Betty starts running around the house, talking about how busy she is, what with Daniel getting out of the hospital today, and their father still in Mexico, and having to bring Hilda her meals upstairs, and all that laundry. Justin offers to help with the laundry — a sign of how truly desperate he must be — if she’ll let him stay home from camp. She says it’s not so bad, it’s only arts and crafts, but she has no idea how cruel summer camp can be to sensitive lads like Justin and myself, how they force you to do horrible things like play sports and be outside.
Betty apologizes for not having done any shopping for breakfast, and Justin snarks, “We’re making macaroni necklaces today. I’ll just eat that!”
We cut right through the floorboards (and if this was The Simpsons we’d see buried treasure and skeletal remains and such) to the upstairs bedroom where Hilda is lying in bed. Out of the shower, Bobby Ewing-style, emerges Santos, the guy Betty fans suddenly started liking the second he was brutally gunned down. He’s looking kind of hot, at least from the pecs up. It must be nice to have been shot and have an excuse to wear a bandage that hides your sagging gut.
Santos says it’s been three weeks since he was shot, so he really should be getting back to his place, but Hilda insists he stay and rest up some more. She points to a gray hair and says, “See this one. This one I call, ‘When Santos almost died,’ and I don’t want any more.” Me, I call my three gray hairs, “The mortgage,” “The George Bush years,” and “This season of Top Chef.”
They turn on the TV, and as we know happens whenever a TV is turned on in the world of Betty, it’s permanently set to “Fashion Buzz,” now hosted by a dandyish gossip guy played by Alec Mapa, who in 10 seconds of screen time manages to be much funnier and more believable a fashionista than anyone they had do this bit last year. I really hope he sticks around all season. He also introduces this episode’s theme — guest stars familiar from countless other roles, most of which don’t come readily to mind. All I can remember about Mapa is playing the houseboy in a flashback episode of Friends who gleefully leers, “More turkey, Mr. Chandler.”
He introduces an exclusive press conference with Mode’s acting editor-in-chief Wilhelmina “La Slater” (heh), and says, “Grief becomes her. She looks Ah-Mazing!” We cut to Wilhelmina done up in this fantastic, Hitchcockian white hat, talking about how Alexis is still in a coma — the one soap opera element this show somehow managed to overlook last year. With hilarious faked emotion, Wili says she asked Alexis to flutter an eyelid to indicate her support of her impending marriage to Bradford, and “By God, her little eyelid fluttered. That’s our girl.”
Cut to a glass smashing against the TV screen, an action I totally understand since I hate my cable provider too. It’s actually Claire Meade, and she’s angry at Wili for stealing her family from her. The way Judith Light plays her now is really scary, like you can believe this woman was recently in the Big House because she brings this Leona Helmsley-like nastiness to everything she does. Anyone who goes near her would be wise to check for shivs.
Claire and the convict who helped her escape — the one who calls everybody “Fish” which in my book makes her the “Fish Monger” — are hiding out in the Hamptons. Frankly, they’d be better off in jail — it’s much less crowded and at least the sex offenders are locked up at night. The Fish Monger says everybody in the Hamptons thinks she’s the maid; I’d say the two of them, with their berry picking and seashell collecting and clambakes at “Candie Bergen’s house,” would come off more like a gay couple, except everyone knows lesbians only go to P-Town.
Claire wants to try to see Bradford but can’t because she’s still front page news. Then she decides to go in disguise, since the friend whose house they’re crashing — named Mitzy, naturally — has a closet full of costumes from the big Halloween parties she throws. Yeah, I’m so sure that’s what they’re for. You can’t have too many Halloween costumes in your summer beach house, right? Funny how they all come with handcuffs.
