Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 415 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT There's That Past, Informing the Present Again
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 5 | Aired on 2010.08.22
...and later, he comes out with the director and tries to get in. Unfortunately for them, Joey's a good guard dog, and smugly tells them that it's a closed set -- while inside, Peggy's just riding the Honda in circles, with no one else in attendance. Hee hee hee. This is how you get labeled a genius, Chaough.
When we return, it's dark out and Don's working in his office when he casts an appraising eye toward the bottle of sake Ted Chaough sent him; he then walks to the kitchen past people who are leaving for the day and grabs some ice, startling Faye, who's been running a focus group for Samsonite. When Faye tells him she's never had sake, Don pours them both a finger, and Faye says she doesn't know how he drinks the way "people" do around there. "I'd fall asleep." That's a best-case scenario, I'd say. After chatting a bit about a trapeze artist Faye interviewed, Don wonders why everyone needs to talk about everything, which is a classic little disclaimer in advance of him opening up, but one more thing needs to happen first, which is that he asks Faye about her home life, and she confesses that she's not married -- she just wears the ring to keep too many men from hitting on her. She then asks about him, specifically if he has children, which I would have thought she knew already given that by her own admission she researched him thoroughly, but she's probably just following the conversational cues here. He tells her their genders and ages, and when she offers that it must be hard to be apart, he admits that's true -- he feels guilty for not seeing them enough, in the high weeds when he does see them, and both relieved and sad when they're gone again. Faye sincerely expresses sympathy, and he continues that things aren't going well, and Betty wants Sally to see a psychiatrist. Faye assumes Don is against that, but Don merely says he doesn't even know, and it seems like his reflexive distrust of anything therapy-related has given way to guilt both over his part in Sally's emotional distress and his own inability to positively affect the situation. Faye, however, says that while she has no clinical evidence to support this, she's pretty sure that if Don loves her and Sally knows that, she'll be okay. I wouldn't have expected a comforting platitude from someone who wears a wedding ring to keep men at bay, but I suppose the point of this episode is that people, not just cultures, are full of seemingly incomprehensible contradictions, and the new way Don looks at Faye suggests that that's not always a bad thing. Faye finally breaks the moment by saying she should go, and Don can't resist digging in a little: "Fake dinner plans with your fake husband?" Faye wisely declines to answer that, and instead merely wishes Don a good night.