The Grown-Ups

Great episode, except January Jones' acting. Why is she in the series? She doesn't know how to act. Its as if she is just reading the lines from a teleprompter. She can't even act in intense and extreme scenes, leave alone the plain and subtle ones.

"The Grown-Ups," the twelfth episode of Mad Men's third season, directed by Barbet Schroeder and written by Matthew Weiner, is a devastatingly effective portrayal of societal and personal collapse, framed against the backdrop of one of the most traumatic events in 20th-century American history: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

The episode's title is a cruel irony, highlighting the fact that when faced with monumental crisis-global or personal-no one truly functions as an "adult," capable of maintaining order. The central narrative is fractured by the assassination, which acts as a historical cataclysm forcing all the characters to confront the immediate, terrifying reality of their dissolving illusions. The episode interweaves the public trauma with the climax of the Draper divorce and the Sterling-Campbell wedding, showcasing how intimate tragedies are magnified by national grief. Schroeder's direction is marked by a pervasive sense of numbness and emotional inertia, using the stillness of the historical moment to amplify the internal turmoil of the characters.

The assassination of JFK serves as the definitive turning point of the episode, visually and thematically. The news breaks during Roger Sterling's and Jane's lavish, albeit emotionally hollow, wedding reception. The sudden intrusion of raw, televised violence into the carefully orchestrated performance of upper-class happiness is a brilliant piece of dramatic contrast. The assassination is immediately politicized and personalized by the characters: Roger is furious, projecting his helplessness onto the world, while Pete Campbell is overwhelmed by the sense of historical inevitability, recognizing the end of an era. The ensuing national grief acts as a social solvent, dissolving the formal structures and etiquette that the characters typically hide behind. The sudden cessation of the wedding celebration and the universal focus on the television screen underscore the pervasive feeling that control is an illusion, a theme that directly feeds into the collapse of the Draper marriage and the precarious situation at Sterling Cooper.

The assassination pushes Betty Draper to finalize her decision regarding her marriage. Having already exposed Don's identity lie in the previous episode, Betty is now forced to contend with the immediate, practical fallout of her choice. The tragedy of the national event gives Betty the emotional urgency to move forward, making the profound decision to end her life with Don feel almost secondary to the magnitude of the day's events. Her consultation with the lawyer is cold and calculating; she is acting with a profound sense of purpose, ensuring that the process is clean and final. The return of Henry Francis, who flies to Ossining to comfort her, is the final confirmation of her future. Henry is positioned as the promise of legitimacy and stability-a contrast to Don's fraudulent existence. Betty's decision, confirmed by her direct, emotionless conversation with Don where she reveals her knowledge of the Dick Whitman lie, is an act of determined self-liberation, albeit one achieved through cold, strategic action rather than emotional warmth.

Faced with Betty's finality and the national despair, Don Draper retreats into a state of profound emotional inertia. The assassination affects him differently; he sees the violence as the inevitable consequence of a disordered world, one he tried to escape by inventing a new identity. His attempts to comfort Roger are clumsy and inadequate, revealing his deep-seated inability to connect with genuine, external sorrow. Don's primary reaction is one of isolation-he is a bystander to the grief around him, unable to genuinely participate in the communal sorrow because his own identity is a sham. The episode subtly links the chaos of the world with the chaos of his interior life. The knowledge that Betty knows the Dick Whitman secret, coupled with the loss of his wife and family, forces Don into the most terrifying state for a man of his ambition: invisibility. His personal tragedy is dwarfed by the national one, leaving him without the structure of his marriage or the emotional cover of the lie.

The episode also focuses on the shifting dynamic between Peggy Olson and Pete Campbell. At the wedding, Pete delivers a spontaneous, emotional tribute to his father-in-law, showcasing a raw vulnerability that is rare for him. The juxtaposition of his momentary sincerity with the news of the assassination is particularly affecting. Meanwhile, Peggy, the emotional anchor of the office, is often left to handle the professional chaos. The episode hints at the beginning of their new alliance, one born of professional respect rather than sexual tension. Pete's emotional despair over the state of the world-and the fragility of his own marriage-temporarily breaks down his competitive facade, forcing him to momentarily recognize Peggy as a professional equal and confidante. Their dynamic hints at the future of Sterling Cooper: an agency built not on old-money WASP hierarchies, but on the talent and competence of the new generation.

Barbet Schroeder's direction is a masterclass in controlled minimalism, utilizing the historical event as a form of cinematic mise-en-scène. The cinematography often focuses on the stark, muted colors of the early 1960s, which appear drained of vibrancy by the news from Dallas. The camera work, particularly the focus on the television screen, makes the viewer, like the characters, an unwilling spectator to the tragedy. The episode acts as a profound sociopolitical critique, showing how the assassination shatters the national innocence and the Camelot myth, forcing Americans to confront the dark underbelly of their political landscape-a parallel to Betty being forced to confront the dark underbelly of her seemingly perfect marriage. The stillness and silence following the news are more powerful than any dialogue, allowing the weight of history to settle upon the characters' fragile personal dramas.

"The Grown-Ups" is an exceptionally crafted episode that utilizes one of America's most profound national traumas to catalyze the equally profound personal collapse of its protagonist. The creators' opinion, brutally conveyed by the convergence of the wedding disaster, the assassination, and the divorce, is that all comforting myths-national, marital, and personal-are finite. The episode confirms that the Draper marriage is irreparable, ending not in a blaze of passion, but with the cold, decisive action of Betty. The final, resonant message is that the ability to function as a "grown-up" is not about avoiding chaos, but about confronting the inevitable truth that both the world and our own lives are fundamentally unordered, shattered by the random, terrifying intrusion of fate.

The ending of season 3 is where Betty takes charge. From a confused housewife, she has emerged as a fully developed character, who is no longer able to turn a blind eye to her husband's wanderings, and discovers the truth. January Jones gives a tour de force performance as she breaks free of the era of 60's middle class conformity.

Betty once said she "hated John F. Kennedy," but in the inevitable episode where he gets assassinated, she practically becomes the widow: ironic since she's got a lot in common with Jackie being that their husbands would rather be with ANY OTHER woman, but...

Good episode, not great, bordering on just-okay, with too much covering of tragic history and very little story as far as, you know, this actual series is concerned...

What WAS handled well was Roger's story, trying to remain glib even though Joan, another JFK widow, says it's all no laughing matter...

Except that his spoiled daughter's wedding is on the exact same day of the assassination, and, as she's crying, the audience thinks it's for JFK but it's for her ruined wedding...

The kind of clever writing where an actual historic event flows evenly along with the episode... like when Kennedy was elected, for example... but it just doesn't happen this time: MAD MAN, like the fictional company it's about, takes a 50 break to mourn.