Wow, despite all these half ideas floating around in the back of my mind, time seems to have gotten away from me and it’s been a while since I put anything in paragraph form!
Well, here’s one semi-formed thought I’ve been hanging onto for a while.
In season five of Mad Men, an episode titled “Tea Leaves” tells a story about Betty. In it, Betty finds herself at risk of cancer, having a lump discovered in her throat. As she waits for the result of tests to discover if the condition is indeed a major problem she stresses and worries, which ultimately manifests as a dream. In her dream, Betty has died and her family sits around the kitchen table in a mourning black. She walks around them, invisible and unheard as a ghost as they go about their lives without her.
It is at this point that my brain did a funny little jump and something (probably imaginary) dinged: didn’t this happen on Beverly Hills, 90210?
In fact it did, and in an almost identical, parallel narrative.
Brenda discovers a lump in her breast and worries she has cancer. As she waits for the results of her biopsy she is edgy and worried and has a dream. In her dream, her friends and family are gathered, after her death, in their mourning black in a classroom where they take a test (reminiscent of the SATs) about Brenda. As she walks among them, invisible as a ghost, she peeks at their answers and feels forgotten and unloved.
Not only do both shows have the same cancer dream sequence, the same narrative trajectory leads from discovering a lump, to doctor’s tests, to the dream and worry, and finally to the discovery that the tumor is actually benign and not dangerous. After contemplating their mortality, both women get to live.
I’ve pondered the possible significance of these two overlapping narratives – one from a melodramatic, though hugely successful teen soap opera of the 1990s, the other from one of the most celebrated and accomplished TV dramas of today.
Here’s the only thing I came up with: Betty, a twice-married mother of three, is effectively a teenager. It’s actually a characterization that comes up repeatedly throughout the series – Don calls her a child, she throws tantrums, she has petty rebellions and fits of boredom. Betty does not seem to have really grown up, so much as she has been trapped by the life of a wife and mother.
As such, she reacts to things with all the untempered emotions of adolescence. Like Brenda, Betty is a bit of a teenage drama queen.
Of course this comes from five seasons of her developing character, and cannot actually be deduced from her fevered cancer dream. But I can’t help wondering at the extent of overlap between her story and Brenda’s. Was it inadvertent? After all, how many ways are there to tell the story of someone almost but not quite having cancer? But if it wasn’t done in ignorance, why would Mad Men retell an episode arc from a teen soap from 1990?
It’s all speculation, but you’ve heard my theory. Why does Betty never seem happy? Because she’s as moody as a 16-year old who has to babysit her little brother instead of going to the prom!
