Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A | 683 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT European Gay-cation
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 11 | Aired on 2008.10.12
In the evening, the jet-setters dine outside as Rocci complains that she doesn't like Mexican food. Sacrilege! Don then emerges, dressed in a short-sleeved Lacoste-style shirt, and everyone applauds. It's actually not meant to make him self-conscious, and he endures the attention with better humor than I would expect, given the recent heat stroke and all. Actually, maybe that's the explanation. Joy has Klaus move so Don can sit next to her, and Willy pours him some wine and proposes a toast to their guest, and "to not being carried out in a box." Everyone giggles like they don't keep Klaus around for a reason, and then Don predictably gets questioned on who he is, with Greta saying that Willy and Joy think he's a spy, and Rocci chiming in that his wallet fell out when he was carried inside, so she knows he's in advertising. Don: "Or I'm a really good spy." Everyone's charmed that Don's brain is back in such droll working order. Willy then makes a grand pronouncement about how they're all very interested in professions, but none of them work, to which Don bluntly replies that he assumes they're all well off. Now, given what happens later, I think this comment is meant to illustrate that no matter how well he's done for himself, he hasn't succeeded in completely extracting the Dick Whitman from Don Draper. However, I find Willy's comment to be just as gauche in its own mannered way, so I don't think acting like Don just spat on the enchiladas is warranted. Willy changes the subject to how he was twice an Olympic fencer, and the following things happen in rapid succession: Joy fondling Don's leg, Don holding his own at the easiest geographical game ever invented, and Joy licking the molé sauce right off his teeth as everyone blithely continues naming cities from around the world...
...and then Joy is leading Don into their room. I'm no fan of hers, but if a trip to bed is what it's going to take to get us the hell out of Palm Springs, so be it. After she takes off her dress, he steps forward and asks how old she is, and the answer is twenty-one. He tells her he's thirty-six, and then asks with some wonder who she is, but she simply tells him she's Joy. She takes off her bra, lies on top of him, and then we rather chastely cut to a commercial. Considering they teased us with the prospect of nudity, it seems like a gyp that he didn't even take his shirt off.
Finally, back to New York! In the break room, massive quantities of doughnuts have appeared.