Why didn't anybody push the French kid down the stairs? I'll do it. Anyway, it's tomorrow, the day after the big bash, a bunch of mannequins and ice sculptures got slapped and smashed and roughed up, and the cops are interrogating Betty about where Daniel spent the evening after things got horrible(r) at the New Mode shindig. Betty Rashomons to six hours ago, when she was rushing around while Ignacio pretended they were having breakfast by bugging her on the phone. She is wearing a fit-inducing blue print granny dress in polyester with a big stupid neckerchief and a weird Kmart shirt-thing over it with a psychedelic print in red and white that looks like a headache feels.
Out in the hallway, she discovers her umbrella is gone, even though as she protests she is totally street-savvy from growing up in Queens and not naïve or gullible or overly trusting. Ignacio calls her dumb for leaving her umbrella in the stand outside her door, just like when she let some guys "borrow" her bike in the seventh grade. She protests that those guys totally said they'd bring it back, and puts a Betty shine on it, hoping she won't need it anyway.
Of course, it's raining. Amanda congratulates her on her improved look as she enters the Mode offices, and she ignores her, wishing "Daniels" a good morning. DJ says something irritating and French, pronounces himself "Audi Five K," and wanders away to annoy elsewhere. Betty is perky to an annoying degree, handing Daniel his schedule for his first day back, reminding him that almost all his mail is being forwarded to Alexis, and offering to take his shit to the dry cleaner since he's finally stopped wearing tracksuits. He tosses a dusty raincoat in her face and asks her, since he wasn't available to take Claire home last night, to tell anybody that asks that they were packing up the Player offices late into the night. Betty wonders if the simplest explanation wouldn't be to just tell the truth, and he stutters for awhile.
Marc hops up on Amanda's desk looking fly in a popped-collar polo and red neckerchief to announce that Wilhelmina is in the hospital. When everyone gasps, he clarifies that she's visiting her surrogate, at which point Betty -- basically alone -- gasps again. "Don't worry, the baby and Wilhelmina are fine," he assures them, and Betty asks about Christina. "You know... I didn't ask."
Bouquet-bearing Betty goes to visit Christina in the hospital, where she's lying with a bandage around her head and acting like she has a concussion even more fiercely than normal, because this time the concussion is all too real. She whispers that she was pushed down the stairs, and then we hop to Fashion Buzz, where Lloyd tells us all about the Baby Mama Drama, including a cute animated stick-figure of Christina bopping down the stairs. As though she'd ever been that thin, drinking the way she does. "Or was she pushed?!" he cries, over a hilarious pop-up video representation of the suspects. It starts with the Meades, of course -- "The Playboy," "The Tranny," and an angry jailhouse rockstar picture of Claire -- and quickly overwhelms the screen with pictures of every one of Wili's "frenemies" from, like, every episode: Gina Gershon's more-insane-even-than-reality lips, designers, that little gay guy that's everywhere, that rock musician with Amanda's tongue, the baseball player, Martha Stewart, Christian and my personal hero Nina Garcia, Betty White, Posh... Even the wife of Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez is up in this bitch. Wili always did hate South American Communists most of all.
Wili gives a whole press conference about finding the person who threatened her unborn child -- whisper from Marc -- "...And others..." She offers a hundred K for info and squeezes out part of a tear.
Jump immediately to Wili, taking advantage, -- as any Big Business opportunist would -- of the Schiavo-rific opportunity that just fell in her lap, via stairwell. The more they talk about her creepy frozen-sperm zombie baby, the less they'll talk about the Angelina-in-a-block-of-ice failure that was Wili's inaugural (and only) issue. Besides, she explains, if somebody gives you chintz, you have two options: bitch about how it's actually upholstery fabric, brew up some nice cold chintzade, or make a fabulous bolero jacket. Okay, one of those was mine, but I'm not, as Marc puts, it a "diabolical fashion genius," as he reminds her that her baby -- "And others!" -- are in the hospital. Wili agrees: they have to stage many long nights at the hospital, fretting and worrying uselessly, so that nobody forgets the real victim here. Who is? Marc doesn't know, even as he's asking, but I bet you do: "Me."
The second the cops -- who BTW are not even that cute but then, like somewhere between Henry and Marc and Cliff and Coach Tony and Daniel Sr., they broke the Cute-Meter© on this show forever ago so who knows what "moderately cute" means, plus they're all authoritative -- enter, Amanda crawls over the desk toward them like Cristal Connors after some Doggy Chow, confessing to anything and everything. "You have to interrogate me for like hours and hours. And I do not break easy." She breaks character -- or whatever Black Snake Moan character she's attempting at this moment -- and confides, "I am totally easy." I feel like I still haven't gotten that quintessential Amanda scene this year, although this episode has a few contenders; because the cops don't know about how broken her Loony-Meter© can get, they think they're scared just from this. They don't know from scared -- she's at like a 3. Betty saves them from Amanda, who screams "BUT I'M GUILTY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" and then, brilliantly, hangs out on the desk long after they're gone, kicking her feet and being nuts on her own time. Meanwhile, Betty goes from usher to ushee as the cops take her in for questioning, closing the loop from the opening scene.
Now: Same thing. She equivocates for a bit about whether she knows where Daniel was, and then ... Tells the cops that he told her to lie about his whereabouts. The end. Without any stuttering or anything, just opens her stupid mouth and says it. I mean, really? I know it fits with the whole "Betty's faith in people: retarded or justified?" theme, but it seems like really lazy fucking writing to do it this way. Like for this scene she's just going to be stupid as shit, and then go back to being Betty in a sec. Kinda like last week, and the week before. Huh. The cops are like, "He told you to lie." She says, essentially, yes. And her ass is so shocked that the cops find this interesting that it's suddenly a whole new scene, and she's bitching at Ignacio about how the cops have some nerve thinking that Daniel is covering his tracks when all Betty did was tell them that. Bored of Betty's senseless and unending prattling, Justin points out that Mariska Hargitay is rocking some serious pantsuits of late. Thank you! I couldn't have segued from total retardedness any better than that, girlfriend.
Ignacio points out that if Daniel is innocent, which he obviously is, then Betty's being a moron, which she obviously is, and all three of them cosign, so of course the worry falls right off her shoulders and onto their linoleum, joining the ground-in dirt and grime of all the worries of before. Hilda comes in, covered in the ground-in dirt and grime of SIN, and Betty tosses some judgments her way, even though she totally shacked up with a baby daddy for like a hundred thousand silly-ass years. In which he took off his shirt approximately 2.4 times.
Hilda swears she's the same person, only now with extra whore, and plus how dare Betty judge her, because -- unlike every other married dude in the history of the universe -- Coach Tony's situation is "complicated," and anyway, can Hilda and Tony borrow Betty's apartment in the city? The better to ... have a conversation they shouldn't even be having? I'm sorry, but the conversation is just as obvious and short as it was all summer: "Still married? Then no." It's not that fucking hard to get a divorce. If he doesn't, guess what? He's just not that into you. Case closed. Stop hanging your self-worth on an emotional adolescent and get a real boyfriend, loser. Betty, who is back to being stupid, gives in, all, "Okay, you can use my apartment as a fuck nest ... Just as long as he's not cheating on his wife!"
Amanda begs the cops to handcuff her, worrying Betty on several levels, and she sprint-waddles around to Daniel's office to warn him about how she totally sold him out for no reason whatsoever. Daniel wigs out a tiny bit about why she would do that, because the answer -- no narrative or reason consistent with Betty Suarez the fictional character -- is still a mystery, and then the cops bust in and arrest him for owning horrible gold lame (and lamé) tennis shoes. To be fair, they are not the Fashion Police, but real live cops who have noted that the hand-molded one-of-a-kind soles of his hideous designer crap match the footprints in the dust around the recently discovered prone body of Christina and her womb.
Alexis and Claire spring Daniel, and Claire tells some alcoholic Sedaris story about how she explained to DJ that all Meades go to jail: first grandma, then Daniel. "Aunt Alexis may go to jail !" Drunks never lie. Alexis offers the suggestion that Wili framed him, and everybody thinks about it; they shove Daniel in a limo with Betty and give a firm "no comment" to the press. I would not want to be in that limo. "You wanna act like your brain just got knocked around your skull like a hockey puck? I'll give you something to act like your brains just got knocked around about."
Christina wakes up to the horrible nightmare of Wili's scary Botox face pretending to act caring and sweet; the flashbulbs a second later from outside help her put it together, and she pronounces Wili's fake concern and photo op "horrible." Wili's disingenuous about it: "Because I care about the welfare of my unborn child?" Hearing it come out of her mouth, she's pleased enough to yell it at the paparazzi: "Because I care about the welfare of my unborn child!" Christina, who is I guess still putting it together, bitches that Wili is using her and the spawn as PR props, and Wilhelmina blows her off, calling it hormonal hysteria and saying she just needs some water. Which is kinda funny, but not as funny as Wilhelmina Slater doing a full-bore Terms Of Endearment through the hospital, shaking nurses and aliens and getting reincarnated and what have you, screaming, "Someone just give her some water!" at anyone and everyone, and then, once they've calmed down from that insane display... Immediately chilling out even though everybody's still standing there, turning 180 degrees toward the cameras, and vamping around all fierce. She is a one of a kind kind of woman.
Aw, Daniel. No product in jail! He looks like a little chickadee just freed from its shell, his hair is so puffy and funny and sweet. The look on his face? Less so. Betty tries to justify how her brain randomly shit the bed and she sold him out, and Daniel's like, "It's okay, I understand that sometimes resourceful and intelligent young women act retarded to further the plot. But yet I cannot tell you where I really was, and the less I tell you, the better."
Chez Betty, Hilda and Coach Tony have some meaningless conversation about their imminent conversation, but then instead of having the conversation Hilda tells Coach Tony to take a shower in Betty's living room while she makes an ice cream run.
I'm going to say that again.
Instead of talking about Tony leaving his wife, or Hilda leaving Tony, Hilda randomly suggests that Tony take a shower in Betty's living room while she goes to buy ice cream. No setup, no reason, Tony's like, "I feel like a shower!" and Hilda says, "Take a shower here in my sister's living room, and I'll leave you unattended long enough for the viewers to check out your insane bod, and my dad to figure out that you're married." Tony's like, and then we'll fuck, right? And she's like, "It says right here on the script that for some reason I leave you in this strange apartment to take a shower in the living room, so that's what I'm going to do." And I'll tell you right now that there are aspects of this which I am above complaining about.
...And there they are! The aspects. So Tony takes a shower for a while, getting all cleaned up and smelling nice for their "talk," but Ignacio randomly comes in to replace Betty's locks vis-à-vis their conversation about how gullible she is, and then loiters around staring at the awesome aspects of wet naked Tony until his slut daughter walks in, at which point Tony's wedding ring jumps into the air and lands at Ignacio's feet. Sometimes this show tries so hard, and then other times it does not try at all. Ignacio stomps his tiny feet and runs away, Hilda continues to be in total denial, and Coach Tony is like, "Hey, I'm fine. I'm risking nothing I wouldn't rather see destroyed, and have no emotional capital in this relationship. Worst thing that happens is that I leave her for you, and you spend the thirty years wondering when I'm going to do the same thing to you, which I eventually will, but none of that is my problem any more than my marriage is my problem. I move that I should only take showers from now on, all the time." Motion carried.
Betty -- actually giving Christina water, note -- whines that Daniel didn't push Christina, and harangues her about whether there's anything she forgot, or didn't fully explain. I normally like the whole "Betty covers for Daniel" angle, but it seems really out of place in this episode. It's just not something Daniel would do. It's something Wilhelmina, Claire, or Alexis would do, because they are cartoons, but it's not something Daniel would do any more than it's something Christina would do. Good thing Betty's stupid this week, or the episode would be about ten minutes long.
Christina explains that she has been avoiding telling Betty -- and the po-po -- about her fight with Stuart where he -- like everybody else on the show, between this week and last -- abused a mannequin after she threatened to have him deported for using her money on drugs. And then, apparently, didn't follow through. Or is planning on doing so after she leaves the hospital. A little awkward light bulb goes off over Betty's head just as a high heel with socks is aiming for her mouth, all, "OMG! We all assumed it was somebody that hated Wilhelmina that pushed you, because you're merely a walking womb, but: nobody's even talking about all the people that fucking hate you!" I admit it. I pushed Christina McKinney down the stairs.
Christina burrs and ochs and whatever about how she threatened a violent drug addict with deportation and how unbelievable that he would retaliate in such a characteristic fashion. Or something along those lines. I can't really understand when she speaks. It's because of that stupid accent of hers, probably. So Betty's like, you have to tell the police about how you threatened each other and then he pushed you down the stairs and what about the puir bairn or whatever, Nessie or something, Toad in the Hole, and then of course Stuart is in the hallway coming toward her room. In a kilt. With some bagpipes.
I love those Brooke Shields commercials about the people having babies to get VWs. I thought about pretending to be really offended by it but that's too dumb to pull off, I think. Betty jumps out from around the corner and screams, "HI!" Kids, if you're ever being approached by a dangerous drug addict who may have attacked your best friend and may be in turn coming back to finish the job, you should try to startle him as badly as possible. They love it, because it keeps their heart rate up. Stuart tries to get around Betty, which even in a hospital hallway is difficult, but she's not having it. She asks what size shoe he wears, and he says 14 (Daniel, who is about four feet taller than Stuart, wears 11) and that the kids at school called him Bigfoot, and it was humiliating.
(Oh, Derek Riddell. You deserve so much better than Stuart. You were so fucking amazing in Much Ado, and you were my favorite in The Book Group, besides Fist. You made me look at hooligans in a whole new way. Also having sex with Spanish soccer players and tiny Scottish soccer fans, you really made me think about those things too. Vale!) Anyway yes, he's on drugs, which is why he looks gross and not totally hot like usual, but the reason for that is that his experimental treatment was a bust, so now he has to take a bunch of drugs to dull the pain just like the rest of us.
Oh, plus he's totally going to die. Bummer. (Not actually a bummer.) Betty wastes no time in lecturing Stuart about how his moral imperative at this point is to walk in there to the woman convalescing and tell her that selling her entire dream, her ethics and her self-respect for cold, hard Wili dollars has resulted in a dying junkie without hope of recovery. Just like what was obviously going to happen. Futility, thy name is Scottish stereotypes. Sick Boy (!) heads in to break this gloomy news to Christina, I guess in the hopes that it will finish her off for good and then he can steal her meds or smoke her corpse or something.
Hilda sneaks into the house for some reason, but as adept as she's gotten at sneaking around, Ignacio is better at standing in the corner and waiting to ambush her. Which he does. He ambushes right up her ass. Hilda makes the excellent point that their entire family is based on adultery, which means that at least part of my memory of that is true, although she doesn't mention him going all Long Island Lolita on the guy, which may be the part I made up. Ignacio says that that is totally different, because in a feudal society like 1970's Mexico, where you're constantly fending off dinosaurs and talking hantaviruses and Tribbles, marriage means something different I guess. Plus, you know, it resulted in such shining examples as his daughters, who are both acting like buttheads this week. She calls this out as chauvinist Latino machismo bullshit, and he resorts to telling her that they are not discussing what a gross (possibly murderous) whore he was many years ago, and should get back to yelling at Hilda for being unable to pass up the totally sweet ass of Eddie Cibrian.
Then it all turns into español and that turns into a telenovela which turns into another novela which is on the screen that a Meade security guy is watching. One of the weirder transitions of late. Betty asks him for the security tapes, and when he realizes she works for Daniel the murderer, she delivers a hilarious Betty a-ha: "Alleged murderer; and he didn't do it; and you work for him too." It's in the delivery: very funny, staccato like she's planned it out but also spontaneous and triumphant. That's my girl. Anyway, the tape's been stolen, and just like he told the cops and "that little blonde girl," he has no idea where it went.
Straight to Amanda, of course, who wants the reward money for her insane debt and fifteen maxed-out credit cards and parental estrangement. Her real parents, not what's-his-face. She should really get on making that up to them. Betty asks her to give her version of events, and they are -- of course -- totally fucking awesome.
It was late, which is when Amanda usually tries to call the credit card companies, because their overseas customer service people are so much nicer. In the memory, she looks ten times hotter than she even already looks, explaining to "Rahul" that it is no crime to purchase things you can't afford. Amanda, you are so subprime, but I love you. Betty walks into the memory with a giant Dagwood sandwich going, "Amanda, have you seen the mustard? I need it for my big fat sandwich! Which I'm always, like, eating around you, and making a total mess of myself." Amanda nods sagely: "I know! You always are, right?"
Real Betty informs Amanda that she is not constantly eating sandwiches, and was not there during this moment in her life, but Amanda's not hurting: "It really does feel that way sometimes," she says philosophically about Betty's constant eating of big fat sandwiches and mess-making. And in a way, she's right. At least this week. And last week. And last season. And OMG, as usual Amanda is like a wizard. Back to Rahul, to whom she explains that if she pays her bill, she can't pay her rent, and if she can't pay her rent, he'll have nowhere to send the bill, so really she's just thinking of him. Ah Rahul. You lucky man, talking to Amanda across the ocean.
Amanda hears a scream and goes to investigate. "I peered around the corner. It wasn't a woman. ...Well, it was Marc." Marc's hair looks totally debonair as he screams at a woman in Wilhelmina's chair: "You will rue the day, Wilhelmina Slater, that you decided to cross Marc St. James! I know all of your plans and I will make you pay." He totally slaps the woman in the chair, making Amanda gasp, but also making me think: literally at this point in the evening, half the people on this show were slapping mannequins and threatening the baby. Like half of the entire cast. I cannot let that go. Plus, Marc is lots of times very attractive in the way that Herman Miller or Heywood-Wakefield or Eames is attractive, but when he's hot? So weird. And yet so hot. Jump to Marc at his desk, admitting that he did shove Christina that night, but -- at their gasps -- it's not what they think.
Except it's what they think because you said it in a fucked up way that made them think that, which I hate because it only exists to set up the joke, where he climbs down Betty's throat and complains that someone with her skin tone should be more sensitive to prejudice... Except it's dumb, no matter how funny he is saying it, because: what prejudice? What, you got profiled as somebody who admits to a crime and then acts offended that people think you committed it? How unfair. I'm prejudiced against people who mangle basic English in order to set up jokes that don't even make sense, just like Betty Suarez. And don't be mad, because I'll tell you right now the end of this episode is awesome and justifies any amount of shitty writing and lazy, uncommitted acting, which the rest of the episode is chock full of. Well, not justifies exactly because there's never any reason to shoot for anything other than excellence in all your endeavors, but the disinterested writing and acting are a lot easier to overlook when you know what's coming is so great.
Anyway, Amanda and Marc make crazy faces for awhile -- I mean crazy -- while Betty explains why that joke, from setup to follow-through, was useless, and Marc's like, "Okay, I have a secret. I'm not hiding it, I just don't want anyone to know about it." See above regarding how this joke also makes no sense. Betty sighs, all aggrieved as though she wasn't twice this retarded and with the same syntax about ten minutes ago, "Marc, that's the same thing." He takes them to see his Wilhelmina Real Doll. It's ...Not to be insensitive, but Vanessa's face went plastic crazy at some point I don't remember, and in this episode I would say she's easily as lifelike as Marc's doll of her.
Sometimes when Marc's angry, he yells at the doll at night. Flashback to a second ago, where he slaps the doll and it goes spinning around. Amanda points out that this is not only hot but "hardcore," and Marc admits that he later apologized to the doll, like, "I know she's not real, but she's still scary." Betty asks why he was so mad, and he reiterates about his years of loyalty and suddenly Wili hires "this little Mayan fireplug" and promotes her above him. Which was a scheme he was in on, and eventually brought down, last week, some time between slapping mannequins and being totally adorable. He gets on his high horse about how he licks Wili's boots not only because he likes it a little bit -- "they're fancy" -- but because he too has dreams and wants to succeed in the magazine world. Urie always sells these random moments where Marc rises from his nihilistic lunacy and suddenly gives a fuck so well. Anyway, he got all worked up working the faux Wili over, and don't we all know how that goes, so when Christina got between him and the elevator, he shoved her pregnant ass right out the way. And the last thing he saw? Claire Meade, lunging drunkenly at Christina's throat.
Betty wigs because Claire had both motive and opportunity, is jail-hardened and menopausal, and Amanda points out: "Not to mention she totally murdered my mom. Kind of." You were right the first time. And then to put the icing on this delicious scene, we act out on all three of them, suddenly staring up at the Wilhelmina doll for no reason.
Claire -- wearing nude lipstick and looking like she was just in a hurricane -- explains to the three of them that she would never let her kids take the fall for something she did, because the two things they tell you in prison are "do your own time" and "don't trust the po-po." She nods at Amanda and Marc, and thinks back to last night. She and Wili were "exchanging [their] usual pleasantries," which was, if you recall, a redux of that classic "Don't you threaten my family, trick"/"My baby is your family, ho" thing they do. My favorite thing is when people take off their earrings as a declaration of ass-whupping, and I've been getting that need met on the regular the last week. I really wanna see Claire take those bitches off and scare the crap out of Wilhelmina sometime soon.
Claire admits that she had a drink to dull the pain (like we all have to do every night alone, am I right ladies?), which Betty admits was a bad call due to Claire's total alcoholism, but not murderous. Claire explains that -- as Amanda nods in complete understanding -- she can't just have one drink. She flashes back to appalling some models by working blue -- "Wilhelmina Slutter! Get it?" -- and then her face became a cold mask of hatred and death when she saw poor dumbshit Christina, and attacked just as Marc's jaw was dropping in the elevator, out of the front of which he'd just shoved her. Claire, being fall-down drunk, fell down on the pregnant woman, who carried her to the ladies', where Alexis was just like hanging out staring at Cherokee Bat and Witch Baby in the mirror and looking like she was pregnant with an entire country, and Alexis thanked Christina and sent her on her way.
Jump to Alexis, who's all about apologizing for her drunkard mother and explaining she had her own shit going on. She puts the girls right in their places and waves a finger around kind of boredly, and tells them that her whole life is about looking poised and maintaining the illusion she was born female, so when she forgets her estrogen and, say, a giant random facial hair makes an appearance, it can make you want to push a boring Scottish moron down some stairs sometimes. She says she didn't even notice Christina, because she was so intent on caring for her mother and not getting old lady barf on her new Donna Karan. Marc's all, "Girl, I hear you because I am a homosexual."
The three of them regroup as Betty explodes with amazement that people have lives and things that happen to them even when she's not around. Amanda gets very nervous when Betty mentions her credit problems, pointing at Marc, and it's sweet. Marc worries because it really is starting to look like Daniel did it: "And I am genuinely surprised." Betty protests that, again, all three of them know better, and there's another amazing, bizarre conversation between Marc and Amanda where he suggests that Wili can help "prove it," and Amanda's like, "Prove what?" and Marc goes, "Prove that Daniel's innocent," and without even pausing or looking at him, Amanda just goes, "Oh. I didn't understand that part." So fantastic, and it goes on: Marc pushes the Wili doll down the stairs. It's kind of dark how the limbs go, like, this way and that. Marc and Amanda agree that the mannequin is way too skinny, and they need something grossly fat that could make a convincing pregnant woman. AWESOME. They are totally going to throw Betty down the stairs to solve a mystery! For science!
Betty can't even believe it, which makes it all the more amazing when they grab her from either side like Lord Of The Flies, and then all three of them go down together, landing in the dust that was all over Daniel's raincoat. OMG. Except for how he owns one-of-a-kind shoes whose distinctive tread was already found at the scene, so like...
Wili's haranguing Christina about Barbara Walters appearances and the like when Christina starts weeping and explains about how Sick Boy showed up and mumbled some garbled nonsense that she was somehow able to understand, and is dying. I would love if Christina were like, "So can I have my soul back now?" But Wili's face is a war between Botox and sadness, so that wouldn't be appropriate. She offers that experimental treatments are often tricky that way, but the sadness and respect in her face are pretty touching. I always thought she loved Bradford, and he's dead. You know? Christina rolls over to cry some more after asking Wili to give her a minute alone, and Wili sighs and feels bad for her. Aww.
Betty hangs out at Daniel's desk, looking for more ways to "accidentally" destroy his life, and finds the security tape in his briefcase, then must back away all awkwardly and weird as Daniel finds her going through his shit and acts in no way menacing toward her, regardless of her Chihuahua-like shivering and tics. He thanks her for her faith in him, and doesn't seem to notice the W hump under her top as she's leaving for home, so that she and Ignacio can talk about Hilda's grotesque life choices and Betty can strain something trying to get the focus back on her by comparing the two unrelated situations. See, the parallel is that they thought they knew Hilda -- the original real one, who is neither an idiot nor selfish to the point of negligent malice -- and found out she's just trash after all; meanwhile over here, Betty thought she knew Daniel -- the real one, who doesn't push people down stairs -- only to possibly find out that she was right, but possibly not.
There's a completely idiotic thing about how Hilda's made -- and is currently, at this very second making -- a huge gross mistake, but after all is "a good person," which I guess gets her off the hook somehow. I hate that so much. All you are is your behavior. If you're acting like a bad person, you're a bad person. Stop doing it, and go back to being a good person again. It's that simple. There are a million ways of expressing the idea that Betty knows Hilda's capable of better and loves her regardless, but that useless "good person" thing leaves a Big Brother taste in my mouth too easily. It's something a stupid person would say.
Blah blah, is she naïve or the most amazing person ever for being naïve and whatever, the whole point of Betty Suarez is that she's smart enough to be pessimistic, and chooses to be optimistic, and that's why she is strong. Betty's belief in people and faith in herself is not a symptom of some greater retardation; it's the reason I love the show. This has come up three times in three episodes, but it's like, you don't have to be innocent or particularly naïve to believe the best of people. You just have to do it. So they pop the tape in and rather than Daniel shoving a Scottish girl down some stairs, he's fucking some girl on the Xerox machine. Betty's funny: "Ew! Daniel! This is dirty! ...And awkward." Ignacio just kind of stands there feeling weird.
Betty drops the tape on his desk -- how great is it that his first week back it's still so scary in there? -- and starts yelling at him about how she had to watch him fuck some girl with her dad, which admittedly is yucky, and he stands up and explains that he's borrowing Ignacio's storyline from last year and is seen here boning Holly, that forgettable State Department liaison who's helping him retain custody of the awful French child. He's worried that it will look like he's doing exactly what he's doing, so he was willing to do a little time in lockup until they found the real "culprit" to keep Holly's job and his custody case safe, because DJ gives him a reason or something. Betty throws her arms around him and immediately starts talking about herself.
After about ten minutes of Betty patting herself on the back for believing something so obvious that everyone on the show told her fifteen times in every scene, Daniel excuses himself to "pick up DJ," which I think is code for "go throw up," and tosses her the raincoat, explaining that Alexis can just have it anyway: it looks better on her.
Damn. So Alexis is outlined in light, apparently with the windows open or on a porch or something, when Betty comes to see her. She resists for a while, until Betty rudely points out that no matter how many things she does to herself, she will always have the gigantic size 11 feet of a cold-blooded XY killer, and then twists the knife by pointing out that not only did she do something horrible, i.e. push a moron with the Omen inside her down some stairs, she framed her brother for it. She further clarifies that this means Alexis is a bad person, not a good person, according to Betty's Big Old Book Of Bullshit she got from Gio last year and never gave back.
Alexis explains that she was trying to reconcile with Wili that night, right after the Meades pulled triple-rank on her in front of everybody (dumb) and was wearing a babydoll top in order to hide her gigantor pregnancy (dumb) in no way whatsoever except to make her look like Betty Suarez after eating an entire circus tent, and Wili tells her to suck it, calling her "my freakishly tall girlfriend" -- which, why all the TS hate in this episode? -- and telling her it's only a matter of time before she fucks Alexis the hell over. She's just so fucking pregnant, I can't believe it. It's like she invented new ways to be huge. Anyway, she breaks a heel and finds a whisker and this is what turns her crazy. That age-old tale, coming true once again.
She hallucinates that Christina is Wili (hilariously, wearing her pregnancy gear and outfit) taunting her about ... something, I don't even get this part. Wilhelmina has a third of the company via her devil baby, and seems to feel like she has some power to exert over Alexis, with which Alexis agrees. Maybe I'm just forgetting what Wili has on her that would explain her complete lack of integrity or continuity. I'm willing to admit that is possible.
Shiny gold sneakers drop Claire on the chaise in the lounge, and shiny gold sneakers follow Christina into the stairwell, and all the shiny gold sneakers can think about is how much Wilhelmina has put their family through, and then Christina goes bouncing down the stairs. Alexis -- looking gorgeous, by the way, with big fluffy hair pulled back -- realizes she just totally got free of this show, called 911, and got the hell out of there. Alexis admits to Betty that it was unjustifiable and creepy and insane, and she feels terrible about letting Daniel take the fall for it, but it's not something she can undo. Betty says she needs to decide to tell Daniel herself, and confess and do her time and not trust the po-po.
Betty also assures Alexis that it's okay she pushed a pregnant woman down the stairs, because she's a "good person." I give up.
"Breathe" by Two Of Cups plays over the best Betty montage in quite a while. No shows do really long, satisfying montages quite like this one -- and the end of it is one of the most effective, crazy scenes maybe ever. So the song starts over that last scene, as Betty's about to leave after telling Alexis that only she can prove what a "good person" she is.
Christina wakes up in the hospital surrounded by flowers; across the room Wilhelmina is reading What To Expect. When the flashbulbs attack, she stands up and closes the curtains, annoyed, and looks down almost caringly at ... others.
Ignacio watches Hilda do her nails and hugs her or whatever because she's such a good person.
Alexis confesses to Claire and Daniel; they're totally thrown, and Daniel wanders stunned through the office until he finds DJ, and holds him tight.
Betty finds her umbrella back in the stand by her door with a note from Val Emmich: "Sorry I took your umbrella -- Jesse." She immediately high-fives herself and starts telling everybody in the entire world about how she's superior for being naïve and dumb.
Back at Mode Daniel and Betty watch Alexis work out the terms of her surrender with the cops. They commiserate about how you think you know your own sister, and then she gets written into being a sociopath. Just like that!
That song's still playing all dramatically as Alexis calls Claire over for one last bombshell: "When I was clearing out my office, I opened a piece of Daniel's mail." Claire tells her that, what with the attempted murders and shit, he'll let it slide. But Alexis shakes her head: "It was a paternity test." She leans in and whispers that Daniel isn't DJ's father -- she is. And you can't even deal with that because then it gets really sad and good-actingy and Claire just stares at her daughter and hugs her goodbye, and they handcuff her, and Alexis and her mother speak silently to each other as the elevator doors close. And once they're closed, she breaks.
That was awesome. week: Gio's back (boo!) and mad as hell (yay!).
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