Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Hitting The Fan
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 10.03.2010
...while Abe has apparently finished his, um, delivery, and heads for the SCDP exit. Stan, however, passes him on his way out, and the smile he gives to himself suggests he's quite aware of Peggy's noontime activities. Which...I guess makes him the new Paul Kinsey?
Despite his anger at Don, Pete has taken his advice and returned to the hospital, but is chagrined to see that Ted Chaough is waiting there for him, although Tom first intercepts Pete and tells him not to get mad. Pete at least stays civil while Chaough somewhat nauseatingly glad-hands Trudy's mother, but when the two of them step away for a private word, Pete asks Chaough what he wants. Chaough gives him the full-court press, first running down his list of Pete's perceived achievements and then telling him that he's what CGC needs -- Jim Cutler is due to retire, and he thinks "Campbell, Gleason, and Chaough" has a nice ring to it. Pete, rather astutely, asks if Chaough wouldn't want his own name first, and that seems suspicious to me as well, but Chaough assures Pete that he would have a full voting third, and by the way, they just got Alfa Romeo. "I think you'll really enjoy driving one." Okay, forget Pete -- I'm starting to get interested. Pete, however, says he doesn't drive, but Chaough offers to teach him, and that's another one of those plot points I hope happens only if they show it. Chaough then turns back to Trudy's parents and tells them he can get them a hotel room across the street, but Pete just stares blankly into space. Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing.
Joan lets Roger into her place, but when he starts kissing her, she tells him they can talk, and that's it. Taking in her fairly utilitarian pajamas, he asks if that's what she sleeps in now, and she, already tired of him (and I know the feeling), asks what he wants -- she's exhausted! He pathetically tells her he needs her and they belong together, but she's not having it. "I'm not a solution to your problems. I'm another problem." That's a quote the show put up on its Twitter feed this week, and I can see why. She tells him she can't do this anymore, and he doesn't hear her at first, but when she falls silent, spent from the energy it takes to deal with his infantile self, he finally gets it, although he does pull her in for a goodbye hug. After another long look, he trudges over to the door, and then turns back and asks if that night they got mugged was really the last time. Joan looks at him and fractionally shrugs her shoulders, and he sighs, "I wish I'd known that." Despite your ridiculousness, Roger, I feel for you, but knowing it was ending would only have made you feel a different kind of devastation.