“Maybe he was afraid,” Berger’s friend tells Carrie. Carrie returns, “Interesting, how so?” His friend notes, “Women can get really angry.” Carrie retorts, “Well I assure you, I would have been very understanding.” The friend mutters, “Right.” Carrie urges him to elaborate with, “Excuse me?” So he does, stating that, from the man’s perspective, “You all say that but then you just freak and get all psycho bitch.” Carrie snaps, “Really? So now it’s our fault?” He shrugs, “All we’re saying is there really is no good way to breakup with someone.” Carries pushes back, “Well it’s funny you should mention that, because actually there is. You can have the guts and the courtesy to tell a woman to her face that you no longer wanna see her. Call me crazy but I think that you can make a point of ending your relationship in a manner that does not include an email, a doorman or a missing person’s report. I think you can all get over the fear of looking like the bad guy and actually have the ‘uncomfortable breakup conversation’ because here’s what. Avoiding that is what makes you the bad guy. And just so you know: most women aren’t angry irrational psychos. We just want an ending to a relationship that is thoughtful and decent and honors what we had together.”
This monologue from Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in the illustrious Sex and the City episode, “The Post-It Always Sticks Twice,” could perhaps, if Betty Broderick (Amanda Peet) had better been able to express herself at the time–and if that time had been even slightly more feminist–come straight out of this jilted housewife’s own mouth to be directed at her lying, cheating husband, Dan Broderick (Christian Slater).
As the latest installment of Dirty John (which, in the first season, was named for con man John Meehan [Eric Bana], so it’s weird now), The Betty Broderick Story is a narrative that has been explored many times before. Not just specifically about Betty, but generally about women who are cast aside and discounted when the man they’ve been with for so long suddenly decides she’s no longer worth anything to him. And yet, the need to constantly retell such stories is an indication that the problem remains the same.
This particular rendering of Betty’s descent into madness is among the most convincing and expository regarding all the reasons that drove her, in the end, to kill her husband and his new, much younger wife, Linda Kolkena (Rachel Keller). Based on Christopher Goffard’s podcast (also called Dirty John), the show’s creator and executive producer, Alexandra Cunningham could not be a more perfect person to hand the narrative over to, considering she was a primary writer and producer for Desperate Housewives. With an interspersed storytelling structure, flashes between Betty’s past and present–always with the indication that Dan was never really in love with her, was using her for some long-term end–help us better understand her fractured and frazzled mental state.
What’s more, those who would question Betty’s stubbornness and irascible temper seem not to understand that her background was Italian, her maiden name being Bisceglia (in fact, there’s even a town in Italy called Bisceglie). The passion and furor that runs through Italian blood cannot be overlooked when watching Betty’s tempestuous behavior reach a boiling point as dangerous as the Vesuvio on the precipice of eruption. Being from an Italian American family of the 1940s and 50s when, as Betty stated, she was conditioned and trained to become a housewife of the highest caliber, her Catholic upbringing was in line with Dan’s own large Irish family (once again, we see that the Italians and the Irish just don’t jive, ultimately). Except Dan, with the benefit of being a man, could use those values for his own subjugating and dismissive purposes against Betty.
As The Wedding Singer, another project that did a thorough job on conveying the nature of the 80s to its viewers, told us, it is so often the seemingly “little things” in relationships that paint the portrait of what will become a major source of contention (and lack of consideration) later on. And speaking of projects set in the 80s with meta cachet, having Christian “Heathers” Slater cast in the part of Dan Broderick was a smooth choice–and that cult movie of ‘89 (tailored to the year Betty would kill Dan) he co-starred in with Winona Ryder is even made reference to when Betty’s daughter asks of her, “What’s your damage?” But yes, back to the little things. There were so many little things Dan did to show Betty who he really was.
Her mother’s own overt lack of affection for Betty is also present throughout, and it seems likely that Betty allied herself with Dan in the hope that she could find love from someone. Genuine love that could be shown. For a brief period, Dan seemed happy to show it, until he became consumed with his medical and then legal studies. But during that key “wooing” period (showcased in the second episode, “The Turtle and the Alligator”), Dan was all promises and assurances, attentiveness and fawning. As is the way of most megalomaniac men at the outset of a relationship in which they’re ultimately trying to make the woman their emotional slave.
After meeting him at University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the courtship escalates quickly, with meet-ups that consist of Betty taking the train to Dan (of course). On one such encounter, Dan meets her at a bar and eyeballs a Ms. type of magazine she has in front of her. “Oh. Where’d you find that?” Young Betty shrugs, “Someone left it on the train.” Young Dan sneers, “And you picked it up? How come? Are you a feminist now?” This condescending question is, indeed, strong foreshadowing for just how much someone like Dan Broderick would come to loathe a woman who spoke her mind without fear and without self-censoring (no matter how many times she’s fined for her expletives). There are many such moments in The Betty Broderick Story, meticulously structured not just with its attention to detail in costuming (Amanda Peet’s looks are sure to be the envy of any viewer), but in its use of implementing subtle scenes that will later enrich the nature of Betty’s explosiveness in the future, for so long keeping a lid on her own needs for the sake of Dan’s and then being written off as a materialistic do-nothing despite the decades of support she offered in his years of food stamp-level poverty.
More foreshadowing moments happen in the second episode, as is the case when Betty’s mother storms into the church dressing room where Betty is appraising herself in her wedding dress and declares, “You can’t do this. It’s as if no one else even exists. It’s unconscionable. He’s gonna ruin it all. He said he’d wear the formal morning dress.” Betty explains, “He said that he didn’t want to wear rented clothes.” Her mother warns, “He knew the entire bridal party would be in morning dress… A man who could do this without a thought for anyone–what wouldn’t a man like that do?” While it might have seemed overly dramatic at the time, surely Betty now understands that her mother was right. Even as much as didn’t want her to be. And as Dan delves deeper and deeper into Harvard Law in episode three, “Marriage Encounter,” Betty is left to raise their two daughters on a virtually nonexistent income. Which is why she can’t fathom that Dan would insist she carry another pregnancy to term. But according to his “Catholic values,” he doesn’t believe in abortion (later, when she wants to go to church marriage counseling, he will say he doesn’t believe in Catholicism). Dutiful as ever, however, and convinced that she is in love with Dan (this is the benefit of a man catching a woman when she’s young enough to become hopelessly attached), she abides by his request, only to deliver a boy that will die four days later.
Dan, naturally, isn’t nearly as broken up, still enmeshed in his studies and giving such speeches in class as, “We don’t live in a utopia, where, by definition, everyone’s goals are the same. In the right circumstances, lying serves a greater good.” This little “aphorism” will certainly play out as he’s lying to Betty for two years about his affair with his assistant, Linda. But before Linda comes along, there’s a brief moment where the two of them enjoy Dan’s success. Granted, Betty seems to be the only one who wants to remember that the sweetness of that success comes from all the suffering they endured before. At an expensive restaurant they’ve now been to multiple times in the past few weeks, Dan balks at the menu, “Maybe we should find another spot until this one gets exciting again.” The double meaning not yet evident to Betty, for it’s clear that Dan is getting bored with a lot of things he once “put up with” before having the power and agency that came with wealth. He seems disgusted by Betty’s nouveau riche attitude when she asks, “Still, would you have ever thought we’d get bored with a place this expensive?” He replies, “Don’t. You never miss a chance to bring it up. How our life used to be shit.” Betty explains, “It wasn’t shit, Dan. But it was hard.” “You don’t have to tell me that it was hard. I know that it was hard,” he responds, as though alluding to having to deal with her in any way during that period was part of the challenges, despite the fact that she was instrumental to him coming through to the other side. Both metaphorically and then literally–from the East Coast to the West Coast.
After capitulating to going to the Marriage Encounter therapy offered by the church, Dan sits before Betty and offers her the same yarn of promises and apologies as he always has (which is why scenes of their past in which he did the same thing are intercut in his monologue). His “sincerity” is void, yet Betty’s vision is too clouded by the deep-seated attachment she has to him as she herself tells him with the utmost genuineness, “You will never be replaced. We’ve shared too much.” Clearly, Dan did not feel the same way. In many respects, their dynamic echoes another marriage involving an Elizabeth a.k.a. Bets a.k.a. Betty. And even if Mad Men came later and is fictional, the frivolities and expenditures of Betty Draper (January Jones) as distractions and coping mechanisms against the fact that her own rich husband, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), found her just as repugnant (not physically, so much as in character) is mirrored in Betty Broderick. Don and Dan–similar names indeed–also see fit to gaslight their wives into thinking they’re crazy to believe he’s having an affair (in Don’s case, oh so many–yet Don was still decent enough to give her an upright divorce settlement).
Betty’s suspicions of Dan having a dalliance with Linda begin in October 1983. This psychological strain is highlighted in episode four, “More To It Than Fun,” opening with a psychologist (Jeff Perry a.k.a. Richard Katimski on My So-Called Life) who will interweave his own interpretation of what Betty endured over the next two years in which Dan gaslights her about her correct assumption. Likening Betty’s eventual reactions to that of a pressure cooker ultimately needing to release that pressure in some volatile way after absolutely no acknowledgement for her feelings, the betrayal on Dan’s part, no regard for all she did for him throughout their marriage, or at least an equitable monetary division that would speak to her worth even if Dan wouldn’t, he states, “To achieve that [closure], the first thing that has to happen is the infidel has to be willing to both admit and express remorse. To say, ‘I have deeply hurt you. I have lied. I admit it. I’m sorry.’ Those are the necessary conditions for change. In their absence, you just add to the pressure cooker. Unless something is extended to the victim that says, ‘You are not crazy, this has happened. You are not wrong to have these feelings of absolute unsupport, self-hatred, anger toward everyone’… there is no resolution for the victim at all, healing does not take place.” And while Betty is led down the primrose path of believing that Dan wants to buy a new house with her and maybe have another child, all the while he’s meticulously planning his exit strategy without alerting Betty to it until the final hour: February 28, 1985. For yes, he is very certain to establish a date of separation for subsequent legal proceedings that will determine the value and division of assets.
As Betty still feels a sense of denial about what’s happening, she acts more and more recklessly in her handling of the legal process, alienating her first lawyer and then unable to get another one thanks to Dan instilling the fear of every other lawyer in town should they take his wife’s case. The fact that Dan pulled the rug out from her so quickly and so seemingly apropos of nothing does very much lend him the element of surprise advantage of not only getting all his ducks in a row to fire at Betty, but also shoving her down the rabbit hole of being deemed “erratic” and “crazy,” at last truly driven that way by his relentless tactics and all-out callousness.
The psychologist continues his testimony as though narrating Betty’s life while she goes through the polite motions of catering to Dan as he claims to be “taking some time” for himself–after also having taken custody of their children, venomously telling her that she hasn’t proven her point about being indispensable because he can take care of them himself (that is, Linda can–and even that’s not true, as her kids start getting sick more regularly without the same level of attention). So it is that the psychologist provides the voiceover, “Confusion and anger makes [the victim] feel like their life has become a mockery, that they barely exist. A pressure cooker must have some type of release. In fact, that was the problem. They were taken off the market–pressure cookers. Eventually, they tended to explode.”
From sympathy to eye-rolling, even Betty’s once loyal friends gradually start to migrate over to Dan’s court (eventually testifying against her after the murder) in terms of wishing she could just “let it go.” But how can someone who invested every emotion they ever had, as well as the majority of their life, simply “let it go”? As though it were as effortless and second-nature as breathing. When “breathing,” in fact, for Betty, is being married to Dan Broderick and being a mother to their children. What’s more, to have everything she’s ever loved ripped away from her–including her four children who were pitted against her and seemed to readily take Linda’s presence as “natural”–what did she have to gain from “letting it go”? Having already lost all that she ever held dear, the only way Betty could envision herself getting “peace” was to see Dan and Linda pay for what they had reduced her life to. A life already riddled with being expected to “grin and bear it.” Well, she might still grin (albeit diabolically), but she would no longer bear it on the morning of November 5, 1989.
Even to this day, a man would have difficulty fathoming being pushed to such a breaking point as a result of matters pertaining to love (instead he is pushed in matters pertaining to white supremacy and/or bullying, as most school shootings have shown us). For his emotions–good, “bad” or otherwise–are accepted in any format. Without being dissected and picked apart as a means to prove he’s “crazy.”
The fact that so many women came forward in support of Betty after the news broke about the murder was a testament to the collective oppression being felt by females across America–whether “just a housewife” or not. The writing off of women as “silly,” “insane” or “whore” (especially by other women conditioned to see fellow members of their sex as competition) had persisted well after Gloria Steinem’s day (mentioned in that episode when Dan mocks Betty for being a “feminist”). And it was becoming increasingly absurd to women still suffering this treatment. Almost as “absurd” as a spurned ex-wife killing the man who thought he could take the money (and the kids) and run. Live happily ever after while she was expected to rot and get fat in silence.
Whether or not one feels Dan and his new wife (a near replica of young Betty) “deserved” their fate, it cannot be denied that the greatest tragedy of The Betty Broderick Story is brought forth in the final episode, “Perception Is Reality,” in which a series of replayed scenes show that if just one of the scenarios in the timeline had gone a different way, the entire escalating trajectory might have ended with a better, non-murderous outcome. For it was as the psychologist says in the fourth episode: all Betty wanted was some kind of recognition for everything she had done, as opposed to being tossed out like cholera-plagued garbage. And that is exactly what happens to so many women who are no longer “eye-catching” (“Everyone loves a kitten, not a cat,” Betty says at one point to the judge). Even more ironic is that not even those women married to men rich enough to get them plastic surgery can seem to escape such a phenomenon (vaginoplasty, evidently, only goes so far in mimicking a “youthful” appearance).
So while no one is saying what Betty did is “right,” it bears noting that it still–in 2020–takes an entire parsing through of the events to prove to people (mostly men) that Dan was completely wrong–absolutely cold-blooded–in how he treated the original Mrs. Broderick.
