All the Dogs’ Names
Season 1
Episode 7
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Amid the end of his relationship with Cristle, Greg opens his heart to the possibility of a real friendship with the bonkers Walt.
Photo: Katrina Marcinowski/HBO
We’ve reached Thanksgiving break, and I, somehow, have only just realized that Greg’s job technically has an expiration date. Turkey day means that the end of the semester is nigh, and Greg’s first writing workshop is almost complete. Since HBO just made the very smart decision to renew Rooster for a second season (yay!), I’m willing to bet that Greg is going to take on a more permanent position in the final three episodes of the season. Perhaps he’ll even be Dylan’s pick for head of the English department? The man is certainly living a full life at Ludlow, and there seems to be little reason for him to leave.
“All the Dogs’ Names” finds Greg settling into a comfortable routine following his breakup with Cristle. The breakup itself is pretty funny, with Cristle taking the lead (as usual) and then spiraling into despair when Greg doesn’t fight for her … even though she would have rejected him anyway. Speaking of Tommy (in a roundabout way!), our boy is not doing great in this episode; I’m worried for him! He shows up to Greg’s seminar in dark shades, claiming that all he can see when he looks at his professor is “a snake between two Gatorade trees.” Thanks, Tommy, for that visual. Also, a snake? Damn, Greg. I’m very grateful that Tommy doesn’t seem too far removed from his relationship with Greg, because the show almost seemed to be suggesting that Walt’s forced friendship might replace Tommy’s genuine friendship with Greg, and I was starting to worry.
Not that I’m complaining about this new development in the Walt and Greg saga. As Walt admits, he is a bit tough to take, but his heart is in the right place. When Greg installs a latch lock on the inside of his door so that Walt can’t barge in at any time, Walt takes umbrage to this bid for privacy. Greg tells Dylan that he decided to put up the lock when Walt walked in on him literally gazing at his navel one day. That’s a funny thing to do, Greg! And I get why you’d want to do it in private! Walt has zero boundaries, and he’s been compiling a list of transgressions against Greg since day one. In a fun scene, he levels no fewer than six accusations against his writer-in-residence, and Greg responds to them all, rapid-fire. It seems like Walt is most worried about Greg conspiring with his wife to take over Walt’s job, but Greg disabuses him of that notion pretty quickly.
Walt is also insulted by the fact that Greg and Cristle clearly had sex on his desk, which Greg understands. Feeling guilty, he decides to help Walt get Dylan to accept the head-of-English-department gig instead of fighting for the dean-of-faculty one. However, this assistance is short-lived once he runs into Katie, Zoey, and Dylan chatting about how there are so few women in positions of power at the college. When the women figure out what Greg is up to, they get him to send a selfie to Walt, indicating their collective displeasure. Greg’s smile, contrasted with the frowns and thumbs-down from the rest of the crew, makes for an entertaining visual.
Walt actually shows some growth here, as he genuinely contemplates the feedback from Greg, Dylan, and Katie. Katie finally gets a scene with Walt! And it’s a good one! She enthusiastically advocates for Dylan to become dean of faculty because “everyone loves her.” This, oddly enough, seems to be the thing that ultimately changes Walt’s mind. Dean Riggs is his friend, but he’s also kind of mired in the misogynist past. When Walt confronts him about his recent transgressions, he asks for a chance to change, and he’s pretty convincing! (Alan Ruck gives a great puppy dog face.) But in the end, Walt does what’s best for the school and appoints Dylan as the dean of faculty. The blossoming look of joy on her face after he informs her of his decision is a delight to behold.
Walt is a man looking for friendship, but he also wants to be good at his job. These two things are at odds because he often uses his power to get people in his orbit to act in the capacity of friends. Case in point: His “coffee walks” with Dylan. Really, he’s a lonely man. Men are often lonely! There’s a male-loneliness epidemic! Greg is lonely, too! The scene in which Walt admits to Greg that he’s lonely and that he was hoping the two of them could be close is really lovely and delivered with heartfelt vulnerability by John C. McGinley. Greg opens his heart to the possibility of a real friendship with this bonkers dude. And Walt fully wins him over when he makes the right decision by giving Dylan the position. The two men gleefully ride electric bikes into the distance as the episode ends, friendship in the winter air.
Elsewhere, the Archie-Sunny-Katie love triangle still sort of feels like it’s part of a separate show. The connective tissue of Katie and Greg’s relationship is sweet but thin. We do also get a bit of a connection when Sunny’s dad, Fred (Jim O’Heir) — hi, Jerry, er, Garry!— comes to town to celebrate his gestating grandson. It turns out that Fred is a big fan of the Rooster books, and after an initial awkward encounter, in which Greg pretends not to know who Fred is, the two men chat about their weird association. However, that’s pretty much it for an integration between the story lines.
Archie is really testing my patience, and his face is getting more punchable by the day. He’s stringing both of these gorgeous, accomplished women along, but he doesn’t really seem to care about the heartbreak and stress he’s causing. We see him show up at Katie’s class with her favorite croissant and some witty banter, and he promises that he’ll come every day until she agrees to take him back. Katie resists this at first, but then, literally just as she gives in, Archie backs off. It’s physically painful to watch Katie spot Archie at the top of the stairs and realize that he isn’t coming to see her. It’s like that moment from The Simpsons where Bart pinpoints the exact moment that Ralph’s heart “rips in half.” Charly Clive does an outstanding job of making us feel what Katie’s feeling in this moment. My own heart hurt as I watched her bubble of hope pop. (Notes while I was watching this scene: Oh wow. He’s really going to ignore her. Ow. OUCH, OMG ow ow ow fucking ouch.) In the wake of this rejection by a man who’s only ever disappointed her, Clive lets a host of emotions run over her face. She’s clearly distraught over Archie ignoring her, but she’s also kicking herself for ever having had hope in the first place. And that, in and of itself, is kind of a tragedy.
Archie’s change of heart does not come lightly, but he surely should have walked down those stairs to explain the situation to Katie instead of running away from her like a cowardly asshole. After Sunny’s dad tells him that he should give himself over to the process, he goes with her to her OB/GYN appointment. They offer her a spontaneous ultrasound — this is not at all how prenatal care works, but go off, Bill Lawrence Cinematic Universe! — and Archie suddenly falls in love with his son in utero. Sunny is happy, but she’s also still considering the job in New York. Again, I beseech this fictional character from my recapper perch: Go, girl, go! Run from this fickle man as fast as you can! In a just world, Katie and Sunny would find love with people that deserve them, and Archie would be left to contemplate his sad, lonely existence. (With regular visits with his son, of course. I’m not a monster.) Perhaps he can join Walt and Greg’s electric-bicycle gang and they can give him lessons in how to be a flawed but accountable man. With only three episodes left until the end of the season, it feels like anything’s possible.
• For all of Greg’s talk about taking over the hockey-coach position and promising Officer Rory that his kid will get time on the ice, there is no hockey in this episode. Is it weird that I kind of wanted to see some hockey? I’m not even a hockey fan!
• Fred as Sunny’s dad did not make sense to me at all, until Fred reveals that Sunny was adopted. That was a real aha moment for me. This fact brings her decision to keep the baby into much sharper focus, and I feel like it would have been beneficial to reveal this detail earlier in the run of episodes to flesh her character (and her motivations) out a bit more.
• “Please know that my door is always open, especially when my gatekeeper is out having a nervous breakdown.” Once again, John C. McGinley wins the best line read of the episode.
An earlier version of this recap included an inaccurate scene description; it has been corrected.
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