Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 762 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Cat is Out of the Bag…
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 2009.10.25
When we return, instead of heading to the car or even hobbling down the street as fast as his shellshocked legs will carry him, Don has wearily made his way up to the bedroom. With the box next to him, he settles onto the bed, and after a long moment, he hears Betty in the other room and calls to her. She comes in, and after some cursory discussion of the baby, he quietly asks her to sit with him, and she obliges, a questioning but less angry look on her face. After looking at her with an expression that's almost guardedly hopeful, he shows her the pictures again and tells her who everyone in them are -- Archie, Abigail, "Uncle" Mack -- as well as the story of his mother, "a twenty-two-year-old prostitute" who died having him. He mentions that Mack was nice to him, which I never got but I suppose hasn't specifically been contraindicated, and Betty asks what happened to them. Don tells her they're all dead, but when Betty further inquires, "Even Adam?" it's like a gut punch, and I can't be sure if he was definitely planning to tell her about him. Mistaking Don's horrified stare for mere incomprehension, Betty says she's referring to the little boy in some of the pictures, whom she assumes is Don's brother. Don slowly flips ahead to one of the pictures of him and Adam, and in a small, breaking voice, says that Adam was his half-brother, and he killed himself. He hangs his head as he tells Betty how he came to him wanting to be part of his life, but he turned him away because he "couldn't risk all of this." He starts to sob as he tells her the method of Adam's suicide, and Betty tells him she's sorry, her anger replaced by wary compassion. At least, that's what I'm assuming -- it's getting hard to see all of a sudden. She puts a consoling hand on his neck, and in an episode where one character couldn't see the value of psychiatry, isn't it interesting to see the therapeutic effect on Don of, you know, talking about these things?