Episode Report Card Jessica: B+ | 5 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Pilot
By Jessica | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.27.2006
Betty heads down to the cafeteria for lunch, where Stanley Tucci tells her she had better lose weight and pull herself together if she wants to fit in at Runway. ...Oh, wait. That's another story. Anyway, everyone eyeballs Betty, but no one seems interested in having her sit next to them. Amanda the receptionist actually puts her bag on the seat next to her. Aw, poor Betty. I hate the idea of someone not having anyone to have lunch with, even though when I worked in a big, corporate-type office, half of the time I really, really just wanted to be left alone with my book. But you've got to have someone to eat with when you want to bitch about work. Now I'm sad. Betty finds a seat, and begins to unpack her brown bag. A Scottish girl comes sweeping up to her. "Hey, you," she opens cheerfully. "Betty, right? Daniel Meade's new assistant?" She explains that everyone knows everything about everyone at Mode, and introduces herself: she's Christina, she works in The Closet, she's a seamstress, and she's wearing a jacket that looks like two coats fused together because sometimes they let her keep the crappy stuff from last season, but she has to improvise, since everything is a size zero, and she is not. "Anyway, I like it," she yammers, "mostly because I'm by myself, away from all the bitches that work at Mode." She then calls over two normal-looking girls -- Zelda and Nancy -- and introduces them to Betty. Aw, our girl's making some friends. That makes me much feel better. Evil Marc and Amanda give the foursome a once-over as they leave the cafeteria, and roll their eyes. "It's the bizarre version of Sex and the City," Evil Marc says. "Stop it, I'm GAGGING," Amanda chortles.
Meanwhile, Bradford is feeding birds in the park. Gross. I hate birds. Please don't encourage them. A man in a leather jacket plonks down next to him on the park bench and comments that he looks like any old schmo, just feeding the birds in the park. Bradford comments that he doubts most people are feeding the birds homemade, artisanal bread. Because normal people would rather eat those delicious buttered carbs than waste them on gross, flying rats. "There's nothing to worry about," says Mysterious Leatherman. "She's gone. Weren't you sitting front row at the funeral?" "Closed casket. Double, triple check. The things Fey Sommers knew about me. About the company," Bradford says glumly. Mysterious Leatherman says he's on it.
Over at Mode, the Torture Betty Into Quitting portion of the hour has begun. First, Daniel tells her that there's a problem with his lunch. See, he loves coleslaw, but he doesn't like cabbage. He needs her to separate the dressing from the cabbage, which she appears to do with a pair of Tweezermans that I think she should also use on her brows. Don't get me wrong: she's terribly cute. But everyone looks better without a monobrow. Daniel calls Betty in the middle of the night; Daniel makes her bring him coffee; Daniel makes her walk his huge, overpowering dog. He makes her personally remove gum from his shoe. And, frankly, the gum and the coleslaw excepted, all the rest of that stuff is pretty typical assistant work. What is not typical is that Daniel also makes Betty sit on his stoop and air-traffic-control the entrances and exits of the women he is sleeping with. To wit: a woman gets out a cab in front of Daniel's building, and Betty calls up, telling him, "The red turkey is on the move." She rolls her eyes at the code, but honestly, this would be the only part of her job I would enjoy. Not because I like sitting out in the middle of the night in the cold, or because I condone infidelity, but because she's sitting on a gossip goldmine, and I'm nosy. And I like speaking in code.