Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 1483 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT The Man-Boy Becomes A Man
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 2010.08.15
Pete enters his office, and the support beam in the middle of it prevents him at first from seeing that Harry's eating at his desk. Once he catches sight of him with a start, he seethes, "I hate this office." Harry replies that Pete wanted to be close to Roger, like, who asked you and what are you even doing in there, but I guess the answer is that he wanted to ask Pete if he's seen Sunday's paper. Pete, pouring a drink, tells him that if he's referring to the Playtex ad therein, he's been told the printer mistakenly swapped paper stocks, "and I don't care if she looks like a Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican girls buy brassieres." If this is based on personal experience, I don't want to know about it. Of course, I want even less to know about Harry drooling over the memory of a Puerto Rican woman he saw on the subway, so let's move on to where he shows Pete an announcement in the paper -- Ken is getting married. Pete asks what that is to him, so Harry tells him that Ken took him and Jennifer to the opera the month prior, and they had great seats and now he knows why -- his fiancée's father is the CFO of Corning. "My father-in-law's a bus driver -- the only place he can take me is to the moon." The Honeymooners reference aside, are we taking up a collection here? Pete wonders why Harry was fraternizing with the competition, but Harry dismissively says that "Geyer" is twice their size, and besides, they're friends. Pete disgustedly tells Harry not to be always looking for a job, although when he reads the transcript of the Lucky Strike conversation I wonder if he'll change his tune, and Harry basically tells him it can't hurt to keep ties with a "comer" like Ken, who by the way has Mountain Dew these days. He adds that he's having lunch with Ken the next day, and Pete should come along. "Worst case, Kenny'll brag too much, and then you can steal a client from him." Heh. First time Harry's made me laugh in a while, I tell you what, but Pete's too down about the way his day's going to appreciate it, and when Harry's gone, he goes and rests his head on the support beam. The beam is like, "I thought you hated me!"
Peggy gets on the elevator and sees a young woman holding a binder, attached to which is a pink slip that reads "REJECTED." Astute as she is, Peggy offers that that looks like bad news, but the woman says the bad news isn't hers -- she's Joyce, an assistant photo editor at Life, and she looks impressed that Peggy's a copywriter. Peggy says she loves Life's photos, but Joyce says she'll never see the ones she's holding. Conspiratorially, she shows Peggy some of them, and they're female nudes, which I guess is what the nudity warning at the top of the hour was all about. Peggy admits that she'd be shocked if she saw them in Life, and Joyce tells her the photographer is a friend of hers, but her boss hates nudes. "Who hates nudes?" Peggy, thankfully and wisely, decides not to get into all the complaints they must get about any ads seen to violate the merest standards of propriety, instead pointing to another picture and opining that it's beautiful. Joyce is like, "Oh, REALLY," and after they say their goodbyes the way she stares after Peggy makes it clear her les-dar is pinging in a big way. Sorry, Joyce, but she likes male parts. I mean, considering the sexual partners of hers we've seen, there's no alternative explanation.