Remember that episode in the first season of Mad Men where Betty Draper (the chain smoking ice queen soon-to-be ex-wife of Don Draper) crashes the family car into her neighbor’s fountain with her two little ones, Sally and Bobby, in the back seat?
Last night, January Jones, who plays Betty on TV, lost control of her Range Rover, running into three parked cars and causing major damage. The paparazzi who were following her (and probably caused the accident) jumped out to cover the scene, and January was heard saying “I can’t deal with all this commotion” before fleeing the scene. By foot.
It’s funny when the saying “Life Imitates Art” gets turned on its head. When Californication star, David Duchovny, went to rehab for being a sex addict in 2008, it was sort of ironic and confusing for his fans. People wondered if it was a publicity ploy for the show, or if he had just delved too deeply into his roll. Unfortunately, the reality was that Duchovny, who has a wife and kids, has suffered from sex addiction for years, and the roll simply brought the disorder to the surface. I call it a case of expert casting. Duchovy is really, really good at playing a compulsive pussy hound.
In the same vein, Jones makes a spectacular Betty Draper. The look on her face when she waits for Don at the kitchen table engulfed in cigarette smoke each night, inspires both pity for her, and a nagging irritation which helps me to sympathize with the philandering Don. She’s a glamorous woman and a spoiled, emotional child all wrapped into one, and being able to inspire that kind of conflict in a viewer is acting at its finest. But so far, her roll as Betty has been the only one that I’ve bought her in. Her performance on SNL last year, was actually remarkably terrible, inspiring news headlines like, “From ‘Mad’ to Bad”. I don’t think this means that Jones is a bad actress, so much as just incredibly good at playing herself.
There’s something kind of satisfying, but also a little creepy when things like this happen, especially in our now reality-obsessed culture. Whitney’s ambitions on The City are to work in fashion, but her ambitions in real life, seem to be to star in The City. But we’re still somehow supposed to believe that the “reality” show ambitions are genuine. It gets confusing.
Even though Mad Men is entirely fictional, Betty’s story bleeds into January’s and visa-versa, fact inspiring fiction, fiction enhancing fact. Maybe sometime soon Miss Jones will take to shotgunning down birds in her back yards and get caught having sex with a guy in a super fancy bar restroom. But until then, I think it’s best if we just enjoy watching her do Betty on-screen, and ease up on chasing her around town.
