Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A+ | 348 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Parting Really, Really Is Sweet Sorrow...
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 13 | Aired on 2007.10.18
Don's looking through some slides in his office. Probably influenced by the nostalgia, as well as by the fact that his secret no longer seems so terrible, he takes out the box Adam sent him and starts looking through the pictures. After a minute, he picks up the phone and calls the Brighton Hotel, and the guy at the desk picks up. Don asks if he has a forwarding address for Adam, and the guy tells him he's sorry, but one of the only remaining connections between Don and humanity is gone...I mean, "Adam killed himself." Don is stunned, and the guy goes on that he left the building a bunch of money, which I don't really think was his intention. Don hangs up the phone and buries his head in his hands. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, he can't help but feel partially responsible...
...and speaking of Don-inflicted emotional distress, Betty turns on her bedside light, opens the phone bill, and examines it...
...and then she's making a call. Dr. Wayne answers, and Betty doesn't recognize his voice, but Wayne, thinking it's someone else, identifies himself. Betty disconnects and lets the receiver drop in shock. That's certainly not who she thought Don was having an affair with!
Don is actually sleeping alone, on the couch in his office. He seems to hear something and gets up groggily, no doubt having drunk several toasts to his dead brother. Coming to the door of his office, he sees Harry, in a t-shirt and tighty-whities (which are really endearing on him) heading back to his office with a wastebasket under his arm. Don beckons Harry into his office, and Harry, desperate for any kind of companionship, almost literally skips in and takes the drink Don offers him. Don, a little slurry, asks Harry what the benefit of the Wheel is; this leads to a discussion of how Harry used to take pictures in college. He talks about how he did a whole series of photographs that consisted solely of handprints on glass, and then goes on about how he's always been fascinated by the cave paintings at Lascaux. "The bison get all the attention, but there are also all of these handprints, tiny by today's standards, with paint blown all around them." He goes on that he thought it was "like someone reaching through the stone and right to us. 'I was here. And stop looking at those stupid bison.'" I may have inferred that last part. Don then does the head-lolling thing that signals it's time for bed, again, and he rudely dismisses Harry. Not that you have to stand on ceremony with someone who's currently showering in the bathroom sink, but given that Harry's setting his campaign wheels in motion, he could at least have said goodnight. Don puts out his cigarette, and we get an overhead view of him going back to sleep...