"What do women want...?
The second episode, while is does a lot of other stuff, rather cleverly examines the lot of women in the America of 1960 through the respective lenses of Peggy, continuing to settle in at the firm, and Betty Draper, whom we properly meet for the first time. Contrasting against them is Don's other woman, Bohemian and carefree to the point of throwing a television out of her window, but lacking any real connection to society, long term security or- so far, at least- even a name.
Peggy continues to run the gauntlet of constant male attention in a world in which casual sexual harassment and even groping is utterly normalised- the worldly-wise Joan takes it utterly for granted- and the only acceptable excuse to a man's advances is to claim to "belong" to someone.
Meanwhile, Betty- whose name evokes Betty Friedan of The Feminine Mystique fame- is drowning in a life of suburban domesticity where the arrival across the road of- shock horror- a divorced woman is the subject for hushed gossip. It hardly seems surprising that she should have a nervous breakdown. Nor is Don's very contemporary resistance to her seeing a psychiatrist, given the stigma of mental illness- although, like a stopped clock being right twice a day, he sort of has a point in that this shrink seems to be a Freudian, and therefore a quack. And even when he relents, we learn that the shrink is reporting to him. Don, who is cheating on his docile wife, is subtly controlling her.
Oh, and there are a lot of women crying in the ladies...
There's also Don's evasiveness about his past, which is moving slowly towards the foreground. This is brilliant television, and it' very telling how well we know the characters after two episodes.
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