Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | 10 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT No Good Deed Goes Unsexed
By Couch Baron | Season 6 | Episode 11 | Aired on 06.09.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Manolo the Spanish-from-Spain nurse brings Pete's mother by the office, and Peggy chats with her only to find she's mistaken her for Trudy – and that she's getting some action. When Pete learns that his mom is apparently banging the nurse, he tells her he's going to let him go, to which she tells Pete that he's always been unlovable. Pete calls Benson in to chew him out for his recommendation, but Benson tells him that Manolo isn't in love with his mother – because, apparently, he's into dudes, and so is Benson. Sadly, Benson's in love with Pete, who is not quite ready to return the sentiment. None of that matters, though, because I was right about the shorts. Also, Pete, Peggy, and Ted go out and get sloppy after an Ocean Spray meeting, and Pete clues in that Peggy and Ted have the mutual hots for each other, not that he disapproves. When Ted sees the rapport Pete and Peggy have, not knowing it's borne of their history together, he seems jealous; not only that, his wife tells him he's too focused on work even when he's not in the office. In the end, though, Ted seems to make the choice to stay with what he's got, which likely means Peggy's going to give Stan an even harder sell the next time she has a rat problem, which will probably be tomorrow.
Mitchell, Sylvia and Arnold's son, is in the apartment when Don comes home, and Megan tells Don the kid sent back his draft card in protest and now wants to run to Canada to avoid possible prison time. Don tells her from experience that the kid can't spend his life on the run, but soon a fit-to-be-tied Arnold shows up at their door, and he and Don go out for a drink, whereupon Don reiterates the sentiment we've heard from him before that he's against the war. Feeling a sympathy for the kid he probably didn't know he was capable of, Don goes to Pete and asks him to get hold of his old DoD friend (the one that buried the investigation into Don's past when they were courting -- I think -- Northrop Grumman) to see if he can get Mitchell a deferment. Pete suggests Don turn to GM, but when Don feels them out at a dinner, the reaction is frosty, to say the least. Ted initially chews Don out for this, but when he hears the problem, he offers to make a call to a highly-place military officer to get the kid into a pilot program – in exchange for Don working with him in the future. Don sincerely agrees, and then calls a grateful and tearful Sylvia, which is a much better ending to their relationship than anything we saw before. Or it would be, except when Sally sneaks into Sylvia's place to try to retrieve a letter her friend Julie left for Mitchell on her behalf, she catches Don and Sylvia in flagrante and runs off in horror. Later, it's a Dinner O'Awkward, as a drunken Don barely is home for five minutes before Rosen and Mitchell show up to thank him in front of a nauseated Sally. Don lies to her about what she saw, and she tells him she believes it, but her fatherly worship looks like it's gone for good. ABOUT TIME.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!So Peggy is still living in the now Abe-less building she owns, and she's dressed and ready to head to work when she sees a rat scurry by. She does scream, but instead of getting up on a table as the cartoons of my youth led me to believe, she heads right out the door. How disappointingly sensible of her.
Dawn greets Don by taking his briefcase and informing him that Roger's in his office. From inside, they hear what sounds like glasses being knocked over, after which Dawn hilariously turns back to Don: "Do you want ice?" Don tells her that coffee will do before heading in and seeing Roger rummaging for something on the floor. Don snarks that being near the bar is one thing, but being under it is quite another; however, Roger is not fishing for dropped olives or cocktail glasses -- Sunkist sent over a crate of oranges, and he was just picking up the three with which he was trying to juggle. He remarks that he's seen blind people do it, but it seems to be beyond him, earning this response from Don: "Why don't you just close your eyes? That's what you did in the meeting." Good line, but at this point it amazes me that Don (or Roger, for that matter) feels qualified to assess anyone else's behavior as unprofessional. It's almost, but probably not quite, as bad as if Betty were to judge anyone else's parenting.
Anyway, it's a moot point, as Sunkist wants them. While Don is glad to hear it, he points out that the best advertising angle will be to show the oranges on TV, "but they were pretty clear they're too cheap to get out of print." Roger suggests Don talk them into it, but Don tells him the best way to do that will be through a media strategy, not market research. He suggests Roger get Harry on it before tossing an orange back at Roger, who starts juggling like a circus performer. And while I compliment the achievement, I find it hard to believe anyone as attention-starved as Roger wouldn't have had this in his arsenal already.
Oh look, it's Dot -- dressed in a Jackie O suit right down to the pink color, with a Spanish man who can only be her nurse, Manolo. Clara leads them up the stairs and tells them Pete should be right with them, and after Manolo requests a cup of tea for his charge, the door opens and Peggy emerges, a poster board with an Ocean Spray ad ("Berry Good" is the tagline, which makes me wonder if this is a first draft) under her arm. Pete, behind her, makes a disparaging comment about having to take Ted's plane to present. Seeing his mother, Pete greets her warmly enough before asking Manolo if he could have a word, and the fairly-heavily-accented Manolo agrees, leaving Peggy to sit down with Dot. Dot tells Peggy that she's glad she and Pete both swallowed their pride and reunited "for the good of the child you have together," and given that Peggy still ostensibly doesn't know about Pete and Trudy's estrangement, it's hard to blame her face for doing some things she probably didn't know it was capable of before she chokes out an "Excuse me?" However, after Peggy tells Dot that she and Pete aren't together "that way." Dot urges "Trudy" not to deny him ("don't reject his caresses" is not a line I necessarily needed to hear), and Peggy breathes a sigh of relief, but doesn't have time really to take in what that means about Pete and Trudy's marriage -- because Dot goes right on to say that she hopes they "can someday find what Manolo and I have found." Peggy's like, "...," and Dot goes on that she "waited long enough to experience the physical satisfactions of love," which I guess is not the greatest testimonial to Pete's dad's prowess, not that that's a huge surprise. Peggy forces a brittle smile before hilariously asking out loud if Clara went to China for the tea, and it does seem to be taking a while, but I wonder if she's not surreptitiously watching and giggling.