Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All the Real Girls
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 9 | Aired on 09.19.2010
t to call her mother or her brothers, but Sally tells them that as it's nine-thirty, they're asleep, and either she's calling Betty super-boring or she's saying that wanting to talk to her is beyond the realm of possibility; either way, I'd anticipate a scene tomorrow even if I hadn't seen the episode already. Pursuant to that, Sally tells Don she loves him so much and wants to live with him all the time, and Don at least tries to employ logic, pointing out that she'd need a place to go to school, and what about her friends and her brothers? Sally considers this for a moment and then says they could live there too and she'd take care of them, which is really touching, as long as she's just talking about the brothers and not twenty of her snot-nosed friends. Don tells her to go to sleep, but whether he knows it or not, this conversation isn't done. After he leaves her, he goes to write in his journal, but finds he has nothing to say, and after the day he's had it's hardly surprising.In the morning, Don, wearing white pajamas that I don't have to tell you he fills out rather nicely, gets out of bed to find that Sally has made both of them French toast. Don mildly chastises her for using the stove, but she breezes that she does it all the time, and she learned how from Carla. However, as it turns out, Sally inadvertently put a spin on it that churchgoer Carla would never do by mistakenly making it with rum instead of Mrs. Butterworth's, but when Sally asks if it's bad, he replies, "Not really!" Heh. Sally Draper: Bringing a new meaning to "on the sauce." Don tells her to get dressed and they'll go to the office, but Sally asks if they can't do something together, so Don tells her he'll push everything back to noon and they'll go to the Central Park Zoo. Aw. I mean, I'd rather he take the whole day off and go to the Bronx version, but this will do just fine.
Roger and Bertram are trying to come up with an appropriate obituary for Miss Blankenship; after Roger buzzes for Caroline to ask Joan to join them, Bertram flagellates himself for being unable to come up with anything, and then bitches about how he has no place to "ruminate" since he doesn't have an office. Well, that explains why he's been popping up in random spots like Waldo, but really, what does he do anymore other than hold the hand of aged accounts like Secor? Anyway, Joan comes in and starts capably and efficiently dashing off ideas, but Bertram gets the last word: "She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper. She's an astronaut." It's a lovely sentiment, fanciful though it may be, so it's no wonder that Bertram leaves on that note, although where he's going isn't particularly clear to me. Maybe he'll do me a solid and bother Harry for a while. When he's gone, Roger apologizes for what happened, but even though Joan regards him inscrutably for a good bit, in the end she says she's not actually sorry but she is still married, and so is he. She starts to leave, but he tells her he feels something, and he knows she does too. She doesn't bother denying it, true as it obviously is, but whether it ends up being relevant is something the rest of the season will have to answer.
Don brings a happy Sally into the office, wherein he introduces her to Megan. Sally wonders where Miss Blankenship is, and Megan, without really missing a beat, says she "went away," so she's helping out for a bit. Probably best not to mention that she went to a place where she can do naughty things to Grandpa Gene. Don tells Megan that Betty should be by at five o'clock, and then leaves Sally with Megan for a bit while he goes to get coffee and check in. When he passes by the conference room, Stan grits out his chagrin that now they can't leave, and then Ken tells them Harry said that on the coroner's report, they listed the cause of death as "Don Draper." Honestly, as bad as Don's been this season, I still can't imagine he's even in the same league as Roger in his heyday, or even worse, from what we've heard, Roger's father. But they all chuckle, even Peggy, and then Stan wonders how long "Yvette Mimieux" will last in the Spinal Tap drummer position, and Ken offers that they should start a pool on whether Megan quits, dies, or is fired. Having worked around boys like this before, I'm surprised such pools aren't in existence already.
Don enters the room and wonders where Faye is, and after Peggy tells him she didn't know if she was even coming in, Ken makes fun of the Fillmore guy's stutter, for which Don reproves him, and then Ken goes on that they don't want anything rock-and-roll-based, and he was pushing Perry Como, Pat Boone, and some other selections from the inoffensive white singer catalogue. Peggy, seeing an opportunity to check out Abe's accusations about Fillmore, suggests Harry Belafonte, which results in uncomfortable cringing and then condescending "Here's how things are, sweetie" explanations from Ken and Stan about why that won't work, while Don keeps his eyes fixated on Peggy to see how far she's going to take this. And Peggy does take it further, asking why they're doing business with a company with discriminatory practices, and when Ken and Stan don't have a ready answer for her, Don pipes up: "Our job is to make men like Fillmore Auto, not make Fillmore Auto like Negroes." Roger: "Well, that's it in black and white!" Okay, he's not in the scene, but I feel like it's what he would have said. That, and I don't want to take credit for it myself. Peggy nods in submission, and then Megan executes what's apparently her primary job responsibility by waving Don out of the meeting. When he's gone, Stan laughs that they should pick Dean Martin, as he's friends with Sammy Davis Jr. "Does that work for you, Peggy?" Peggy's "Eat shit and die" expression suggests the answer is "no," and she leaves...
...while outside, Megan informs Don that Betty is going to be arriving any minute, and she has to cover Reception "per Joan's orders." Don, more respectful of Joan's authority than the departed Joey, tells her to go ahead, but when he enters his office and tells Sally to get her things, she informs him she wants to stay, and she doesn't know why she can't. Unwilling and unable to discuss this further, he tries to take her by the hand and lead her out, but she pulls away and yells that she's not going and that she hates it there, and then Faye comes in and asks if everything is okay. Oh, Faye, with your loose connection to the Mafia you should know how not to get involved in ugly scenes like this. Don takes Faye outside and asks if she could calm Sally down, and although Faye says she doesn't have much child psychology expertise, she gives in. Once again, though, her effort is a bit stilted and seems to be geared toward someone a fair bit younger than Sally, although it's not like Sally's acting so mature when she tells Faye to shut up and that she doesn't need her help. Her lashing out at Faye is the last straw for Don, and despite the exceedingly loud tantrum she starts pitching, Don grabs her by the arm and manhandles her out of the chair. Sally, however, is more slippery than he gives her credit for, and she breaks free of his grasp and runs down the hallway until she trips and falls flat on her face. As Don and Faye, accompanied by a suddenly-appearing Joan and Peggy, catch up, Megan rushes over from Reception and picks Sally up off the floor into a kindly hug, but when she tries to tell Sally it'll be all right, Sally demurs: "No. It won't."
Joan, Peggy, and Faye watch silently as Megan tells Sally she falls all the time, and it's a really poignant scene, because obviously Megan must know that that isn't what Sally's upset about, but what she is upset about is something they can't discuss now, and the way she's being forced to endure the situation strikes an awfully resonant chord with the women. I've been hard on the show a couple times this season for reaching too hard to make an episodic theme work, so I think it's only fair to ho