Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A | 13 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Dark Side Of The Closet
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 2007.09.06
In Midge's apartment, Don is just emerging from the bathroom as everyone else is doing a bunny-hop line. Midge asks if he's all right, implying some time has passed, and then a loud alarm goes off, and the beatniks worriedly go running to the window to watch the cops pull up. Midge speculates that they're there for some guy who regularly beats his wife, and then Don snaps a picture of her and Roy. He puts the camera down, and we cross-fade into…
…Hobo, who's in the barn, I think, getting his bed made up by Dick. Hobo asks him if he smokes, and Dick finally finds his voice as he says no. He will of course be making up for lost time. Dick says that he's supposed to tell Hobo to say his prayers, but Hobo, with a good read on the familial situation, says praying won't help him in this place, and he should look to his mother to protect him. Dick of course says Abigail isn't his mother, and adds that he's a "whore child." Hmm. It's not that this is a surprise, but it seems a little convenient that Dick knows this. I mean, Abigail doesn't seem like one to use that kind of language, and as crusty and bitter as Archie is, if he's the one that laid the whore, I find it difficult to believe that he'd tell Dick about it in quite those terms. Then again, Archie does seem like an asshole. Hobo then talks about his lifestyle in rather grand terms, and I'm not saying a drifter's life doesn't have some appeal, but the whole clothes-boiling thing does tend to de-romanticize it to some degree. Dick says it's sad that Hobo doesn't have a family, but Hobo says he once did have a family and all the attendant trappings, and he couldn't sleep at night tied to all those things, so he "freed" himself, and now he's at peace with his life. Poor Dick is just putty in this drifter's dirty, calloused hands. Hobo warns Dick to flee this place as soon as he can, as he sees death lurking around every corner. Oh, and by the way, sleep well, kid! Hobo then pulls out a piece of chalk, saying that Dick is an "honorary," and explaining The Hobo Code; everyplace a hobo goes, he marks the front gate with a coded illustration; one means the food is good, another means "beware of dog," and a third means a dishonest man lives there. I suppose since he's made the critical point, there's no need to show the marks for "the farmer's daughter is easy" or "do not go in the outhouse." Hobo finishes up by telling Dick not to be scared. "You ain't a man yet."