By Couch Baron
This is the most underwhelmed I've felt on first viewing in quite some time, I have to admit. Okay. Harry drags Pete to a lunch with Ken, and when Harry gets an important phone call, Ken and Pete get to chat and fight and then bond, and it's pretty cute how much they obviously miss each other. Meanwhile, Pond's has a wild hair about Clearasil being a conflict for them, and since Pond's is bigger, Clearasil has to go, despite the toll Pete says it will have on his personal relationship with his father-in-law. When Pete takes his father-in-law out to tell him what's up, however, he's the one that gets some surprising news -- Trudy is finally pregnant, and what's just as surprising is that he's actually pretty happy about it. When Trudy's parents come over the night to celebrate, though, Pete tries to get her dad's big business -- Vicks Chemical -- and succeeds, kicking Clearasil over to Ken in the process. Also, the news of Trudy's pregnancy causes Peggy literally to bang her head against her desk, and also to give Pete long cinematic stares of desire. One of those I could have done without.
Also on the subject of Pond's, SCDP conducts a focus group for the product, led by Dr. Miller and in view of Don, Freddy and Peggy. It devolves into a sob-fest about the girls' esteem issues when it comes to men, and when Allison completely bails from the session, Peggy goes to talk to her and learns the truth about her hookup with Don; unfortunately, Allison assumes that she and Peggy have a shared experience on that front, to which Peggy takes predictable umbrage. Later, Allison gets Don alone and tells him off for not acknowledging what happened between them and then quits, freaking out on him most deservedly in the process, and I will miss her but this was overdue. Joan, seemingly wise to the issue, gets Don a new secretary who's older than Methuselah, and if that doesn't solve the problem, he's maybe beyond help. Some other stuff happened, but frankly, it was pretty uninspired, so let's just save it for the full recap.
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