Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | 425 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Beyond The Veil
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 1-2 | Aired on 2013.04.07
Welcome to Season Six! It's a bit of a jolt for me, as I've gone from the period-England soap of Downton Abbey to the backwoods slow-burn of Justified and now into the polished repression of Mad Men without a chance to catch my breath, but at least they're not throwing us into another two-hour episode to sta...oh. Right. Well, will they at least promise no reprise of "Zou Bisou Bisou?"
After we hear a woman shriek, the opening shot is of a character we haven't met before, a fiftyish bald man who's administering CPR to the camera. We hear the woman cry "Oh my God" a couple times, and as we fade back out, we hear sirens...
...and then Don's voice, as he VOs from Dante's Inferno: "Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road, and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood." I'd imagine, given its prominent placement that themes from the book are going to pervade the season; it's not like it would be the first time a literary work has been used in this manner on this show. We see that he's reading this while reclining shirtless on a beach, next to him a tanned and bikini-clad Megan, who takes a blue umbrella-ed cocktail - not her first -- from a passing waiter with a bright "Mahalo." After giving the guy their "suite" number, Megan asks Don how long they've been out there, adding that she can't get too tan. "They'll fire me." So it looks like the favor Don did for Megan has been parlayed into an actual career here. I'd guess she's most excited not about the work or the success but the fact that she gets to stick it to her mother. Don checks his watch, but realizes it's not functioning at the moment, prompting Megan to guess that he got it wet before adding that she doesn't actually care what time it is. It's easy to be flip lying in paradise, Megan, but in my line of work I've seen an entertainment contract or two. Might want to find a robe, there.
Sometime later, Megan returns to their room and reports to Don, who's just emerging from the bathroom in a robe that shows off an appealing percentage of his legs, that he would not have liked the seedy neighborhood she just visited, but with a smile, she pulls from her bikini bottom the object of her errand, which is two joints, already rolled. Don stays silent, so she coaxes him, saying she knows he's tried it, but he hasn't had sex high, and it'll make it so much more intense. With that, he lowers her onto the bed and gets on top of her, so it looks like sex is happening, with its level of intensity to be left to the imagination.