Our little Betty is growing up. And it seems she’s inspired everyone around her to do the same. Of course, you probably already know everything that’s going to happen since it’s all quite predictable. But before we get to that, let’s start at the beginning of the season premiere of Ugly Betty.
Betty was faced with a choice at the end of last year: She could go with Gio to Rome or get married to Henry. Amen, she chose herself. When she recounted her story of traveling the country on her own, I knew it was going to be a good season. So, Betty visited all the places she’s ever wanted to see and came back to New York with a three-step plan. The first step was to take on more responsibility at work. The second was to get an apartment in the city. And the third was to remain free from romantic entanglements. Onto the first step.
During the month that Betty was away, Wilhelmina did take over Mode and Daniel went to work at another Meade magazine, Player Magazine to be exact. Mode is now an icy, colorless, scary place. So much so that Amanda and Mark are thrilled to see Betty, who doesn’t know about Daniel, because she’s so “big and colorful.” Well, that and they can’t wait until she does something that makes her look stupid. Alas, she can’t stay and so she travels down to Player Magazine.
And this is such a fun place…there are really dumb girls walking around in bikinis and all the guys are morons. I’m not being mean here: When Betty asked Daniel why he never called her, he said he had his assistant call a ton of times to leave messages. Yeah, she was calling a number that consisted of six numbers and the letter P and the guys all boo or bark at the girls. Daniel’s fun here, too. He lets his son, DJ, run around like a maniac and he wears horrible track suits instead of real suits. Betty, being the loyal gal she is, stayed with Daniel and looked to take on more responsibility. And Daniel was more than happy to let her. He used one of her ideas, well sort of, for the next cover story. Only he changed the strong women who have overcome illnesses riding bicycles across the country to hot girls on motorcycles visiting the best party schools. It’s close, though. He even let her plan the event to kick off the new hot girl gang. Of course one of the girls didn’t show and Betty had to take her place, which meant wearing a cape and riding a motorcycle. And you know what happened next. Betty was sprayed in the eyes with silly string by the totally out of control DJ and drove into a giant vat of some kind of Jell-O like substance. But the video will hike readership so Betty tells Daniel to leak it to YouTube and have a link on the magazine’s website. She’s good. So step one, check. Next, please.
Moving to the city is an expensive endeavor and Betty knows that, but she is one determined girl, as we know. So even though her father tells her the new plan is naïve, she sets out to find the perfect apartment. And she does. It’s bright, sunny, big (definitely not a real New York apartment), and just as she turns to take it, another woman beats her. Lucky for Betty, there’s another one in the same building and the nice agent says it’s just like this one so she puts down her deposit and moves in. There’s no way that woman would lie, right. I mean, she’s an honest, upstanding real estate agent working on commission. Really, though, it isn’t that bad. The place is just trashed with weird white goo on the walls. Good thing Betty’s family is so close and they surprise her by helping her clean up the whole thing and paint it the same sunny yellow as the other apartment. Things are starting to look up except for this deafening music coming from a neighbor’s apartment.
Looks like that third step isn’t going to work out so well since the neighbor is an adorable, sweet musician. Yeah, didn’t see that coming. Maybe she’ll stick to her plan, though. Don’t worry, I know how naïve I sound now.
While Betty was fulfilling her plan, her sister was still seeing the married coach and falling even further in love. Her Dad got a job working for her old high school nemesis, Kimmy. Wilhemina successfully killed Claire’s magazine, Hot Flash, by enlisting Kelly Ripa and Regis to talk bad about it on their show and became one step closer to taking everything from Alexis. By the way, Alexis must be taking some stupid pills because she was never quite so dumb before but now it’s completely obvious Willie’s pulling her strings, as Claire pointed out, and she doesn’t see it at all. Agh. One good thing, Daniel did realize that a father doesn’t have to always say yes in order to be a good father and he started setting some boundaries for DJ.
Let’s hope the writer’s decide to break some boundaries and surprise us a little or I might fall asleep next episode. And can I beg a little here…more Mark, Amanda, and Justin, please. What if I say pretty, pretty please?
