Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT TV Is A Medium
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.22.2009
Betty swings by the hospital to see if her father has survived the battery of routine noninvasive tests that are performed every day in this cardiologist's office, and her dad is gone. Just wandered the fuck out into the street. Which is, for me, ideal because he's horrible, but Betty has to throw a big fucking weird-out, and then immediately call Hilda so she can bitch and moan about it and they can both look like total idiots.
In a half-assed attempt at a sudden B plot, two-thirds of the way through the episode, Marc is charming the Teuto-Gallic Trio and being awesome and charming the shit out of all three of them, and Wili runs in and makes an ass of herself, throwing Marc under the bus in such a lame, hamfisted way that it's completely unbelievable: "I had no idea you were here, which is particularly tragic since I specifically told my assistant to call me as soon as you all arrived. This is... beginning to be a problem. So if it happens again, it'll be back to spritzing perfume at the makeup counter. That will be all, Marc," she says. "Nice to look at, but you could sit a Picasso behind his desk to do the same job," she says.
Which I guess if you're basing your ideas about business or the luxury industry based on a sloppy viewing of The Devil Wears Prada and a handful of Sex & The City episodes, that kind of behavior might seem realistic, but if you've ever been around people or enjoyed the company of a person then it just comes off as classless and tasteless and pointless as the majority of the episode. Try treating your assistant like this in front of a possible client and see how fucking far it gets you.
Hilda beats it into Manhattan so that she can throw her huge fucking fit for no reason. It goes like this:
Hilda: "You lost Dad!"
Betty: "I know, sorry!"
Hilda: "You lost Dad!"
Betty: "I know, let's go find him."
Hilda: "Or we can stand on this street corner and bitch and fight and cry for no reason, for the rest of our lives."
Betty: "Hey, there's the doctor! Randomly! Does he know where Dad is?"
Doctor: "Two hours ago I did, but he's on the move I bet. He seemed like he went senile off-screen in this episode and thus that would make sense as a source of narrative tension we're keeping secret from the audience in order to show disrespect both to our viewers and to the basic concepts of storytelling. But I wouldn't worry about it, two strange girls I don't know and am not getting paid to deal with, because he just had a QUADRUPLE BYPASS and thus isn't moving SUPER FAST."
Hilda: "It won't matter how slow he's moving, because I am going to stand right here yelling about how much I care about him, instead of actually looking for him, until the sun goes down."