Naturally, Henry is at Betty's very first meeting of the day. She assures Daniel that she'll be fine. "It's not like I'm writing 'Betty loves Henry' all over my notebook." (Daniel points to some conflicting evidence.) Wilhelmina has called a meeting for Daniel with the Sales, Marketing, and Accounting groups. Betty asks someone to move so that she can sit as far from Henry as possible, but Daniel immediately takes that seat. She asks the next person to move, but instead of the person she asked, another person moves - who had been sitting next to Henry.
Wil telling them that, thanks to the "leaked" news of Daniel losing the Atlantic Attire account (this was the one where the guy wanted Daniel to fire Alexis), they've lost 52% of their remaining sponsors. While Wil is speaking, Betty and Henry keep bumping knees by mistake and become flustered. Henry tells them that if the magazine doesn't cut back expenses, they'll be out of business in 90 days.
Wil does her best to speed up the process - approving all expenses without reviewing them, and delegating the supervision of a photo shoot to Fido. Then she helpfully tries to convince Daniel and Alexis to cut costs by switching to rice paper, which is translucent, and soy ink, which smears and rubs off. She suggests offsetting this inconvenience by throwing in some free detergent samples. They also experiment with some new layouts and content, including celebrity mugshots.
Betty looks at some mockups and tells Daniel he should ask his father for a loan to keep the magazine afloat. That way, at least they can afford to go out in style. Daniel hates the idea, but Alexis feels the same way when the soy ink smudges all over her designer blouse. She volunteers to do the asking - since she seems to be Bradford's favorite "son," she'll take the blame for the loss of advertising revenue.
Meanwhile, Claire and Yoga have been hiding out at another rich friend's vacant beach house, plotting their next move. While Yoga has been enjoying the high life, Claire has been "drinking... I mean thinking." With the clarity of thought that only prolonged alcohol abuse can inspire, she has decided to turn herself in because her kids need her. Yoga reminds her that she won't be much use to them in prison. Besides, Yoga needs her too - she wants to stay at some more vacation homes. But Claire would rather see her kids from behind bars than not at all. Yoga gives in and proceeds to select some valuable souvenirs from their temporary home.
Later, Claire snoops through her unwitting hosts' mail and is muy impactada to find an invitation to Bradford's wedding.
Christina, who is measuring a fine specimen of masculinity because his underwear supposedly needs to be tailored properly ("they never catch on," she asides to Betty), counsels that it would be easier to ignore Henry if she had someone else to think about. Betty resists the idea of dating, especially with an online service. Christina assures her that she probably won't get chopped into little pieces. Betty reconsiders and agrees when she thinks she sees Henry's head on the underwear model's body.
Christina helps Betty fill out a profile on a dating site. Their efforts to take a photo are thwarted by Betty's uncooperative eyes (and I know the feeling - you should have seen my 1993 passport photo). Suddenly, Betty sees an attractive sandwich which Amanda had tried to trade in for a pair of shoes; Betty's resulting smile makes a great picture.
Fido goes to the photo shoot. His typically goofy antics charm and amuse Cliff, the photographer. Together, they admire Gus - the model with the not-really-altered underwear. "Please let him be dumb - he can't have everything," Cliff jokes. (The model giggles and tells them he put his underwear on backwards.)
Fido admits to Cliff that he doesn't understand the shoot's theme, which is a tribute to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Fido is unfamiliar. Cliff offers to educate him with an evening of drink and film. He suggests a beer. Fido insists on an appletini.
As Cliff goes about his business, Amanda rushes in to tell Fido about Betty. Fido tells her to bookmark the dating site so they can laugh at it later. They admire Gus together, and Amanda scoffs at Fido's plan to ask him out on a date.
Henry's cube neighbor, Kenny, acts as a middleman, delivering paperwork for Betty and Henry. He tries to cajole Betty into giving Henry another chance. He also asks Christina to tell her friend to "throw my man a Betty-biscuit before he leaves for Tuc-son." Betty interrupts their debate on the proper pronunciation of "Tuscon" because she is already getting some responses on the dating site. Most of them are food-themed joke responses authored by Amanda, but there's also one from NiceGuy47, who proposes a bowling date.
"Yes, I love blowing," Betty replies. (Christina kindly points out the typo.) Kenny reports the news of Betty's hot date to Henry. (It is also revealed that Kenny uses the ladies' restroom, because it's cleaner.) "This is something I heard with my own eyes," he promises Henry. Betty is going bowling "with a dude." Henry is impactado.
Betty's date, Steve, shows up just as Betty is picking some crud out of her braces. After they introduce themselves, Steve comments, "Adult braces?" (This reminds me of the time I went to a movie with a date. As I put on my glasses, he asked, "You wear glasses?") She admits that the braces probably weren't visible in her photo. He comments that it was a really good picture.
(Guess what, Steve? When Betty gets those braces off, her teeth will be perfect. She won't have a big gap between those two teeth on the upper left like you do.)
A while later, Betty is explaining that she didn't choose a profile name involving bunnies, because all the good bunny names were taken. It's her turn, but she can't stop talking long enough to bowl. Steve looks about ready to shoot himself, and sadly so would I in that situation. He observes that they still have many frames to go yet, and prompts her to take her turn. Then her phone rings. He excuses himself to go to the bathroom. She offers to tell him a long-winded story about the bathrooms there when he comes back. He smiles politely, but dread is written all over his face as he gets up.
The call is from Christina, wanting a status report. Betty happily informs her that he's really nice, and there haven't been any awkward conversational pauses. Christina says goodbye and gets an IM from someone named FISHANDCHICKS saying he knows she's not really single, because he's her husband!
Steve comes out of the bathroom and watches as Betty airs out her armpits over the blower on the ball return. He turns and heads for the exit. Henry, spying through a vacant space in the ball rack, sees him leave. Then he looks at Betty, who has just lost her balance and is sliding on her butt down the ball return. Unlike Steve, he finds her clumsiness endearing.
Betty bowls alone for a while. She finally knocks over one pin, and jumps up and down and shouts excitedly. She turns around and sees Henry, who pretends to be surprised to see her. He has a lame story that he's there to meet with the accountants' bowling league, the Debitz. She tells him that she's on a date, and it's going really well. Henry says that if it was with a guy in a yellow shirt, he got a phone call in the bathroom and had to leave. Something about a sick bird. Bird flu. His story gets worse and worse until Betty looks ready to cry. So does Henry. They admit to one another that they're not enjoying their plan to avoid one another. Betty suggests that they try to be "friends." They seal their friendship with twin gutter balls and a high-five.
Then the lights dim and voice on the loudspeaker announces that it's time for couples bowling... effectively disproving Henry's Debitz league story, just in case Betty was left with any doubts. They agree that bowling sucks, so they flee to a nice restaurant. On seeing a poultry dish at another table, Betty jokes that it must be her date's bird. They laugh about Henry's feeble story about the bird and about league night. (The Debitz are real, he insists - it's just that they meet on a different night.) He admits that he heard about her date, and he got jealous.
A violist approaches. Betty sends him away, explaining that they're just friends - Henry got another girl pregnant. The violinist makes a face and slinks away. Then the rose lady approaches, offering a rose for Henry's pretty lady. "She's not my pretty lady," he replies. He awkardly tries to clarify that she's pretty but not his; the violinist fills in the lurid details.
Mortified, Betty gets up to leave. Henry reaches for her hand and says loudly enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear: "We can do this!"
"He's proposing!" cries an excited onlooker. Everyone applauds. The violinist starts playing Mendelssohn's Wedding March recessional. "I can't do this," Betty mutters softly, and rushes out. Henry turns away, while his spellbound audience awaits his next move.
Back at the beachhouse, Yoga, who is really growing on me, has optimistically been studying Italian in hopes that Claire will change her mind and agree to hide out at someone's villa in Positano. She walks into the den to tell Claire that "Pesce" is Italian for "Fish," but Claire is gone. Yoga's expression darkens when she finds the wedding invitation on the table. Instinctively, she turns to the wall, where several firearms are mounted on display. One of the rifles is missing. She shakes her head and prepares to retrieve her wayward Pesce.
Fido pirouettes to show off a plaid suit and bowtie to Amanda. He's going out with Gus, the underwear model. However, Cliff, the charmingly scruffy photographer, shows up first. Fido says yeah, they did have plans, but this thing with Gus is different, it's a date.
As he's saying it, he sees the look on Cliff's face and realizes his blunder. Cliff plays it cool and pretends not to care. Fido chases him down to apologize. Cliff doesn't want to talk about it.
He changes his mind and confronts Fido. He tells him that drinks and a movie is always a date. And maybe he's not all hunky and perfectly coiffed, and maybe he's inexplicably using air quotes all of a sudden (Fido giggles), but it's very cliche for beauty to date beauty, while beauty dating a beast is a fairy tale. (Which, in my opinion, is an even bigger cliche... but ABC is owned by Disney, so what do you expect.) Also, Gus is hot now, but 20 years from now (I say 15), Gus will look like Cliff anyway.
Alexis and Daniel go to Bradford's house to have dinner with him and Wil. Brad claims that they used to have a family dinner every Sunday night right up until the car accident, but as he takes Alexis's coat, she half-remembers another time when she was Alex and handed Bradford a coat. It's just a glimpse.
Next, Wil makes them all pose for a Christmas card photo. Wil makes snide remarks about their mother being on the lam while they get into position in front of the camera. Bradford offers to take Alexis's glass. As he does so, she half-remembers another time when Bradford took Alex's glass and angrily threw it into the fireplace. Before she has time to ponder this, Wil finishes setting up the camera and hurries to stand in front of all of them as the flash goes off.
Claire has been watching all this from outside the house, through the scope of her borrowed rifle. Yoga finds her. Claire snaps out of it and shows Yoga the placid-looking gathering through the window. She admits that Wil has accomplished what Claire never could: she has brought the family together. She says to Yoga, "Let's go to Italy." Yoga gently leads her away from the house.
As the remaining Meades sit down to dinner, Alexis raises the subject of the magazine's finances. Daniel interrupts, wanting to shoulder the responsibility himself. Wil pulls up a chair to enjoy the show as Daniel explains about losing Atlantic Attire and all the additional revenue. Bradford starts laying into Daniel - verbally - about what a screwup he is, unlike Alex/is.
As they argue, Alexis all-the-way-remembers another time when Bradford said similar things to Alex, ending with "You are DEAD TO ME, Alex!" In fact, as the flashback changes from black and white to full color, we realize that Alexis now remembers everything.
She steps out to clear her thoughts. Daniel follows. She tells him that she remembers now how much their father hates her. Daniel explains that Bradford doesn't hate her at all; in fact, he's been using the amnesia as an opportunity to make a fresh start.
She tells Daniel that she put a hit on Bradford, and the hit man must have cut the brakes on the car they crashed. The accident was her fault, not Daniel's. Daniel is not as forgiving as Alexis was a week ago; on the other hand, he has no idea how badly Bradford treated Alexis, either. He was too high at the time to notice.
Hilda has joined a social club for widows, who seem to spend most of their time at the Suarez house when they're not hanging out at the cemetery. Hilda is by far their youngest member, but she's grateful to be around people who truly understand what she is going through. Her new friends have not only accepted widowhood, but embraced it as an entire identity. They tell morbid stories about how their husbands died, plan widow-related activities that will reinforce their widowly station in life, fill their hours with mundane activities such as ironing dollar bills for birthday cards and writing angry letters about petty slights, and eagerly anticipate their own deaths.
Justin is also still grieving in his own way - he declines to try out for The Music Man and says the drama club is for losers. (He's not just its president - he's also its founder.) He gives Hilda something from the school to sign - she is too distracted to read it before signing. She dismisses Ignacio's concerns.
The paper excuses Justin from a field trip. He tells his friends he'll swipe the car so they can go for a ride. The chick who was on the sofa with him last week tells him that car theives are hot. He fishes Hilda's keys out of her purse as she plans a trip to Rockaway Beach with her cheerfully bereaved friends.
Later - specifically, at 3:15 - she prepares to meet her friends for an Early Bird Special dinner. Ignacio again expresses his concern that Hilda needs to concentrate on the life that she still has, and her responsibility to Justin. Again she brushes him off, saying they're fine.
After dinner, she works on a quilt (made out of Santos's old shirts) and babbles happily about applesauce. Ignacio points out that the grandmas have all fallen asleep. He mischievously suggests that one of them might be dead. Hilda checks her breath on a mirror just to be on the safe side.
A siren roars outside. It's Justin and a cop. He's crashed the car against a tree. Nobody was hurt, and the cop knows the family's situation, so she cuts them a break just this once. But she warns Hilda that these things can spiral out of control.
Hilda's eyes finally meet Ignacio's. She gives him a tiny nod and sends the widows home. She'll meet them again at the cemetery, but she's bowing out of the other activities, like the trip to Rockaway.
She confronts Justin about his behavior, and he confronts her about her intermittent mothering. They argue, and for the first time, she acknowledges Justin's loss. Justin says he just wants his father to be proud of him. Hilda reminds Justin that Santos accepted him the way he was. Mother and son re-bond in their grief.
Fido looks around a lushly decorated apartment and giggles that this is not the apartment he expected to end up in. (He has changed his clothes - no longer in the plaid suit, no longer in purple. Just casual things.)
Cliff, the roguishly handsome photographer, comes in and hands him an appletini. He gloats about having been chosen over an underwear model. Fido says it's only because he wanted to see Psycho. As the classic horror film begins, he shyly looks at Cliff and asks what happens if he gets scared. Cliff takes his hand and says he'll be right there. Fido replies with a bashful smirk. They jostle each others' feet on the coffee table.
(Nice transition to the next scene - converging horizontal stripes, similar to those in the opening credits of Psycho.)
Betty shuffles down the sidewalk in her neighborhood. Henry calls. She tells him it's enough that he's following her home - he doesn't have to call her too. The camera pulls back to reveal Henry walking a few paces behind her. He explains that he didn't want her walking alone at night.
She turns to face him and begs him to stop being so nice. He's only making things more difficult. She suggests that he "kick a puppy, or knock over a midget." ("Little person," he corrects her.) She goes up the steps to her house.
Henry complains that they haven't been able to avoid each other, and being "friends" nearly got them married. He asks if he should leave Mode. Betty doesn't say anything. He promises to quit on Monday. Betty says Daniel will help him find something else.
She goes into the house. He turns to leave. Betty comes back out and offers another option: she kisses him. She says she knows she'll get her heart broken when he leaves in five months, but it will be worth it. They kiss some more.
I need some damn Kleenex.
Next time:
- Gio the sandwich guy returns.
- Wilhelmina eats a sandwich (probably not a coincidence).
- Additional "Wicked"ness transpires.
- And just in case you were wondering, there's still been no fallout yet from Ignacio's escapades in Mexico.
2 comments:
Again, not Henry's head on the underwear model's body...this was all Christopher Gorham in the scene where she looks up...on one of the UB podcasts they mentioned that CG worked out for weeks for the scene.
Thanks, Lisa - I would assume that it'd be easier (no special effects needed) to use Henry's body than the model's, but BETTY couldn't have known it was all Henry. She's never seen Henry without a shirt before.
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