Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Elle In A Handbasket
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.08.2009
So really, what this episode is about is about the very last thing -- Ignacio's heart attack -- and the fake contrived conflict that it symbolizes. That's at the end of the episode, although handled so poorly that you couldn't be blamed for finding Betty to be the only non-asshole left standing at the end of the episode. But then instead of working organically toward that ending, the story works backwards, with 3x5 notecards scattered in its wake like breadcrumbs. The idea being that you have to earn this emotional climax by demonstrating the two sides of the argument (work v. family) and resolving them in an unexpected and powerful way (Betty ignores calls about heart attack). Never write backwards, because we can always tell when you're faking it.
As Betty's side goes, this works somewhat: we see her struggling with it, trying to have it all, scrambling to offer compromises to satisfy all three (Daniel/Mode, Jodie/YETI and the Suarezes). Where it falls down is the "networking" subplot, which unnecessarily tries to shoehorn itself into all three where the Halston dress task would have sufficed, and the Suarez part. Because the Suarezes do not share a fucking leg to stand on this week, because Betty is too good at taking care of them for them to have anything to bitch about. And I'm sorry, teleplay on paper, but simply taking a break every three or four scenes to scream BETTY YOU ARE OVERLOOKING YOUR FAMILY doesn't make it feel true, it just makes us feel screamed at.
The only thing that would make it feel true is if she actually overlooked her family at any point, which she never does, because this show has never managed to find the balance between Saint Betty and Human Betty, which is why I'm happiest when they find ways around this particular kind of storyline. (I would never suggest going anywhere as retarded or clueless as the plagiarism episode, for example, ever again.) But it's not because they can't do it -- and God knows America's talented enough to sell anything, she could make Betty operating a meth lab seem adorable and slapstick -- but because this show still has this made-up likeability issue with Betty, and this season seems to really want to sell us on her awesomeness. Which seems more and more desperate the less and less awesome she gets.
All of which means a lot of inorganic complaining from Hilda, puffed-up chesting from Ignacio about literally nothing, and Betty running around frantically but never getting anywhere, because there's nowhere for her to go, because the entire story rests in the last five seconds of the episode, which is bullshit because when you're a viewer, you don't have the option of watching it backwards: it's a story, and it works like stories work. And instead we have gestures, punchlines with sketched-in setup, no parallel structure to speak of unless you think "half-hour of limbo" is a structure, and jokes from the age of Brandon and Brenda.