't ever hit up on Joanie.


Lest you think we're talking about a mere pop-culture phenomenon, I'll have you know there's a celebration in Times Square for the Mad Men season premiere.  The story focuses historically on the cultural changes that occur during the sixties, especially in regards to feminism, consumer targeting, and the demise of the nuclear family as it was known in the fifties. And there's that knotty pine kitchen of Betty's that makes me want to thaw a block of Snow Crop peas. And the tail-finned baby-blue car Don got her. And the clothes are to die for! And Peggy is gonna wind up OWNING that ad agency, girl, you just know she is!  And how come Roger is such a narcissistic hound dog?!  Maybe Peggy and Joanie will take over the place as a team even though Joanie treated Peggy like pigeon poop the whole ENTIRE first season she did give her some pointers about how to dress and how to handle those MALE CHAUVINIST PIGS!


Very high brow, actually.





I've just got to get hold of a teevee Sunday night!  I'm going to get my hands on a TV Dinner with meatloaf and mashed potatoes with one of those little fake butter pats and eat it on a TV tray and just be GLUED to that television!  Even if I have to check into a motel room--hey, maybe one that has those little cottages with cracked linoleum floors and knotty pine paneling and rusted metal showers and sway-backed beds with coin operated vibration and those old solid color cord bedspreads from Sears.


I'll be an an elitist intellectual again next week, or at least until "Eat, Pray, Love" comes out with Julia Roberts.