Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 514 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Half the Battle
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 8 | Aired on 2010.09.12
Don writes that when a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him, and it's a good thing we're getting to the end because his journal is starting to sound like a fortune cookie here. Cut to him pulling up in front of the house to find that Henry has passive-aggressively stacked all the boxes out on the sidewalk already, and this whole episode has made me want to TP the guy's office. I should give Glen a call. Don doesn't bother to greet Henry, who's out mowing the front lawn; instead, DVO goes on that if you listen, a man will tell you how he got there; how he forgot where he was going, and then he woke up. "If you listen, he'll tell you about the time he thought he was an angel, or dreamt of being perfect." As we see Don ironically tossing the boxes into a dumpster, getting rid of vestiges of his old life, DVO goes on that the man he's describing would then smile, content in his realization that the world isn't perfect. "We're flawed, because we want so much more." Henry comes in from mowing the lawn, removes his shirt, and passes Betty with yet another cold stare, like, I was never your biggest fan but I didn't peg you to be quite this insecure, guy. DVO finishes up by saying that we get things and then wish for what we had, and at home, dressed up in a casual suit, Don finally steels himself with a small belt of liquor, but it's understandable...
...because it's time for his al fresco date with Faye. After they're seated, she notices that he smells like chlorine, and he tells her how he's been swimming to clear his head, as he's been somewhat out of sorts lately. "And it's an effort to get in the water, but when you do, you're weightless, and you don't even sweat. And in the end, you're wrung out." Faye smiles and says she's been looking forward to this -- I'm going to guess she's talking about the date and not the swimming-related metaphors -- and Don tells her it wasn't exactly easy to get a reservation. Faye tells him he should have called her, as her dad is a candy-store owner and thus has mob connections. Okay, I could have danced around the subject a bit as she did, but in the end her meaning is as plain as mine, so why bother? Don smiles and asks what he's like, and Faye returns the favor as she says he's "a handsome, two-bit gangster like you." Cute, but the "two-bit" part makes me wonder if she knows just how much Don got when PPL bought SC.