Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 497 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Half the Battle
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 8 | Aired on 2010.09.12
Later, Don sits contemplatively in the locker room while the viewing audience contemplates him in a towel and nothing else, and then we cut to the exterior of the building, which lets us know that he's at the New York Athletic Club. Well, nice workout if you can get it. The Rolling Stones' "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" kicks up as Don takes in the surroundings for a bit and tells us that summer is coming -- he can smell it. And I think the point of this scene is to let us know that Don is waking up and seeing the world around him again, which is good, but if I were going to pick a place and time to reignite my olfactory senses, New York on the verge of summer would not be my choice. I mean, he's on Central Park South here -- that's where they have the horses, you know?
Anyway, the song continues as Don strides into the office but cuts off abruptly when he reaches Miss Blankenship, possibly because the thick dark glasses she's wearing startle it. Don asks how her surgery was (we'll learn it was for cataracts, unsurprisingly), and she says it was a nightmare, what with the ether and the blindness, "and then I got the goggles." She says she's okay to work, though, but when he offers her more time off if she needs it, she assures him, "I'm fine, Roger." To be fair, it wouldn't exactly have shocked me if she made that mistake before the surgery. However, she's just kidding around, which makes me wonder if they gave her some ether to go, so he asks her, since he left his book at home, to get him Bethany's number...
...while up the hall, Stan and Joey are manhandling the office candy machine, while Harry tries to direct and Peggy amusingly tells a female co-worker, "I feel like Margaret Mead." Heh. All this effort is in aid of trying to retrieve some change that the machine denied Ken and also Joey's watch, which he lost in the rescue effort, but after a particularly loud attempt to jiggle everything loose, Joan strides out and demands to know what's going on. After some explanation that goes nowhere and some sharp words between Joan and Joey, Pete comes out and, apparently having used his week off to work on his patrician accent, asks what all the fuss is about, since he was in the "midst of an extremely important telephone call." Joey snarks that Joan was just handing out demerits, prompting her to order him into her office, and on the way, he shows off to the guys by saying it's going to be a "private spanking, just like my dream." If it doesn't work out that way, Don's got a number you can call. Pete hilariously wonders when they got a vending machine, and that's all Vincent Kartheiser has to do this week. No wonder he loves this gig so much.