In a season obsessed with the emergence of youth and the resignation of the old guard, it is fitting that the two most climactic scenes in this pivotal episode involve the physical embodiments of life and death. “Commissions and Fees” suggests that the price of entering the brave new world of the late sixties must be paid in blood. Lane’s suicide may be bloodless, but his puffy, ashen face evokes blood by its conspicuous absence. Blood comes up again after Don’s speech about the insatiable nature of desire with Roger remarking that Don should wipe the blood off his chin. However, actual blood only enters the frame with a brief red flash on a young girl’s underpants. Sally has been playing at female adulthood throughout this season: talking back to her mother, quasi-flirting with Glen, wearing makeup and Go-go boots, and acting as though she and Megan are the same age. Nevertheless, like many tween girls who long for the trappings of adulthood but are horribly frightened and confused by the often crude realities of womanhood, she runs back into her mother’s arms the moment her pubescent female body makes itself known.
Sally is standing in front of the Museum of Natural History’s diorama of a Pleistocene couple, talking with Glen about the couple’s offspring when she experiences the unique pain of menstrual cramping. After a very expensive cab ride, she returns to her mother’s bed and is spooned like a child as her mother tells her that this pain, blood, and sadness simply indicate that everything is working properly. Sally, like the Pleistocene woman, can now have a baby. Betty is, of course, correct, and it’s a much better response than the standard bromides about becoming a new woman, but what does it say about femininity when properly functioning adulthood equals pain? Continue reading “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”