Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 677 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Man-Boy Becomes A Man
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 2010.08.15
Peggy turns up at the party, which is in the sort of run-down commercial-looking space you'd expect. She eventually finds Joyce, who's chatting with a woman of color she introduces as "Sharon, one of Davey's models." Peggy, like a good Catholic girl, asks Sharon what her mother said about her nude modeling, and Sharon admits she doesn't know about it. I wouldn't risk it, Peggy. Your mom seems like the type to find out everything. Noticing a film playing on a screen in the next room, Peggy asks what it is, and Joyce tells her Davey screws around with movies, too. "He's not as good at it." Peggy asks if there's any beer, but Joyce offers to smoke her out instead, and she readily accepts. While she's puffing away, however, Joyce leans in to kiss Peggy on the neck, and Peggy's like, "Whoa! How about dinner first!" Well, not exactly, but when Joyce explains that she's "hungry," Peggy tells her she has a boyfriend, getting this response, "So? He doesn't own your vagina!" Now, I almost never am bothered by the fact that the dialogue on this show is often a bit more modern than is realistic, but I do wonder whether this term was bandied about even by lesbians at sixties happenings. And regardless, I'm not sure how we got Down There quite so fast, but Peggy has the comeback to make everything okay: "No, but he's renting it!" Nice. And I'm not particularly surprised at Peggy's non-reaction to Joyce's orientation, although it does make me wonder if she still hangs out with my beloved Kurt.
Don gets home, and starts to write a letter of apology to Allison. However, when he's gotten as far as "Right now my life is very..." he can't think of how to continue, and instead throws the letter out and goes to the couch to pass out. Sometimes there's just nothing for me to add, you know?
Back at the party, Peggy is stonedly mesmerized by the countercultural imagery of the film; she tells Joyce she thought she was going to get to meet Davey, prompting her to call over some other dude "Abe" and asks where "Kellogg" is. Abe asks if Peggy is "with" Joyce, and Joyce asks, "Are you?" like, give it a rest here, honey. Peggy neatly sidesteps her, simply introducing herself, and then there's a bit about how Abe and Joyce can't believe Peggy isn't doing any writing other than at her job before the artist himself appears and does a good job of making Joyce seem unpretentious by comparison while deriding the idea that there could be art in advertising post-Warhol. We then hear a police whistle, signaling a raid, and the lights go out and everyone disperses in a panic. Peggy ends up in a closet with Abe, who is perfectly tolerable even by standards higher than this party's, and he confesses to Peggy that he was arrested once (I think he's a journalist), but instead of going to jail, his sister came and got him. Heh. There's getting the story, and there's getting strip-searched. He whispers that he feels like he should kiss Peggy, and she obliges him for a long, if rather chaste, exchange, until Joyce opens the door and tells them the police chased everyone down the fire escape, and they took the film. Abe thinks he should investigate the story and asks how he can find Peggy, and Joyce, not without a little jealousy, I think, says she knows where she is. Peggy and Joyce steal away...