Episode Report Card Jessica: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Box And The Bunny
By Jessica | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.04.2006
Later that night. Fey Sommers's apartment. Bradford lets himself in and goes through her stuff. As he sneaks around there...
...Gina breaks into the Suarez residence.
Bradford finds a music box, which he opens. While he sticks it into a knapsack...
...Gina steals The Book.
The next morning, Betty comes down the stairs, removing her curlers. She makes a horrified face when she realizes that The Book is gone.
After the ads, Betty is tearing the house apart looking for The Book. Trash is strewn all over the kitchen floor. (I would like to take a brief moment to comment that the Suarezes have a great pistachio-green vintage fridge.) Papa -- after looking at the mess and commenting that this is why he doesn't want to get a dog -- points out that surely there are computer backups of everything in The Book, so how could this be such a big deal? ["Good point, Papi!" -- Wing Chun] Justin wanders into the kitchen and asks what's going on. "She lost The Book," Hilda tells him, and he gasps incredibly dramatically and covers his face with his hands. This reaction appears to bring home the severity of the issue for the rest of the family; Hilda runs off to look in the living room, and Papa -- because he finally believes it's a crisis --starts to cook.
In the other room, Hilda has found something. It's not The Book so much as a ransom note from Gina. She wants the money for her TV. Betty looks horrified. Hilda turns to her son and tells him to put his headphones on and, as soon as she knows Justin can't hear her, spits, "THAT BITCH." Betty and Hilda are infuriated by this. I hate to say it -- and I certainly don't think Gina should have stolen The Book -- but Betty did break Gina's TV. She kind of does owe her a new one. I mean, Walter is the one who broke up with her. He didn't even cheat on her, as far as we know. Now, they might have broken up because of Gina, but that doesn't mean that Gina deserves to have her TV broken. You just can't go breaking people's TVs, is what I'm saying. Won't someone respect the sanctity of the flatscreen? ["Whoever installed that shit -- Walter, presumably -- should have hung it more securely so that it could survive the kinds of dramatic door-slammings that are apparently commonplace in Queens." -- Wing Chun]
Over at Daniel's, Amanda comes out of the bathroom and coos, "If that showerhead could pay my bills, I would marry it." I don't think that's a comment on how clean her hair turned out, if you know what I mean. I would be more explicit, but I have a One Masturbation Joke Per Recap limit. Amanda crawls over to Daniel as he listens to his voicemail. He freaks out when he hears that Betty took The Book home. "To QUEENS? Ew," Amanda says. Daniel calls Betty at home -- Mode doesn't give the EIC's assistant a cell phone? Doubtful -- where Betty and Hilda have a rapid, whispered argument over how to handle this. Betty thinks she needs to come clean with him. Hilda makes Justin put his headphones on again, and then advises her sister to lie, lie, lie. Over on Daniel's end of the phone, Amanda rubs herself all over him, and advises him to fire poor Betty: "Fire her right now. I would be such a better assistant." Daniel just tells her to go get dressed. "Okay, but I'm telling you, you're going to get it back and there's going to be chimichurri sauce all over it," says Amanda. So, Betty takes Hilda's advice and lies, telling Daniel that she's looking at the Natalie Whitman photos right now, and that she thinks it's really brave of him to use the unretouched ones. Daniel freaks out that The Book contains the original pictures, and tells her that if those photos get out, it would be DISASTROUS. He's sending a car for her right now!