Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Betty Bobs Her Hair
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.06.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.I rarely think about it when I give the A+, because I basically always give the A+, because I think quantifying art is, if not impossible, at the most subjective to a sort of horrifying degree. At what point do you go from "I liked it" to "it was good"? I don't trust myself to be accurate about that; I feel like it's enough to enjoy the ride they're putting me on as much as possible and getting as much out of it as I can. That way, the burden's on them. Having said that? Best episode in the last year and a half, possibly best altogether since the first season. A fucking Plus.
Betty, having noticed her lack of backbone and boyfriends, decides to stalk Cute Jesse across the hall. He's friendly and sweet, which can be hard when you've got all that Betty coming at you, but not to the point where he's actually upset when she breaks the insane news that this show just became awesome by moving Amanda in with Betty, and going six kinds of crazy bi-curious on her. Betty tries to ask him out on a few dates, each of which morph into a more horrible Pokemon version of themselves until she accidentally commits him to play this big Mode party... Which Mariah Carey is actually singing at. Oops!
Of course, Betty spends the entire episode wrapping herself in the velvet embrace of LIES, turning every buddy-buddy exchange into some deeply symbolic meaningful love gesture, but for the first time in I don't know how long, it feels less like Betty picked up Lyme disease on her intracontinental lesbian bicycle odyssey and more like... Sometimes that's just what a girl needs to get through the day: a functionally retarded guitarist with cute hair and no real shot at intimacy. I am seriously not judging on that one, for as many reasons as there are stars in the sky. (Or, you know, as there are indie bands in Austin, home of the sexually-confused, illiterate guitarists with cute hair. Represent!)
Amanda proves once again to be good at... whatever it is that she's good at, and creates massive buzz for a party on Betty's roof. She spends the entire time needling Betty, roommate-style, about her secret crush. Betty gives Jesse an amazing pep talk, signifying all that is good and right about Betty Suarez, and gives him the power not only to dedicate her a song he wrote about her, but also do a note-perfect rendition of that hot Val Emmich tune all the kids are bopping along to these days -- not to mention total Betty Suarez theme song -- "Get On With It," from Little Daggers which dropped back in May on Bluhammock, and you know I bought that shit so don't point fingers at me bitch, because this show and like every television show turned into a love letter to Emmich way before I showed up. Anyway, when Betty finds Amanda accidentally making out with Cute Jesse and wigs the fuck out, Amanda shows her very, very softest side, charming the pants off the universe and earning herself a few more episodes at Chez Suarez.
Meantime, ♥~♥Cliff♥~♥ asks Marc to move in, causing a total meltdown. Even Amanda tries to caution him against living with a fat-ass, and he finally gives just enough of a non-answer that it's an answer. Cliff is sad for like five seconds and doesn't return any of Marc's messages, it's like this horrible bloodbath. Then Marc feels so bad that he totally goes on a short-term slut spiral with some ripped set dresser/gay porn-looking stud from Betty's building. Which is sort of hot...
Cliff comes back explaining that he should have known better than to expect anything BUT a total meltdown, so Marc guilt-reflexes right into a proposal of gay marriage. (Thank God this show's not being shot in California, right Henry?) Marc's hot feet immediately turn cold out from under him, which means more Cliff abuse to come, but mostly I have to say, of all the adorable Marc outfits this week, he gets minus one million for the string of pearls/tietack combo. The fuck is that? It's a perfectly healthy instinct to give Marc St. James a pearl necklace, but it's unnatural as shit for him to wear it in public.
Meanwhile, Daniel's crush on Connor Owen reaches insane new heights, meaning that Marc, Daniel and Betty all agree on the same thing for the first time, like, ever. Usually there's at least one tiebreaker! Connor flirts with like everybody on the planet, driving even Wili to get all man-crush about him, but once Daniel and Wili start edging into Dynasty-type bitch fights about him, he tells them both to stop being assholes, declares his allegiance to both of them and neither, and promises to do his job no matter how ridiculously they behave. He then puts a tiny little chink in the chilled vodka martini Wili's got instead of a heart, causing her to bond sweetly with Betty of all people.
Which means that Betty gets love from both Amanda and Wili, which always makes the episode, and although she doesn't have any sweet scenes with Claire this week, Daniel's heartfelt defense of Betty's beauty in the face of Jesse's betrayal is worth ten of those. It's always nice when people are ridiculously affectionate toward Betty; even better is seeing her deserve it again. Best of all? That feeling of affection toward Betty, her friends and the family she's creating around herself, and most of all: for the show that bears her name, and her unfortunate countenance. I can honestly say I'm excited for next week, which I haven't been since like the trip to Mexico a hundred years ago, and that's fucking awesome.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Oh, Betty. So she's dressed like a lunatic, as usual, hopping around behind her window waiting for Cute Neighbor Jesse to come home from his actual real life that he's been having while she's been capering behind the curtains like a pensioner with a crush on the UPS guy, practicing her hellos, and finally grabs two coffees and beats it down the stairs so she can crazily fake laugh about how they're "always running into each other. LOL!" Is this a low point for Betty Suarez? The fact that you have to think for a second about that, like it's a real question with a quantifiable answer, is part of the problem with this season, but if you ignore the rest of this season, the happy answer is: Not even! It's just cute! She's been way more pathetic than this! You go, Glen Coco!
Neighbor Jesse calls her "Betty Rocker," which is so multitaskingly amazing I just now figured it out, a day later. He compares them to two ships that pass in the AM, and tells her that his night was so-so, ending with getting spit on by the cook. I would never spit on Neighbor Jesse, not even if he requested it in some kind of scenario. She forces him to take her stupid sad extra coffee and then totally blows her own spot about how she got it by accident but it's accidentally decaf because the coffee guy accidentally knows that Betty accidentally knows that Jesse sleeps in the morning because he's accidentally a slacker musician.
Jesse's like, "Oh, speaking of, thanks for reminding me that I'm the lead singer in a band, and thus have no concept of other people. I knocked on your door last night to give you this CD so you can tell me how great it is, because that's what other humans are actually for: listening to my CD, loving the shit out of it." And Betty's like, "I have played that role my entire life, future husband." Speaking of things Betty can do for Jesse, could she tell him her honest true thoughts on the CD and be brutal instead of being so nice. What Jesse is saying here, if you don't speak Hipster, is that a fun game for us to play is to pretend that we have humility and pretend that the other person has humility, but then totally love the shit out of the CD please. In a "brutal" fashion. Betty says she can only ever brutally love it to death like Lenny with a rabbit because his music is "so emotional," which actually does explain Neighbor Jesse's facial resemblance to that little bitch Chris Carrabba.
Anyway, "I Made Her Cry" is a song of Jesse's that made Betty cry, with brutal love. Is there anything else that Betty can do for Jesse? Why yes, yes there is. He wants to watch a Miles Davis documentary but doesn't have a TV, so he asks about the TV in the laundry room so she'll offer up even more of her dignity. Because luckily, Betty has a TV, and the loneliness that accompanies it, and if you give her five seconds she'll produce some kind of Hungry Man dinner or something to accompany it. Then Betty wanders off to work, the wrong way, and giggles and shivers and acts like a moron. Which would be embarrassing if Neighbor Jesse didn't immediately retreat to a pot-soaked fog of solipsistic considerations of his personal style and whatever the second she stopped yapping in his grill, dressed like a circus clown off her meds.