Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 762 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Cat is Out of the Bag…
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 2009.10.25
Sitting in the study of, presumably, her father's house, Betty opens the desk drawer in kind of a hilariously snooping manner, like she suddenly thinks all such compartments hold unspeakably dark secrets about their owners' past. But I do hope her dad didn't leave evidence of a secret wife in there, because the two we've known about have been quite enough for me. William then enters with the estate lawyer, who seems like he's been attached to the family for a while, and although William offers that they can have lunch first, they end up getting straight into the issue at hand -- the house has been left to both of them, and William wants to buy Betty out but doesn't have enough money to pay her a market rate. The lawyer silently looks at William all, "What do you want me to tell your poor ass, kid?" prompting William to snit right on out of there. Once the undesirable has left the room, Betty tells the lawyer she needs to speak with him in confidence, and after he closes the door to the room, she tells him she's discovered some "compromising facts" about her husband -- he's been married before and bought the woman a house, and what's more, the name he's using is not even his original one. After expositing that he knows Gene didn't specifically didn't want Don in the will, he asks what she wants -- if it's a divorce, in New York State she'll have to prove adultery. "Can you?" Betty says maybe, and I wonder if she's thinking of a phone call to Jimmy Barrett, but the lawyer clarifies that she'll have to prove it in a court of law, which could be difficult. The other option would be if Don wants out of the marriage, but in that case Betty wouldn't get anything, probably not even the children. Was this really the case even in 1963? The show is usually infallible on points like these, but then again, the term "second opinion" doesn't exist for no reason. Having dispensed his legal advice, the guy offers a different kind: If Betty's not afraid of Don and thinks he's a good provider, she should give staying with him a try, at least for the sake of the kids. "That's what I'd tell my own daughter." Were you still on speaking terms with her, that is. This is all too much for Betty, who puts her head in her hand in frustration, at which point William yells through the locked door once again that the situation with the house isn't right, as if that's currently in the top ten of things on her mind.