Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT "No Crimes, Real Peeps, Saddle Up"
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.04.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Amanda and Betty get an assignment to go out on the town and ... something, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Like they're meant to blow ten thousand bucks, but without spending any money, or... Very Breakfast At Tiffany's, this concept. They pick up a couple of Eurotrashers at an art show, get the boys to wine and dine them, but then the dudes stick them with a check in the thousands. While Amanda is, of course, more than happy to dine and dash, some quick thinking (and Mode name-dropping) from Betty not only solves the problem but gets them a regular column. Which is good, because beyond eating all of her food and ruining most of her life -- while blaming "Bad Ronald," who lives in the walls! ["Yay! I'm not the only one who remembers that cheesy movie." -- Angel] -- Amanda also manages to misplace the rent.
Betty throws a massive hissy and runs to Queens, where Ignacio actually gives her good advice for once: basically, that Amanda is awesome and has much to teach us all, while Betty is pretty much a sopping rag of suck a lot of the time. Amanda gets a second job of the Flushing Burger variety, they become more like each other, and continue to fall madly and deeply in love with each other to the point where nobody's sure where one of them ends and the other begins, et cetera, Betty starts cooking for Amanda and buying her Prada knockoffs, they cry and they laugh and they respect each other's viewpoints...
You know what? None of this matters, because Betty spends most of the episode wearing the most effed-up thing she has ever worn. It's like... Well, tell me if this is a movie or I just made it up from elements of other movies I saw on Mystery Science Theatre. There's like Santa Claus, and Martians, and some dance numbers, and those weird dominatrix women they have up there on the moon, right, and there's a rocket ship, and maybe a giant gorilla fights a giant lizard that shoots fire. Also there is a turtle that can fly, but has no face, and it shoots electricity of some kind. And so the dominatrix women need babies, or sex, or it's really cold there or something, and they have pointy shoulder pads and long puffed sleeves and tight bodices and look totally crazy -- they're kind of like Princess Barbie's friend Wanda from Sandman at the end, in Barbie's dream -- and walk around and yell and shoot lasers from laser guns, and eventually because it's the '50s they settle down: That's exactly how Betty is dressed the entire time. She's like a spell cast by the vomit of a nightmare of a clown.
Anyway Ignacio is awesome for once, Hilda is not really around but very cool, and also behaving out of character is Christina, who manages a partial raison d'etre by bonding with Wilhelmina over their baby (a boy!) and Wili's crush on Connor, which is getting unsettling! And gets a major revival in the form of Daniel's (surprisingly boring) date with Connor's fiancée Molly. They eat-cute and romp around Platonically in the Closet, nearrrrrrly kiss, and then split up again so Daniel can do that face he does. Marc, in like his sole appearance in the episode, blows a security guard to get tape -- and Wili realizes that Daniel (looking at Molly the way "Betty looks at a cheeseburger") is completely in love.
Join us next time for the episode where Ignacio Suarez is, judging by the hypermania of the advertisements, ripped apart by wild dogs. Horrible tragedy? Or Greatest Christmas Wish?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Hilda has apparently only gotten half the point that Karate Kutie tried to get across -- yes, she can legitimize her home business by deriving 30% of her profits from merchandising, but... I don't think selling illegal Chinatown knockoffs from that well-known atelier PLADA is really what he had in mind. Betty, being as we all know a first-class G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S label queen, turns up her nose at the PLADA handbags and shades. Just not up to her high fashion Mode tastes. Hilda's like, "As though my trashy clients will notice, these sunglasses were $2 a pair." Hilda, sometimes your hustler nature and survivor scrappiness actually do make you look sort of vaguely disgusting, mostly when you fall into the Flushing trap of animal prints, and yet I cannot in good conscience advise, obviously, that you do anything but the opposite of what Betty says.
This snootitude would be funny of Betty any day -- because God knows without compassionate guidance she'd be wearing them on her head or as giant hideous necklaces -- but is especially retarded today, because she's wearing pointy puffed sleeves like a creepy-bisexual/dominatrix-vibe villain from the Planet Mongo, in a psychedelic flower print, over a purple turtleneck. It's like her usual hideous clothing is feeling whimsical and decided to wear a costume over itself. And then of course her Anne Boleyn "B" necklace, because sometimes you just need to accessorize a bit more, and on top of it all the big wide green butterfly belt cinching all that shit together. I wish this outfit and Claire Meade's Pip Pip Mad Hatter Old Chum number from last week would get a spinoff series where they roam around in a old schoolbus, blowing people's minds.
Betty's out of OJ, and whines about how living with Amanda has done the opposite of the money-saving roommate thing she's heard of, and no matter how much she labels her food and juices, Amanda does not seem to notice. Hilda asks if she's been contributing meaningfully in any way -- supplementary to the MacArthur Genius Grant that is her very presence, I suppose -- and Betty says she's "hinted," which you know is Betty-speak for "No, because I am weak of spine, but I do sit around feeling resentful and horrible inside, which counts for something." Hilda suggests she try the pithy and always successful, "Where's my rent, bitch," which I guess she picked up from Justin, and Betty goes on a spiel about how yes, Amanda has made poor choices and racked up debt, etc., but she's not... I don't know how on Earth Betty would have managed to make her sunshine-and-duckies conclusion here, but thank God it's Amanda.