Sept. 27, 2007 (2.1, aka #24): In which the dead come back to life, and the living are buried prematurely

Update:

• This recap is now finished, though I will probably need to come back and correct some typos - every time I repost this thing, I notice a ton more. Sorry about that.
  
  
• I didn't need to add much of importance, but I did manage to answer a few questions and fill in a lot of irrelevant detail. :-)
  
  
• I came up with a better fake title. I like making up my own titles. You can find the official titles elsewhere (like TV Guide - I added a link in the sidebar).
  
  
• Yeah... I really do intend to clean up and merge those older recaps from last year. But I'm not feeling a strong sense of urgency, so it probably won't be soon.
  
  
• Last Friday this site got nearly 200 page views. I realize that's nothing compared to some blogs, but I've only been doing this for fun - I haven't done much to promote it, other than to make sure it shows up in a Google search for "ugly betty recaps." (It also comes up in Yahoo, but not on MSN... hmm...). All I can say is, wow, thanks for visiting!

We start off the season with something I was afraid had fallen by the wayside: A scene from a telenovela. This is a very special one, starring Betty as a maid in a very brightly decorated home. She has glamorous hair and makeup, but she's also still wearing those glasses, braces, and that hideous giant "B" necklace. She's dusting a framed photo of her employers, Henry and Charlotte. Overcome with tristeza, she throws herself sobbing onto the sofa.

In walks Henry... or should I say Señor Grubstick... after a rough day of wearing designer cowboy duds. He tries to comfort her with a passionate embrace. She tears his shirt open and kisses him. An ultra-pregnant Char-- er, Señora Grubstick, clad in a fluffy little nightgown of envious green, catches them. "Whore!" she shouts at Betty in English. (I've been watching Univision for over a year now, and I'm pretty sure you can't say the Spanish equivalent on TV in the US.)

Henry and Betty are impactados, not to mention covered with smeared red lipstick. Betty squints in confusion as Charlie needlessly explains that she's pregnant with his child. (Betty puts her glasses back on and gasps at the sight of Charlie's gigantic green belly.) "If I can't have you, no one else can!" She lifts her green-gloved hand to reveal a gun. Betty gets in front of Henry to protect him; Charlie is just as happy to kill her instead.

Charlie's psychotic behavior is a big turn-on for Henry. (If you think this sort of thing happens only in spoofs of telenovelas, then clearly you've never seen a real one!) Henry shoves Betty aside, and she ends up crying on the sofa yet again.

Justin wakes Betty up from her nightmare. She's going to be late to work. She trips and knocks things over in her haste to get ready. She and Justin talk about how much he hates camp, and how Hilda won't leave her room at all. With Ignacio still stuck in Mexico, Betty is pretty much holding down the fort.

Santos is recovering from his gunshot wound. He looks fine except for a big bandage around his middle. He's eager to get on with his life, but Hilda won't let him out of the room either. Not till he's healed up some more. They snuggle, plan their wedding, and watch TV in bed all day; Betty has been bringing up their meals. (Because she doesn't have enough to do besides her job, all of the housework, all of the shopping, and looking out for Justin.)

Amanda (aka Fluffy - I'll try calling her by her actual name for a while) has been eating nonstop ever since Christina found that birth certificate identifying Fey as her mother. Most of it has gone to her butt, and she now has two asses. She's in denial and hasn't been keeping up with her clothing sizes. Marc (Fido) convinces her to confront her parents.

No, actually, Wil convinces her - she calls Amanda "Betty." O the indignity! She and Marc go directly to Scarsdale to see them. They are in their pajamas and seem flustered and nervous. The first thing Amanda's mother does is point out that Amanda's overweight. They become very defensive when Amanda accuses them of keeping secrets; another couple ("internet friends" who came over to "play tennis") comes down the stairs in pajamas as well. Amanda hardly seems to notice. Marc finally blurts out the accusation; her parents reluctantly admit that they adopted Amanda from Fey because they can't have children of their own (her adoptive father has "lethargic sperm") and Fey wanted to concentrate on her career. They don't know who her biological father is.

All that Amanda can see is that they lied to her and they're not her real parents. She can never trust them again! She runs out of the house in tears. (Marc says goodbye more politely.)

As they ride up on the elevator at Mode, Amanda complains that she no longer knows who she is. Her own biological mother never paid her much attention, and now she's dead.

Bradford gets on the elevator, and Marc notices that Amanda and Bradford have similar mannerisms. (Amanda is even more upset to realize that her ex-lover Daniel might be her brother!) Marc and Amanda then embark upon a quest to get a DNA sample from Bradford, but it isn't easy. (Amanda calls him "Dadford" by mistake.) First, she tries to get him to lick an envelope, but Betty points out that it has a self-sealing adhesive. Then she gives him a paper cut and offers to wipe the blood for him, but he's in a hurry. Finally, Marc tricks him into giving up some ear hair that's supposedly been offending Wil.

We're just going to have to wait for those test results.

Yoga and Claire have been hiding out in the Montauk home of a Mitsy Sacks, who is visiting Barcelona at the moment and apparently did not invite the two escaped convicts to house-sit. Yoga has been enjoying the celebrity social scene there, but not discreetly enough for Claire's tastes. Yoga assures her that people will assume she's either the maid, or Gayle King.

Claire desperately wants to see her children again, and of course she's not happy about the situation with Wil and Bradford. Wil has changed Bradford's phone numbers, so Claire has no way to contact him. Yoga warns Claire that she's still front-page news and needs to be careful.

Daniel's been in the hospital, with his entire right leg in a cast. He's gotten hooked on pain pills, and is in no hurry to get out. He tries to delay his discharge from the hospital. He's so pathetic, he has Betty scratching his feet for him. He's trying to manage the magazine from his bed, but Wil has been disregarding his orders and doing her own thing - with Daniel and Alexis both out of the picture, she's become the de facto editor-in-chief of Mode. She's still planning her wedding and enjoying the media attention during the Meade siblings' recovery.

Will also has a new sidekick, a champion ass-kisser named Sheila. (No explanation is given as to where she came from, but she looks familiar - I'm wondering if it's the same actress who played Nancy or Zelda in the very first episode last year.) I don't see Nick anywhere.

Wil and Marc relish the thought that soon she will be married to Bradford, and then she'll own all of the Meade magazines. Wil wonders where Claire is.

Undaunted by Yoga's concerns (and emboldened by Mitzy's closet full of Halloween costumes), Claire calls Wil and arranges a meeting near a bridge, where she will sign Mode over to Wil in exchange for dumping Bradford. Then she pulls a switcheroo so Yoga will meet up with Wil, leaving Claire to meet up alone with Bradford. Alas, Wil also pulls a switcheroo; Marc (dressed as Wil) meets up with Yoga (dressed as a nun).

In Bradford's office, Wil smugly hands Claire a drink and gloats that she's already called the police, who will be there in three minutes. "I only need one," says Claire as she KO's Wil, finishes the drink, and leaves.

Marc meets a similarly painful fate at Yoga's hands. "I don't think I'll ever be able to watch The Sound of Music again," he cringes at the memory of Yoga in an old-fashioned habit. Me, I'd have to be very traumatized indeed to give up Rogers & Hammerstein. Wil worries that she may need protection. (I predict that she'll get a bodyguard who turns out to be Claire's and Alexis's hit man.)

Alexis has been comatose in the ICU since the accident. Every day, Daniel wheels himself almost into her room, then chickens out and turns back and asks for his pain pills. (Meanwhile, he has been telling Betty that he spends hours at his sister's bedside.) A photographer manages to get some great photos of both of them in their debilitated states.

In reference to getting past her problems with Henry, Betty tells Christina, "I have to look straight ahead." She then turns around and crashes into a gigantic mock-up of the next issue's cover; she falls and hurts her eye. (The last thing she sees is the caption "LOVE HURTS." Heh, subtle!)

Now she was to wear an eyepatch. As it happens, my boss had to wear an eyepatch for a few months, but she managed to make it seem really cool. Poor Betty has a ways to go before she can pull something like that off. The doctor warns Betty that her blood pressure and heart rate are worrisome. Betty denies being overstressed. (Meanwhile, Christina tries on some rubber gloves in the background!)

Justin has found the creative opportunities at his summer camp to be unfulfilling, so he runs away and hides out at Mode. He is found by Wilhelmina, who has more respect for his fashion sense than that of all her other assistants combined. He and Wil reverently quote Coco Chanel at one another. Betty works out a deal with Daniel to allow Justin to finish the rest of the summer as an intern at the magazine.

Betty finds out that Henry sent her favorite flowers (pink Gerber daisies) a few weeks ago. He's been thinking of her. Swell. In a very bad mood, she stomps down to Wil's photo shoot with victims of various natural disasters. The idea of the feature is to give cosmetic makeovers to women whose lives were destroyed. Betty takes one look and is disgusted by the crass vapidity of it. (It doesn't help that Sheila comes by and asks if she's the mudslide victim.) Miss Famine offers Betty a bagel, and Betty loses her temper (not with the famine lady, but with the concept of the photo shoot). She makes a big scene and storms out. (I think she throws a bottle of hair gel at Nick, but I'm not 100% sure that's him.)

She ends up at a diner, drowning her sorrows in grease and salt. Daniel hears about the scene she made at the photo shoot and takes some time off from the hospital to pay her a visit. She self-consciously takes off the eyepatch. "It's no secret you turn to potatoes in times of need," he tells her as she begins working on her third or fourth serving of chili-cheese fries. He takes her to the park and they have a "funeral" for her relationship with Henry. She takes all of her Henry memorabilia and buries it. It takes a long time; she says a few words about every item, and there are a lot of items - from the soy sauce packets from their first lunch together (sushi in their Halloween costumes) to the paper crown from the Administrative Assistants' Day bash at The Middle Ages.

Meanwhile, Hilda is showing off her wedding gown to Santos. She gets angry when she thinks he hasn't written his vows yet, but it turns out that he did, and they're very heartfelt and touching. At the same time, Betty is giving a eulogy for her relationship with Henry. "I had a fantasy we were together, we were building a life." The Betty/Henry funeral scene is intercut brilliantly with the Hilda/Santos vows scene. "It's gone, for good," Betty concludes the eulogy.

I tell you what - this scene is even more impressive the second time around, knowing how the episode ends.

Daniel tells Betty the accident that put Alexis in the hospital was his fault, because of his drug habit. (I guess the hit man once again did a good job of covering his tracks.) He says he's not sure if he can get over the guilt, but he can get over the pills. He throws them into the mini-grave of Henry souvenirs. Betty sighs and throws a shovelful of dirt on top.

Daniel goes back to the hospital and apologizes to Alexis. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Alexis's eyelids flutter and she wakes up. But she's irritated. She's thirsty, she doesn't remember what happened, and she's annoyed with Daniel for calling her "Alexis." Doesn't Daniel recognize his own brother, Alex??

The lights are on in Hilda's room. She and Santos are still talking about the wedding. He is eager to get out and says they can't stay in there forever. She begs him for one more day. He tells her it will be okay. They kiss.

Betty opens the door. The room is dark. She tells Hilda she knows the answer will be no, but she's going to ask anyway: would Hilda like to come down and help fix dinner?

Hilda is huddled alone on the bed in tears. She has been alone all along. "He's gone," she tells Betty. It is the first time she has said it out loud.

A bus arrives in Times Square. A tall, slightly nerdy but handsome man wearing Clark Kent glasses steps onto the curb with his bag. He looks around to get his bearings.

Yes... it is Henry. And his cheating, two-faced, "found item"-crappy-jewelry-making, double-dealing, manipulating, allegedly pregnant space cadet of a skank-ho girlfriend is not with him.

I bet he's got an interesting story to tell.

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Next time:
Alexis is pleased a second time by the results of her surgery.
Elsewhere, there are bagels.