a belated UnREAL post for Valentine's Day

[pocochina]

UnREAL: quite possibly the best new show of 2015. All of the praise that it's gotten has been well-earned. The one thing sticking point I have is the repeated claim that Rachel Goldberg is “the female Walter White.”

Now, I have nothing against the idea of a female Walter White character. Walt's comedic doppelganger was a woman; some day soon he'll

Comments

[sunclouds33]

Yeah. And Mad Men takes place on the back end of that window of progress, I think is what I'm trying to get at? These are the people who are going to benefit from it and then destroy it. Like, we know what was wrong with Lucky Strike and Big Tobacco and we at least have the option to avoid it. Coca-Cola, though, we haven't even been able to make it so that people can cheaply and easily avoid HFCS.

This is very true, and well put. I don't subscribe to this notion that SC&P was more moral or whatever than McCann. I'd even argue that there was such a failure of leadership in S7 that the agency would be tanked if it wasn't bought out quickly at its peak. SC&P just operated more on an "all hands on deck, including particular women and Jews" because it was smaller. However, the buy-out still serves as a negative harbinger of the corporatization of America and eliminating a wider variety of voices. IMO, UnREAL also sets up how two essentially immoral organizations- Everlasting and The Network- also compete on which is the frying pan and which is the fire because of the different moral postures they can operate based on their size.

TBH I don't think Rachel's mother is any less of a hypocrite, preaching good liberal feminism while abusing her power as a psychiatrist. But that's something which is by design a lot harder to pick up on. And her pathologization of Rachel - changing her diagnosis to be whatever's ~trendy but always insisting that there's something wrong with her - is a decade- and class-adjusted version of "you're never going to be okay." But I don't think she's necessarily aware of the shallowness of her moral education, whereas Don is very conscious of his blank slate status.

Hmm, we'll learn more about Olive in S2. I do think there's a meaningful difference between Olive saying Rachel is always mentally ill versus Abigail maintaining that Dick is a garbage whore-child. Its a difference of class and 1930s v. 1990s child-rearing. However from a pathologizing standpoint in addition- Rachel is actually Olive's child instead of a reminder of husband's whoring around and I think Olive loves Rachel as a her child (even though that's no protection against abuse) so there's a big difference in intentional malice between the two women. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Olive is a decent citizen and helpful academic in other respects- but obviously, the way that she ruins her family is a sin that she can't get over. However, Abigail put such an emphasis on Christian immorality to the point that like a seven-year old Dick assumed that if the hobo had been on their property for a few hours, he'd already heard that Dick was a whore-child. In part because that's Great Depression Dust Bowl Christianity- it's relentless survival and lecturing about venial sins in free time.

But yeah, we'll see if Olive is closer to Abigail or Katherine Olson. Katherine was deeply, deeply flawed and she seemed to bad-mouth many of Peggy's major choices so it's a string of "Move to Manhattan? You'll get raped. Move in with your boyfriend? He'll use you for practice. Not go to your boyfriend's surprise birthday party? How many nice boys do you think are lining up for you!" However, it was more a very period-piece rejection of Peggy's modern choices instead of Peggy, herself, from the minute she was born. However, I don't know how much a material difference that amounts to. Peggy and Rachel feel an obligation to have a relationship with their mother. Neither ran away and changed their name and tried buying off contact with their sibling for $5,000. But Rachel's and Peggy's relationship with their family is very self-conscious and defensive because there's almost a guarantee that they'll be hurt with every interaction.

[sunclouds33]

However in the Millenial v. Silent Generation divide, I think it's key that Peggy becomes financially independent younger without any college while Rachel really has to suffer and struggle miserably to be financially independent from her parents which she needs in order to ward off her mother's abuse and smothering- even though they're both the hard-working rising talented stars of their glamorous and lucrative fields. Peggy does even better because she broke a glass ceiling by being made a copywriter- but even if she was a secretary, Joan still acted like there was a 1960 guarantee that she'd still be upwardly mobile."In a couple of years, with the right moves, you'll be in the city with the rest of us. Of course, if you really make the right moves, you'll be out in the country,and you won't be going to work at all." That's terrible- but at least, it's better than the unspoken, "You may have just gotten a job but rents are so high in Manhattan, in part due to foreign investment properties and understanding that the largest cities in America are just for the rich to live in and the people who service the rich to commute there, that there's no guarantee that you'll make enough to beat that rising curve. But hey, we've got Tinder instead of marriage pressure."

I agree that Peggy can't get away with what Rachel pulls off, but then again, I think Don gets away with far more than Rachel Goldberg. Although, it's hard to say- Don flopped more and more later in the series but he was more in control of his own spinning plates in S1 than Rachel in her S1, especially as you Rule-63d above in how Don/Betty v. Rachel/Jeremy and Don/Rachel v. Rachel/Adam played out at the close of S1.

One of the reasons why I'm optimistic about UnREAL's potential for more than just a great freshman season is that I think the cards are lined up for a really unpredictable arc for Rachel as her professional, romantic, platonic, familial, and psychological arcs coalesce and come to surprising stops and starts and twists for as long as the show goes. Much like Don. IMO despite the fact that these aren't action-adventure shows, it's a more unpredictable arc than Walter White or Tony Soprano who are very committed to the continuity of the criminal world and continuity of The Marriage. Another difference with the standard Rachel Goldberg = Walter White. However, I do have a hunch that Rachel will flop more at smaller, less impressive plays than Don. In part because his far greater societal privileges and because media business was like the untamed Wild Wild West in the '60s compared to now and because I think Don is both more naturally gifted at a variety of things and more of a total weirdo than Rachel. I really do know quite a few Rachels. I know lots of people with *aspects* of Don, but not necessary himself exactly.