Much as either would hate to admit it, Betty Friedan and Phyllis Schlafly are mirror images of each other. Betty’s book, The Feminine Mystique, addressed the very housewives that Phyllis believes she’s representing. They’re even of the same social class, education, and race, considering the original readership of The Feminine Mystique. They have similar dislike of queer people—Betty is the originator of the term “lavender menace”—and disinterest in supporting marriage equality. The main difference is that Betty’s audience hates the norms they’re trapped in, while Phyllis’ cherishes them.
And they are indeed just norms, even though Phyllis tries to argue, in a mock-debate with her husband, that they’re rights. Fred points out that for all her points, there’s a strong counterpoint—and when she tries to use politics and policymaking as a point, he firmly tells her: “Not the right crowd.”
It’s a crowd Betty is used to, to her credit. As she prepares for a date, she picks out a dress she wore on TV, where she put the host in his place with her continuous use of the word, “orgasm,” a trick she jokes she uses with her husband. Of course, she’s a few years divorced now, with her husband remarried and her daughter borrowing her stepmother’s clothes. She gets along with her blind date, and though she contends he hasn’t called, he does end up in her column. She talks a lot about herself on the date—I once read that a good date (for heterosexuals, anyway) is one where the man asks more of the questions. They discuss the women’s march, and Gloria Steinem, to Betty’s chagrin. Betty opens up quickly, letting her date (and us) know that she, too, is from Illinois, but found her friends ready to abandon her when she couldn’t join a sorority because she’s Jewish.
It’s clear, when Betty talks about Gloria, that she misses being a one-woman show. As one character notes, Betty is a “force of nature,” with the celebrity to go with it. Women recognize her in the streets, come up to her with the hopes to get their copies of The Feminine Mystique autographed, and thank her for her work and her words. In previous episodes, she talks about staying in better hotels and getting excellent speaking gigs. Gloria finds Betty to be playing into the male press’s hands with her urge to debate Phyllis, but to Betty (and us), her disinterest in engaging with Phyllis seems naïve. And while Betty’s clearly frustrated by Gloria’s celebrity, it’s not so much Gloria’s looks that frustrate her than her much more political, slow-moving, and (to Betty) watered down politicking. And it’s clear that Gloria knows she doesn’t have the same verve as Betty does. “What I would give to write a book that women talk about like they talk about the Feminine Mystique,” she says, with naked envy. “I would retire to the Hamptons and listen to the waves crashing.”
While “Gloria” presented Betty as a garrulous radical, “Betty” presents Gloria as almost oblivious, especially when it comes to Phyllis Schlafly’s influence on a specific audience.
I have the same problem with this episode as I did with “Gloria,” — the problem with focusing on Phyllis is that we don’t get nearly enough on the other much more interesting legends in this show. While this episode pinballs between Phyllis and Betty, it also includes Gloria and Flo Kennedy – but not nearly enough of Betty on her own. Also, Flo should’ve actually had an episode of her own, considering how much she shows up, and how much she is a character in her own right.
Flo fights with her peers at a meeting with a coalition of black women. She defends Margaret Sloan’s (Bria Samoné Henderson) queerness to one member, while showing her frustration with Margaret’s contention that their coalition is little more than “Sunday’s at Flo’s.”
You might remember Margaret as the new writer at Ms. Magazine, who brought her daughter to her first day. In a pitch meeting, she suggests a story about tokenism in the workplace, as in the way that a person of a certain group will be treated as representative of that group. Her fellow writers—all white women—hope she doesn’t have to deal with that at Ms.! Margaret doesn’t know how to respond to this pearl-clutching, but I wish the writers had responded by expanding her part a bit more. Similarly, I hope Phyllis’ maid Willie B. Reed (Novie Edwards) gets more to do than the aggrieved side-eye she does as Phyllis says some bullshit.
Part of that bullshit is how Phyllis suggests that she’s definitely not part of the John Birch Society, the kind of racist rightwing group that, among the many conspiracies it propped up, peddled the idea in the 1970s that a certain drug was a cancer remedy. Gee, that sure sounds familiar.
It’s that fact that Betty uses to contend that Phyllis has more nefarious connections than her housewife persona lets on, and leads to her debate with Phyllis.
The episode really shines during the debate between Phyllis and Betty, full of the rich adrenaline that every good debate scene needs. Betty has heard Phyllis repeat the same talking points enough to cut them off at the pass, and is doing quite well until Phyllis starts her personal attacks. She clearly saw Betty checking out Fred. She contends that Betty’s the unhappiest woman in America, and turns to the audience. “The fact is, the ERA will not solve your personal problems,” she says, with a mean grin, reframing Betty’s focused critiques of the system as simply whiny complaints. It’s enough for Betty to become frustrated and call Phyllis a witch she wants to burn at the stake. And of course it is—part of Phyllis’s brand is she is already happy, that she is comfortable and her husband “gives her permission” to do what she wants.
And her personal attack gives her what she wants—at Alice’s son’s wedding, she is treated like the celebrity Betty was in the beginning of the episode. “We have our own champion,” says one woman. Of course, things are not as they seem at the wedding. For one, we see the young mother we met in the first episode being aggressively pushed and pulled by her husband into a pew. And Phyllis realizes, while watching her eldest, John (Ben Rosenfiel), play organ at the end of the scene that her son may be going out but he’s likely not going out to see girls.
Betty is embarrassed by her outburst at the debate, shocked at how she let Phyllis get the best of her. There is one silver lining, though: Gloria calls her and commiserates with how much Phyllis sucks. She also swallows some of her pride (and admitted envy) and tells Betty thank you for writing The Feminine Mystique, and how much it meant to her.
Stray observations
- I would recommend just reading The Feminine Mystique, with these caveats —and their deconstruction thereof.
- The episode begins with the 1973 Roe V. Wade ruling, so I looked up a few articles that my friend Caitlin Cruz, who’s writing a book about the history of the procedure. It’s frustrating to see Phyllis act so mournful while knowing that Roe didn’t guarantee the safety of those getting or providing those abortions, and the majority of Americans, and even Republican voters, around that time agreed that abortion should be legal.
- A commenter noted on a previous recap that Phyllis’s sons get speaking parts, but her daughters are left to sit quietly, and used in her talking points against the ERA. The opposite is true for Betty’s children – her sons are nowhere to be seen, but she worries about her daughter, how she dresses, and how close she might be getting to her stepmother. Even in this episode, Phyllis’s daughter is the one who contends with her mother’s frustrations while preparing for her debate. Phyllis forcibly handles her daughter’s fear of swimming by forcing her to daughter into jumping in the pool.
- I didn’t write too much about the lurid cartoon of Gloria that shows up in Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine, but to be honest it really grossed me out. As did the creepy dudes calling the office—I wish we’d figured out more behind that attack, and more about how Ms. Magazine dealt with it. I did like when Bella said it didn’t need to be her, Gloria said, “Those are my aviators.” To which Bella replied, “And my labia.”
- Shirley without her glasses looks so vulnerable in this episode. I wish we could stay a little longer on her storyline!
- I winced when I saw Betty breathing and staring into the mirror. I recognize an asthma attack when I see one.
- Betty’s neighbor, who she watches The Mary Tyler Moore Show with, is Harper’s writer Natalie Gittelson (played by Miriam Shor). She wrote the book The Erotic Life of the American Wife. Oh my.
31 Comments
Amazing cast in this. I would not have thought of Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan but I think it works. I have always liked her as an actress.
This show is 100% up my alley and aligned with my interests but I’d recommend it to just about anyone for the casting, costumes, and soundtrack alone.
Would never have picked this but my gf was already watching and now I’m hooked!
For me, the big problem with this episode was that while Betty Friedan is an interesting character, the show’s approach with her really isn’t. For the past episodes, they have treated as this blunt, oblivious object, so it really struggled then to suddenly those necessary layers to her. Because of that, it didn’t really succeed in drawing those comparisons and, furthermore, it felt like the episode realized it and ended up being really scattered.Which is a shame as I think the start of the episode hit on a really strong point. Here one of the reasons why Phyllis managed to catch the Women’s Liberation movement so off guard is that despite all, they could not imagine that Phyllis was a force in herself and just assumed she was a mouthpiece to some men. Thus in this idea of trying to avoid women fighting women, they didn’t realize that they were being just as dismissive of Phyllis. The episode just then utterly failed to build on that.
As a more positive note, the John Birch Society discussion in Phyllis’s newsletter office was genuinely hilarious. I think my favorite moment was ‘I’m not with the John Birch Society, but they are totally fine and not racist at all. Again, not taking money from them.” approach by Phyllis. Also, she was totally getting money from the John Birch Society, wasn’t she?Also yay, my earlier observation about Schlafly children got a mention in the recap.
The Vulture recap linked to an article confirming, that yes, Schlafly did take money from the Birch Society.
Another aspect that distracted from this episode was that it was probably the worst directed episode so far with a lot of scenes just shot really weird.The church scene was a core example of this for two reasons. First it was clear that Phyllis realized that her son, who had barely been featured in the first three episodes, was gay, but I couldn’t understand what exactly made her realize that. Which in turn made Blanchett’s moment of acting feel more baffling than revelatory. The second was Paulson’s character staring at the scene with the young mother and her husband as I completely missed what was happening there. I actually thought it was the red headed woman from the Women’s Lib meetings and her husband was preventing her from attacking Phyllis, which felt so weird.
I thought it was the longing stare from her son towards the groom
I kind of realized it afterwards, but for some reason I kept thinking the groom was Phyllis’s son, partially because they had announced the wedding at Phyllis’s house. I think?It’s one of those situations where there were so many moving parts there that for a moment as big as that, they needed that extra scene or two of establishing who everyone is and show some interaction before between the two.
Earlier in the episode when she was having the mock debate with her husband, the son came in before heading out for the night. She thought he was secretly going out to meet a girl and he told her that he was playing the organ for this wedding
…Yeah, I remember? And? That actually address my criticism at all.
He said “Tommy asked me to play at his wedding.” Phyllis didn’t have a son named Tommy, so I’m not sure why you would’ve thought the groom at the wedding was Phyllis’s son. Maybe it’s her nephew??? Which would make it skeevy but he was defo making eyes at the groom I thought.
Though brief, I knew right then her son was gay and she was clueless. So her realization later on was corny and fell flat. Even if the character is fictional, something about the camera shot following her son’s longing gaze to the brightly grinning groom in full military dress made it clear Tommy wasn’t pining over an unspoken crush; they’re lovers with the new bride acting as the groom’s beard.
I would say Phyllis’s realization definitely comes from experience in the social circle she occupies. Even if straight, her husband undoubtedly has had mistresses over the years and I’m sure she’s been witness to other wives/relatives who’ve silently dealt with the additional humiliation of being trapped in a facade of a marriage to GBTQAI husbands because they have no viable options that would allow them to maintain their lifestyles independently.
Which made another point rather frustrating – it was Phyllis’s husband who made the best points about potential weaknesses in her opposition to the ERA during their test debate. That once her father died, her own mother had to take on two jobs just to make ends meet because of the gender discrimination in wages, education/skills and job opportunities. As he smugly cut her down a previous episode, she couldn’t have been offered entrance into Harvard Law School because it went co-ed five years after she earned her masters degree. Why Betty Friedman hasn’t been able to dig up any of these personal points of contention about Phyllis was annoying, especially Phyllis knew enough about her to get under her skin at just the right time, quickly destroying her credibility at the debate.
Sarah Paulson’s character, in the church scene, right after she sees the weird interaction between Pamela and her probably-abusive husband, says “I can’t believe my son’s getting married,” or something similar, so that’s how we know it’s Alice’s son.Though I agree it was kind of a disorienting scene.
Was it Pamela? The redhaired woman? Oh man, do I get the feeling Phyllis treats her daughters as props?
The wedding scene was pretty messy directing/editing-wise. This show is usually spot on with so much other nuance.
As she prepares for a date, she picks out a dress she wore on TV, where she put the host in his place I thought she was daydreaming of appearing on TV because Gloria got all the attention.
Possibly, but he generic host appeared to be Johnny Carson and Friedan did appear on his show.
I was pretty sure that was Carson, as I checked on iMDB, and while the actor who played him wasn’t credited, the actor who played Ed McMahon was. I thought they might have used a real comedian, as in “The Irishman,” where Don Rickles was played by Jim Norton.
From his affectations I thought the host was supposed to be Dick Cavett.
I’m just going by the look of the set, which mimiced Carson’s New York set of the early ‘60’s, and that an actor was credited with playing Ed McMahon, but the actor who played the host wasn’t.
While “Gloria” presented Betty as a garrulous radical, “Betty” presents Gloria as almost oblivious, especially when it comes to Phyllis Schlafly’s influence on a specific audience. I think it’s much more complex than that. The writers seem to be suggesting (and this doesn’t seem out of line with history) that this debate is the moment when Schlafly first becomes that influential. By debating her, Friedan acknowledges Schlafly as someone worth debating, and prior to that, she was simply a name that had come up a few times in reference to ERA opposition.
Gloria’s attitude only seems “oblivious” to an audience who knows what Schlafly ends up becoming. But at the time, I don’t think Schlafly’s influence or celebrity status was a foregone conclusion. Sure, she might have gained some notoriety on her own, but it’s not completely outrageous to suggest that the women’s movement made Schlafly far more influential than she had any right to be.
Agreed. You can just see Phyllis’s glee when she’s called by a journalist to respond to a nasty quote from Betty, and how quick she is to realize that it’s a very profitable moment to take advantage of, as she then prints out copies and sends it to their network. Phyllis and Gloria both seem to be aware of Phyllis’s position to take advantage of “any press is good press” – and Betty, very unfortunately as we all know now, was either blithely unaware or simply too trigger-happy to see it.
to Betty (and us), her disinterest in engaging with Phyllis seems naïve.Speak for yourself, Sulagna. I agreed with Gloria and the rest. Engaging with Phyllis was clearly a mistake, and not just because Betty let Phyllis get the better of her. We saw how thrilled Phyllis was that “the libbers” were taking her seriously, and how the debate improved her profile. The women’s caucus needed to take the STOP ERA threat seriously and counter-organize, but elevating Phyllis was the wrong way to do it.
Good point!
Yeah, but that was just to advance the plot and in no way parallels anything relatable now 🙄..🤔🤔🤔..🤯
Here. Here. Any communications professional would have known better than to elevate an agitator and put them on equal footing. But I will say this show is very impressive. Expect some Emmy’s, Globes, and possibly even a couple of SAG awards.
Phyllis was a lioness who mauled every opponent in one-on-one debates. Watch old YouTube clips of her vs. Betty, and you see how underestimated she was. Phyllis was smart and prepared. Disagree with Phyllis, but she single handedly defeated ERA. Glad to see a show recognize her as an effective female leader, if not a feminist.
‘The women’s caucus needed to take the STOP ERA threat seriously and
counter-organize, but elevating Phyllis was the wrong way to do it.’You need a newsletter.
Finally saw it and that scene where Phyllis forces Anne to jump in the pool was horrifying like no way EVEN Alice could call that “tough love” she was practically man-handling her at the wrist and Eleanor being helpless to help her niece. Also Alice seeing Pamela being handled like that by her husband Kevin, I kinda hope Alice can help Pamela get out of the marriage. I don’t know what will be the thing that makes Alice drop Phyllis but I hope it isn’t just petty crap just to piss off Phyllis but maybe Alice learning to see what most women unlike herself have to contend with and not seeing herself worth with Phyllis in good faith.
Not only should Flo Kennedy get a focus episode, she’s played by Niecy Nash who should’ve been in the title credits. Jeanne Trippelhorn is good but she’s been a one-scene wonder.