What else is there to do?  Have Don win.  Have him grab for everything that looks like success, big success, in as ruthless a way as necessary—the more ruthless the higher the stakes—while the core of his life hollows out.  Give him real entree into the boardroom world that's always beckoned, give him power because…

Is there a support group or something?  Do we get a benefits card?

Interesting, too, that Don pointedly refuses to comment on that wedding photo—re-presenting his enforced muteness in the show's opening minutes.

Don may be a badly-behaved husband whose bad behavior at this point doesn't actually count—though that's more about Megan than about him.  The episode strongly implied that Megan can't even really see Don at this point, through the rosy fog of her first acting success:  Don for her was so much an invention of her own…

They've at least gotten Dow's oven-cleaner business:  those were the boards Don was looking over when he started talking about the cheapening of the word "love."  Probably not the full Dow account, but something in the nature of a trial run, or a first bite at the apple.

The most disappointing thing about this very disappointing season opener—more than the arbitrary weirdness of the Betty story, or the sitcommy broadness of Roger's—was the suggestion that we're beginning another adultery arc for Don.  The repetition in itself isn't the disappointment—of course Don's going to find…

Dinkins ended up with (the real) Don's lighter—he called (our) Don "lieutenant" at the bar, which is the rank he saw inscribed when Don flashed the lighter at him.  Dick was a private.

So are we going to find out that Sandy died on the way back to her home planet?

I really feel transported to the ghetto.

Fish boobs … Do fish have boobs?

If by "cute" you mean, insufferably self-conscious …

"Tithonus" FTW.

But Harmon had developed Abed into a character who could use the TV frame of reference self-consciously—to comment on situations and his place (or non-place) in them, often at his own expense.  While also managing the "this is meta-commentary about the show itself" move.  That's what I caught in that line—Abed…

"I remember when this used to be a show about a community college."  It's a sharp, smart line, unlike almost everything else the new show's offered so far.  It's also—more to the point—the single moment in these first three eps where I've heard (what sounds to me like) the authentic voice of one of the Harmon-era…

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Of where I start to reply
Then we'll read the rest of Gary's discussion's posts!

It stopped just as I was getting caught up on the series, at long (long) last. All those episodes after season 2 just flowing past me, discussionless … How did I know what to think about them? How did I know what I should FEEL?

The whole episode was like a little festival of beautifully understated Zooey reactions to male weirdness.

That's what Jess is claiming the obstacle is, this week.  Her ability to be honest with herself, especially when it comes to sex, is somewhat in question—as in, has deliberately been thrown into question by the show all season long.

Making the Jax stuff extra disappointing.  The show just doesn't need to go that broad and stereotypical to consider masculinity—and in this episode of all …

I don't get your thing …