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Q: How do you make Nikki Blonsky look even more like a diabetic video blogger getting airlifted out of her ailurophilic trailer home than she already did?
A: Big old pink stripe in her big stupid racist vagina-kicking hair. I'm sorry, but she looks like those apples they used to sell at roadside stands that have slowly dried until they look like bloated grandmother caricatures of, in this case, Kathy Najimy.
Q:Who's that wizened weirdo wandering the set of Ugly Betty this week?
A: That's what used to be Bernadette Peters. She was a Broadway legend who was eventually turned into a robot as a joke by Andy Kaufman and now that he's dead (or is he?) she just sort of cameos around. Here she is playing, loosely and through a briny boozy pickle of nonchalance, the role of Betty's YETI advisor and hopefully future mentor.
Q:What is Christina talking about?
A: What is Christina ever talking about? She's beautiful and she's been pregnant longer than Ashlee Simpson was with little Mohican Mohinder Mekalekahimekahineyho, and that's all that matters until somebody summons the nuts to shove her down the stairs again.
Q:You know how sometimes with this show, you realize early on that you're really just going to have to sit there and wait the full forty-five for the episode-ending montage? And you wish that you had figured that shit out later than the first act, because knowing it that early just makes it seem that much longer and stupider?
A: If I didn't, I sure do now! But yeah, I do.
Q:So what actually happened this week?
A: Oh, you know the plotline in Prada where hottentottie Adrian Grenier whines and whines with his thumb up his ass and then makes, like, a grilled cheese or a cupcake or like a waffle or something and is like, "If you choose your actual career over my pants-shitting tantrum, you don't get this waffle?" It's like that, pretty much the entire episode: either you do your job like a grownup individual, or you throw your phone in a Parisian fountain and go home to Adrian Grenier's waffles. A choice we each must make for ourselves at some point.
See, Betty is so busy having a life and doing her job that she forgets to... Not really sure. Something about Hilda's stupid beauty salon in their living room and how Betty has to be standing there while this happens. Not doing anything, mind you, just standing there and ignoring her own shit. Or else she gets no waffle. But then, we all get the waffle in a way, with like strawberries provided by a unicorn delivery service, when Ignacio's horrible ass keels over with a heart attack. Probably in the middle of giving some goddamned speech about how fucking worthless Betty is, and that's what "family" means. I know he's not actually going to die, but it still smells like delicious waffle in here.
Q:What about the clothes?
A: Well, Marc is adorable as usual. Even though he and Daniel have sort of floofy hair all night, and he's wearing a green velvet suit not unlike that one worn by the guy that won't let Dorothy into the Emerald City until she rings the bell or whatever, he looks good. Christina is, as usual, gorgeous; Betty's clothes are edging up on hipster awesome but it won't last. Molly still looks outdoorsy no matter how much lipstick you slap on her, Hilda's ass is on fire but her face is sort of haggard, and Wili's wearing something you might see on Serena van der Woodsen or the Visionaries line of holographic man-toys from the '80s where each character had a hologram of their spirit animal right on the front of their shit. Also Connor, she is wearing Connor attached to her face, because Molly broke up with him, because Daniel got all up on her jock, because Wili told him to. So everybody wins, except for Zac Posen, who is denied some of that thunder from Down Under but is, as usual, adorable. Even with a fake tan, and even if he still always manages to talk like he's got ten dicks in him.
Q:And the actual plot?
A: Ugh. Bernadette Peters notes correctly that Betty Suarez has no social skills, yells at her to get some, is brutally rebuffed, and threatens to kick Betty out of YETI. (Which is all eerily similar to this old Gilmore Girls episode I watched today, where they give Rory the same business.) Betty enlists Marc to teach her networking, runs into Nikki Blonsky and manages to avoid getting kicked in the vagina by Nikki Blonsky, then gets kicked in the metaphorical vagina when Nikki Blonsky steals this Halston dress for an Elle cover shoot, and then they get the dress back and go to a party at Wili's house, where Bernadette Peters babbles about shrimp and then wanders away in the middle of a line, because she is nuts.
Instead of being rude and answering screeching Hilda's nineteen thousandth guilt-tripping phone call, Betty behaves in a mature and professional manner. Of course, this means she must be destroyed, so when she finally shows up in Queens everybody's missing, because Ignacio had a heart attack, because Betty wasn't there, because somebody up there loves me.
See the soapiest moments on the show, and come back on Monday for the full weecap of the episode.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Betty is very excited about Jodie Papadakis, who's the editor running YETI, and her family is being their usual amount of eye-rollingly, numb-faced supportive. Given that Betty in all likelihood has been yapping repetitively about Jodie Papadakis since the advent of the Tamagotchi, I can barely blame them. The rest of the Suarezes are busy uglifying their home in celebration of Hilda's home boutique with streamers and those shiny letters with grommets all over the place. Justin is wearing purple pants and a shirt in a print Dorothy Szbornak would find a little grim, Ignacio is standing around shooting judgment eyebrows at anything that will stand still, and Hilda could not give less of a fuck about Betty's life than ever. She's very off-the-shoulder right now, while Betty is wearing a collision of knits and a Minnie Mouse polka-dot bow at her neck.
Apparently Jodie is Betty's number one freakout famous hero, which caused her to scream in her building's hallway so loudly that an old woman slapped her. However, she's not so terribly excited about meeting Jodie that she would do anything as logical as attend the pre-YETI mixer, choosing instead to stand around talking about Jodie while Hilda decorates the house and thinks about hiring a magician for her opening. Justin whines that he's trying really hard to get the "Bridge & Tunnel" out of their family -- which is a war he lost long ago, and keeps losing -- and Betty's like, "This is too depressing to contemplate, so I'm going to keep talking about Jodie." Ignacio literally goes, "Betty, your sister asked you a question," as though that's not ten times ruder than ignoring the question in the first place, especially considering the question was "Should I hire a magician for the opening of my trashy living room boutique salon and candle shoppe?"
Betty's like, "Whatever, how about gift bags?" Hilda yells at her that she can't afford gift bags, because she spent all her money on "merch," and Betty's like, "Except for how I get free shit from my job, which is mostly about free shit." The fact that Hilda feels driven to explain what "merch" is short for should clue you into the fact that this is one of those episodes where the jokes -- and the impossibly anvil-icious and poorly constructed moral of the tale -- don't come fast and hard, but instead float lazily toward you from a million miles away, in the early '90s.
Which sucks, because I really like the woman that wrote this episode as a writer, and it feels a little messed-with, to be honest. A little tainted by someone or several someones from the ranks of the clueless not-so-hip. A little Bridge & Tunnel, a little Off-Off-Off. Bernadette Peters? Nikki Blonsky? A Tom Wolfe reference? A complete dearth of the sparkling, wisecracking dialogue that once characterized this show, in favor of hoary old Catskills routines and a bludgeoning ancient message about the hazards of having women in the workplace, neglecting their family and all-important fathers' decrees in order to walk around in pants and operate in a business setting? Seriously. This script was obviously stolen and marked up by aging, uncool drag queens. Who apparently can operate a time machine even with those long fake nails.
Anyway. Hilda calls this part her "very own Broadway opening," and Ignacio... Okay, this is what I'm talking about. He says it's going to be like "Spring Awakening, Avenue Q, and South Pacific all rolled into one." And I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see that production, but even with my hatred and ignorance of Broadway musicals I know that makes zero fucking sense, because really what he just said is, "It'll be like [three Broadway musicals you may have heard of, picked out of a hat at random], all rolled into one." Which, I don't know if you know this, but gay people watch this show, and many of them actually know about Broadway musicals, and many of them are occasionally able to discern when you're pandering. Especially when you do it in a way that suggests you've been hit in the head by a cast-iron frying pan that once belonged to John Wells.
We have got to get out of this scene, I agree. I'm just having trouble doing that, because the whole episode is like this, just like: soft joke from The Cosby Show school of "humor" leading into a non sequitur fashion reference from 1996 and then some kind of over the top slapsticky Christina shit, and then repeat. And it pisses me off because this season has been more like that than not, and we're halfway through the season at this point. At least boring old Season Two didn't feel like it was written by two old queens wearing elastic-waisted Mom Jeans in a trailer park somewhere upstate. This season -- with several wonderful exceptions but not nearly enough -- has felt like somebody's idea of what this show is like, rather than being the actual show. Which is sad, because I liked it once.
Anyway, to Manhattan, where Daniel is complaining about Elle's sales win for last issue -- perhaps, he says, it was the classy photo of Sarah Silverman on the toilet, because being outraged by Sarah Silverman is soooo 2009, and meanwhile here's what everybody's wearing: Betty looks presentable-ish in a skirt of many colors in the red family, Marc looks stunning in a black suit, patterned grey shirt and neon pink tie, and Amanda looks sort of understated in some Express Editor-looking pants, a stupid plaidlike vest, and a gold-dipped Bluetooth. Marc and Mandy remind us about how Marc was once an intern at Elle, and Betty shushes them. Wili tells the assembled staffers that if Elle wins again, one of them will die; Daniel offers them a bottle of great wine if they get any scoop on Elle's plans for month.
Connor tosses some of that charm at them both after the meeting, appealing in a sort-of threesome-y way that he likes their Good Cop/Bad Cop routine. Daniel says it's not a routine, it's just that he's "nice" and Wili is mean. Wili responds, and thank God for her, that you could also say she has balls Daniel is lacking, and Connor randomly goes "God, I love this woman," so you remember the other thing you need to know coming back from the break, which is that Wili has a crush on Connor and wants to exploit Daniel's crush on Connor's fiancée Molly. And that's... literally all you need to know at this point, because that's how boring this show is now. Wili shivers and giggles and Daniel's grossed out/jealous; she invites Connor to her house on Saturday for a party, and he says he's bringing Molly even though she's got something going on with her own life.
There's a never-seen Halston original that Daniel's borrowing from a collector for Keira Knightley to wear on the cover, which will do wonders for advertising in that month's issue. Betty does a "Go Daniel, It's Your Birthday" dance and he's like, "We talked about that." (Really? Did you talk about it back in 1992, when Martin Lawrence and Tisha Campbell's love seemed untarnishable? Maybe Betty can woof-woof for the boys in the Dog Pound, or show us all the meaning of twenty-three skidoo. Thank God America Forever is adorable, or I would have stopped watching right about now.) They talk about how Betty's going to be picking up the dress herself, in secret, like an international spy.
Wili snags Daniel and shows him the video of him kissing Molly in the closet; he goes, "You're awful" in this sort of wounded sad voice. She gives him the only copy, and they discuss how it needs to stay quiet, but some things are worth the risk, and then Wili sort of explains to Daniel that he is in love with her. She floats the possibility that Molly is into it, despite her protestations to the contrary, and apparently that's how dumb Daniel is now, so he's going to totally skeeve his way into Molly and Connor's impending relationship.
Marc takes a good long time figuring out how this whole scheme-that-is-not works, because he's dumb this week too. Wili protests the entire time that she only has Daniel's best interests in mind, because she's such a good person or whatever, which makes no sense because you're also totally trying to wreck somebody's relationship so obviously you have a personal stake, but eventually Marc pulls it together and realizes this is about snagging Connor.
In yet another goddamn scene without Amanda, Christina presents Betty with a stupid Montblanc the size of a Ren Faire turkey leg on a stand that says "BETTY SUAREZ, Young Editor In Training." YEIT. Then they talk, but as usual I have no idea what the fuck Christina is talking about. She yells at a dress form for awhile and then preggoes around and rolls her Rs and talks about a rodent in her pants or her womb or something and then breaks down crying and I think mumbles something about that guy from Flipping Out, and then says she wishes she could be an alcoholic like Hilda but she can't because she's pregnant or something, and cries hysterically for awhile because her hormones can't handle their internet service being interrupted, and then for no narrative reason Betty tells her to go be at Hilda's stupid tacky party and if you think that story's going somewhere, that means you're lucky enough to still have places in your heart that haven't been burned and salted by this show yet.
Off Betty's line that her whole life is beginning today or whatever the fuck this simulacrum of Betty would say, Bernadette Peters is all, "Welcome to the funeral" because print media is dying, have you noticed, and then during the rest of this scene Radar fails eleven more times, and there's a pile of tics on the floor beside Bernadette Peters that grows exponentially as she burns through every possible weird/stupid thing she can do for a paycheck and then leaves them on the floor like grimacing unreal pistachio shells. She tells them to toughen up, just like when she came to NYC acting like this and was justly mocked for it. Betty softly declares her love for Jodie, which gets her shit on by Jodie for talking, and then Jodie makes Marc name five YETIs and their magazines. He does so easily, and then it's Betty's turn. But Betty wasn't at the mixer, so she stumbles all over and basically wets herself, because I don't know if you know this, but Betty Suarez has a congenital lack of game.
Jodie asks WTF she was doing instead of going to the mixer, and when Betty explains that she had to watch her tacky family stick tacky crap to the tacky walls of their tacky life, Jodie's like, "Anybody else miss the mixer? Sick hamster, perhaps?" Which is awesome and exactly what I hoped she would say. Of course, everybody else understands the concept of applying yourself to achieve your goals, and the importance of other people in this pursuit, so they were all there. Jodie, probably applying some stupid Tough Love principle we'll eventually have telegraphed and eventually revealed to us long after it has decayed, tells them to make forty professional contacts before the class, or they're out of YETI. What she really means is, "Fucking give me a break, Suarez."
Betty runs into Connor in the elevator, and of course he knows Jodie, and knows very well that Jodie's a hard ass, and Betty whines about the whole networking thing -- "she was a little unfair to me," she says -- and Connor's like, "Yeah, it's sad how you can't be a success in a vacuum without ever meeting people or forging connections of any kind, and aren't you so put upon," and then goes for the bonus by talking about how sometimes you just have to fuck your family and loved ones over because that's the way the cookie crumbles, the unspoken "And apart from macking on Daniel, Molly doesn't seem to mind" hangs between them in the air. Then, to shut her up, Connor tells Betty to find somebody who excels at "the shallow stuff," and get their help.
Ugh. This show's usually a bit more even-handed in its portrayal of Losers vs. Popular Kids, but this is ridiculous. The "shallow" stuff? Such as making friends and learning to understand other people? Meeting people in your industry? It's not a fucking chore, it's basic shit. So now you've got what could have been a fairly interesting episode about watching people who get it trying to explain it to Betty who doesn't, in a way that gets past her automatic nerd arrogance and leading to greater self-esteem once she realizes how easy to like other people actually are... But instead, you have confirmed heartless Bad Boyfriend Connor explaining that being good at your job is a good thing, but that being good at your job also involves doing horrible things. Such as your job.
Of course, "shallow" means Marc, who shuts her down immediately in his amazing patchy couture jacket, and blackmails him to help her network with how she leveraged her affirmative action to get him into YETI. He says they can go to Swill for her forty contacts, but the offer's for tonight only. Betty calls Hilda to say she can't help her assemble the gift bags for the party on Saturday, and Hilda acts uncharacteristically whiny about it and hangs up, and Ignacio tells Hilda that her sister has no choice. Which is true. And what's more true is, Betty thought of the motherfucking gift bags in the first place, and got them for you for free, not to mention that your son was born to assemble gift bags and he is standing right there.
Daniel and Molly babble at each other for whatever reason, and act all awkward about the kissing thing, and she stands around lobbing ellipses at him long enough for Connor to arrive and whisk her away to somewhere stupid. Wiley Watching Wili shoots Daniel her most beautiful, caring and nurturing (yes!) smile, and they have a little convo about the nothing that just happened. She tells him to occupy Molly at her party under the guise of more helpful advice, and Daniel is grateful to the alien that has taken up residence inside Wilhelmina because it's so gosh-darn sweet.
Now, we confirm at the end of the episode that Daniel's totally onto her, but it's almost worse that he is behaving like this even though he knows she's after Connor, because it makes Wili the fool for thinking she's fooling and manipulating Daniel (and Marc the fool for falling for it on his own). And of the three of them, you know I love Daniel, but of the three of them: he is the fool, in every scenario you can construct. Strike four, show, and Blonsky hasn't even shown up yet. Although judging by the chicken wing/ranch dressing scent wafting from my TV, she's getting closer.
Betty's first networking conquest: Ryan Richards, of The Gorgeous Gourmet. Not actually in the magazine industry -- or gorgeous, for that matter -- but the fact that Betty didn't immediately gun him down for not meeting her intellectual standards is a good sign that Betty's learning the basics. The basics of meeting other human beings. He hungrily reads her business card while Marc and Amanda dress her down viciously for spending twenty minutes on a caterer, but like: she's an assistant who throws about sixteen parties an episode, usually in the ten minutes before Wili starts shooting into the crowd, and he more than likely has a roster of entertainment and magazine clients already, so I'm not sure I understand why he's a bad contact. I mean, he might not count for this game, but -- and at least the episode follows up on this one thing -- that's a good card to have in your wallet. Even if it's just to whip it out during a conversation with somebody else and they're all "My caterer just cancelled," and you go like, "Call this guy, he's great." So even the episode is unclear on what "networking" actually means, which is just so great because we were already doing something stupid.
Marc explains that in this episode, "networking" means "acting retardedly fake while finding out what other magazines are doing right this second, in return for meaningless, made up gossip." The screen splits like mitosis and shows him doing this, but it's too stupid to tell you about, frankly, and basically you just: say your name, tell a huge stupid lie, then hamfistedly ask people about their secret stuff. So now you know what that's like when people say the word "networking." Oh, and then you tell them you'll be right back and walk away from their face while they're still talking. And that's how you succeed in business! Amanda's ghost like Swayze because she knows when to get the fuck out of a shitty episode, but Marc waits around for a sec so he can stupidly set up this whole Terminator-style eye-menu where Betty assesses the people and decides if they're worth meeting, then approaches them, and it's just so awful because I guarantee you that based on its context, this is not a reference to the show, but to the first or second movie. I'm pretty sure Dwayne Wayne or the Fresh Prince or Fred Mertz did this at some point, and now Betty's doing it. I sort of hate this show, come to think of it. Although you do get to see cute little Betty plop down in a chair and brightly say, "I know a murderer!"
Anyway, guess what? After a big dumb montage of her telling stupid lies to scary people that all look like they got Hepatitis C from their Botox surgeries, she's at 39 contacts. Stupid fucking Nikki Blonsky sits down beside her in a sassy Lane Bryant ensemble and a nasty-ass McKibbin-esque pink stripe in her stupid hair. And you know where McKibbin is now? Living in the Sober House with Andy Dick, which is the place we all go to die. I think you understand what I'm saying.
Anyway, Betty and Nikki are like, "We're fat and rude and we hate ourselves and other people, so obviously we are going to bond," which is just so realistic, like both of them wouldn't be scrambling to be as far away from the other one as possible, and they talk about how this super cute dentist down the bar is into S&M, and how much they hate networking, and chit-chatting, all the things that normal people do and how much they are above them, but before they grab their Oscar the Grouch slippers and Gilmore Girls DVDs and call it a day, they trade business cards and then shiver because Nikki works for Elle, our mortal magazinemy.
I don't think Nikki was dissembling before realizing they were magazinemies, but now she's working it, and the reason I know that is that she compliments Betty's braces instead of asking what the fuck a thirty-eight-year-old woman is doing wearing color-coded braces instead of her dignity when there are already sooo many other immediately discernable problems; Betty compliments Nikki's awful hair-stripe, because God knows Betty would think that shit is cool. They randomly talk about the Gorgeous Gourmet and Nikki mentions that he's catering an upcoming Elle party, and then immediately sticks her be-sweatered elbow in the ranch dip they've decided is appropriate to nosh on. I guess since this is Betty's 40th business card, she's done networking and just wants to hang out, which is fine except it sort of means she still doesn't really get it. So with dip all over her eighth layer of clothing, they talk about how "real" (meaning "obese") they are, and Betty takes off just long enough for Nikki to grin crazily down at Betty's Blackberry like she's going to eat it with the rest of the fuzzy ranch dip.
And I mean, I kind of hate Nikki Blonsky. But I'm not calling her a phone-eating ham sandwich because I hate her and feel like anti-fatso hate speech is the way to go, because nobody whines about being called fat like fat people. I'm calling her that because the show is calling her that, because the entire hateful message of this scene is that if you're Betty you can't trust anybody but people just like you, either in the way they look or their lack of basic social skills, which just sort of means you're right for being a loser in the first place, and I don't like that.
I know it's fun to be a victim, but the thing that freaks me out about this kind of thinking is that it's just as much fun to be a victim whether or not anybody is victimizing you, or even fucking cares, which means you can't really trust yourself once you head down that path. I guess I should just be grateful that she gets burned for taking the easy way out, except for how it makes it seem like Nikki's evil and Betty's completely innocent as usual, like if there were just another fat girl at Swill -- perhaps somewhere behind Nikki Blonsky -- she would have been better off sticking to her own kind. Ugh. Assuming somebody sucks because of the way they look is a fast-forward trip to a hell of your own devising, because if the best you can do is assume that beautiful people are stupid, then you deserve your loneliness.
So Betty comes in walking all weird and waddly and screaming about nothing, then fills Daniel in on how Elle's cover shoot no longer conflicts with Mode's trip to Venice, which means Betty wins the bottle of very nice wine. They chatter about how Betty's got a friend at Elle now and that can't possibly bite her in the ass, and then Daniel asks Betty to (DO HER JOB) instead of leaving work early, and pick up the Halston dress at five. Betty acts like she's being slow-motion destroyed, then fills up a big bin of beauty samples for Hilda's giftbags, and he bitches because the Queens Morning Tribulation is doing a story on Hilda's garage boutique -- which I'm so sure -- and Christina offers to go back to Queens with Papi for again, no reason, but I thought they already said that and anyway, who knows what she really said. Ignacio pisses his panties for no reason about how Betty should apparently just hoist Hilda onto her back and carry her to the land where rainbows come from, or at least as far as she can get until her feet are worn down into bloody stumps.
Now I will lay some knowledge on you, because I don't know very much about TV but I do know what the problem is here. You know how if you have a gun in the first act you have to have the gun go off in the third act, you know that thing? Well, there is an opposite corollary that if you're going to have a gun go off in the third act, probably you should have the gun in the room in the first act so that people get used to it. And when you're a screenwriter, something you must always understand and never forget is that we the audience do not have your time machine. We don't have the luxury of going back to page ten when you realize somewhere around page forty that you forgot the gun.
So really, what this episode is about is about the very last thing -- Ignacio's heart attack -- and the fake contrived conflict that it symbolizes. That's at the end of the episode, although handled so poorly that you couldn't be blamed for finding Betty to be the only non-asshole left standing at the end of the episode. But then instead of working organically toward that ending, the story works backwards, with 3x5 notecards scattered in its wake like breadcrumbs. The idea being that you have to earn this emotional climax by demonstrating the two sides of the argument (work v. family) and resolving them in an unexpected and powerful way (Betty ignores calls about heart attack). Never write backwards, because we can always tell when you're faking it.
As Betty's side goes, this works somewhat: we see her struggling with it, trying to have it all, scrambling to offer compromises to satisfy all three (Daniel/Mode, Jodie/YETI and the Suarezes). Where it falls down is the "networking" subplot, which unnecessarily tries to shoehorn itself into all three where the Halston dress task would have sufficed, and the Suarez part. Because the Suarezes do not share a fucking leg to stand on this week, because Betty is too good at taking care of them for them to have anything to bitch about. And I'm sorry, teleplay on paper, but simply taking a break every three or four scenes to scream BETTY YOU ARE OVERLOOKING YOUR FAMILY doesn't make it feel true, it just makes us feel screamed at.
The only thing that would make it feel true is if she actually overlooked her family at any point, which she never does, because this show has never managed to find the balance between Saint Betty and Human Betty, which is why I'm happiest when they find ways around this particular kind of storyline. (I would never suggest going anywhere as retarded or clueless as the plagiarism episode, for example, ever again.) But it's not because they can't do it -- and God knows America's talented enough to sell anything, she could make Betty operating a meth lab seem adorable and slapstick -- but because this show still has this made-up likeability issue with Betty, and this season seems to really want to sell us on her awesomeness. Which seems more and more desperate the less and less awesome she gets.
All of which means a lot of inorganic complaining from Hilda, puffed-up chesting from Ignacio about literally nothing, and Betty running around frantically but never getting anywhere, because there's nowhere for her to go, because the entire story rests in the last five seconds of the episode, which is bullshit because when you're a viewer, you don't have the option of watching it backwards: it's a story, and it works like stories work. And instead we have gestures, punchlines with sketched-in setup, no parallel structure to speak of unless you think "half-hour of limbo" is a structure, and jokes from the age of Brandon and Brenda.
If there were more worthy dialogue (meaning, I guess, Amanda) or the Daniel/Molly-Wilhelmina/Connor storyline didn't feel the exact same way, down to using the exact same placeholding beats instead of actual scenes with a brain or a heart or any courage at all, it probably wouldn't be so noticeable but the fact is that everything I just said about the Suarezes applies double to the Connor-Molly story, for the same reason. Which means that of the three plots here (Queens, YETI, Mode romance) in this episode, the only one with any life or humor in it at all is the one guest-starring Nikki Fucking Blonsky, which is the most offensive part of all.
Wili lounges briefly against her kitchen counter with Marc in her perfect apartment, planning her move on Connor while Marc hints and mugs and begs, all outrageously, to come to the party, and of course she says he's not, but you know this episode well enough by now to know that he will be at that party obviously, and that Betty will too because it's the same night as Hilda's whatever. Marc does call this plan "juicy couture," which is funny, but it's not that funny.
No, this scene is good, actually, and should have carried the whole storyline. The redecorated Casa Suarez looks like Claire's just felched a Spencer's Gifts, which is how Hilda likes it, and Christina walks in quacking like a duck at her, and Hilda pretends to understand her primitive crazytalk, and then there's about three really sweet seconds where Hilda gives herself a well-earned, awesome pat on the back, and then basically explains the actual issue, which is that Betty is still working on balancing the various parts of her life, and Hilda just honestly misses her. Which is all you had to say, honestly, because that's real. Which means that yet again Ignacio has ruined everything by trying to be the voice of all morality, when the actual conflict here is that Hilda wants to impress Betty and show her what they have in common. That's a story you could love, because then Hilda's whining and constantly bringing it back to Betty would make sense and wouldn't seem so petty and thick.
I guess the only solution -- since you have to have Ignacio front and center in this episode to give the ending some weight -- would have been to make him the third front somehow, instead of awkwardly making him the standard-bearer for an unrelated conflict so that he's the voice of Betty's guilt. Which would imply her having something to be guilty about, which would imply her doing something to be guilty about instead of just blundering through the episode and constantly looking like she's going to vomit. But whatever, cute scene, and then Christina has some kind of contraction or something and they bond or whatever.
Betty heads over to the poor man's Zoolander with the shadowy Halston collector sitting in a dark room with opera playing and a candystriped tie, and the guy tells her "Betty Suarez" already picked up the dress, because Nikki Blonsky gave him her business card and used her name. Betty heads back to Mode with the news, and Wili fires her immediately. Daniel of course laughs this off, and Betty grovels about how Nikki stole the thing while she was washing ranch off her sweater, and they have a conference call with Elle. It's cute, as celebrity cameos often are, although if you have to ask whether losing Nina Garcia was bad for Elle, all you have to do is consider the fact that they hired Nikki Blonsky to work there.
Betty and Nikki scream at each other over the web-conference screens and it's embarrassing and unrealistically unprofessional, but not really in that day-glo Betty way it could have been, and Wili finally shuts them all up and tells them to stop holding Mode hostage, and then the Elle people take off, and Nikki smirks at everybody, and Wili's thoughts turn once again to murder and she tells Betty she doesn't belong in this business and runs off. Daniel passive-aggressively takes responsibility for this fuckup by admitting he shouldn't have expected basic shit from Betty, and runs off all sucky and dumb. Is his last name Suarez suddenly?
Flushing talk and Scottish talk abound, so who knows what they're talking about, and Ignacio tells Betty to man up and stop feeling bad about fucking up, and she whines about Daniel losing faith in her, and she's all about tearing up Nikki's business card as this act of ultimate revenge. Justin comes in to say that "Crazy Fingernail Lady" is asking for rum, which is the second laugh of the entire episode, and then Betty locates the business card of the Gorgeous Gourmet, who is catering the Elle party that's going on the same night as all these other parties in this episode, of course. A lightbulb goes off over her bushy little head and she gets Marc to meet her and Gorgeous Gourmet at the Elle offices to steal back the dress. Hilda -- resplendent and professional, with a curly side-pony -- spots her and immediately starts bitching about how Betty's not being demonstrative enough about Hilda's amazing life. Which has yet to begin, because this is a party for a thing that does not yet exist and does not require Betty's presence in any way.
Hilda stomps off after Betty tries to explain the actual, real shit going on in her career, and then Ignacio comes up and spits in her eye for good measure. She provides him with about sixteen valid reasons why he needs to shut up, but you know Papi: he will never, ever shut up until death's cold hand finally jerks him off the stage. So Betty leaves to do her actual shit for her actual job to make up for her multimillion-dollar mistake, and Hilda gets back to her guests at her party for her new business, while Ignacio stews and hates and acts ridiculous as usual.
Molly compliments Wili on her apartment, and Wili laughs about how she likes to look down from the penthouse at the little people, and then sends Molly off to be intercepted by Daniel. They act awkward and dumb and stammer some more, and he drags her off to the bedroom to ask her "something" in "private." She's got trepidations, but not really.
Gorgeous Gourmet sneaks them into the Elle offices and puts paid to Marc's notion that chatting up caterers is a bad idea, because at least Gorgeous Gourmet understands the actual concept of networking and not the stupid definition this episode uses, but once again we see that Betty's inability to accomplish a single task -- without stopping to pet bunnies or pick up garbage from the street or bring Christina into the mix -- is actually a virtue, while shallow Marc will never succeed no matter how hard he tries because he's too busy making industry contacts.
Daniel explains that his heart is mushy and his brain is mushy and his eyes are dewy with love and Molly explains that she has been with Connor for four years and Daniel needs to cut it out. But on the other hand, Connor is actually devoted to his career and expects her to understand that, while Daniel's doing great if he actually shows up at work, so it's less like totally creeping and more like a conversation among adults. Daniel admits that what he is doing is totally shady and gross, not to mention a horrible business move, and he doesn't want to hurt Connor, but... He's going to anyway, so just look him in the eye and tell him there are no Daniel feelings, just Connor feelings. Molly stares at him for a ridiculous amount of time and busts the eff past him, because this is gross.
Wili and Connor entertain Zac Posen and his two female friends, who are in costume as She-Ra for some reason. Wili cracks a joke about how nobody knows what Connor is talking about because of the Australian accent, and Zac talks in his fake weird voice about how hot Connor is. You know how sometimes somebody talks so gay that it's like they have a concussion? "Who caaaaares what he soooounds like, look at the way he loooooks," and I mean, Zac Posen is one hot little bitch, but that voice makes me want to fucking lose it. (Or I suppose, in other words: who cares what he sounds like?) Zan tells them they make "the most diviiiiiine couple" and swans off. Connor says he's flattered, and Wili notes they'd make a bad-ass power couple, then admits she can't handle being around him ever since that business trip where she tried to bone him. Just then, Molly comes running up with Daniel's excessive emotions still dripping from her dress, and they take off. Wili's face tries for "yearning" but ends up somewhere around "I'm sure another taxi will drive by soon."
Marc and Betty locate the Halston dress in Elle's closet, where he knew it would be ("I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing this to get a better Christmas present from Wilhelmina") and then points out the Ugly Wall, where they put up pictures of ugly coworkers to make fun of them. Marc's idea, naturally. He tells her to hurry up and plays with a giant furry hat while she works on the dress's vintage snaps, but then they hear somebody coming and freeze. They hug in fear and a drunk couple of drunks come in giggling, but where are they?
Weekend At Bernie's-ing the mannequin down the hall and through the party with the big furry hat over its face so it just seems like a drunk model. That works. Then the mannequin's head falls off and Nikki spots them, wearing quite the party outfit: tailored skirt, too-tight wrist bangle making her arm look like a sausage, and a shapeless wide-neck top with three-quarter sleeves that make her look grossly out of proportion like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and cinched with a belt right around where her waist would be if she had one but instead just seems to be holding her head-sized boobs up and dividing her body into two equal-sized blobs with her stupid pink hair on top like a stripper-haired snowman. Looks like somebody got all diva on wardrobe, because there is no other justification for putting her body through this insanity. She is just not as fat as her clothes are telling you she is. Then they fight and it's dumb and I don't recap fisticuffs because I am opposed to both violence and stupid shit, and they get away just as Nikki's bearing down on them with giant white flowers clutched in her honey-baked fists.
Daniel explains to Wili that he knew what she was up to, and has finally figured out her crush on Connor. He says he won't hold the fact that she's human against her (which isn't the punchline but is sort of funnier than the punchline, like, "You're in love with Connor too? You're only human!") and that he'll keep her humanity a secret. They grin at each other in that super-affectionate thrilling way they've started doing this year, love that, and then Betty and Marc show up with the dress and headless mannequin. Wili admits she's intrigued and then invites all three of them in. "Pinch me!" Marc breathes. "Don't touch me!" Marc hisses.
Daniel gives them champagne and Marc quietly giggles about how he's the first assistant to make it into one of Wili's parties -- explaining, of course, that he'll leave her out of the story when he tells it -- and they share a super-sweet moment of pride and excitement about how their lives are finally happening. Marc sets off toward Zac and Betty spots Jodie, who is really looking quite well for a lady of a thousand and six, and ignores Hilda's phone call. Which would be totally acceptable, but is doubly acceptable because Jodie is heading straight for Betty. Betty puts her phone on silent and they discuss how Betty's gotten her contacts together, and then Jodie acts all weird and tells Betty the shrimp are spicy and then wanders the fuck away in the middle of talking to Betty. As I'm sure people often do.
Betty, never one to let something happen organically or prove herself before asking for favors, crawls right up inside Jodie's dress with neediness splashed across her face and asks Jodie to be her mentor. And it's a credit to Bernadette Peters that she actually manages to sell "Let's start with me not kicking you out of YETI" without even a hint of the obvious writeoff that this character would realistically do at this point -- just a subtle warning tone about the cart going behind the horse -- because if this were real life, you would get a bright red Family Feud XXX right across your face at this point. When did Betty's optimism and belief in self stop being inspiring and start looking pathetic? I guess when she stopped earning it on the back end. I'm giving this show one more week.
Betty acts totally fake and stupid with a random party guy, just like they taught her, and then later on goes to Queens, I guess for the tail end of the party. There's a huge mess in the kitchen, with a dramatically-lit overturned kitchen chair, and on her phone there are fifty thousand messages from silenced Hilda. She calls immediately, and Hilda's crying, and tells Betty that Ignacio had a heart attack.
"La Ritournelle" starts playing and you realize the episode's about to start: Molly's on Daniel's steps when he gets home, and tells him she can't deny her feelings for him. And not only that, but she dumped Connor. Daniel stares at her boring giant face and finally kisses her, and it is awesome because of Sebastian Tellier, and then meanwhile at Wili's house, she's lounging around looking hot, and Connor shows up looking broken and sad and drunk and then he just fucking grabs her and kisses her super awesome hard great job, and Papi's on life support and Justin is crying on Hilda's breast, and she still looks fucking amazing as usual, and Betty throws herself down on him and Hilda holds her hand, and man, I wish this paragraph was the whole episode but I don't like thinking that the awesome episode-ending montage is a crutch, or -- even worse -- that they only seem awesome when the episode is sucky otherwise, or -- worst of all -- both at once.
"This episode really just ... isn't that great." Let's find a song and turn the last two acts of this well-written and emotionally valid script into a montage. "But then what will we do for the other forty minutes of the episode?" Fuck it, all they ever talk about is the montages anyway. Just write any old fucking thing. "Should it be interesting or funny?" I guess so, if you've got time, but don't throw your back out. "Oh no, the writer's assistant from Men In Trees stole my Blackberry at our softball game!" Then I guess it's crunch time. Call Alex Patsavas and ask her what she was using months ago, and we'll just pick from that list at random. "Is this really what writing TV was supposed to be like?" Yes. It's kind of like writing TV. "Can I be in the Guild now? My health insurance is really expensive." Go write a Two & A Half Men or something and we'll talk.