Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT California, Here I Come…
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 10 | Aired on 10.05.2008
But right now, she's too busy staring at a portrait of her mother when her brother pops in through one of the large windows. Betty asks where he was, and he tells her he was hiding in the tree house. Indicating the room in which the jigsaw festivities are occurring, he opines, "It's like a tomb in there. I don't know how Don's standing it." I'd imagine the car ride there had a hand in inuring him to such things. We get a good look at the portrait, in which Ruth looks rather more like a peasant girl than I would have imagined, and then Betty somewhat snappishly asks about some items she can't seem to find, including "the ottoman with the birds," which of course would be important to her given her nickname. William sighs that you can't blame Gloria for getting rid of some stuff. "I wouldn't want to live with Mom's ghost." Betty scornfully says that Gloria is a silly woman. "All that talk about her underthings. Daddy used to fine us for small talk, remember?" Maybe with Gloria, he's just taking it out in trade. William, not overly fondly, does remember: "Conversation is an art," and suddenly Betty's attraction to Don makes a million times more sense. Betty asks bluntly how long Gene has been like this, and William sighs that he was acting "queer" on the golf course a month earlier. William then testily points out that Gloria's presence is a help to him, and he doesn't want to get stuck with Gene just because he didn't move away. Betty shuts down that line of discussion quickly in favor of going back to complaining about all the things that are gone, and when William confesses he has one of those items, she seethes, "Do I have to go around and write my name on all the things that I want?" He accuses her of being drunk, which: Nice work, Sam Spade. Gloria then bustles in and tells them dinner will be ready in a few, and wonders aloud why the window is open. Betty looks at William like, "You see? She's talking about the window! That would have been two bits when we were kids!"
There's some progress on the puzzle, but mostly at Judy's end, which is all Gene needs to perform a character assassination on Don. "Who knows what he does or why he does it. I know more about the kid who fixes my damn car." Don casts a wary side-eye as he realizes that people who are crazy and/or dying often hit the truth without even knowing it, and Gene turns up the volume: "Nobody has what you have. You act like it's nothing. My daughter's a princess, you know that?" The rest of the family pops in for dinner, but Gene isn't done as Betty asks him what's going on: "He has no people! You can't trust a person like that!" I'm assuming he's using "people" to mean "family," as was common in this region at the time (and may still be), and if that's the case, I can only imagine what he'd think if he knew how Don treated poor Adam. Betty warningly calls Gene off, but even though he gets up to go to the dinner table, the look on Judy's face suggests that he merely said what they all think. Everyone heads in, leaving Don and Betty alone for a moment. She says she has no appetite, and when he tries to tell her she should eat (because: drunk) she replies, "Stop it, Don. Nobody's watching." He looks unnerved by the fact that she still won't let him hide in plain sight, and takes off away from the dinner table.