Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Tit For Splat
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 08.29.2007
Holding up the empty (!) bottle of vodka, Roger asks if anything can be done about it, so Don goes to check the garage as Betty clears the table. Roger follows her, and wastes no time in putting his arms around her waist. After a few seconds, she somewhat weakly tells him to stop; it doesn't excuse him by any means, but in the interest of accurate reporting, I feel obliged to say that she could be discouraging him more firmly. Roger grossly keeps hitting on Betty until they hear the door and break apart, and Don reenters, looking like maybe he's got a read on the room, but he doesn't say anything to that effect. Roger grabs the vodka and heads back into the dining room, and Don and Betty exchange A Look before Roger calls them back in. Don returns, and Roger says he was just telling Betty how lucky Don is. I suppose that's true, in a manner of speaking. A nauseating manner, but a manner nonetheless. After a long, awkward moment, Roger says he's going to go, and referring to his drink, says, "I'll take this for the road." I made this joke in the recaplet, but -- which one? Roger leaves, pausing at the door to say it was a magical night, and how that didn't come out "mathkll nert" continues to be beyond me. Don watches him go, and then calls, "That's my car!" Hee. And: some effect from all this booze, finally! Don calls, "Lights!" and we hear a squeal of tires. Be afraid, neighborhood felines.
In the kitchen, Don wastes no time in asking Betty what "that" was; her back is to him but we see her face, which sort of gives up that she was expecting to get chewed out. She feigns ignorance, however, so he tells her he could feel the heat when he got back from the garage. She tells him nothing happened, "other than your drunk boss ruining our evening," but he tells her that she made a fool of herself, throwing herself at him by giggling at his stories; she in turn says he's nuts, which prompts him to grab her by the arm and seethe that he knows what he saw. Suddenly taking power in the relationship, she calmly asks if he'd like to beat her up: "Would that make you feel better?" Don's face looks like it just downed whatever the opposite of Viagra is. He reaches for the only thing he can think of, saying that sometimes he feels like he's living with a little girl, but she's unbowed, and he leaves the room. Jeez, and I thought last episode was showing us the ugly side of marriage?
An establishing shot of the outside of the building suggests that Sterling Cooper, with its name right by the front door, occupies the whole building, which hardly seems to jibe with where I thought the firm's place in the ad-agency pecking order was. Inside, Pete, carrying a large blue box (maybe from Bergdorf's?), leads Ken and Paul into his office, telling them about dinner with the in-laws at the Four Seasons. In response to Ken's question, he tells them that the box contains a wedding present, a "chip and dip" of which they happened to receive two. He opens up the box and shows them the TACKIEST little thing: a glazed ceramic bowl in the shape of two cabbage leaves to hold the chips, and a small "tomato" in the middle for the dip. I could, and in fact did, make better-looking stuff in a pottery class I took when I was eight. Ken and Paul rightly laugh, but they're jumping the gun, because the real hilarity is that the thing cost twenty-two dollars. Now, I seem to remember a couple episodes back that Pete makes seventy-five dollars a week; we're really to believe that that piece of tack-ola costs well more than what he makes in a day? I know Pete's not really worth all that much, but come on. I mean, I suppose if you guess what Pete would be making these days, the math isn't that far off, if you ignore the fact that I wouldn't even pay twenty-two bucks for that hiddy thing today. Pete says he's going to return the spare, which is the smartest thing I've ever heard him say, but the boys are planning on taking advantage of a free lunch from Freddy's cousin, and suggest that Pete's whipped when he refuses to do the same. Of course, since the wife isn't behind the return, I'm not sure what the hurry is, but maybe Pete's really feeling a financial crunch. The boys leave, but not without Paul calling Pete "Mildred." After he's gone, Pete's face is like, "I'll Mildred you!" He really should have a waiting period on his firearm purchases.