User Reviews

Here's my long repetitive and unnecessary rant.

I like this one better than the first one because the end of it wasn't confusing, ridiculous and unrealistic. The ending is finished, it's logical and it sums up the whole episode.

Some people might think there's the only person wrong in this situation, i.e. Michael Romanoff. They're partly right. It's him who hasn't grown up emotionally and has a lot of issues. On the other hand, I didn't find Shelly particularly likable either because it literally took her to be a victim of attempted murder to end it and stop tolerating and pretending. I wonder what she wanted from this marriage. She even refused to spend a night with someone she really wanted despite her marriage being an utter trainwreck. Why? She didn't even feel anything towards her husband. No love, no lust, no respect, no friendly feelings, not even hatred. Was marriage just an empty duty to her? How can someone be so blind to the person they're living with? Of course, he is a lying manipulator, but he's so transparent at the same time. Shelly feels extremely repressed, to such point where I even stopped feeling that sorry for her. It's not very clear, but she also has deep issues. Although they're not entitlement issues, they're of very different nature.

Couple therapy session at the end of the episode was really important. The therapist was painfully unthorough and the scene highlighted the double standards and bias that exist in our society against women. She thought there was nothing wrong with expecting Shelly to be a caretaker to the manchild she was married to. She sent Shelly a message ''Hug him even though you don't feel anything because that's what you're supposed to do'', ''Don't say anything that might even slightly upset him despite feeling like saying so and already being so unnecessarily considerate while choosing your words'' (in previous session). This is what many women do, but that's how they're taught to act. It's not something they realize because of this deep social conditioning that starts very early. Meanwhile Michael has opened his heart and confessed he felt really lonely and lost in his life. For the first time he felt known as a person and he had feelings and passion in his life. And despite that it was apparent that he cheated on Shelly she ignored that fact completely. This speaks volumes of their relationship. Michael clearly has issues with violence and entitlement. Of course, it felt really horrifying and off-putting how violent he was and how he was planning to do something to Shelly when they were hiking. However as we know the full story now we can understand his impulse. He was just too emotionally immature and unreflecting to express it in a different way. This is not to justify what he did or spare him from accountability, of course. It's just that to me Shelly's dishonesty and coldness felt more terrifying.

I like how humane the depiction of them is despite some parts of it being a satire. Made me feel empathy for both of them. I think that's crucial for any work of art. Things have to be ambiguous and complex because it reflects life this way. This sad couple is something that, I think, everybody witnessed at least once in their lives.

I really hope the creator of the show will stop using his Don Draper trope that much though. Hope he'll be able to move on to something new. He was able to do that with Shelly's character. I've never saw it depicted on screen before even though it's quite common in real life.