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Summary
Chapters 23-26
Chapter 23, KCTV Studios
Chapter 23 reintroduces Walter Pine, a harried television producer with a difficult boss, a lack of star quality for his afternoon programming allocations, and a daughter whom he’s unsure how to parent. He knows he faces the risk of losing his job due to a still-vacant afternoon TV slot, and is desperate to get Elizabeth into it. Elizabeth is back at Hastings as a lab tech, as she couldn’t make ends meet without the work. She’s similarly frazzled to Walter, dealing with underemployment stress and intellectual stifling at Hastings. It’s the last straw when she reads an article by Donatti that is directly plagiarized from her own work, with Boryweitz as co-author. She’s infuriated, but as usual, Donatti dismisses her concerns out of hand. Frustrated, she quits her job at the Institute, dumping her lab keys and ID. Harriet informs Elizabeth of urgent calls from Walter Pine about a cooking show. Mad asks her questions about Calvin, and Elizabeth thinks back to letters she read between Calvin and his pen-pal, the Reverend Wakely. Despite her initial reluctance, Elizabeth calls Pine back, implying she’ll go to KCTV.
Chapter 24, The Afternoon Depression Zone
Elizabeth, speaking to Pine, rejects the tight clothes that Lebensmal, the chief of the network for her show “Supper at Six,” wants her to wear. She doesn’t understand the premise of the show, or why it matters that she appears attractive and entertaining on camera. Lebensmal mandates a "sexy" show, one where she prepares a cocktail at the end of every segment, while Elizabeth wants to speak and behave authentically and seriously. Pine and Elizabeth have a frank discussion about why he thinks it’s important for Elizabeth to be entertaining, which she also struggles to understand. She suggests that she wear a lab coat, and Walter despairs.
Chapter 25, The Average Jane
Elizabeth is live on TV, hosting "Supper at Six." Rather than dressing provocatively and reading the cue-cards she’s been provided, she quickly takes control of the show. She speaks directly into the camera, explaining to the audience why she’s getting rid of all the materials on the cooking surfaces she thinks are unnecessary. Although Walter is shouting with alarm and rage, trying desperately to persuade her to co-operate, she keeps going as though nothing is happening. She establishes an unexpectedly quick rapport with the audience, which works in her favor even though Lebensmal is furious. When she leaves the set, Walter tries to persuade her to follow orders, but she refuses, saying she knows her audience. As she passes, all the KCTV phones ring with questions about the ingredients she uses.
Chapter 26, The Funeral
Walter Pine exasperatedly wrestles with the scientific, no-nonsense direction Elizabeth insists on taking “Supper at Six” in. It seems to be working, but he’s nervous that any missteps could negatively affect his chances at keeping his job. During her first show with a live audience, Elizabeth again goes off-script, sabotaging his plans. In a dreamlike state, Walter imagines his funeral, overshadowed by Elizabeth's crisp voice giving cooking instructions. Upon coming back to full consciousness, Elizabeth tells him to eat and hands him the spinach casserole she prepared on the show. Despite feeling disgruntled with Elizabeth, Walter takes it home, and his daughter Amanda loves it.
Analysis
It’s not just in her Hastings lab coat that Elizabeth contends with professional belittlement and underestimation; sexism is prevalent at KCTV too, despite Walter’s respect for her. However, she does finally hit a tipping point at the Institute when Donatti—who previously told her she was “just not smart enough” to do her own research—steals and publishes an entire paper of hers and lists Boryweitz as co-author. She has always known that Donatti plagiarized other people’s work and is somewhat inured to it. Indeed, her own thesis advisor Dr. Meyer at UCLA was famous for stealing papers from students. However, this blatant theft, so crass that even Boryweitz apologizes to her, makes it clear that she will never have the career she wants while working for Donatti. Elizabeth's struggle mirrors the larger issue that women in the workplace still encounter: the need to fight for rightful recognition in their fields.
At KCTV, Elizabeth can exercise a little more autonomy over her own fate, though she is still subject to the sexist ideas of her professional superiors. For example, her producer Lebensmal believes that “Supper at Six” will only be successful if she agrees to conform to his own sexualized image of the homemaker. He wants her in tight skirts and bright lipstick, standing in a highly decorated and impractical kitchen. When he describes this to Walter, he tells him that he wants “Big hair, tight dresses, homey set. The sexy-wife-loving-mother every man wants to see at the end of the day.” Elizabeth protests the uncomfortable clothing and mountains of cosmetics this would require, as well as its total irrelevance to what she’s saying or doing. Walter tries to persuade her that the tight clothes are necessary to “suck it in, slim it down” and prevent her from looking heavier onscreen. This tactic doesn’t work on Elizabeth, but it appears to be a ubiquitous one at KCTV. Elizabeth has no recourse for this behavior; she has to play the game by Lebensmal’s rules for as long as she can bear to, in order to get what she wants.
What she wants is to be a chemist, but if she can’t be running a lab, Elizabeth plans to create the closest thing to it that she can. The added bonus of doing so on live TV is that it gives her a platform for educating other women, ones who might benefit from her experience. Despite the pressure she’s under to make the comparatively silly, fluffy content Lebensmal and Walter expect, Elizabeth insists on frontloading her scientific background on “Supper at Six.” As in her other professional life, Elizabeth is forthright and to the point in her explanations of the chemistry of cooking, prioritizing education over entertainment. Although this worries Walter, who tells her that the only goal of television is to “entertain” at all cost, it proves startlingly popular with Elizabeth’s largely female and largely homemaking audience.
In this section the reader also sees more directly how Walter Pine's narrative runs parallel to Elizabeth's experiences. He’s also a single parent, and is also facing job insecurity because of his stance on management’s prehistoric attitudes toward women. When they’re read together, Elizabeth’s and Walter’s actions illustrate how difficult it can be to stick to one's moral compass in the face of professional demands.
