Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 580 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT "I Demand Satisfaction!"
By Couch Baron | Season 5 | Episode 5 | Aired on 2012.04.15
Anyway, the crane cross-fades into a shot coming up from an SCDP desk and once it's no longer blocking our view, we see Pete telling Roger that due to a recent plane crash, they should pull Mohawk ads for a week and then hope that no one notices that the airline has ten planes of the same model. Roger doesn't see the big deal, but defers to Pete before asking Lane (well, he calls him "Heathcliff"), at whose office they've arrived, how his date was. Lane confesses that Edwin's reticence to share forced him to employ Stratagem Number Two and even though he offered that Rebecca was "unbalanced" (I wonder how far he was stretching his own view of things, if at all), that got him nowhere. He does say that he has another dinner on the books with Edwin, but Roger isn't thrilled and Pete, his hostility now temporarily forgotten, suggests that he, Roger and possibly Don take Edwin out to dinner and ask the tough questions while propping Lane up as Edwin's new best friend. Lane isn't sure about the whole thing, but Pete assures him that staying a pure friend is the way to go and Roger is forced to agree. Sure, Pete's got a bit of smarmy condescension in there, but at heart he's being his usual practical businessman, which again, makes his behavior from earlier clank even louder. I know I keep going on about it, but it's rare for a moment of characterization on this show to hit me so false. Anyway, Lane is reluctant to give up his prize, but agrees, so Pete and Roger take their leave. When they've closed the door, Roger snarks that that was generous and Pete replies that Lane couldn't close a car door. Roger: "I mean inviting me along." Heh. I like that Pete and Roger have graduated from the open hostility of the beginning of the season to this grumpily tolerant pairing. Pete counters that Roger is invited to the dinner, "not the wedding night," and Roger stalks off, possibly to calculate what honorarium he should charge for the appearance.
Pete's face fades into... Pete's face, as he's sitting in Driver's Ed when Unnamed Blonde joins him and confesses that she thinks she's hung over. Pete's like, I know that game and then presses her about going to the Gardens again and I hope for this girl's sake she never has to rely on Pete to get a dress cleaned. Fortunately, the girl is rescued by the appearance of an impossibly hunky dude, who first mistakes Pete for the instructor (ouch, and hee) before finally getting a name from Unnamed Blonde -- Jenny Gunther. She calls him handsome, or, as it happens, Handsome -- his real surname is Hanson, but everyone calls him Handsome and it's not a far journey to figure out why. (The actor, Parker Young, was literally a model, a triathlete and the captain of his high school football team. Also, he's now on Suburgatory, which given the episode theme, I can't believe is a coincidence.) Anyway, Pete knows this game too and I take the look on his face to mean he's realizing that if he's going to take any jailbait to the Dyckman Ancestral Botanical Gardens, it's going to be one that appreciates him.