Don should be headed for self-destruction, but he is a survivor. No one can throw anything at him that he can't survive, and yet he is his own worst enemy; he might yet throw himself a blow he can't survive.
Here, Don's good impulse to help his neighbor's son--after having coveted (and more) his neighbor's wife--ends up looking less than virtuous when his daughter, Sally, walks in on him with Sylvia Rosen, the neighbor's wife and mother of the boy he has helped.
Don desperately wants Sally to believe him when he tells her that what she saw wasn't what she saw. "Mrs. Rosen was very upset and I was trying to comfort her." In a comedy, Sally would retort that that must be why the two of them were half naked, but this is not comedy: the comedy is drained from the situation by the pain of both Sally and Don. Sally through no fault of her own. (Don never asks what Sally was doing in Mrs. Rosen's apartment; that is irrelevant at this point.) Don's inability to face the fact that Sally is too old to buy his outrageous cover story is more pathetic than funny.
The scene where the boy and his father come to thank Don for his help is full of tension as Don's opportunity to play the hero is thwarted by the fact that Sally, sitting there as audience, knows that Don is less than a hero. And Don knows it too. His moment of triumph in the eyes of most people in the room is one of humiliation in his own and Sally's.
Here, Don's good impulse to help his neighbor's son--after having coveted (and more) his neighbor's wife--ends up looking less than virtuous when his daughter, Sally, walks in on him with Sylvia Rosen, the neighbor's wife and mother of the boy he has helped.
Don desperately wants Sally to believe him when he tells her that what she saw wasn't what she saw. "Mrs. Rosen was very upset and I was trying to comfort her." In a comedy, Sally would retort that that must be why the two of them were half naked, but this is not comedy: the comedy is drained from the situation by the pain of both Sally and Don. Sally through no fault of her own. (Don never asks what Sally was doing in Mrs. Rosen's apartment; that is irrelevant at this point.) Don's inability to face the fact that Sally is too old to buy his outrageous cover story is more pathetic than funny.
The scene where the boy and his father come to thank Don for his help is full of tension as Don's opportunity to play the hero is thwarted by the fact that Sally, sitting there as audience, knows that Don is less than a hero. And Don knows it too. His moment of triumph in the eyes of most people in the room is one of humiliation in his own and Sally's.
