Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 677 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Man-Boy Becomes A Man
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 2010.08.15
Tom, Trudy's father, is already waiting at the bar of some establishment when Pete enters; after a brief hesitation, he moves to join him. After Pete orders a drink, Tom asks what's so important, and on second view he does have this playing-along-with-the-charade look on his face, which is fun. Pete tells him he hopes he knows he's always tried to do his best by him, and with eyes looking like they're about to pop out of their sockets from stress, he babbles for a while in attempting to break the news, but Tom, totally misinterpreting, laughs that Pete is "some kind of high WASP, all right," and says he already knows before giving Pete an affectionate kiss on the cheek. Pete, astute as he is, figures out that this isn't really an appropriate reaction to getting dumped, and so asks what Tom is talking about, and Tom jovially says his wife Jeannie went to the doctor with Trudy. Pete, having long had reason to believe his wife is as barren as the ladies of her station in The Handmaid's Tale, is stunned, and Tom sticks a wing tip in his mouth before removing it and saying it was Monday that she got the news, so why hasn't she told him? Pete, who even through the surprise seems a lot happier than you might have expected, muses that he doesn't know before breaking into a grin: "I'm going to be a father?" Aw. An enjoyable moment is made far more so by Kartheiser's work as he puts his hand over his heart and says he feels like it's going to burst, and Tom, doubly happy now that his faux pas has already been forgotten, orders a bottle of champagne and says they're going to tie one on. He doesn't, however, forget that Pete had something else he wanted to discuss with him, but Pete hems and haws for a moment before he says they're putting new Creative on Clearasil, and Tom replies that he doesn't care. That's pretty clever from Pete, because if Tom later asks, he can claim he said they're putting no Creative on Clearasil. Tom starts babbling about how they would have had more kids if not for his wife's forced hysterectomy, but Pete's already lost in his own thoughts...