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 heads over to the poor man's Zoolander with the shadowy Halston collector sitting in a dark room with opera playing and a candystriped tie, and the guy tells her "Betty Suarez" already picked up the dress, because Nikki Blonsky gave him her business card and used her name. Betty heads back to Mode with the news, and Wili fires her immediately. Daniel of course laughs this off, and Betty grovels about how Nikki stole the thing while she was washing ranch off her sweater, and they have a conference call with Elle. It's cute, as celebrity cameos often are, although if you have to ask whether losing Nina Garcia was bad for Elle, all you have to do is consider the fact that they hired Nikki Blonsky to work there.
Betty and Nikki scream at each other over the web-conference screens and it's embarrassing and unrealistically unprofessional, but not really in that day-glo Betty way it could have been, and Wili finally shuts them all up and tells them to stop holding Mode hostage, and then the Elle people take off, and Nikki smirks at everybody, and Wili's thoughts turn once again to murder and she tells Betty she doesn't belong in this business and runs off. Daniel passive-aggressively takes responsibility for this fuckup by admitting he shouldn't have expected basic shit from Betty, and runs off all sucky and dumb. Is his last name Suarez suddenly?
Flushing talk and Scottish talk abound, so who knows what they're talking about, and Ignacio tells Betty to man up and stop feeling bad about fucking up, and she whines about Daniel losing faith in her, and she's all about tearing up Nikki's business card as this act of ultimate revenge. Justin comes in to say that "Crazy Fingernail Lady" is asking for rum, which is the second laugh of the entire episode, and then Betty locates the business card of the Gorgeous Gourmet, who is catering the Elle party that's going on the same night as all these other parties in this episode, of course. A lightbulb goes off over her bushy little head and she gets Marc to meet her and Gorgeous Gourmet at the Elle offices to steal back the dress. Hilda -- resplendent and professional, with a curly side-pony -- spots her and immediately starts bitching about how Betty's not being demonstrative enough about Hilda's amazing life. Which has yet to begin, because this is a party for a thing that does not yet exist and does not require Betty's presence in any way.