Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | 373 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT It's a Gi…Boy!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 5 | Aired on 2009.09.13
In the waiting room, some amount of Scotch I'd guess falls into the "not insignificant" category has been consumed, and Don complains that time seems to have stopped. Try recapping when the jokes aren't flowing, pal. He then asks Hobart about Sing Sing, and Hobart tells him that although he's outnumbered, he feels like a king. Don: "Except your subjects want to kill you." Not seeing how that detracts from the comparison. Hobart says they're not all bad -- some are killers, but some are baseball players, and in '29 their team even played the Yankees. Don, half in the bag, jokes that everyone was in stripes, which gets an appreciative laugh from Hobart. He gets serious, though, as he says he has to be careful not to bring his work home, especially with a kid there, and furthers his point by saying that he sees all these violent prisoners, and every one of them would blame their parents for how he is. Don mutters that that's a bullshit excuse, and given that he didn't turn out to be a serial killer in spite of his upbringing, he's got some credibility on the subject.
Betty, despite having "little veins," eventually gets an injection of something that will apparently help with her pain and "put [her] in a twilight sleep." I'd like to pick up some of that -- the ability to put certain people into a twilight sleep would ease a lot of my pain. Despite the medication, Betty is not pleased to hear that her regular doctor is in the middle of tying one on for his anniversary in the city, so she'll have to take the obstetrician who, while unknown to her, is both on duty and sober. The nurse starts to tell her she's at five centimeters already, the implication being that it's way too late to be arguing the point, but that becomes irrelevant for the moment, because the nurse suddenly starts some geography-related babbling...
...and then Betty's in a dream in which she's walking down her street, except they achieve a surreal, dreamlike effect (and save from having to film on their lot for this scene) by green-screening the background in. She's in an uncharacteristically busy sundress with an uncharacteristically goofy smile on her face, and when she stops walking, a caterpillar floats down on a thread of silk into her outstretched hand. Betty regards the incredibly fake-looking thing intently, and closes her hand before...
...we cut to Don and Hobart manhandling the cigarette machine. Hey, as long as that's what it's into. With the assistance of a candy striper, they finally succeed in retrieving the pack of smokes that Don ostensibly paid for, and when the non-speaking girl is gone, Hobart mildly leers after her before getting emotional, saying that his wife was screaming at him in the car, and she's in there now and he can't bear the thought of something happening to her, and he doesn't know how he could love the baby if he or she cost his wife her life. Perhaps the actor is so distraught that he's forgotten how to do convincing business with a cigarette, because the way he's holding the thing would cause Paul and possibly Peggy to come running over in anticipation of getting high. Don then puts a hand on the guy's back and intones, "Our worst fears lie in anticipation, " and it's all so manly and fraternal that I'll refrain from putting a different potential spin on the scene by noting that he last heard those words from a flaming homosexual. Except for the part where I kind of just did.