Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 345 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT To The Moon, Connie!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 2009.10.11
Sally and Bobby are watching TV as Betty sits on the couch (but not the monstrosity; different room) with a glass of wine and writes a boring letter to Francis. And I'll add that she actually apologizes for it being boring, as she's out of touch with writing letters, so I don't think it's harsh for me simply to agree. We hear the whole letter in voiceover, by the way, and she goes on to marvel at the fact that they've only actually met three times, and she wishes she had a clearer picture of him in her mind. Might I suggest recapping those episodes? It'll burn images into your brain, I can tell you. As she finishes, saying she hopes to hear from him soon, we see her asleep in a chair, glass of wine still in her hand. Don enters and regards her, and maybe we're supposed to think he's intuiting what she's been up to, but really I'm guessing he's merely impressed with the fact that she didn't spill a drop even while passed out.
At night, Harry and Paul are eating sandwiches in the latter's office as he keeps one eye on the TV to make sure all the ads are properly run. Given his recent promotion, I would have thought he'd be able to get a flunky to do this, but I'm not getting the sense he's dying to go home to his family. You'd think, though, Jennifer would keep him on a tighter leash even if she's forgiven him for the little incident with Hildy. The phone rings, and it's Lee Jr., who sounds like he continued to drink after the last little scene we saw. Oh, dear. I actually thought on first viewing that he was going to turn it around and say Sal made a pass at him, but what happens is barely any better: He tells Harry he has a bit of a problem, that being that Sal is "no good," and he can't work with him. Harry says he doesn't have the authority to remove him, as Pete and Roger are in charge of the account, but Lee Jr. firmly tells him he wants him not only to take care of it but also to keep it just between them. Harry, flailing about for a direction to take, opts to tell Lee Jr. that the commercial is turning out great, and Lee Jr., who I now see is deep into a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red, looks like he's having trouble keeping his eyes open here, but manages to wish Harry a good night. Paul asks what happened, and Harry comes in with a big understatement in replying that he doesn't want to know. Since Paul doesn't really do any work, though, he's got more capacity for gossip than you'd think, and he drags it out of Harry without too much effort, with Harry admitting that he didn't ask for Lee Jr.'s reason in wanting to get rid of Sal because "he was drunk as a skunk and he's scary to begin with." Paul suggests calling Pete, but Harry tells him the part where he wanted it kept between them. He concludes that he shouldn't "panic and do something stupid like I usually do," and concludes that maybe the whole thing will blow over, as Lee Jr. was really drunk, so maybe the whole thing isn't to be taken seriously. As much as I think Harry's kind of spineless sometimes, he's in an impossible situation here, so I can't really blame him for sitting tight and hoping the whole thing blows over, since that's the only decent outcome that could result from this mess. Unfortunately, he's failing to account for two things: One, that the offending incident happened many drinks ago and is much less likely to be forgotten than Harry thinks, and two, the man is from the South. It's the land where people's tolerance for alcohol is only exceeded by their inability to let things go.