Summary
Rooster finds pathos in an unlikely place in “All the Dogs’ Names”, which is one of the better installments, even if not every aspect of it entirely works.
I didn’t expect the most meaningful sentiment of Rooster thus far to come from Walt, of all people, but here we are in Episode 7, three half-hours removed from the finale, and the hothouse has become a source of surprising pathos. Walt’s admission that he’s lonely in “All the Dogs’ Names” is a means to an end, a way to further the subplot involving Dylan’s battle with Riggs over Ludlow’s Dean of Faculty position, but it resonates because it’s unexpected. For all his bluster, Walt is a man out of time who, unlike Riggs, doesn’t love that he’s being left behind.
In a weird way, Rooster having already been renewed for Season 2 feels like a bit of a net negative for this episode and may well be for the next few. Part of Walt opening up about his idealistic desire for him and Greg to become besties is the idea that Greg’s position is temporary, that soon, his class will have run its course, and he’ll be leaving. Among the other things it does, I’m pretty sure that this instalment has opened a way for Greg to stick around Ludlow long-term, presumably taking on the now-vacant head of English position. It only makes sense.
The downside is that I think “All the Dogs’ Names” slightly neglects the fallout from last week’s discovery that Cristle is Tommy’s mom. Tommy does interact with Greg here, but only briefly, and he’s not interested in talking things out. Cristle, for her part, decides to break things off, then gets upset when Greg doesn’t fight for her, despite the separation being her idea and her openly admitting that she would have rejected him even if he did. Shortly after, Cristle disappears from the office on a premature Thanksgiving sabbatical, leaving Greg to get reluctantly involved in the rest of the office politics.
Hence, Walt. Walt’s smarting from a series of transgressions committed by Greg that at one point Walt presents in list form. They include having sex with Cristle on his desk and padlocking the door between their offices. But Walt is also stuck in the middle of the dispute between Riggs and Dylan. To avoid having to deal with it, he tasks Greg with talking Dylan into accepting the Head of English position, but Greg happens to broach the subject with Dylan when she’s in the middle of discussing the lack of women in positions of power at Ludlow with Katie and her rebellious student, Zoey. It’s obvious that the winds of change are blowing in only one direction, but Walt’s reluctant to turn on Riggs because he’s basically his only friend. You get the sense that’s why he was so keen for him and Greg to be chums; so that he could upgrade his best pal to a newer, less controversial model.
Rooster Episode 7 seems to think there’s a bit more tension in Walt’s decision than there ends up being in reality. And I think the whole subplot is undercut by Riggs being a cartoon misogynist who really shouldn’t be the Dean of Faculty in any circumstances. But it’s still a nice moment when Walt promotes Dylan, one really sold by Danielle Deadwyler and John C. McGinley. The latter is the real star of this episode, and his sauna chat with a fully-clothed Greg is one of the better scenes of the season thus far. Walt’s characterisation has been pretty note-perfect, a bit of a dinosaur who has consistently exhibited zero boundaries but also a desire to improve, to be there for people, and to be good at his job. He’s a great character.
The other half of “All the Dogs’ Names” adds some new complications to the love triangle between Archie, Sunny, and Katie, the most significant being the arrival of Sunny’s dad, Fred, who turns out to be a Rooster superfan. I’m less sold on this now than I was at the start of the season, I must admit, because Archie is becoming less and less likeable by the episode. Initially, his blundering seemed like a decent guy trapped in an impossible situation through his own hubris, but here, his determined wooing of Katie in an effort to persuade her to take him back becomes actively sinister, especially since he’s giving Sunny zero indication that he’s checking out of their relationship. And I don’t even particularly like Sunny! But Archie’s fickle nature is going to make a victim of her for no reason other than his cowardice, and that seems a bit too harsh a fate.
Archie’s turnaround is a bit too sudden, too. Inspired by Fred, he attends Sunny’s routine OB/GYN appointment and gets to see their baby in an ultrasound scan. Understandably, he falls immediately in love. But his way of dealing with that is to simply ghost Katie as she stands outside his classroom waiting for her daily coffee and pastry delivery. The mix of embarrassment and pain that plays across her face neatly encapsulates the harm Archie’s self-serving behaviour is causing. And with three episodes to go, I’m starting to think that he might end up wrecking even more lives by the time he’s done. One of them, though, is very likely to be his own.
