Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 10 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Where Have You Gone, Dick Whitman?
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 2007.08.23
Anyway, Don jokes that at the first sign of crow's feet, he'll put Betty on an ice floe. I understand that's what Eskimos do as well. Betty reminisces about how her mother kept her looks even into her older years, but tellingly, she says she was "vivacious and positively cheerful" right up until the end, emphasizing the tie in her mind between beauty and happiness. Don wonders why Betty's dwelling on her mother, and Betty tells him that her shrink suggested a book that said it's healthy, and "part of the mourning process." She says she thinks the therapy is helping, but Don rather condescendingly opines that mourning is "just extended self-pity." He goes on that pygmies grind up their ancestors and consume the powder in a beer, which I guess means that I'll be drinking wine tonight. After some derisive comments about pygmy culture (fueled by the Intro to Anthopology course Betty apparently took in college) Don starts nuzzling Betty's neck; some flirtation about "Advanced Reproduction" gives way to Betty teasing that he failed the course because he got "caught cheating." A mistake he seems to be taking care not to repeat. At Betty's request, Don turns out the light; he starts to go for it, but Betty seriously tells him that she wants him all the time; it's all she thinks about, every day. She heartbreakingly goes on that everything she does in her daily routine is just like walking in a fog, because she can't stop thinking about him and when he's going to come home. Whether this is a conscious attempt to draw him closer (and rein in his vaguely suspected infidelities) is unclear and probably irrelevant -- it still signals the crumbling of one of the walls around her. Her voice breaks as she says she wants him so bad, and he takes her non-physical meaning as he tells her she has him. "You do." I know words are at a premium in your line of work, Don, so I'll hold my comments to this: Dubious. They get going as we fade out.