Ugly Betty Episode 202 Recap: “Family Affair”

Two hours of afternoon delight later. Betty and Christina are still stuck under the mattress, which is bouncing and creaking away on top of them. Finally, Dwayne is spent, and Wili says, “I do love an afternoon delight,” a reference also lost on Dwayne. She then asks him to protect her some more in the shower, and Betty and Christina take advantage of the post-coital — and pre-even-more-coital — interlude to dash out.

Hospital ICU of Beautiful Patients with Nary a Scratch. Daniel watches his father and Alexis holding hands and being all sweet and familial. He’s seething because Alexis has all these fond memories of their childhood and doesn’t remember what a dick Bradford was about her becoming a woman. I honestly don’t know why Daniel’s so uptight about this, because it’s not like he was any more accepting of her, and he’s not exactly coming clean about that himself.

Valley of the Hunky Paperdolls. Justin is at Marc’s desk, having finished reorganizing Wili’s contacts, and also inventoried all the gowns she wore on the red carpet last year, in just an hour.

Marc: An hour? You want to know what I’ve been doing? Pricing Weimaraners, getting a plumber for the house in Bedford, sending Warren Beatty his 60th — ha, right — 60th birthday card, telling David Sedaris his 500-word piece is now a 50-word piece, getting yelled at by David Sedaris, and getting Chris Rock to write a 10-minute toast that Wilhelmina is giving Patty Hearst to mark the 33rd anniversary of her kidnapping. And that’s all in the last five minutes.

Just then, he finds out that Shakira’s reps are on their way up with the list of requirements for her dressing room for her upcoming photo shoot. He stands up and calls out, “Ambitious suck-ups! … I mean, interns!”

Casa Suarez Split-Screened with Cheap One-Room “Mexico” Set. Hilda’s on the phone with her father and talks about how she misses Santos. I know they have to get through this grief stuff, but I really miss the Hilda who was capable of pulling out the hair weave of their skanky neighbor, you know?

She tells Papi about Santos’ great taste in crap, gesturing at the kind of tacky stuff (fuzzy dice, a horse head statue, a bowling pin lamp) that I know any number of gay men would grab at a flea market and display “ironically” never admitting it’s also kind of sincerely.

Papi tells her that when her mother died, the only thing he saved was the restaurant receipt from their first date because it was all he really needed since he already had her heart. Aww. Or Ewww, if he meant that literally.

After he hangs up, he blah blah blahs to Vanessa from Six Feet Under about how he’s tired of waiting for his visa to come through and is ready to do whatever he needs to in order to get home. “Treat me like a criminal, and I’ll be one,” he says. She tells him she knows some people who can help.

Bedroom of Dick Cheney and Nora Ephron’s BFF, aka “Satan’s Rumpus Room”. Wili spots an earring on the floor of her bedroom that says “Buenas,” and says to herself, “I smell a burrito.” She’s not really one for being all that politically correct, is she?

Cut to Marc addressing the suck-ups. You’ve heard of the fashion police? You know, the ones who go after woman wearing white after Labor Day and men who show up at awards shows in tuxes with open-collar shirts? Well it looks like Marc is training a new battalion of them. He has the interns all lined up and is screaming away at them. It’s like An Officer and a Gentleman made even gayer than the original. Like instead of calling them “dirty maggots,” I’d guess he’d belittle them as “fashion disasters of Bjork-swan-dress proportions,” and instead of making them do sit-ups, he’d make them do sit-ups with their shirts off.

He’s particularly railing against one intern who screwed up his assignment of getting Shakira bendy straws.

Sergeant Marc: Let’s take a look at what you brought back. I’m Shakira and I would like a drink. So I take a straw and I put it in my hand, and oh, but what’s this? It won’t bend! How am I supposed to drink? Like this? [Jabbing straw into his face.] This isn’t comfortable. I can’t drink like this! Am I some kind of animal? No! Yo soy Shakira, and I won’t be holding my drink around my chin like some savage if I’m thirsty!!!

He explains that only one intern got his list correctly, so he’ll be doing the entire list on his own. One guess who it was.

Marc is interrupted by a call on his fashion emergency hotline. It’s “Wilhelmeister,” who tells him she has a special task for him — to get dirt on Betty. Marc hangs up, calls Justin over, and says, “We don’t know anything about each other’s families. You go first.”

Cut to Dog’s POV Cam looking up at Amanda at her desk. Alexis’ sexy assistant (aka Veronica Mars’ Deputy Leo) approaches. Yay Deputy Leo! He might be a fratboy jerkwad but he’s hot so I’m happy he’s still around. He says Halston “smells like ass,” and Amanda responds he should shut up since, “when you’re 84 you’re going to smell like ass too.” And until then, he’ll just act like one.

Just then, Halston keels over, and Amanda rushes to his hairless side, doing her best Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment: “Hang on! Don’t you quit on me!”