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
Betty, never one to let something happen organically or prove herself before asking for favors, crawls right up inside Jodie's dress with neediness splashed across her face and asks Jodie to be her mentor. And it's a credit to Bernadette Peters that she actually manages to sell "Let's start with me not kicking you out of YETI" without even a hint of the obvious writeoff that this character would realistically do at this point -- just a subtle warning tone about the cart going behind the horse -- because if this were real life, you would get a bright red Family Feud XXX right across your face at this point. When did Betty's optimism and belief in self stop being inspiring and start looking pathetic? I guess when she stopped earning it on the back end. I'm giving this show one more week.
Betty acts totally fake and stupid with a random party guy, just like they taught her, and then later on goes to Queens, I guess for the tail end of the party. There's a huge mess in the kitchen, with a dramatically-lit overturned kitchen chair, and on her phone there are fifty thousand messages from silenced Hilda. She calls immediately, and Hilda's crying, and tells Betty that Ignacio had a heart attack.
"La Ritournelle" starts playing and you realize the episode's about to start: Molly's on Daniel's steps when he gets home, and tells him she can't deny her feelings for him. And not only that, but she dumped Connor. Daniel stares at her boring giant face and finally kisses her, and it is awesome because of Sebastian Tellier, and then meanwhile at Wili's house, she's lounging around looking hot, and Connor shows up looking broken and sad and drunk and then he just fucking grabs her and kisses her super awesome hard great job, and Papi's on life support and Justin is crying on Hilda's breast, and she still looks fucking amazing as usual, and Betty throws herself down on him and Hilda holds her hand, and man, I wish this paragraph was the whole episode but I don't like thinking that the awesome episode-ending montage is a crutch, or -- even worse -- that they only seem awesome when the episode is sucky otherwise, or -- worst of all -- both at once.
"This episode really just ... isn't that great." Let's find a song and turn the last two acts of this well-written and emotionally valid script into a montage. "But then what will we do for the other forty minutes of the episode?" Fuck it, all they ever talk about is the montages anyway. Just write any old fucking thing. "Should it be interesting or funny?" I guess so, if you've got time, but don't throw your back out. "Oh no, the writer's assistant from Men In Trees stole my Blackberry at our softball game!" Then I guess it's crunch time. Call Alex Patsavas and ask her what she was using months ago, and we'll just pick from that list at random. "Is this really what writing TV was supposed to be like?" Yes. It's kind of like writing TV. "Can I be in the Guild now? My health insurance is really expensive." Go write a Two & A Half Men or something and we'll talk.