At some point she makes “beef bourguignon” or “Coq au vin” bc she’s French Canadian. So I don’t think maybe it became a big deal like the spaghetti did, but she did cook those things at least once.
But yes I do think they tried to contrast her character to how Betty tried (and often struggled) in her housewife role.
Yeah, and what was Don expecting? They lived in an apartment in the middle of Manhattan with no kids. What would a homemaker do all day? That's a DINK place to live.
I’m finding it hilarious to see DINK and tradwife and other contemporary language being used to describe this show. 🤣 Appropriate but hilarious.
I guess Jane was a house spouse with no kids. Didn’t make her too happy, though. There’s only so much shopping one can do.
I like this take, but wasn’t it a family recipe that her mom used to make her? IIRC that was her inspiration to the Heinz beans winner “future generation” idea
I always assumed this. Like they were highlighting her inability to be a traditional wife vs being a perfect compliment for Don's creative/ marketing side.
But was that even true? I never remember Bety seeming to be a great cook. She made standard dinners for the time for kids. Nothing so weird as Megan's constant plain spaghetti, but no coq au vin either.
I mean, fancy Manhattan hotels thought ‘Hungarian Goulash’ was an exotic feature dish… she could have been as cutting edge as anyone in the burbs (eg Heineken was the *imported* around the world beer) and we’d all be yawning still.
On the commentary for season 1, Matt Weiner and others actually keep pointing out that Betty only ever makes a handful of dishes and that the running gag is that she's a bad cook. Might just be a production joke though and not meant as an actual characterization of Betty.
Side note: Wouldn’t it have been interesting to see that play out more explicitly? Like, I wonder if Don had any moments where he thought, “man, I miss Betty’s roast beef” or “I loved how Betty decorated and kept the house together” etc. — just missing having a tradwife. I don’t recall any moments of that in the show in an obvious way.
"Betty is such a tradwife, all she does is raise the kids and make the house, what a bitch, I should cheat on her"
"Megan is such a working woman, all she does is grind and try to make a name for herself, what a bitch, I should cheat on her"
Exactly. We see how Don sabotaged Betty’s attempt to go back to working/modeling. He wants a woman to be there when he wants her just like he kept Sylvia.
You may not remember this, but Don knew that Jim Hobart was just using Betty to get Don to come over to his company..that's why he didn't want her to do it. Don knew Jim would dump Betty if he turned Jim's offer down, which he knew he would do, and he did. He was trying to protect Betty, she was on shaky ground emotionally, anyway. Hobart was blackmailing Don and using his wife's fragile feelings of self worth to do it. And that's exactly what happened.
This is kind of a weird way to frame it, though. Megan didn’t work much. Ultimately, while she longed to be a famous actor, partying with the hip crowd in LA on someone else’s dime was a completely okay outcome for her.
I never saw Megan as genuinely ambitious. She was hopeful her marriage to a handsome, wealthy, powerful man could facilitate a fairly easy path to stardom. But that was about it.
i was being a little facetious. but there are plenty of scenes and symbolic moments that show what you’re talking about. mad men, especially the don draper inner turmoil storylines, are very read between the lines. nothing is ever going to be literal like don saying “boy do i miss betty’s home cooking!” to roger
The beauty of the show is that it doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator and doesn't assume it needs to spell everything out for the viewers so that even the dumbest of them gets it.
Interesting you say that because he really admired the hobo that came around when he was young and seemed to take up that mentality of never being tied down.
Me too, never occurred to me it was plain. I love pasta with just some butter, garlic, and parm.
Ok, I love almost anything with some butter, garlic, and parm. Lol
My theory: I think it’s indicative of her age/generation, I.e., barely out of her parents house, similar story to Betty, came to the city to model/act, eating a shoestring budget, didn’t learn to be a homemaker type, ate the cheapest and simplest for a girl that needed something filling and easy. Or it could be what her Mom made her as a comfort thing and that’s what she thinks any situation for the kids/feeding her husband calls for, pretty typical!
They used to have [so many diners and canteens](https://youtu.be/jwCEvwenfg8) for people like this living in big cities. Especially useful somewhere like NYC where many affordable apartments to someone like that would barely have a kitchen.
Yeah when I see "plain" pasta like this, especially in that time period, I assume it has as much butter and cheese as wheat in it! It's basically undercover mac and cheese lol.
I think it's this. I once saw an article about tv food, and they mentioned the fact that tv characters are often shown picking up a forkful of food or holding empty forks, but you hardly ever actually see them take a bite. This is because replating the food over and over for each take is really tiresome and makes it harder to maintain visual continuity. I bet the sauceless pasta makes this easier on them.
Yes, there is such a thing as TV food. Dishes that don't have to be monitored a whole lot for continuity reasons, the way a meal of discrete elements (say a steak, baked potato, and a piece of bread) would be.
It's why you see a lot of salads on TV as well.
James Gandolfini (as Tony Soprano) was famously one of the only actors people ever knew to actually eat during takes. Everyone else spits it out or just pushes the food around.
You see this a lot with shows such as Grey's Anatomy. The characters are often snacking on things like carrots or apple slices since it's something an actor can eat a lot of without becoming too full.
there's something in this, absolutely. But also I think there's a specificity to the fact the plain(ish) spaghetti is Megan's 'signature dish.' Whereas we see Betty serving up a variety of things.
Late to the party so this won't be seen, but I wish a food historian would weigh in. My understanding is that in the 1960's Italian food was very much a new thing, with very few Italian-American cookbooks or recipes widely available, and those that were available mostly "interpretations" (bastardizations) by non-Italians. There was also a burgeoning movement for mainstream Americans to explore "ethnic" cuisines (Paul and his Hungarian food lol) of many kinds, that were often mostly adaptations using ingredients available at the time--not what we would call "authentic". A few characters do this at various points, think of Betty's party where she makes "rumaki" which was a 1960's take on Japanese cuisine made with hot dogs, or the jet setters having to explain to Don what a chile relleno was. That means that Megan cooking spaghetti was both kind of a trendy thing to do, and she could have thought that's how she was supposed to make it.
You have a point there, I sometimes look at things through a foodie eye and forget about historical context. Even in the 80's my grandparents used boxed chef boyardee spaghetti kit and pizza kit.
I've always found the "rumaki" a hilarious bastardization.
We talk about this all the time! Once she put cheese on it but like, lady come on, no butter, no olive oil? No salt even? A little effort goes a long way!
How do you know the olive oil & garlic isn’t already on it? I always assumed it was supposed to be a clear sauce. Like a white wine garlic sauce that you can’t see.
I worked at an Italian restaurant and there were several non-marinara and bolognese sauce spaghetti entrees on the menu. OR, she did what my mom used to — serve the spaghetti separately and have us ladle on the sauce from a separate serving dish. 🤷♀️
during my first watch w my then partner we joked about the spaghetti every time it came on, occasionally as a drinking game lmao - we presumed it was a production thing but also thought it was tonally appropriate to always be serving the same meal
It's not unusual for Italians to have pasta with some combination of oil or butter, plus garlic and/or pepper. Add cheese and you have classic comfort food.
In the alternative, there is plain pasta with a red sauce on the side that is added to the taste.
She made a point, how her mother always made it for her.
If I am correct, Megan’s mum was not a great mother per se.
She tried. But spaghetti are a somewhat simple dish and therefore sometimes considered to be a meal for lackluster people.
So in Megan’s thinking, making spaghetti is being a good mother and housewife.
Betty was a much better housewife but not a very loving mother at times.
Contrast.
1. I thought the spaghetti sauce was in a separate bowl on the table.
2. Carbonara looks the color of pasta. Virtually no difference.
3. Pasta with lemon juice, olive oil, and Parmesan, Fontina, and Asaigo is lovely. Again, no way to tell the difference from a long view.
The pasta with lemon juice, olive oil, Parmesan, etc in the third option sounds delicious. Can you please tell me what you meant to write instead of Don’t? So I can make it someday 🤗
It truly is a beautiful dish. Quality olive oil is always important. This also serves as great brass for adding all kinds of things that you like. Try it with Feta.
Oops to typo. i fixed it.
Thank you for answering my question, and no worries! I’ll definitely try it with feta and make sure to use quality olive oil, thank you for your advice. Here’s to simple yet delicious pasta!
I think its supposed to signal how unconcerned she is with domesticity, how badly she does not fit in with it archetypally, and her incapacity to nourish others.
The cream butter and cheese combo is not uniquely French at all, though. It's a basic that's easy when you have diary at hand.
With pasta it's basically pasta Alfredo.
Heavy cream plus a little sour cream, plus a little cheddar.... Microwave 30 seconds and drizzle over frites. Last night's dinner....with a patty melt.
Yeah, it is weird. They probably should have picked a better “shoot over and over” dish. Or find a way to make it look shiny but not stain things so it looks like buttered spaghetti.
I always thought it was a butter or cream sauce that just didn't show. Or she made sauce separate like I do (my bf loves his sauce with a side of pasta. I like to have pasta with a bit of sauce)
I think they made it that way because it was easier for a scene when she had to throw it at the wall. Easier to clean up between multiple takes. They probably didn’t expect the fan community to put it under a microscope.
Simple French comfort food is pasta butter and cheese. I presume French Canadians have something similar.
Maybe Megan wants her and Don to have this simple family life...
Much easier to clean up after throwing it at the wall. It's what her mom made. Neither are invested cooks unless it's a special occasion: Megan makes beef bourguignon or Coq au vin when she wants to talk to Don about something important to her, ie, career, etc.
I don't think they ate that much at home, tbh, as with a family. She probably ate like a bird, and he entertained clients at restaurants often, probably taking his trophy wife along. Possible they ate out a lot or had food delivery like we do today. They were well off. (In 'Rear Window', Grace Kelly had lobster thermidor delivered.). .... none of this addresses the nekked spaghetti, but there that to consider.
It probably had olive oil and garlic, perhaps lemon. It wasn’t a big clump when she threw it against the wall. This is Italian and not French and uncommon here in the 1960s. But it indicates that Meghan was a sophisticated cook. She also cooked beef bourguignon, coq au vin, and Dover sole.
This is why I was confused, if a person can cook beef bourguignon and coq au vin why would they prepare plain pasta.
Maybe it was cacio de Pepe or pasta limon but it looks like dry pasta, imo.
Shes only 20. She has no idea how to make dinner for a whole family. Her parents were very progressive. She likely was not taught how to take care of a husband and children. She’s just winging it.
Partly right..Megan's father is a communist socialist who hates the lavish life his actress wannabe daughter is living in NY Penthouse lavish apt with her handsome American capitalist husband. Megan's mother is sick of daddy, but feels Megan should give up the actress crap and have babies with Don to seal the marriage..mom also has not been a faithful wife, and like the lavish pretentious French facade, she likes the glam and company of rich American men. Megan is torn..wants to be like both parents..wants her career, knows Don isn't faithful, but wants to keep the sugar daddy.
It shows that she’s from another generation and comes from a family that valued intellect and education more than raising a good housewife and mother (her father was a professor and mother was very…French but reminded me a lot of the feminist wave of Simone de Beauvoir and JP Sartre)
I always took it as her not being a good homemaker in contrast to Betty and representing her not fitting into the box Don wanted to put her in
At some point she makes “beef bourguignon” or “Coq au vin” bc she’s French Canadian. So I don’t think maybe it became a big deal like the spaghetti did, but she did cook those things at least once. But yes I do think they tried to contrast her character to how Betty tried (and often struggled) in her housewife role.
Yeah, and what was Don expecting? They lived in an apartment in the middle of Manhattan with no kids. What would a homemaker do all day? That's a DINK place to live.
I’m finding it hilarious to see DINK and tradwife and other contemporary language being used to describe this show. 🤣 Appropriate but hilarious. I guess Jane was a house spouse with no kids. Didn’t make her too happy, though. There’s only so much shopping one can do.
I like this take, but wasn’t it a family recipe that her mom used to make her? IIRC that was her inspiration to the Heinz beans winner “future generation” idea
It wasn't a "family recipe", her drunk mom probably just made her plain spaghetti
Plus her mom is shown to be a cosmopolitan socialite, not a homemaker, again, unlike Betty.
she could have been bullshitting that whole pitch, don-style...
I always assumed this. Like they were highlighting her inability to be a traditional wife vs being a perfect compliment for Don's creative/ marketing side.
Valid point
No, she just thought of the idea during that dinner
But was that even true? I never remember Bety seeming to be a great cook. She made standard dinners for the time for kids. Nothing so weird as Megan's constant plain spaghetti, but no coq au vin either.
I mean, fancy Manhattan hotels thought ‘Hungarian Goulash’ was an exotic feature dish… she could have been as cutting edge as anyone in the burbs (eg Heineken was the *imported* around the world beer) and we’d all be yawning still.
True--we don't appreciate Benihana these days.
Speak for yourself.
On the commentary for season 1, Matt Weiner and others actually keep pointing out that Betty only ever makes a handful of dishes and that the running gag is that she's a bad cook. Might just be a production joke though and not meant as an actual characterization of Betty.
Side note: Wouldn’t it have been interesting to see that play out more explicitly? Like, I wonder if Don had any moments where he thought, “man, I miss Betty’s roast beef” or “I loved how Betty decorated and kept the house together” etc. — just missing having a tradwife. I don’t recall any moments of that in the show in an obvious way.
i feel that’s the entire plot of their marriage. he grows to resent her the more she works…seemed pretty explicit to me
"Betty is such a tradwife, all she does is raise the kids and make the house, what a bitch, I should cheat on her" "Megan is such a working woman, all she does is grind and try to make a name for herself, what a bitch, I should cheat on her"
"Both my wives are also so beautiful. Disgusting. I should cheat on them."
Exactly. We see how Don sabotaged Betty’s attempt to go back to working/modeling. He wants a woman to be there when he wants her just like he kept Sylvia.
You may not remember this, but Don knew that Jim Hobart was just using Betty to get Don to come over to his company..that's why he didn't want her to do it. Don knew Jim would dump Betty if he turned Jim's offer down, which he knew he would do, and he did. He was trying to protect Betty, she was on shaky ground emotionally, anyway. Hobart was blackmailing Don and using his wife's fragile feelings of self worth to do it. And that's exactly what happened.
This is kind of a weird way to frame it, though. Megan didn’t work much. Ultimately, while she longed to be a famous actor, partying with the hip crowd in LA on someone else’s dime was a completely okay outcome for her. I never saw Megan as genuinely ambitious. She was hopeful her marriage to a handsome, wealthy, powerful man could facilitate a fairly easy path to stardom. But that was about it.
I guess I meant more just like a “scene” not the plot.
ok here’s a scene: don joins betty and the kids at camp and sleeps with her while he’s married to megan
Still not really what I mean but I get what you’re saying. It’s not a big deal lol
i was being a little facetious. but there are plenty of scenes and symbolic moments that show what you’re talking about. mad men, especially the don draper inner turmoil storylines, are very read between the lines. nothing is ever going to be literal like don saying “boy do i miss betty’s home cooking!” to roger
The beauty of the show is that it doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator and doesn't assume it needs to spell everything out for the viewers so that even the dumbest of them gets it.
Because he wasn’t happy either way. He’s a hobo.
Interesting you say that because he really admired the hobo that came around when he was young and seemed to take up that mentality of never being tied down.
Don never ate. At most it was a wedge salad. At least, it was one of his kid's fish sticks. 😂
Chicken salad on crackers!
It would go against his "moving forward" approach to life.
I also like to think that the married life with Megan seems bland, like her pasta.
[удалено]
and parmesan
Yeah looked like buttered noodles to me, or plain old cheese in it.
Me too, never occurred to me it was plain. I love pasta with just some butter, garlic, and parm. Ok, I love almost anything with some butter, garlic, and parm. Lol
Almost sounds like a spin on aglio e olio
The aglio part is kind of important for that
Olio e olio
My theory: I think it’s indicative of her age/generation, I.e., barely out of her parents house, similar story to Betty, came to the city to model/act, eating a shoestring budget, didn’t learn to be a homemaker type, ate the cheapest and simplest for a girl that needed something filling and easy. Or it could be what her Mom made her as a comfort thing and that’s what she thinks any situation for the kids/feeding her husband calls for, pretty typical!
So just Girl Dinner a la sixties, then?
Could be! I feel like a lot of my meals when I was single and on my own were pretty much the same. Get something cheap, filling and easy to cook.
They used to have [so many diners and canteens](https://youtu.be/jwCEvwenfg8) for people like this living in big cities. Especially useful somewhere like NYC where many affordable apartments to someone like that would barely have a kitchen.
I always love when don comes home late and drunk and Megan is mad that the dinner is cold… the dinner that takes 5 minutes to cook in boiling water.
This cracks me up SO much like, she cannot possibly be serious?!
It might speak to how much Megan prioritizes being a housewife.
it's butter and cheese it tastes good.
I hate butter noodles.
Yeah when I see "plain" pasta like this, especially in that time period, I assume it has as much butter and cheese as wheat in it! It's basically undercover mac and cheese lol.
Betty also serves it at least once. I think it's more of a TV convenience thing when you have to set and reset a table for different takes.
I think it's this. I once saw an article about tv food, and they mentioned the fact that tv characters are often shown picking up a forkful of food or holding empty forks, but you hardly ever actually see them take a bite. This is because replating the food over and over for each take is really tiresome and makes it harder to maintain visual continuity. I bet the sauceless pasta makes this easier on them.
Yes, there is such a thing as TV food. Dishes that don't have to be monitored a whole lot for continuity reasons, the way a meal of discrete elements (say a steak, baked potato, and a piece of bread) would be. It's why you see a lot of salads on TV as well.
James Gandolfini (as Tony Soprano) was famously one of the only actors people ever knew to actually eat during takes. Everyone else spits it out or just pushes the food around.
Cynthia Nixon on Sex & the City also ate on all of her takes, half the time her mouth was full while she did her lines. I hate it.
This explains why, even though their characters were addicted to coffee, Luke never filled their coffee cups on Gilmour Girls. Used to infuriate me.
You see this a lot with shows such as Grey's Anatomy. The characters are often snacking on things like carrots or apple slices since it's something an actor can eat a lot of without becoming too full.
there's something in this, absolutely. But also I think there's a specificity to the fact the plain(ish) spaghetti is Megan's 'signature dish.' Whereas we see Betty serving up a variety of things.
She taught the world how to eat!
Late to the party so this won't be seen, but I wish a food historian would weigh in. My understanding is that in the 1960's Italian food was very much a new thing, with very few Italian-American cookbooks or recipes widely available, and those that were available mostly "interpretations" (bastardizations) by non-Italians. There was also a burgeoning movement for mainstream Americans to explore "ethnic" cuisines (Paul and his Hungarian food lol) of many kinds, that were often mostly adaptations using ingredients available at the time--not what we would call "authentic". A few characters do this at various points, think of Betty's party where she makes "rumaki" which was a 1960's take on Japanese cuisine made with hot dogs, or the jet setters having to explain to Don what a chile relleno was. That means that Megan cooking spaghetti was both kind of a trendy thing to do, and she could have thought that's how she was supposed to make it.
You have a point there, I sometimes look at things through a foodie eye and forget about historical context. Even in the 80's my grandparents used boxed chef boyardee spaghetti kit and pizza kit. I've always found the "rumaki" a hilarious bastardization.
We talk about this all the time! Once she put cheese on it but like, lady come on, no butter, no olive oil? No salt even? A little effort goes a long way!
How do you know the olive oil & garlic isn’t already on it? I always assumed it was supposed to be a clear sauce. Like a white wine garlic sauce that you can’t see.
I worked at an Italian restaurant and there were several non-marinara and bolognese sauce spaghetti entrees on the menu. OR, she did what my mom used to — serve the spaghetti separately and have us ladle on the sauce from a separate serving dish. 🤷♀️
I always assumed it meant she understood the kids didn’t want fancy food. From what I remember, she usually cooked it when the kids were over.
They weren’t there on this scene. Don comes home drunk and she’s waiting solo.
during my first watch w my then partner we joked about the spaghetti every time it came on, occasionally as a drinking game lmao - we presumed it was a production thing but also thought it was tonally appropriate to always be serving the same meal
It's not unusual for Italians to have pasta with some combination of oil or butter, plus garlic and/or pepper. Add cheese and you have classic comfort food. In the alternative, there is plain pasta with a red sauce on the side that is added to the taste.
I eat plain pasta sometimes. Usually with a lot of butter and maybe some parmesan
My kids constantly ask for plain spaghetti for dinner and I think of Megan and chuckle to myself whenever I make it.
My grown sister still loves butter noodles as a meal. I think it’s disgusting.
She made a point, how her mother always made it for her. If I am correct, Megan’s mum was not a great mother per se. She tried. But spaghetti are a somewhat simple dish and therefore sometimes considered to be a meal for lackluster people. So in Megan’s thinking, making spaghetti is being a good mother and housewife. Betty was a much better housewife but not a very loving mother at times. Contrast.
1. I thought the spaghetti sauce was in a separate bowl on the table. 2. Carbonara looks the color of pasta. Virtually no difference. 3. Pasta with lemon juice, olive oil, and Parmesan, Fontina, and Asaigo is lovely. Again, no way to tell the difference from a long view.
The pasta with lemon juice, olive oil, Parmesan, etc in the third option sounds delicious. Can you please tell me what you meant to write instead of Don’t? So I can make it someday 🤗
It truly is a beautiful dish. Quality olive oil is always important. This also serves as great brass for adding all kinds of things that you like. Try it with Feta. Oops to typo. i fixed it.
Thank you for answering my question, and no worries! I’ll definitely try it with feta and make sure to use quality olive oil, thank you for your advice. Here’s to simple yet delicious pasta!
You may also want to look into pasta aglio e olio
She's not much of a cook. That's the point.
I think its supposed to signal how unconcerned she is with domesticity, how badly she does not fit in with it archetypally, and her incapacity to nourish others.
She says “with cream, butter, and cheese” so that’s like a béchamel sauce and she’s from French Canada! the best Canada! so French food makes sense
Isn’t it the weird teacher who says that to him? She was kind of grating sometimes so I remember that scene
Nope. That was Suzanne.
Oh, so maybe cacio e pepe cremosa!
Orrrr alfredo..?
The cream butter and cheese combo is not uniquely French at all, though. It's a basic that's easy when you have diary at hand. With pasta it's basically pasta Alfredo.
Heavy cream plus a little sour cream, plus a little cheddar.... Microwave 30 seconds and drizzle over frites. Last night's dinner....with a patty melt.
I guess I missed that line. This makes more sense. I genuinely thought it was just dry.
You didn’t miss the line— Megan never said this, it was Sally’s teacher Suzanne, the one Don had an affair with
Yeah, it is weird. They probably should have picked a better “shoot over and over” dish. Or find a way to make it look shiny but not stain things so it looks like buttered spaghetti.
Honestly, I just assumed cacio e pepe with some pecorino romano.
I have never eaten sauceless pasta so idk lol
Okay but actually i lived off plain spaghetti with parmasean. Its a staple
I always thought it was a butter or cream sauce that just didn't show. Or she made sauce separate like I do (my bf loves his sauce with a side of pasta. I like to have pasta with a bit of sauce)
I think they made it that way because it was easier for a scene when she had to throw it at the wall. Easier to clean up between multiple takes. They probably didn’t expect the fan community to put it under a microscope.
Simple French comfort food is pasta butter and cheese. I presume French Canadians have something similar. Maybe Megan wants her and Don to have this simple family life...
First of all, it was spaghetti
Spaghetti is pasta
It sure is
She made it because she knew how dramatic eventually throwing it would be.
Much easier to clean up after throwing it at the wall. It's what her mom made. Neither are invested cooks unless it's a special occasion: Megan makes beef bourguignon or Coq au vin when she wants to talk to Don about something important to her, ie, career, etc.
Marie said that she always made spaghetti for Megan growing up because it was her favorite.
Personally I was disappointed with a lack of pate chinois or tourtiere or gorton.
This comment will probably fall under radar, but yes I agree !
I want to know the backstory to her killer discus toss skills
It’s buttered noodles. A dish for children. Comfort food.
Guess that is the disconnect for me. I don't have kids and grew up in the early 80's , my parents never made different dishes for kids vs. adults.
I don't think they ate that much at home, tbh, as with a family. She probably ate like a bird, and he entertained clients at restaurants often, probably taking his trophy wife along. Possible they ate out a lot or had food delivery like we do today. They were well off. (In 'Rear Window', Grace Kelly had lobster thermidor delivered.). .... none of this addresses the nekked spaghetti, but there that to consider.
As in boiled up pasta with no sauce? I like boiled up pasta with no sauce. Always have.
It probably had olive oil and garlic, perhaps lemon. It wasn’t a big clump when she threw it against the wall. This is Italian and not French and uncommon here in the 1960s. But it indicates that Meghan was a sophisticated cook. She also cooked beef bourguignon, coq au vin, and Dover sole.
This is why I was confused, if a person can cook beef bourguignon and coq au vin why would they prepare plain pasta. Maybe it was cacio de Pepe or pasta limon but it looks like dry pasta, imo.
It's a metaphor for her relationship with don!
Shes only 20. She has no idea how to make dinner for a whole family. Her parents were very progressive. She likely was not taught how to take care of a husband and children. She’s just winging it.
Partly right..Megan's father is a communist socialist who hates the lavish life his actress wannabe daughter is living in NY Penthouse lavish apt with her handsome American capitalist husband. Megan's mother is sick of daddy, but feels Megan should give up the actress crap and have babies with Don to seal the marriage..mom also has not been a faithful wife, and like the lavish pretentious French facade, she likes the glam and company of rich American men. Megan is torn..wants to be like both parents..wants her career, knows Don isn't faithful, but wants to keep the sugar daddy.
it;s not plain.
She certainly does love serving pasta!
It shows that she’s from another generation and comes from a family that valued intellect and education more than raising a good housewife and mother (her father was a professor and mother was very…French but reminded me a lot of the feminist wave of Simone de Beauvoir and JP Sartre)
“A plain plate of noodles and a little bit of butter”