Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 464 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Goodbye, Norma Jean
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 2008.09.28
Don returns to the house with the kids, apparently having taken them out for dinner or some such. As he looks balefully at his wife, Sally asks if Betty is "feeling better," and she says she is before sending them up to bed. Bobby, still a little young to have cottoned on, complies, but Sally turns to Don and pleadingly notes that he just got back. "And now you're leaving again?" Ouch, painful. Don promises her it will go by in a flash, but Sally starts to cry as she hugs him big and long, and Betty stands uncomfortably, knowing she's going to be perceived as the bad guy here eventually. Don assures "Salamander" (aw) that it won't be that long, and she finally heads up the stairs. Don tells Betty about Sally's call to the office, and while Betty postures that it's not her fault and that she didn't want them involved in this, Don of course has a point when he says that's impossible, and that they're going to have to tell the kids something eventually. He asks her what she wants, but he, she, and everyone else watching knows the answer already, which is an admission of guilt, which will not be forthcoming. He says if her mind's made up, he's not going to talk her into it, and she pounces on that like a hungry lion on a wounded gazelle: "I thought you can talk anyone into anything!" She follows that by staring him down, and he looks baldly shocked to see that her anger has deepened into full-on contempt, that the woman he married, who adored and cherished him just like a little girl, is gone. She bids him good night, and he skulks his way back to the Roosevelt.