Betty's back! And she's not the evil villain anymore.
After a season premiere without Betty, in which Megan Draper seemed set to own the season as the token hottie, Betty's back! And she somehow makes Megan look like an even worse person than she did last week. But more on that as our ongoing quest to determine who the worst person on "Mad Men" is continues with this week's likability index.
Betty
Source: media.amctv.com
BETTY’S BACK!!!!!! And the writers decided to deal with January Jones’s pregnancy by making Betty fat. And they decided to deal with Betty’s likability by giving her a tumor. It’s hard to hate a woman, even if she’s not real, when she might have cancer and is getting fat because of it. That plotline was pretty brilliant because it made all of that awful parenting of hers from previous seasons a thing of the past. That leftover anger we had toward Betty began to transform to pity, as she trucked herself to the doctor, wore that extra Band-Aid-garnished padding around her neck, and sat on the couch in the pink quilt she had fashioned into a robe and ate sad Bugles, which aren’t even good enough to be worth the calories like Tostitos Hint of Lime or something actually yummy (one reason living in 2012 instead of 40 years ago is awesome).
The other thing that endeared Betty (and Don, but more on that below) to me was how she called Don after she found out about the tumor. And they had an exchange like they were husband and wife again: “Say what you always say,” she said, and he replies, “Everything’s going to be okay.” You know she’d never have a conversation like this with Henry, and it was nice to watch them connect like that — like they both know they’re not getting what they really need out of their current marriages, which they’re not. But that’s obvious when you feel like you have to make your husband turn around when you get out of the bathtub.
Likability score: 81%
