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
...while in the adjoining room, Don and Peggy are joined by Freddy and Dr. Miller, the latter of whom, holding her usual business suit on a hanger while she wears a much less threatening blue sweater and skirt, snits that she had to wait until the girls left the ladies' room to change. Freddy pointedly pipes up, "You could have used my office, but I don't have one." Well, I would have suggested you build one and bill Lucky Strike for it, but it sounds like that ship has sailed. Peggy hands Dr. Miller a nametag, and Dr. Miller says there's a mistake - she did want her first name, as is on the tag, but she also wanted it deliberately misspelled (leaving off the "e") because it would show the girls she's not that important and thus make them trust her. Well, if you're going to be that devious, couldn't you lie that your name is actually spelled "Fay?" Maybe that's one too many untruths of which to keep track, but the oversight by the writing staff does make it seem like she missed a trick. Dr. Miller hands the tag and her wedding ring to Peggy, and then Joan comes in and warns her "there's lots of perfume." Dr. Miller: "There always is." She heads out, and Joan opens the curtains and switches on the speaker, saying that she supposes (I guess they're in her space) that she'll go work in Roger's office. "He won't be coming." She exits...
...and inside, Dr. Miller introduces herself as "Faye," and then makes a show of looking around for a nonexistent nametag. "I guess they forgot about me." The women chuckle as the observers in the other room look like they want to take a shower, and it is rather disturbing the way Dr. Miller is playing into the way these women feel they should be subservient and stupid by concealing the fact that she is not those things. I'm not saying it's unrealistic, just unsettling, and it does have the intended effect, as one of the participants offers that they spelled her name wrong. Faye (if that's how she's going to refer to herself here, I'll take the opportunity to type fewer characters) tells the women they should relax and feel like they're among friends; in the other room, Peggy absently tries on Faye's ring until she notices Don looking at her with a shit-eating smirk. Well, at least Freddy didn't catch that, or she'd really never hear the end of it. Faye pours the girls some water as she says they're going to talk about the things they do to keep themselves beautiful, and offers that she has a routine -- she brushes her hair as many times as she did when she was a girl, "but of course, only the nights before I have it set." Boy, is this scene making me miss Gretta, the Commandant of Focus Groups. In the other room, Freddy sighs, "Can you imagine? Your financial future is in the hands of a roomful of 22-year-old girls." Don, amused: "Not mine." And a good thing too, considering most of them have a voodoo doll of you full of pins.