Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | 425 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Beyond The Veil
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 1-2 | Aired on 2013.04.07
Don's lying in bed when Megan enters in the early-morning light and gently tells him that she waited as long as she could, but she has to go - she's sorry about the funeral, but the show wants her to work the entire week. Don takes the news with good enough humor - maybe he's too tired to be combative at the moment - and promises to give Roger her condolences. She leaves, but instead of going back to bed, Don sits up and once again contemplates Dinkins' lighter; he then gets up and heads for the bathroom, throwing the thing in the trash as he goes. What, Don, you couldn't be bothered to put it in the mail to Vietnam? You have a secretary! She's even in this episode!
Betty comes home to find Sally eating at the kitchen table and wonders why, as Sandy is coming over. Sally's dismissive, but Betty pays attention when Sally continues that Sandy went to Julliard early. Betty's like oh, is that so, to which Sally asks if Betty wanted her to say a tearful goodbye. Even though that reads as obnoxious on the page (and it is; Sally's turn toward bratty teen may be realistic, but it's also a cliché and not one I'm looking forward to experiencing), once again, it's apparent that Betty's in a lot better control of herself when it comes to Sally these days, as she replies with a touch of dryness, "Well, frankly, yes." Sally then proves she is definitely a teenage girl by talking about how stuck-up Sandy was. "She kept saying how she really was going to look back on this time fondly." With obvious worry, Betty leaves the room and wastes no time in grabbing a photo of Sandy and Sally together...
...while Don, dressed to go to the funeral, is looking pretty sloppy as he watches TV, oblivious to the maid vacuuming around him...
...and then Roger is fielding compliments from some older ladies and Bertram when Jane arrives. An elderly woman in a wheelchair, who I'm guessing is Aunt Jessica, demands to speak first, to which Roger replies, "I think you just did." Hee. But she's talking about the eulogy, of course, and after Roger agrees, he squires Jane safely away, whereupon she reminds him that she has his mother's ring and inquires if he wants it back. It's a thoughtful gesture, to be sure, but Roger thinks Jane should keep it, as his mother liked her anyway. "You always paid your rent on time." Hee. A delivery of some "victuals," as Bertram refers to them, arrives, and Roger is confused, as he didn't order them. He looks at the card from Benson and asks who the hell that is - heh - but Ken covers that it's from them (he, Harry, and Pete are all standing there) before Margaret suggests they get things moving. After a comment from Harry that suggests his continued low spot on the SCDP totem pole continues to be deserved, Don enters, drink in hand, and he actually looks like shit and this time can't even blame backlighting. After Ken takes a little survey on whose mothers are alive, Don, who is WASTED, is like, I'm going to go stand over there now, and then Roger gets started, first apologizing for the dry atmosphere, "but as I've been reminded many times today, Mother did not approve of libations." Looking like he's going to pass out, Don toasts that, and that reminds me that this revelation makes Roger's earlier gesture to his mother seem even less adequate.