Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 345 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT To The Moon, Connie!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 2009.10.11
Cut straight to the Waldorf, and Don hasn't let the lateness of the hour prevent him from showing up in full suit and tie. Connie is choosing to emphasize their shared status of being plain folk who made good by pouring out something from a bottle old enough that it prompts Don to ask if it contains moonshine. Connie says no, but it is from the Prohibition era. "I have two cases, and they both say 'hair tonic' on the side." If I were Don I'd be worried that the boxes weren't mislabeled. I'm not under the impression the expression "beggars can't be choosers" didn't apply to that time period. My point is made when Don, our inveterate drinker, almost gags on the booze, but he recovers to say he remembers it, and since he's a little young to have been drinking during Prohibition I'm thinking it's poor people stuff again. Connie tells him he's in a bit of a crisis, which explains why he's drinking something at which many denizens of the Bowery would turn their noses up, and when Don asks what about, he explains that he thinks about his business a lot and he's his own worst critic, and sometimes the negative thoughts collect and make him feel bad. "And then I realize that maybe that's the reason I'm so lonesome." I'm guessing by the end of the episode Don will be able to suggest another reason or two. He tells Don that he, Connie, is not working enough, prompting the man who came in for a business talk in the middle of the night to raise an eyebrow, but Connie goes on that it's his mission in life to bring America to the world, "whether they like it or not." He adds that they're a force of good because they have God, and my skin's already crawling with all the talk of expansionism masked as munificence, so sure, go ahead and throw some religious zealotry into the mix. He decries Communists and lauds the Marshall Plan, which to be fair was not anything like what's been going on this past decade, and Don starts taking notes as Connie continues that after everything they threw at Khrushchev, the thing that brought him down was being denied entrance to Disneyland. Don chuckles heartily, which prompts a bemused Connie to ask if he never heard that before. Don: "Well, I did, but when I hear you say it, it sounds beautiful." Oh, Don. You may have verbal skills galore, but ass-kissing sounds as weird coming out of your mouth as one-liners do coming out of your wife's. Redeeming his earlier talk a bit, Connie says he doesn't want politics in his ad campaign, but there should be goodness, and confidence. He thanks Don for listening, and mournfully compares himself to King Midas. Don tells him to stop that kind of talk, and Hilton tells him he's his angel, and like a son to him. "In fact, sometimes you're more than a son to me, because you didn't have what they had, and you understand." Don, a father-hater up to this point, looks profoundly touched that Connie thinks of him that way, and since we know he has no problem changing his name I don't know why he doesn't make things official and start calling himself "Don Hilton." They knock back another couple fingers of that stuff, and I only hope Connie sees fit to let his new son sleep in, because he's going to need the rest.