25 of TV’s messiest meltdowns

Betty Versus the Pigeons — Mad Men

Betty Draper is beautiful, poised, and completely toxic. She probably gave her children PTSD and most likely kept the Lucky Strike cigarette company in business. She was not a particularly well-adjusted woman, nor did she have the coping skills it took to live in the repressive mid-century culture, stay married to serial cheater Don Draper or listen to those pigeons coo outside her window.

Shooting the pigeons is an blatant act of frustration, but it bears the weight of a pretty heavy metaphor in itself. Mad Men often presented caged birds juxtaposed against its female characters, painting them as trapped and oppressed. While this is a bit on the nose for a show set in the 1960s, when Betty shoots those birds, she’s upending the symbol, regaining a sense of control over a life that suffocates her.

Shooting her neighbors’ pigeons comes around the same time she is offered a modeling gig by a prospective employee of her husband, Don. The offer is ultimately rescinded when it becomes clear he won’t come to work for the firm, thus killing Betty’s modeling career. Shooting the pigeons is a metaphorical act of violence against her traditional life, and an rebellion against the stifling nature of her cage of a life.

It’s also really pretty amazing. It takes a lot of nerve to traipse outside in your nightgown, cigarette hanging from your mouth, pump and fire a shotgun in your neighbor’s yard. Betty is a lot of things, but meek isn’t one of them.