Episode Report Card Potes: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Thousand Words By Friday
By Potes | Season 2 | Episode 13 | Aired on 01.23.2008
Back at the Secret Sex Dungeon, Amanda laments the fact that her real father Gene Simmons won't return her calls or emails or Father's Day cards. Isn't he too busy, like, shooting steely glances at Omarosa or something? As Marc queens that Amanda has been so one-note lately, he gets an idea. Gene Simmons is a musician, so Amanda has to communicate with him in his own language. Hebrew? No, the language of music! All Amanda needs to do, says Marc, is write a song, practice it, record it, make a video of it, post the video on YouTube, and wait for Gene Simmons to see it. At the very least she'll get an appearance on Oprah out of it. Amanda is in.
Back at the Jungle Fever Room, Daniel's dancing hottie introduces herself as Renee. She already knows who he is, since he's the famous Daniel Meade. Daniel gets a message and has to leave Renee momentarily. He goes up to Betty and asks her if she still has a list of freelancers in her Blackberry; the writer who was supposed to interview Phil Roth just backed out. Betty starts gushing that she loves Phil Roth, and brings up the time Daniel accidentally double-booked two dates at the same restaurant, forcing Betty to fake a seizure so that Daniel could run out the back door with the hotter one. In short, he owes Betty. It was awfully nice of her not to pull out the old "Remember that time last week when I saved your mother from being incarcerated for life?" That would just seem preachy. A reminder of the chopstick under the tongue leads Daniel to give Betty the assignment -- 1,000 words by Friday. He has faith in her. And it's awfully short notice to find anyone else. She's too excited by the whole thing to get too mad about that latter statement, and jumps off to tell Henry.
And then, sexy music leads us -- and Daniel and Renee -- back to Daniel's apartment. As they leave the lights off and fall on the bed, a voice says, "That's not the boob you think it is." It's Claire! I can't tell you how many times Judith Light had to say that to Danny Pintauro. Daniel is shocked to find Claire there. She says that she had to get out of the house -- too many memories. She tells Renee not to let her get in her way, and goes to sleep on the couch while giving permission for the two lovebirds to do whatever they like; in prison she learned to sleep through anything. Renee decides to leave, but on good terms, saying that a man who takes care of his mother knows how to treat a woman. What this has to do with Daniel, I have no idea. Renee and Daniel plan on seeing each other again. Sexily.
The next day, Betty -- clutching her hardcover copy of The Human Stain -- marches through the Mode office and to her interview. She runs into Gio, who seems super-excited that Phil Roth is in the house. Betty seems surprised that Gio's heard of him, and tosses out a few titles. Gio sees her an American Pastoral, and raises her the fact that the guy in the conference room is not Phillip Roth, it's Phil Roth. The Phil Roth who writes books on how to pick up chicks. And seriously, I'd take the latter and blow a kiss heavenward. Betty, of course, thought that Daniel was doing his annoying casual thing when he said "Phil Roth," and certainly does not want to interview a guy who writes books of such tawdry subject matter. Better than the new bestsellers from Tommy Pynchon or E. Doctorow, I bet. Gio tells her to go in with an open mind, because Phil Roth has a lot to say.