The Looks of Men
27
As fantasy, The Good Place may be a return to what one has lost—a
homeland, sure, but also sexual rapport that was complete and perfect and is
now missing but might be realized in the future. In the episode we are
discussing, along with the specular fantasy of the secretaries and the
occasionally tender meeting between Draper and Rachel, there are two other
notable scenes between men and women. The first occurs directly after Draper’s
fall from the stairs at the beginning of the episode, as the day is ending and he
and his wife Betty are going to bed. After some banter, they begin to kiss. Betty
asks Draper to turn off the light. He obliges, returns to bed, runs his hand up her
thigh, and Betty says, “I want you so much. I thought about it all day.”
“Me, too.”
“No, I mean it. It’s all I think about. Every day. I hear a car coming down
the driveway; I put the kids to bed early, I make a grocery list, I make
butterscotch pudding, I never let my hands idle; washing my hair; drinking my
milk. It’s all in a kind of fog because I can’t stop thinking about this. I want you.
So badly.”
“Shh. You have me; you do.” Of course, she doesn’t have Draper, at least
not completely. But on its own, there is a great deal of innocence and caring and,
really, who wouldn’t want that? Indeed, this is a domestic utopia in the first
sense, a good place to be.
The scene between Draper and Betty is directly mirrored later in the
episode. Draper’s boss Roger is having an affair with Joan, the bombshell
redhead. Near the middle of the episode, we see them in a hotel room together,
preparing to leave. Roger talks about wanting to get Joan her own apartment and
Joan argues that she likes living with a roommate (Roger responds that he will
get her a bird) and that she prefers the freedom that the status quo offers.
Toward the end of the episode, we find Roger in the hotel room waiting as Joan
enters (apparently late). They talk and laugh and kiss, then Joan hears a noise
and notices the covered bird cage on the table. Roger removes the cover and the
bird tweets. For a moment, we see Joan’s face from the other side of the cage, as
if she is behind the bars. Roger says, “You can’t blame a man for trying. I just
hate the thought of having to share you” as he unzips her dress. Joan replies,
“You don’t have to share me now” as she pulls him down onto the bed, on top of
her. “Mmm, Joanie, you smell good. I’ve been thinking about this all day.” Joan
asks Roger to cover the bird; he obliges, and returns to bed.
Clearly, the roles have reversed here in interesting ways. Where once we
had Betty waiting around for her man to come home, we now have a
philandering husband who takes every opportunity to sneak away to be with his
mistress. Where we once had Draper saying to his wife “You have me; you do,”
we now have the more honest Joan protesting “You don’t have to share me
now.” The difficulty is that this isn’t a strictly one-to-one trade. The shot of Joan
through the cage should remind us of the secretaries being locked in the room
with lipsticks (actually, Joan does the locking). And Betty asking for the lights
to be turned off is the same as Joan wanting the birdcage covered insofar as both