Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mystery Date
By Couch Baron | Season 5 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.08.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Don -- who's severely under the weather -- and Megan run into Andrea, a freelance writer from the old firm, and it takes approximately .17 seconds for Megan to ascertain a onetime sexual relationship there. Megan is not happy to be the Diane Chambers to Don's Sam Malone, and tells him so in no uncertain terms. Later, with Don home sick, Andrea turns up at his apartment, and the panic with which he kicks her out shows he either really loves or is really scared of Megan, possibly both. However, when Andrea later sneaks back in and begs Don to have his way with her, he relents. I thought this might be a dream sequence, and when he ends up later strangling her, it becomes clear that it is a fever-induced hallucination, but that doesn't actually make it any less disturbing, especially given that...
...Joyce turns up with crime-scene photos from Chicago's student-nurse sex massacre, and everyone's apparent stomach for them causes "Ginso" to label them "sickos." One non-sicko who's still all over this news story is Sally; Betty and Henry are on the road for his work, so Sally is stuck at home with Pauline. Sally gets into reading about the murders and seems very frightened, although after Pauline I'm surprised she has the capacity to fear anything else. As if to back me up, Pauline ends up telling Sally about the crimes in a chillingly casual way before giving Sally half a sleeping pill so she won't be up all night. Betty, you've met your parenting match.
Greg is coming home, and Gail tries to prepare Joan for the fact that he may be different. When Greg arrives, he's thrilled to meet "his" son, and then Gail keeps considerately clearing out of the house so her daughter can get some, as mothers are wont to do. Any libido Joan may have, however, is killed by Greg's news -- he has to go back in ten days for another year, which was not part of the plan. Joan adapts to the change in plan admirably until she hears from Greg's mother over dinner that Greg actually volunteered to return, and as if that didn't make the dinner painfully uncomfortable enough, the news is followed by a member of the staff playing accordion music, which as we all remember brings back wonderful memories for this couple. In semi-private, Joan lays into Greg, who doesn't want to hear it. Gail, once again, has been through all of this and tries to get Joan to be strong. And she succeeds, but in a better way than she ever intended: Joan tells Greg to return to Vietnam and never come back to her, making it clear that she still remembers the rape in the process. If you wondered whether it was unseemly to cheer the end of this marriage, I can only tell you that you weren't alone.
Hey, guess what? Roger screws up! I know, you're shocked, but he forgets to get Ginso on a campaign for Mohawk to take advantage of some favorable developments with the mechanics' strike, so he does the only thing he knows how to do, which is to apply some cash to the problem. In this case, he pays Peggy to work up a campaign, although she takes his insult offer of ten bucks and ends up gouging him for the four hundred he has in his pocket, which is amazing and may teach him, as I've been suggesting, NOT TO CARRY SO MUCH CASH. Working late, Peggy discovers Dawn still around, and when she learns she's afraid to travel back to Harlem with everyone in such a rioting mood, she insists that Dawn stay over with her. As they bond, Peggy drunkenly confesses that she's not sure she really has what it takes really to succeed as a copywriter. A moment of hesitation in leaving her purse alone with Dawn, however, completely ruins the ebony and ivory-ness of the evening, and in the morning Peggy only finds a nice note instead of a new friend and looks as regretful as she does hung over.
Oh, in the end, Gail and Joan lie on the bed together, Kevin between them. It's not the family Joan imagined, but it's the one that's not leaving.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Sally goes on to complain that Pauline wears a barf-worthy amount of perfume, and she also doesn’t believe that Sally’s allowed to watch as much TV as she wants during the summer. Even Don raises an eyebrow at that, and tells her to go out and get some fresh air and sun, but Sally tells him it’s really hot. And as much as I could listen to Sally bitch about her elders all day and all night, Don does have a point, especially when he adds, “I don’t want you to get rickets in that haunted mansion.” I’m trying to figure out if the nighttime exterior is more reminiscent of The Munsters or Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, but either way, HA! Don then hacks into the phone, prompting Sally to ask how he is, and he replies that he has a cold, “but you’ve made me feel better.”
The doorbell rings in New Jersey, and Joan, wearing the cutest black dress with roses embroidered all over it, answers to find her uniformed husband. They kiss and giggle at each other for a moment, and then Gail’s voice calls, “Somebody wants to say hello.” All right, Ma, wait your turn…oh, she means Kevin, whom Greg goes to hold, leaving Joan to bring in his luggage. Oh, Joan. Gail says she thought his plane might be delayed because of the STRIKE, but Greg’s more interested in looking at Kevin’s face, possibly for any resemblance of himself, in which case we could be here a while. But no, when Greg asks Gail to get the “Brownie”, Gail says they’re out of film, and says she’ll take Kevin and go get some. She doesn’t add, “So you two can also get some,” but she might as well have. Keeping up the level of subtlety, Joan asks if Gail has supplies “in case you have to be gone for a while,” but we can be sure Gail has packed enough for a trip across the desert, and soon she’s gone and husband and wife are shutting the door to the bedroom……while we cut to two doors opening, those being to a cabinet in the SCDP break room containing snacks, but not the aspirin Don’s in search of. When Megan joins him, he explains that he didn’t ask Dawn to find it because he’s gone through a whole bottle since she’s been there, and he’s embarrassed. Boy, I’d love to break open the casing on his internal Shame-O-Meter. Megan, her secretarial skills undiminished by her elevated position, quickly tracks down a bottle and then strokes Don’s hair sympathetically as he has yet another coughing fit, and then she tells him she’s sending him home, as he’s clearly got a fever. Don sighs and apologizes for the morning incident, explaining that he got together with Andrea a long time ago, and he was unhappy. Megan replies, “Because you were married,” and on the one hand, she does seem to be convicting him for past crimes here, a little bit. However, it’s worth our while to remember that Don was over the moon about Betty once too; besides, she’s of a far more outspoken generation that Don is. Megan goes on that he can’t really blame his past “careless appetite” on Betty, and goes on that the fact that he clearly feels guilty about the morning makes the whole thing worse. I mean, she’s obviously in a delicate moral position here, especially since Don had a fairly serious thing going with Faye (MISS YOU, FAYE) when he took up with her, but she still has a point, and also these kind of doubts can happen when in the past you accepted someone’s word that he’s been in love with you “for a long time” WHEN IN REALITY YOU’VE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR ROUGHLY FOUR SECONDS. Don reverts to the gallows humor he does so well and succeeds in getting a smile out of his current wife, but when she tells him again to go home, he replies that he has to attend this one meeting so he can skip the next two. That actually sounds like his normal batting average, so good for him for keeping it up while at death’s door.
In the Rye Town Francis Spookhouse, Sally is staring into space when Pauline admonishes her for not eating her sandwich, and then catches sight of a story in the paper, presumably about the student nurses. Sally tries to look on, but Pauline smacks her with the speed of a frat boy playing Red Hands, and Sally rubs her knuckles in disbelief. Pauline tells her that some things aren’t for children, and adds that Sally demanded tuna salad, so she’s going to sit there until she’s eaten it. Sally complains that it’s got relish in it, and then tells Pauline she really hurt her hand, and Pauline does say she shouldn’t have done that, but tells Sally she needs to be respectful, and that she’s sure Betty has rules too, although she does add that she may be “distracted” when it comes to enforcing them. I do think that living in the Rye Town Francis Spookhouse with Grandma Slaps-A-Lot here is giving Sally a new appreciation for her mother, and I can’t say I blame her. But Pauline tells Sally she’s sure Betty would be sick if she knew how Sally was behaving, and Sally is going to finish that sandwich if it takes all day. It’s hard to believe after their relationship of last season, but I think Betty would take Sally’s side here. Sally does take a small bite, and I’m sure the relish flavor is lost in all the bile, so there’s that.