Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 2 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT My Dinner With Awkward
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 3 | Aired on 08.10.2008
Sterling Cooper. A guy comes around and drops Harry's paycheck off, and when Harry goes to open it, he notices that Ken's envelope (remember their surnames are "Crane" and "Cosgrove") got stuck to his. Harry calls "Todd" back, but then thinks better (i.e. worse) of it and sends him back on his way. Once he's alone, he opens Ken's check and looks stunned. He looks even more stunned to realize that the envelope won't magically reseal itself, which could go a long way toward explaining why Ken apparently makes more money than he does. His efforts to remedy the situation only make things worse, and then the schlub with whom he shares the office comes in and uncertainly invites him out to "the oyster bar." Harry declines, although whether it's due to stress over the check fiasco or to the fact that oysters don't fit into the budget now that Jennifer's eating for two is for you to decide. Speaking of Jennifer, Harry calls her at home forthwith, and learns her morning sickness was so bad that she bagged work. She soon picks up on Harry's mood, though, so after prefacing things by recalling that she expressed the desire for him to tell her when he's upset, he informs her that Ken makes three hundred bucks a week. Jennifer's aghast at "that mannequin"'s salary, pointing out that he's not married. I don't really want to get into this with a pregnant fictional character, but (a) he doesn't get the tax breaks you do, and (b) the company isn't paying people to be married, but to do their jobs. Man. Harry sighs that he should quit, but Jennifer's worked up a head of steam here, saying that he works long hours, and if SC has that kind of money to spend, they should spend it on Harry. On that point, didn't we learn that Pete, senior to Ken, was making only seventy-five bucks a week in Season One? Is this meant to be indicative of SC's advancement in the world, or merely that math is the one thing that this show isn't great at? Anyway, Jennifer urges Harry to go in and ask for what he thinks he's worth to them, but he resists, causing her to reply snottily, "I didn't know this was about you feeling sorry for yourself," and says she's hanging up. Well, it is hard to see his boo-boo-kitty face over the phone.
Don is in a movie theater, watching a black-and-white French film. Midge would be so proud!
Okay, I was going to leave it at that. With most shows I would have left it at that. But I figured with this show, there would be some real meaning wrapped up in the film choice. And I want you to know that while I don't mind spending time with Google doing research for these recaps when I feel it's warranted, trying to slog through Google France is a bit more effort than I normally feel obligated to expend. But what I found is this: While I couldn't identify the film itself, the narration, word for word, is from a lyric poem entitled Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis," which translates as The Ballad Of The Ladies Of Yore and concerns a Frankish queen known as Bertha Broadfoot. The last ten lines on this page are what you hear the narrator speak, and as the page notes, one of them, "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!," is the derivation of the line "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" which you might recognize from Joseph Heller's Catch-22. However, the words I find most relevant come right before the ones we heard spoken, to wit: "La royne Blanche comme ung lys,