Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 1 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT My Dinner With Awkward
By Couch Baron | Season 2 | Episode 3 | Aired on 08.10.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Harry gets Ken's paycheck by mistake, and when he can't resist taking a peek, he's chagrined to learn he's not in the same monetary league. His wife is similarly upset, but tells him to demand a raise instead of feeling sorry for himself. Instead of doing that, however, Harry reaches out to a friend of his at CBS, who doesn't have a job for him but does have a controversial show involving abortion in need of sponsors to replace the ones that have pulled out. Soon, Harry, Don and the rest of the SC boys (it'll save time if you just start assuming that Peggy is one of them) pitch the idea to, of all people, the Bel Jolie guy who made a pass at Sal last season. He turns them down, but the attention gets Harry promoted to Head of the newly-created Television Department and a small attendant raise. Harry neglects to mention to his pregnant wife that abortion is behind his newfound success, which is the better part of either valor or wussdom.
At the stables, Betty and her friend run into the young guy from the first episode of the season and his fiancée. Next time out, though, it's just Betty and the guy, and he confesses to Betty that he thinks about her, but she firmly and somewhat surprisingly wards off his advances. SC is representing a potato-chip company called Utz (really), with a commercial starring a horribly obnoxious comedian/actor who aggressively offends the owner and his wife. Don is called in to clean up the mess, part of which includes firing Lois as his secretary, leaving Joan to fill in on a temporary basis. Don dresses down the actor's wife in more ways than one, which makes it even more awkward when he has to take the Utz owners out to dinner with his most recent conquest and her cuckold. The dinner starts off inauspiciously enough, but when the actor's wife tries to blackmail Don, she gets a glimpse of what the man is really like as he gets physical with and threatens her, and before you know it, the actor is apologizing and even restraining himself from a beach ball of a setup. On the way home, Betty cries tears of joy that she and Don are seemingly a team these days. Well, at least she's crying, right?
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on the set of a television commercial, and from the lighting and the position of the boom pole we see that the star is a guy in a white tuxedo (we'll soon learn his name is "Jimmy Barrett"). Freddy Rumson is in attendance but seems only half-conscious, and it's probably due to the fifth of something he's downed already but I still can't say I blame him. Jimmy complains about some chips on the bar on which he's leaning, and then the director calls for take six of "Utz Are Better Than Nuts." Jimmy talks about how his evening at a nice bar was almost ruined by the bartender giving him a bowl of nuts, but luckily, he had a bag of Utz potato chips with him. He concludes by sticking his face into the bag like a horse and popping back up with his mouth full of chips and announcing, "Take it from a nut. Utz are better than nuts!" So, Jimmy, you're saying that these salty, greasy, disgusting chips are better than you. Not that I disagree -- just wanted to be clear. He then barks some instructions about the camera setup that should be left to the director and D.P., but which are meant to show that he thinks he's running the show. Just then, Ken awakens Freddy and indicates an older couple who have just shown up and are smiling somewhat excitedly in Jimmy's direction. Their smiles fade quickly, however, when Jimmy starts ruthlessly making fun of the woman's weight, likening her to the Hindenburg. Nasty, yes, but given that the couple (the "Schillings") are the owners of Utz, it's at least an appropriate reference on the disaster scale. He continues in this vein for a while, to muted chuckles from some of the on-set people, until Freddy suggests they take a break. Jimmy ignores him, though, so Ken is forced to escort the Schillings off set. Possibly getting an idea of what he just did, Jimmy calls after Freddy, "Just for your information, this guy's laughin' over here!" He's not pointing in my direction.
At the stables, Betty and her friend ("Sara Beth") dismount after their lesson. After Betty mentions that she has to pick up Don's watch, which needed repairs after he bathed the kids with it on, Sara Beth tells her she and her husband are coming up on their tenth anniversary, and complains a bit about the romance being gone from her marriage. They then spy the guy from the season premiere ("Arthur"), and Sara Beth sighs that he reminds her of Montgomery Clift in A Place In The Sun: "Learning how to ride so he can worm his way into the upper crust." Betty, familiar with the reference, intones, "Somewhere there's a pregnant girl floating in a lake." Heh. For someone not known for her sense of humor, that one was pretty good. Sara Beth, however, counters, "I'm from the South. There are such people." Honey, don't one-up your friend just as she was taking a tiny step toward lightening up. A buttoned-up young lady dismounts and tells the instructor that she thinks the guy needs a different horse, but she isn't hearing that: "He's on the worst one we have." I didn't catch this in the season premiere, but the instructor is played by Denise Crosby, best known to Star Trek: TNG viewers as Lieutenant Tasha Yar. The girl changes her tune and says that she knew teaching him to ride wouldn't be easy -- otherwise she would have done it herself. In that case, I hope he's either good in bed or she's willing to put in a little more effort in that department. They start to walk in Betty and Sara Beth's direction, and Betty starts to head off to get her purse, but Sara Beth grabs her and breathes that they have to meet the girl. She and Arthur stride up, and he introduces her as "Tara Montague," his fiancée. Sara Beth and Betty in turn introduce themselves, and he speculates that they make fun of him for his riding. Betty demurs: "That would be cruel." Back to literal normalcy. After some words from Tara that make it seem like these two aren't exactly the romantic match of the century, they walk off, and Sara Beth sighs that Tara is prettier than she expected, and goes on that she's been spending too much time at the stables -- she's even started dreaming about Arthur. "Or a version of him that could ride." Heh. Betty laughs and starts to take her leave, saying she'll see Sara Beth on Saturday, but Sara Beth tells her that's not the case, as he daughter has a dance recital. "It's so horrible to put girls that fat in a leotard." I'd spend more time being speechless if I weren't on deadline.