Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 4 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Cat is Out of the Bag…
By Couch Baron | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 10.25.2009
re." Heh. He expresses gratitude that she thought of him, and I think this is a key exchange in light of the situation with Annabelle, because regardless of what may have been explicitly said between them I think Roger thinks of Joan as his One That Got Away, and exploring those feelings is going to help him in deciding what to do about his other old flame. He tells her, "You want to be on some people's minds. Some people's, you don't." After a bit more of this, she says she should go, and he asks if he should just pass on her number to anyone he thinks of. Joan: "Look at you, figuring things out for yourself." Heh. Roger hangs up with a fond smile.Sitting in the study of, presumably, her father's house, Betty opens the desk drawer in kind of a hilariously snooping manner, like she suddenly thinks all such compartments hold unspeakably dark secrets about their owners' past. But I do hope her dad didn't leave evidence of a secret wife in there, because the two we've known about have been quite enough for me. William then enters with the estate lawyer, who seems like he's been attached to the family for a while, and although William offers that they can have lunch first, they end up getting straight into the issue at hand -- the house has been left to both of them, and William wants to buy Betty out but doesn't have enough money to pay her a market rate. The lawyer silently looks at William all, "What do you want me to tell your poor ass, kid?" prompting William to snit right on out of there. Once the undesirable has left the room, Betty tells the lawyer she needs to speak with him in confidence, and after he closes the door to the room, she tells him she's discovered some "compromising facts" about her husband -- he's been married before and bought the woman a house, and what's more, the name he's using is not even his original one. After expositing that he knows Gene didn't specifically didn't want Don in the will, he asks what she wants -- if it's a divorce, in New York State she'll have to prove adultery. "Can you?" Betty says maybe, and I wonder if she's thinking of a phone call to Jimmy Barrett, but the lawyer clarifies that she'll have to prove it in a court of law, which could be difficult. The other option would be if Don wants out of the marriage, but in that case Betty wouldn't get anything, probably not even the children. Was this really the case even in 1963? The show is usually infallible on points like these, but then again, the term "second opinion" doesn't exist for no reason. Having dispensed his legal advice, the guy offers a different kind: If Betty's not afraid of Don and thinks he's a good provider, she should give staying with him a try, at least for the sake of the kids. "That's what I'd tell my own daughter." Were you still on speaking terms with her, that is. This is all too much for Betty, who puts her head in her hand in frustration, at which point William yells through the locked door once again that the situation with the house isn't right, as if that's currently in the top ten of things on her mind.
Annabelle shows up to dinner wearing the sixtyish sixties version of a fuck-me dress, and seeing Roger's full martini glass, expresses surprise that he waited. Roger: "This is number three." Before even starting dinner? I know we're well past the time of Prohibition, but that still sounds illegal. Roger is also smoking even more quickly than usual, and if he's nervous it's with good reason, as Annabelle allows him exactly one business-related comment (about a focus group Don has already put together) before calling an end to that line of discussion and telling Roger he's really the only thing she remembers from her pre-married days. He does not return the sentiment, however, so she asks if when he saw Casablanca, he didn't think of her, obviously trying to sell the idea that theirs was an epic love that ended due to circumstances and wishes beyond their control. Roger, however, does not see any similarity other than the fact that she left him for someone else: "That woman got on a plane with a man who was going to end World War II, not run her father's dog-food company." She tries to counter this obvious truth by saying he was adrift at the time, only good for spending money: "You walked around like you were hoping to be a character in somebody else's novel. The boxing?" I'd imagine he kept his bouts quite short, because after a few rounds that smoking habit of his would certainly have been scoring a TKO. Roger, however, is not really interested in hearing her reasons for breaking his heart, as he still remembers them. He says he picked himself up and married Mona, joined SC, and then got shipped off for the entirety of the war. "And when I came home, I went to work while you were watching Casablanca. And I got blamed when we lost the account." Annabelle somewhat apologetically denies knowledge of that, but Roger isn't really interested in that either, instead pointing out that she's rich, so why not sell the company and let someone else peddle the horsemeat, but she counters with, "And do what?" Aaaaand there's the season's theme again. The waiter then turns up with Annabelle's wine order, and when she tries to say she didn't want a whole bottle, Roger assures her he'll help. She raises an eyebrow like "Now we're getting somewhere!" Honey, I think you're underestimating Roger's tolerance. NOT THAT I BLAME YOU.
Some number of bottles of wine later, Roger is unsteadily helping Annabelle into her coat as she tells a drunken-loud story about something or other, and they giggle and lean against the wall, but when she tries to escalate things, he tells her he's a newlywed. She obviously doesn't take that declaration particularly seriously to start, but he keeps up the resistance, and he finally informs her, "It's different with this girl." It may be a surprise even to him that he's saying this, but regardless, the statement is more effective than a hose would have been, as Annabelle's smile fades and she gets out of there in a hurry. And there isn't even anyone on hand to discuss the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Joan gets home to find Greg drinking a beer and watching TV with his feet up on the coffee table, and the moment she takes to process the tableau and just noticeably stiffen is great work by Christina Hendricks. She asks him how it went, surely already knowing the general answer, and he sullenly replies that he totally screwed it all up. She tries to tell him she's sure that's not true, but he pulls away from her touch and tells her she wasn't there, so she can stop acting like she knows everything; besides, he doesn't want to be a psychiatrist, as "it's not medicine." Joan keeps it together but does lay down the law, a little -- she doesn't care what he does, but he has to do something, as they need money. Not responding to that, he whines that he did everything he was supposed to do, and he's wanted to be surgeon since he was a kid. She soberly tells him she's sorry, but suggests it's time to move on, prompting Greg to shout that she doesn't know what it's like to want something and plan for it your whole life and then not get it. Let me just say in advance that what follows is so awesome it makes me hope you all have DVR. Joan, who was looking forward to being a mother so, so much, after a moment in which a storm gathers so quickly on her face it could cause you to go blind if you stare at it directly, picks up a vase and, without even bothering to take the flowers within it out first, literally breaks it over the back of her idiot husband's head, like, that was nowhere near an even payback for all the things he's done to her, but it seems like it now that I've watched it somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred times. Joan storms off into another room and slams the door as Greg shouts that she's insane. Not if she follows this up by getting a divorce, she isn't.
In that room with the one-way mirror at SC, Annabelle and a bunch of SC people are watching a