Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A | 1 USERS: F YOU GRADE IT Bertram is Evil. Evil!
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 09.27.2009
hey stop in front of a furniture store and he points out a horribly ugly chaise longue, the very same that will end up in Betty's living room, and tells her, referring to her bout with dizziness, that it's what she needs. Ugh, it's hideous -- all busy light pink fabric and overly-ornately carved wood -- and it most certainly does not belong in their new living room, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, Francis tells her it's a "fainting couch" from the Victorian era, for women to use when they get overwhelmed, and adds that he knows that because he used to move furniture. I'm not sure if they're playing up this blue-collar-upbringing angle of his personality because the combination of it with erudite success is somewhat reminiscent of her father, or of Don, or both, but anyway, Francis offers to walk Betty to her car, but she pointedly tells him Ossining is "still a small town," so he leaves her with the promise of a rain check for the hike and to call her as soon as he knows anything. Again, keeping her hopes up while being sure he'll get maximum gratitude should he succeed. He leaves her, and she turns to regard the ugly couch again. Given my moniker, I am truly appalled that she ends up buying that thing.Back at Eclipse Central, parents and children alike have cardboard boxes over their heads, which makes for a fairly amusing tableau, but Don is not participating, and the teacher comes over and asks if he doesn't want to watch it, adding that it only happens once every ten years. They make some small talk about how she'll be off in August, but when he, perhaps too pointedly, says he'll be around despite the fact that the place is a ghost town during that month, the teacher takes it as an overture: "You're all the same -- the drinking, the philandering." Hmm, this is interesting, because she obviously made advances to him that were at the very least overly familiar, and did so while drunk. Not only that, she's rewriting history on another front, because she told Don, both verbally and in ways unspoken, he was not like other dads at their last meeting. I think this exchange is very telling and thematic and ties in strongly to the eclipse -- I don't know if I can even articulate it particularly well, but I think the point is to remind us that, like looking at the sun, looking directly at people and seeing what's really there is a forbidden and potentially destructive thing in this era. Like most parallels, I don't know that it completely holds up in every aspect, but in this case, the teacher let Don view something about her other people perhaps haven't seen (and keep in mind that even if there was an attraction, it was motivated by her feelings about a young child's loss of a parent, so it was deeply personal), and because of that, he now holds the power in the relationship. And knowing this makes her angry and scared, which is why she's lashing out in this clumsy way and accusing Don of impropriety. But interestingly, he doesn't use that knowledge to dominate her, at least not here, nor has he done so with other people -- witness how he reacted after learning huge secrets about Sal and Peggy. He could easily bring up that phone call here, but he doesn't. Instead, he convinces her either that he's not being inappropriate or that he's too charming for her to care, maybe both, although she does suggest that people as rich as tend to live in their area get bored more easily than others. Don denies that he's bored, and they gaze into each other's eyes, but Sally interrupts and calls the teacher over to look at the eclipse with her. Don, for his part, finally puts his sunglasses on and stares up into the sky, and it's at this point that the sun is declared legally blind.
Peggy awakens and sits up in that same bed with the man next to her...
...and then, at SC, she's closing the door to her office as she calls Duck. He's in a hotel room with some people that look like business colleagues, and she tells him that she hasn't changed her mind and is planning to return the gift. He says he's been at the Pierre (how long it's been!) taking meetings all day, and Hermès is coming in at 4:30, so why doesn't she come and return it herself? She's confused about the hotel locale, but he tells her the Grey offices are "like a Penn Station toilet with Venetian blinds." Way to upsell the place, guy. Also, I can see why she'd want to meet Hermès people, but wouldn't it be a little awkward to do so while returning a Hermès product? It'd be like meeting Michael Bay and asking him to refund your ticket price for Transformers, only much less understandable. Anyway, Peggy tells Duck never to contact her again, and that instruction will be a lot colder if she repeats it later in the episode.
Roger and his tan come in to see Don, and they pour themselves a drink and tell Don they know he hasn't even sent the contract to his lawyer. They add that his lack of a contract is starting to affect their business, and that Don is their David Ogilvy and if he'll only sign, he could have his name out front. "After mine. And Cooper, probably." Heh. Not really sure Roger can promise that, as he doesn't own the place anymore, but let's ignore that, as Roger says they really only need a letter of intent, and his lawyer can rape them later. Don looks up wordlessly at him, so Roger offers, "Grunt once for yes!" Nice. Don's stony silence isn't what Roger was hoping for, though, so he takes his leave: "The problem is, I don't know whether you don't want to do this here, or you don't want to do this at all." I'm not sure why that actually makes a difference, unless Roger is just trying to figure out how personally to take the whole thing. When he opens the door, he sees Peggy, and is like, "Didn't we give you an office?" Hee. Peggy, posterboard in hand, asks Don to sign off before she sends it to the printer, and he invites her in. When she brings up Hilton and starts to say how she'd love to work on the account, however, Don tells her that they're not bringing Hilton in (which...if that's true, I'm guessing he's planning on leaving rather than sign the contract) and he doesn't appreciate her coming in wasting his time with something he didn't actually need to approve. Peggy, flustered, tries to say she was excited about the account, but he practically sneers, "And you thought you'd come in here and ask for it because I never say no." She really does not time her approaches to Don very well, does she? She points out he says no all the time, surely referring to the question of the raise, but that's a mistake as well, as he snaps that she was his secretary, and now she's got an office and a job "that a lot of full-grown men would kill for. Every time I turn around you've got your hand in my pocket." He tells her to put her nose down and pay attention to her work. "There's not one thing that you've done here that I couldn't live without." My reasoned response to this tirade is this: Ooooooooouch. Feeling the same way, Peggy holds it together enough to apologize, and he concedes that she's good, but she needs to get even better and stop asking for things. Obviously, his reaction to her request was disproportionate and incredibly nasty, but, in keeping with the theme here, I think his comment about her having been his secretary is more telling than it seems, because remember: She knows things about him, just as he knows things about her. And I think, when she asks him for stuff like this, it makes him wonder if she thinks she can treat him as an equal, which makes him resentful, despite her explicit request he not treat her badly because of what she knows. And it's easy to say she would never use what she knows against him, but...I would have thought that about Bertram, too.
Roger calls Betty, who greets him with little warmth, and tells her about the contract and that he could really use her help in getting Don to sign it. Her reply: "Don is going to do whatever he's going to do. And honestly, I find it terribly disrespectful that you would go behind his back." Roger starts to stammer an explanation, but she hangs up on him. Not a good day to ask the Drapers for favors.