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
What does it tell you that the best part of the episode is a wordless montage of Amanda playing in the Mode Closet? She dances past Wili and Connor fucking, and yuckily Marc is somehow in there too, while they are fucking, and then he grabs Marc and whisks her away. Um, it's Amanda. She's not going to notice. And if she notices she won't care. And if she cares, it will be random and creepy and not about what you think it's about. Anyway, he acts weird enough that she puts it together, and then he threatens her with badness, and she doesn't care, but the reason that he cares is because God "tests the pretty people so much more than the regular lumpy people," meaning that things are finally going his way: YETI, Wili's finally a EIC, etc. But now he can't ride her coattails because her coat is on the floor in a pile because she has lost her way: "It's just I've never had to deal with a boss who cared more about sex than work. Actually, maybe this is what working for Daniel is like."
Betty discusses all this crap with Marc for awhile, counseling him to "see those moments as career opportunities" and "step it up" and show everybody what you can do, and it's like: it is ugly. And it dresses like Minnie Mouse in a k-hole like Betty. And it talks, what it's saying right this second, is kind of like somebody's idea of what Betty would say, I guess. But it's still stupid and meaningless and glib. Just glib, just gestures toward something real that used to exist. This show is like a zombie, you know what I mean? And the people are so talented, and I'm going to miss these characters and actors so much, and so much of the qualities of its individual parts are still wonderful, but at the end of the day no matter how much makeup you slap on a zombie, it's still gonna have dead guy breath.
Anyway, they go track down some sad gay guy named Fabian to get dirt on Suzuki, but he won't dish about it because Suzuki is super famous. Amanda understands the need for discretion, because she dated someone famous and never told anybody: Jeremy Piven. "He goosed you on the subway once, Amanda. You talk about it constantly." Amanda threatens Fabian with starting a rumor about him having ambiguous genitalia, "like a Ken doll," which she characterizes as "the kind of stank that don't wash off." He gives them a random address in Jersey and they run off to put a few more nails in the coffin of this show.
Betty lies to Hilda about how she didn't just leave her adult father, who is in possession of his faculties and is a reasonably intelligent man, in a state-of-the-art medical facility where tests vital to his continued health were being performed under presumably professional supervision. People will do anything to avoid admitting they're in Jersey. Daniel pushes forward lamely on the whole work vs. family conflict this show has settled on, all, "Guess my photos aren't all that important in the big picture," and she's like, "Um, they are, give me a break." Then they read the mail at the address they got from Fabian, and learn this address belongs to a Byron Wu. They think about how maybe that's his boyfriend, but it's not.