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Betty and Marc go up against one another in an assistant-on-assistant cage match to get some kind of... nebulous reality-show prize like a hundred bucks or hellish year in an apartment with one of those people from Stylista, of the few that didn't end up in a mental hospital or whatever the eff goes on in that show, that isn't Megan or Kate or William, which is the sum total of worthwhile people on that fucking show, plus they get to hang out with Badgley (meh) Mischka (hot as fuck).
Meanwhile, Justin's (controversially Disneyesque) gay boyfriend, who doesn't know he's gay, gets a telegram from Everybody On Earth telling him how gay they are, delivered by his friends whose bangs are even gayer than his own. So he chills it with Justin for the time being, but really it's because ABC hates gay American men and women now. Which is stupid, because gay people are obviously just like real people but slightly awesomer, and you may think it was for other reasons but you'd be wrong, because even in 2008 we're mostly all kind of creeped out by gay people, which yes, makes us assholes, but is a lot easier to feel when they act like screaming infants denied their tit and completely forget what makes them strong. I'm serious, like, the last time I got enraged enough to protest about the actions of another state's legislature in a way that proved nothing and only ruined unrelated people's days so they would know how pissy I felt about something that didn't affect me or them in any way was like, the Louisiana Purchase in 1803! Those Cajun bitches!
Hilda "solves" this problem by taking him to In The Heights herself, thereby instantly turning Justin fifty times gayer than the already impressive gayness of him, not to mention continuing the cycle of "creeped out" vs. "creepier than actual sex weirdos" that has characterized the endlessly fascinating gay/straight relationship since whining was invented. Meanwhile, the actual tremendous part of being gay, where you kiss dudes, is ignored. Luckily, Hilda looks so fucking hot this season you don't even really think about how sad it is until it's too late to save Justin.
So while Daniel and Wili edge ever closer to destroying Connor and Molly's entire relationship, Betty and Marc play out this whole affirmative action thing that is simultaneously obtuse, abstruse, topical of the past, glossed over, and ... sort of perfectly correct. There's not Anita Hill, but we do get major Hillary, so there you go. Racism is a feminist issue, because once you hit like 1992 everything is.
Caucasian Homosexual Marc doesn't get into the program, and Mexican-American Callipygian Betty does, Marc goes to the unforgiveable place of how it's because she's fat or Mexican or some shit, Betty finds out he's unforgivably right, she gives up her Mexican place because white homos are simply unrepresented in the fashion industry and it's a motherfucking tradge, and then they both get in on a technicality because Daniel Meade wrote a letter or something. Because what trumps affirmative action is straight rich white dudes every fucking time, which is why they so often save the day. And yes, you're welcome!
Don't get me twisted: I want to be clear that I don't give a fuck, and as a gay white man from a family of rich white men, I have less than one RDA of opinion on this. So here's my take: take what you can fucking get and be compassionate when you can, because no matter what disadvantages or advantages or whatever you have, there are some bitches want to screw you, and you're always the bitch screwing somebody else, and our duty is to remember there's always a way we can all get out alive.
However. I am at a loss as to how an affirmative action story taking place in the world of fashion between a gay man who wears pearls and a 300-pound Latina who dresses like a circus clown's PTSD can actually have this fight. So you kind of have to fill in the blanks. Which, since both Cliff and Amanda are missing this week, you will have plenty of effing time to do.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Betty's got some decent clothes happening -- giant Minnie Mouse bow notwithstanding -- when Amanda summons her with a tiny handbell to the bathtub, where she's lounging in a mountain of delightful bubbles. One-room apartment + clawfoot tub + Amanda's total lack of boundaries = Hilarity. She explains that she got the bell for Halston, but he's a bad doggie and doesn't come when she rings it -- whereas Betty comes running. "You're a good dog!" Amanda says, tickling Betty's tummy with the loofah, and Betty puts her foot down in what are no doubt sensible shoes. She tries to clarify for Amanda that she is not her assistant -- while simultaneously advising her of her schedule for the day and picking up her random bras and panties strewn about the place -- and Amanda assures her she thinks of her more as a roommate... And a maid. She asks Betty to fetch her some coffee, and she replies that it's not her job...
Cut to Betty happily fetching coffee for Daniel, because that actually is her job. She has also jacked a hideous clown jacket and stupid red beret over her formerly cute outfit, because... Maybe she resents fashion as a synecdoche for hating her life, and thus seeks to wound it at any opportunity. Around the corner is Leo/Nick Pepper, that sleazy-sexiest assistant guy from Mode that she got into the dick-swinging fight with at the Renaissance Faire restaurant back when Henry and his sick body were still around. Turns out he left with Alexis and has since pulled a Ryan the Temp thanks to the leg up provided by YETI (the Young Editor's Training Initiative) and now has his own assistant. Betty seems to think the program is like Hogwarts for getting out of being an assistant, and he assures her that this is the case. Sparkly music of Betty's dreams, cloudy weird light in her eyes, and it's done. She informs Daniel that he'll be sponsoring her, and asks for a recommendation letter (<1 page), and he gets that "I am going to completely flake and it's going to be sad" face he gets when you count on him.
Wili spots Connor canoodling with darling Molly ("Gross!" she yells to herself, awesomely) and tries to run away, but gets caught talking to them gross couple. Wili calls her "coltish" what with her hair in a ponytail, and Molly tells her that she's got some kind of Native American coming to visit her school class, so Wili half-heartedly talks shit about her pathetic life for a second before pulling a total Girl World maneuver and inviting her to a future brunch together.
...Which of course she and Marc both agree she should be murdered before attending such a nightmare. Wili can't get it: Connor's shrewd, ambitious and hot just like Wili, so why on Earth is he with a coltish farm girl (in a Martha's Vineyard sort of way, I guess) like Molly? Marc's like, "Word, he's hot. He's the Male-amina!" They scheme for her to drag him to an investor's meeting in Florida and show him her underwear. "It's not about the sex, I can see a future with him," she says, and Marc's like, "Or just show him your boob." They agree she still has it, and then he fans her for awhile because the "it" she has is clearly "the hot flashes."
Betty goes galumphing into the YETI conference without doing a lick of research, wafted along on dreams and starlight and silly music. The friendly, gorgeous woman she meets with has the intense name of Pilar Mejia, and informs her that she's got a year to come up with a cover, TOC and letter from the editor for an original magazine concept that defines her. Kind of like Talk or Jane, but less up itself. Betty assures her that she can do the real deadline for this year, which is in 48 hours, because she does it all the time and besides, she can't wait for her actual life to start already. Pilar lets her go with it, because she's adorable, and wishes her a very sympathetic good luck.
If you had a YETI magazine, what would it be? Mine would be like ... a cross between O and Soldier Of Fortune, with fun recipes and party ideas, cool shopping spreads for trendy hipster shit like on Stylista, and ads in the back for scary Montana survivalist camps and articles like, "Go Fuck Your Breast Implants, Chief" and "How I Learned To Take Apart An AK-47 Blindfolded ... And Fell In Love!" and "Paying For Your MP3s is Letting The Terrorists Win." Plus things that could help you, like "Training Nerds To Do All Your Shit For You Using The Nebulous Promise Of Vaguely Sexual Interaction," a ten-part series covering everything from car detailing to cable installation to renting movies and bringing home Americone Dream without being asked. Also some shit about God, because sometimes I like to talk about that; a linguistic Believe It Or Not cartoon; six pages of Lynda Barry strips; a section about the Jungian themes and significance of a different television show each month; and a column about not fucking up your gay kid. It will be called Dear Hilda and it will be addressed to a hypothetical woman named Hilda who is fucking up her gay kid. Wouldn't that be a great magazine? I would read the shit out of that magazine.
While we were talking about that, Betty made the intriguing choice of creating a fashion magazine. Even the ever-supportive, pointless Ignacio is like, "Girl, for real?" Yes, for real. Obviously. Betty's like, "It expresses me and who I am because this is my life," and Hilda's like "Once you get into the program you can make something that isn't fashion." Justin wigs out about how his boyfriend hasn't ever seen the movie of Little Shop Of Horrors and they have to watch it before seeing their school's production. I sympathize with that. Ignacio's like, "Awesome, let's all get going," and Hilda's like, "I loooove Justin's boyfriend, plus he has a guy around and that's probably a good idea because of how he is." Ignacio, in his flowered apron, takes a strong stand for his masculinity, and they humor him.
Wili's wearing a hellacious outfit that looks like a Ford F-450 in the shape of a dress, I can't even talk about it, and makes Connor dump his visit to Molly's classroom so they can go to Florida and she can flash her boob. But who will replace him at Molly's classroom? Ah, I see you've watched TV before. I knew you were smart. And where's Daniel now? Walking into the closet as Christina desperately tries to help Betty choose non-hideous clothes for her magazine cover. She is if course brutally rebuffed, the word "bolero" is mentioned, tragically, and Christina points out that the Letter from the Editor Betty's slaving over should be the easiest part, considering Daniel does it every month.
Dude, I love those. I love men's magazines letters from the editor sometimes more than the magazine. They're like the opposite of the unholy hellride that is the back page of Entertainment Weekly where Stephen King or fuckin' Diablo Cody is all, "I have a way of speaking and some opinions from when I was a teenager that are totally irrelevant! I bought a Zune that runs on wooden nickels! I'm going to see NKOTB in concert, honest to blog!" But in men's magazines it's all, "I got my French cuffs wet and you know how silk is, so then I killed myself in front of the Kirche am Steinhof in Vienna by drinking that coffee they make from cat shit with some pills I got in Mexico and I saw Gwyneth Paltrow at some political function and somebody got rowdy at Nobu and I talk about sex all the time but you and I both know I'm too busy for that right now mister and here's my BMI this month." They always make you feel like you really wish you were friends with them, but that if you were friends with them you would desperately wish not to be friends with them. Like Tom Ford.
He signs out a new tie and then takes in the scene of Betty working on her magazine, and he and Christina are horrified by how she's doing a fashion magazine, and Betty's like, "Why on earth does everybody thing I'm going to fuck this up," and then Christina forces her to choose the correct vest after like ten years, and she's so pretty but I just don't get it. Then Betty's face turns green...
Which turns into Audrey II, where Justin is getting totally bounced before "Suddenly Seymour" by Randy's intensely homophobic (ie., normal) teenage friends. Randy thinks a lot about this and has some trepidation, but whatever: "Suddenly Seymour" is the most beautiful song in the entire world. He'll give in.
Betty and Christina are finishing up her outfit for the cover, and then Marc and Amanda sweep in signing out closet items left and right, because: Marc is also going for YETI. Betty's like, "What?" and he admits that he does try to keep a low profile. Wearing a blue velvet dinner jacket, striped women's scarf, and cartoon T-shirt with a tuxedo drawn on it in either puffy paint or Froot Loops, and he says he likes to keep a low profile. Christina, as usual, spills the beans about how Betty's doing a fashion magazine, and everybody shivers for a second, and Amanda sweetly whispers, "Betty, you know fashion means clothes, right?" Marc moohoohas about how he's totally in, and Christina yells something incomprehensible in that voice of hers, and he asks if her book will be called Clashing Patterns Digest, then informs her that she has no chance because they only take one assistant from a given magazine, and between "this" (his fierce self) and "this" (her hot tranny mess look), you know they're taking Marc. Amanda follows after shooting Betty a somewhat sympathetic worry look that makes her seem like she's strangling. Betty just stares all bug-eyed at nothing, because honestly.
Justin comes home freaking out about Little Shop, distracting Hilda from her pedicure. She corrects her "baby boy" to "big strong man," and he worries slightly about Randy taking off right after the show. Hilda sets them up on a super tight date to see In The Heights on Broadway, and Justin runs upstairs to get his little heart broken, and then Betty comes in to overeat and cry about how dumb her whole fashion mag/zero turnaround thing is turning out to obviously be. Then Ignacio produces the Betty Review Betty made when she was a little kid and her magazine career began. Ignacio points out that she made this crappy kid's stuff in a single afternoon, and Hilda's like, give them that. Which: Not exactly, but yes.
Betty rushes into the office and drinks a bunch of coffee and does insane dances and basically creates the magazine I was describing earlier. By morning, she's zooming around like Kate Moss with her hair looking fifty times crazier than normal. She now looks like that woman on The Simpsons with the cats all over her. And she sounds like her too. She crawls up Daniel's ass about the recommendation, which we all know he's going to flake out about, and he tells her to write it herself and he'll sign it.
Connor rescues him from her crazy eyes and wild hair and all, and asks Daniel to go speak to Molly's class. Daniel makes it super obvious that he's crushing on Molly, and yet again you see that of all the things Connor is good at, blatant sexual attraction is not one. But you know, I bet he is so used to having that shooting at him from all directions at all times that it doesn't even register. As smooth as Wilhelmina is, I bet like the guy at the butcher shop acts the same way around Connor. Anyway, he agrees, and Betty's like, "Stop doing your job and favors for your coworkers and start paying attention to me!" but he has to go crush on Molly some more, so he pulls a pencil out of the tangled insane mess of Betty's hair and takes off. There is an entire desk's worth of random shit in there.
Later -- with pencils in her hair -- Molly watches Daniel be adorable with all the little kids, which has nothing to do with his job and has everything to do with him being awesome. Other options the kids offered as alternatives: Dancer, Monkey, and Chinese Person. Obviously they are making these choices with an eye toward getting into YETI. He tells Molly how much he loves kids and wants them, missing DJ a little bit, and then they sort of fall in love with each other a little bit, and giggle. They both laugh like dorks, it is fabulous.
Betty finally gives up on Daniel with her usual brokenhearted lack of foresight and heads in to meet the YETI panel. I wish Pilar Mejia were on this show every week, she's amazing. Betty tells the panel that while she loves working at Mode, she's over the concept of selling women the image of the thing they want to become: why not celebrate what women already are? They are as bored by this as you just were. Pilar proudly watches her elaborate, saying that she wants to serve the young women who want to be inspired beyond celebrities and clothing, and the female panel member says this is her daughter. Welcome to B magazine, which has Betty's Boleyn necklace in the middle of the cover and lots of famous and powerful, awesome women. Tagline: "Be thoughtful, be confident, be yourself. B magazine." Panel and Pilar love it, and she pulls out her editor letter.
Later on, Ignacio and Hilda are all over her and the celebrate and scream their asses off, delighting passersby, and then Marc looking like six feet of something hard and shiny enters with a whole posse of hot bitches and a seriously awesome look on his face. The hot bitches bust out in formation and set all his materials out. Amanda explains his concept: "A-List Magazine: for all things fashion, fabulous and famous." Ignacio calls this "fluff" and Hilda calls it "done," but Marc goes to the Lauren Zalaznick place where it's more about investigating the why at the same time as the what: why we obsess about the things we obsess about. Neat. Hilda gets scared by the words even though she doesn't really get them. He hands over a copy of his magazine, which contains an essay by David Sedaris, and tells Hilda she can keep it. Betty is shocked to the core by the concept of offset printing, despite working in publication for the last three years, and all the Suarezes sort of crumple. Badgely (stiff but nice) and Mischka (hot and dumb) show up and it turns out they're Marc's sponsors for YETI. Awesomely, Marc gets the opportunity to bashfully slap them on the shoulders and go, "Oh, Marc! James!" Right before the panelist woman with the daughter comes running up yelling "Marc St. James!" That's brilliant. This lady takes the huge group of A-Listers into the room, and the Suarezes continue to be unable to catch a break.
Betty, old and grey, sits at her desk applying to YETI for the 49th year in a row, still without a recommendation from Daniel, who is of course totally hot no matter how much old person makeup they put on him. Nightmare! Daniel comes running in to wake her up and do the YETI work, and she PMs him that he missed it. She's refusing to talk to him, and he feels terrible, but: Molly, which he can't tell her of course, so he shuts his phone off and apologizes some more. She almost starts crying as she admits that she wouldn't have gotten in anyway, due to the fact that Marc is awesome, but then the phone rings and she's in. Obviously. Immediately she forgets everything that just happening and goes stomping around the place in celebration. Daniel tries to share in the celebration, but she's not having it; elsewhere, Marc gets scared.
Wili and Connor come back to her ridiculous suite after the meeting, and she flirts her ass off. The hotel, fittingly, looks like every Nip/Tuck set at once, all occupying the same place. It's sort of terrifying. They want to have dinner, but none of the nearby restaurants are fittingly tasteful -- "We've Got Crabs" one boasts -- so Wili orders room service, but cocks one of her boobs just in case.
After school Justin's like, "We are going on a fabulous Broadway date!" and Randy totally shuts him down with the other owners-of-bangs looking on. Justin totally doesn't get it the entire time and finally Randy's like, "You are dumped." The judging eyes of the boys glare at him and he screams at Justin to stop following him around and get a life. Instead of doing so, Justin feels horrible and a little confused.
Betty visits Marc, who is ignoring her in his sleep mask with tea: "Marc isn't in right now, but if you leave your name and number, he'll never speak to you again, you odious seacow, Betty. Beeeep." She apologizes and says she liked his presentation, and he says his was way better, and she says maybe it's just about how bad she wants it. Marc makes the very amazing point that it's pretty apparent he wants to be a fashion editor too, which is why he graduated from FIT, spent a summer abroad studying menswear in Milan, spent four years working for -- he points angrily at Wili's office -- the best creative director in the entire industry, who neither knows nor would care that he even applied to YETI. Betty's heart breaks for him, because seriously. She floats maybe that it was the concept, and it's like "Betty, don't poke the bear" because people like Betty like to go over things and wonder how and why they failed, but that's not how people like Marc feel better, so everything she says isn't "It's not so bad" but "Here's why it is so bad," which is the opposite, and you know what she's like, it's neverending, and finally he just laughs in her face.
"You really think that what you did in two days is better than what I spent three months working on? Are you really going to make me say it? You helped them meet their quota. They picked you, Betty Suarez, of Queens, because you're Latina. You're the token ethnic girl." Betty can't even handle that, and Marc doesn't feel great about it, but she points out that this is the ugliest of all the many ugly things he's ever said to her. He apologizes, but assures her it's the truth.
Which is a sticky fucking wicket. Because if he's wrong, you just ruined one of the more compelling and subtle characters on television, because that shit is unforgiveable. Part of the burden of living in a democratic society is that there is shit you do not say, because admitting it's a possibility makes everything fall apart. And if you say it, you don't use it like a weapon. And if you use it like a weapon, you don't do it in a sour grapes situation. And if you do say it anger, you don't say it to somebody you love. And if you don't say it in anger, that's even worse. He didn't say it in anger. Which makes it maybe the most brutal thing that's ever happened on the show, because it's not even funny like a pregnant woman falling down stairs or stealing cold semen from a corpse: it's actually gross. And really, really sad. Plus, the bitch cheated on Cliff and he's on thin motherfucking ice this week anyway.
But if he's not wrong, it's still not okay that he said it, but you've just created a much larger issue, which is that you're taking one of the biggest things to happen to a given minority in television in the last ten years, which is a smart and glamorous show that manages to honor many of the realities associated with that minority, and using that show to tell this constituency that their dreams are worthless and that the little asterisk by their every accomplishment -- of which, I assure you, they are fucking already aware -- is something that yes, white people do often wonder about, and in their uglier moments think about. Which is sort of a nightmare on every fucking level.
Now, you know I love this show and I think it's smarter than we give it credit for being, but I think the show has given itself quite a fucking challenge here. Do they pull it off? I think they do, but I don't have a vested interest either way, because I'm more interested in getting paid than getting praised. On the other hand, I've never been in the position of having to wonder if on a hypothetically level playing field -- which will never actually exist even if we live to be thousands of years old -- I actually earned what I got, and if that's true, if anybody would believe it. Which is nasssssty to think about on both sides, because "affirmative action" is used as both invocation and curse word almost as much as "meritocracy," which is a word that shouldn't mean what it does. So yeah, I do love this episode -- for going there, for staying there, and ultimately making an entirely different and more useful (nonpartisan/post-hate/bilateral/real-world) point about it -- but we can now safely say that whatever Hilda says is what I'm going to end up agreeing with... And you and I both already knew that.
Betty feels very sad, and Hilda and Ignacio come and scream at her in Spanish for about a million years, making her feel ever more Mexican, and she takes them aside and tells them about what Marc said, and how she called YETI and they "didn't exactly deny it," and then Hilda -- God love her -- is like, "Who fucking cares how you got in?" Betty, of course, totally cares, which is what having feelings gets you, and Hilda's like, "Look. You get a certain amount of advantages no matter who you are, and you have to use them, because the negatives always outweigh the positives. Scorching-hot babydaddy? Gunned down for no reason, spent the month in bed with a ghost. Gay son on a date? One slight case of gay panic and those tickets are useless. Mom died, Dad sucks, last boyfriend married, latest boyfriend thinks plain white candles are the way to a woman's heart, my only friends are my fat loser sister and my tiny gay son, and I put in weaves for a living. That's my career. So yes. I dress like a whore when I go to the butcher shop, and if you don't understand what I mean when I say that, I will seriously get somebody in here to figure you out, because you need the talking cure." And she calls her breasts "the Pointer Sisters," which additionally rules.
Ignacio gives her the Young Immigrant story about how he was mistaken for a Puerto Rican and when he corrected him the guy said, "Mexican? Even worse." That's ... I don't even know if I'm supposed to laugh at that so I'm going to say I didn't. "If being Mexican helped this time? Fucking good." Betty replies to the one piece of good advice her father ever gave her with yet more pooh-pooh face, and it's not out of character, but I wish Ignacio had talked more, because that's the part I really have no way of understanding, but also I can't believe I just said that.
Wili pours the wine and they discuss free-spirited, forthright Molly ("Yeah, she's a peach," Wili says) and she tries to get him to admit that they have no reason to be together. He says the differences were once aphrodisiac... "And now?" she asks, and he finally figures it out after about a month: "And now we're engaged." Then they flirt some more and drink the entire bottle of wine.
Justin comes in like a hurricane that just got dumped, and he cries on the stairs and won't talk about it, and it is very heartbreaking, and Hilda's like, "How on earth could that have gone wrong?" Because she's the only person more deluded about acceptable public behavior than he is, she is really flummoxed.
Daniel reads the kids' thank you notes, giggling adorably about one addressed to "Danielle" which ends, "You are old!" He calls Molly to thank her for the thank you notes, and she compliments him on the macaroni earrings he made, and they laugh and laugh. Also laughing are Wili and Connor: he's drunk and she's dumping her wine in the ice bucket. "You know Wil, I disagree with everybody at the office: I think you're great!" She takes that in stride, and he absentmindedly spins the empty bottle around on the obvious faux-fur blanket they're stretched out on, and she gets right up in there and he calls this "Spin The Bottle" a very dangerous game. She totally almost gets him to kiss her, and it's sexy. He goes, "You are very hard to resist," and she goes, "Then cut it the fuck out," and he almost does, but then he runs away and tells her pull it together and stop trying to bone him. Like he just noticed everybody always trying to bone him! And then she's alone on the ugly stupid blanket like, "Nuts."
Betty visits Marc's desk with a packet: "Here. You're in. You were right, your presentation was better, so I'm out. You're in." He explains to her that she's acting insane -- her outfit's pretty cute also, I'm noticing -- and that as a person who has been on the receiving end of discrimination his whole life, I guess for being unbearably adorable, and that he would run with this advantage in a hot minute. "MARC. You are a gay man in the fashion industry. Tell me how sad your life is again." He tries to tell her that this earns him nothing and them some random queen appears out of nowhere and gives him Madonna tickets because of the secret underground Gay Mafia.
(Which yes, it does exist, but Madonna? Not in my secret underground Gay Mafia. Maybe as far as Lykke Li, but come on. Who writes this show, those guys that still tan? OMG are there multiple secret underground Gay Mafias? That makes total sense. And if so, the logical question is whether there's some kind of One Ring To Make Them All My Bitches scenario that can play out where you unite all the secret underground Gay Mafias, like ... the Five "Families." Because that would make everything so much easier... Except probably it involves going to those scary Lights Out parties at Geffen's house, which: Never. Again. But I do love the sort of Fairy Godfather pageantry of like: In London, something mysterious happens to Alexander McQueen's tartan samples -- Elton John's wig falls off in Berlin -- Kylie breaks a heel -- Kathy Griffin shuts up for a second -- Margaret Cho decides to say something funny -- Tom Ford has a waxing mishap, you know, like all at once, and then you cut to a sort of high-strung laughing shadowy figure shaking all over like a rescue greyhound, and it's Chris Crocker putting a plastic crown on his head and he's going, "It's Britney, bitch" and then the maid closes the door and you just have to wonder: What ?)
She presses him to take the packet and promises to apply year, and tells him to take it before she changes her mind. Because I'm so sure YETI is all about getting jerked around. He apologizes intensely for what he said, and tries to prove he's not racist by pointing out that some of the hottest guys he's ever "dated" were Latino, which is gold star for effort but sort of too stupid to really acknowledge, and she kind of just stares at him and walks away. He thanks her and she grins hugely to herself, but she keeps walking.
Hilda watches Justin feel horrible, and begs him to talk about it, and he won't because he has no idea what actually happened. "I'm on your side," she says, and he tells her that Randy went from being his best friend, but now he hates Justin because of his friends. "That's their problem, because you're perfect," she says. Which is sort of a toxic thing to tell a kid who's trying to fit in -- for once -- and finishes up: "All that matters is that you never for a second change who you are," which is ... good advice, but only the lesser half of the good advice, because the other half is, "Fitting in is a struggle for everyone on earth, so do what you have to do, but don't lose sight of yourself." Maybe that's implied. Anyway, he offers to take her to the show instead, and she's overjoyed. And then he wonderful all by himself, but still sad. Oh, Justin. Teenagerhood is a slow-motion bloody car accident for everybody, and I have never been a straight teenage boy and I can only imagine how fucked up that is, but it's the awful shit that happens to us in high school that makes us awesome if we work it, so I say bring the noise. He's a strong kid with strong role models and good bone structure. He can do this.
Wili comes home all bereft whining about Molly, and Marc points out she doesn't even wear eyeliner. Wili says she's giving up on Connor, because she's not begging: "If he wants to marry that do-gooding gremlin, it's his choice." I don't see this resolution sticking, frankly. Marc apologizes to her, knowing what it is to be unlucky in love, and she turns on him: "For WHAT?" He gets the fuck out of there, because of the face, and she interrogates him on the YETI thing. "I trust that's not going to interfere with your work here? Good. I can't think of anyone more deserving. Congratulations." And that's Marc's magic moment, and it's good.
Daniel PMs Betty to come talk to him, and she's still pissy, and he apologizes for blowing off the YETI letter yet again, and now she's given her place to Marc... But he made some calls and got her in based on the fact that she worked at Player at the beginning of the season, so now she and Marc are on different magazines. She's in. And the recommendation letter? Six pages long. She nearly cries, and he says the first draft was even longer. I love those two. She apologizes for freaking out and he begs her not to succeed at the rate she's capable of, because he loves her and doesn't want her to leave. On the other hand, he figures in ten years he'll be her assistant. She hugs him and he lights up so bright!
Betty goes over her packet, and Marc calls her from across the office: Anna Wintour and Tina Brown guest speaking? In the same week, they giggle on the phone and grin wonderfully at each other, and then Wili and Daniel both issue their decrees from their offices, and they smile goodbye.
Oh, this will be fun. Send me your YETI proposals by the end of the week, and we'll go over them in a couple of weeks when Betty and Amanda go crazy all over New York. That should add some spice to the spice. Stay ugly!