Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 407 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT That's Some Great Business Sense!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 2 | Aired on 2009.08.23
When Don arrives home, he finds the TV still on but just giving static, and I think we can guess who forgot to turn it off. Indeed, Don finds Gene still awake in the living room, and Gene, referring to the fact that he's going to be sleeping on the couch, thanks Don for the "ritzy accommodations." Don, however, points out that Gene is an Army man: "Drop your socks and...grab something." Heh. Gene laughs, but Don doesn't join in, opting instead to withdraw...
...and head upstairs, where he finds Betty reading. He compliments her for achieving lights out so early, as it's only 8:15, but she replies by upbraiding him for bringing his sooty coat into the bedroom. Guessing where her mood is coming from, Don sits on the bed and asks how bad Gene is, but Betty seethes that he's not the problem. "What am I saying -- he's the whole problem. That and William's never-ending bullshit." Betty! Do you kiss your mother...er, your father...um, I think I see what's going on here. She repeats her opinion that William wants the house, and speculates that Judy might be pushing Gene along the path to senility. After opening the door to bark at the kids, Don asks Betty what she wants to do, apparently a little too gruffly, as she asks how he can talk to her that way, given the condition she's in. If they didn't set her up to say that line with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other on purpose, I will be sorely disappointed. She orders Don to stay in the room with her rather than go downstairs to belatedly hang up his coat, and I can only imagine that once she loses her pregnancy weight she's going to be wearing pants quite often.
Ha! William and Judy are being forced to sleep in bunk beds. It's a cheap laugh, but I'll take it. William says it's funny how Betty's being, given that she and Gene used to fight all the time, and adds that he cares about family too. "You know, Don had nobody at their wedding. Nobody." This comment echoes the deep mistrust Gene expressed toward Don last season, as long as you've got your resentments scorecard out. Speaking of which, Judy asks why they can't just move in with Gene so she can take care of him, but William crabs that it's bad enough working for him. "I'm a thirty-year-old man. I don't want to have somebody tell me I have the wrong tie on." Forget what I said about a cheap laugh -- it's the bunk beds that make it art.