Episode Report Card Jessica: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT After Hours
By Jessica | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.08.2006
Elsewhere, Marc, Wil, and Ted mosey through the Mode offices, as Wil tries to talk the Texan into buying ad space by reminding him that lots of couture designers are making lines for discount brand stores. This is all true. She also thinks she can talk a designer into doing a line for Beau-Mart. Dude. Wil is good at her job. That's a really good way to talk him into the ad buy. Ted says that he'd like to discuss it over dinner, and she tells him that she made reservations at Babbo. But Ted's got somewhere else in mind....
Cut to Hogs and Heifers (which is the bar that fine film Coyote Ugly was based on. Basically, it's a Western-themed joint with hot waitresses who dance on the bar and where the female customers regularly take off their bras and hang them on the wall. If you go, don't wear YOUR La Perla unless you're willing to part with it after about nine body shots.) In fact, as Wil, Marc, and Ted enter, a wayward bra flies at them and lands on Marc's shoulder. He flicks it off as though it were a deadly scorpion.
At a much nicer, but possibly less amusing, establishment across town, Betty is trying to talk her way into a table at the hotel's restaurant. "But we're only fifteen minutes late," she says to the maitre d'. It must be noted that she looks insane in her prom dress. It actually makes Betty look more than unfashionable -- it makes her seem totally unobservant. See, this is the problem I am starting to have with this show. Betty's very smart, right? And she's surrounded by sharply dressed Modeites all day every day. Surely, she's sharp enough to know that her prom dress is not quite right. Even if she's not interested in fashion, if she was clever enough to pick out a totally acceptable dress shirt for Walter, wouldn't she be clever enough to know that a plain skirt and black sweater, with decent heels, would be better than the prom dress? She's clearly been reading Mode, because we just saw her surrounded by old copies. She's in story meetings. She's down in the Closet every day. I understand that part of the conceit of the show is that she's "Ugly" Betty. But after a certain point, she is just beginning to look remarkably clueless. Not about fashion -- I don't expect her to show up in the latest cocktail frock from Marchesa -- but about appropriateness. She looks...like she just escaped from the asylum in that dress. And I get that the show is over the top, but MY GOD. Anyway, the maitre d' is totally snotty about giving away their table, and Walter is more than ready to just give up and go upstairs and snuggle, but Betty puts her bitch on and informs the hostess that she is there from Mode. MODE! And they are promptly seated. It appears that Walter is horrified by Betty's little fit, but I actually found it refreshing. She wants to do a good job, and she wants the table she reserved. Are we supposed to agree with Walter that she should have accepted that their table had been given away, and slunk upstairs to watch cable with him? Because...I'm not going to agree with that.