Season 1 - Episode 4

Conversation between Glen and Betts in carpark.  She tells Glen she has noone to talk to, Glen replies, "I wish I were older" - this whole scene is not convincing and I laugh out loud.  Glen extends his hand to Betts and she accepts.  Dont know what Weiner is trying to convey, but cant see a (how old is Glen in this) boy his age responding in this way.  It would be like "Duh, get lost, I will be in trouble if my mom catches me talking to you"  Granted Weiner did add this to the scene but the rest is foreign to a young boy's behavior.  Wrong,   Birdy's behavior is disturbing - showing she is a suitable candidate for treatment.  Next scene Betts talking to the pysch - at last she begins to see the light.  Growing up time.  Did I miss something?

Glen had a weird crush on Betty. It's evident that he suffered some emotional problems from the divorce. Add to that his mother, who seemed a bit of a getabout. Constant stream of "uncles" coming over? Hiding in their doghouse? He had absolutely no control over anything at his home. Perhaps he was reacting to her sadness in the parking lot, and wanted to play the role of "protector", but was hampered by his young age. When says, "I wish I was older", I took that to mean, "I want to take you away from all this, so we can live happily ever after."
Betty on the other hand, was/is emotionally immature, and found the suburban housewife role too much for her. Remember Don's rule of not letting strangers into the house when he wasn't home? She acted like a child, and he sometimes treated her like a child. So at that point in the storyline, she and Glen were close to the same age emotionally, and connected on that level.

I thought the whole Glen story line was so interesting!  I think they wanted to show Betty's emotional age and that she is very troubled.  Sometimes when children are abused they have arrested development....was Betty abused as a child?  Remember her weird relationship with her Father?  Conversely, Glen was more mature than Betty, I think really seeing things as they are and also knowing how said it all was.  Yes, he wanted to take her away.  They understood each other without even speaking.  Later, Betty knowing this about Glen resents this understanding as it makes her vulnerable and then when her daughter befreinds him, that's the final straw as her jealousy and resentment build to hating him.

Although it may never exist other then as subtext I have long suspected that Betty was molested as a child and maybe even by her father. There was something just a little creepy about that relationship somehow.

Glen's behavior never really puzzled me the way Betty's did. He was a precocious, smart and strange little boy from the onset. Children (esp only or oldest) in severely dysfunctional homes often take the mantel of "adult" very early as a way of creating order in chaos.

Remember when Betty baby sat and Glenn asked for a lock of hair? He fixates on her as both a crush and as mother figure (since his is gone all of the time.) Betty can't seem to keep the roles straight. I think she is very immature but was raised by her mother to "behave" in a manner consistent with being an adult. She trys to say the things a grown woman would say but the girl in her is flattered and acquiesces.

There was a point in one episode where Betty and Don travel to her fathers' house, shortly after her mother died. At the dinner table, Gene, grinning, calls her by her mothers' name and grabs her boob. Betty quickly swats his hand away, and everyone pretends it didn't happen. I thought at the time, that Gene was suffering from an Alzheimers slip. Perhaps he was, but just not in the direction I first thought. Maybe there is something to the idea that Betty was molested as a child.

"I have long suspected that Betty was molested as a child". I agree totally with everything you have said.  I did write about this once on the forum, but to no avail.  At last a kindred spirit.

It was not so much the scene at Gene's house that underscored this as much as things we didn't see. Now that you bring it up though . . .

There was a sense of the camera lurking around the corner to "catch" Sally and Gene alone or nearly alone on the couch or on his cot. There was something in Betty's commands to Sally "not to bother him." You never saw him alone with Bobby or paying him any attention really except to give him a "dead man's hat." And then there is Sally's behavior at the sleep over . . .

Well, I'll tell you, I agree about Betty being sort of emotionally immature, although she seems to mature a bit over time. I was reading the Wikipedia page on _The_Feminine_Mystique_ today, and I see just a lot of stuff in this series which sounds an aweful lot like it was influence by Friedan, if the Wiki article is accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w ...

"Chapter 7: Friedan discusses the change in women's education from the 1940s to the early 1960s, in which many women's schools concentrated on non-challenging classes that focused mostly on marriage, family, and other subjects deemed suitable for women, as educators influenced by functionalism felt that too much education would spoil women's femininity and capacity for sexual fulfillment. Friedan says that this change in education arrested girls in their emotional development at a young age, because they never had to face the painful identity crisis and subsequent maturation that comes from dealing with many adult challenges."

Maybe it's purely coincindental, but go check out the Wikipedia article - it sure looks like Mad Men incorporates a lot of ideas from there.