Ugly Betty Episode 203 Recap: “Betty’s Wait Problem”

Marc, with a Mardi Gras mask across his face, pops up behind him. They’re both in black and white and wearing heavily patterned jackets, which means we’ve moved from Magic Eye to Escher and I’m just as nauseous. This is not a good episode for the fashionably sensitive like me.

Marc grabs Mapa’s mike away and says, “Isn’t that Fey Sommers’ illegitimate daughter?” and points to Amanda getting out of a stretch limo. She’s wearing a striking red dress and a wig just like Fey’s annoying bob, but with her little dog in her arms and Jackie-O sunglasses, she’s more Paris than Fey, which, as much as I loathe Fey, is a major down-grade in the icon department.

She delivers the line about “I didn’t get the memo,” but nobody cares. So Marc encourages her to do it again but louder. One paparazzo finally notices and says, “Hey, it’s Fey Sommers’ …. dog!”

Amanda: This is so unfair. They took pictures of the wrong bitch.
Marc: My mistake. I thought the press would automatically care. But you have to work for your celebrity. Does Paris Hilton have everything handed to her? Well actually, she does. But that celebu-tard works hard to stay in the news.
Amanda: You’re right. I have to do something outrageous. Should I do skanky? Cause I could totally do skanky. What if I just go pee on the carpet?
Marc: Oh, sweetie, Courtney Love did that before you got here. No, it’s got to be bigger! You’ve got to out-Lohan Lohan. Out-Britney Britney!

Boy, that doesn’t leave much. I guess she could poop on the red carpet, but I wouldn’t put it past Tara Reid or Rose McGowan to have soiled that path before.

Marc decides to help Amanda along by announcing he just saw Josh Duhamel, and as she runs after him, steps on the back of her dress, tearing it away until she’s totally in the buff. At first she’s surprised, like one of those dreams where you’re standing at the front of your class naked, only here there’s clearly no class. But then the photographers turn toward her and start snapping away, and she basks in the limelight of the camera flashes. But then again, she kind of has to to keep warm.

At the Big Ball. (Heh heh. I said it again. That makes it a pair of Big Balls.) Marc is once again acting as Wili’s “seeing eye gay,” whispering in her ear, “Michael Bolton. Not the good one.” You mean there’s a good one? News to me. Marc continues with the introductions: “Bradford Meade. You’re engaged to him.”

Bradford confronts Wili about having told Alexis about their engagement. Wili responds, “I didn’t want to, but she’s a smart girl even with part of her brain missing.” Then Bradford tells her Alexis is “totally on board with the wedding.”

A masked Claire comes in, and it sadly looks like, as with so many female convicts struggling to make it on the outside, she’s been forced to a life of streetwalking. We know because she’s brought her pimp with her. Wait a second. It’s not a pimp; it’s just Yoga, wearing an all-white suit and fedora and walking stick. She looks around warily, saying, “Black and White Ball, huh. Looks like an all-white ball to me.”

Inside the ballroom, Daniel is showing off his cool new iBot by making it moonwalk. A super-pissed Betty tries to guilt him into a confession, as his wheelchair, now out of his control, glides off the stage and heads right for a table. He’s getting kind of freaked out about the imminent crash, which is hilarious given how slowly his wheelchair is moving, like in Austin Powers where people can’t get out of the way of a steamroller before being flattened to death.

At the last second, Daniel jumps up and walks away, sheepishly telling Betty, “I forgot to tell you. The Doctor called and I can walk!”

Betty: How could you? I wasted my entire day trying to get that stupid thing … Do you have any idea what I could have done with that time? I could have written a short story. Or a whole bunch of short stories depending on how short they were. Or written in my journal, because I’m pretty sure my last entry went something like, “I love Lance Bass. I want to marry him.”

Hey, I wrote that in my journal too, only it was just this morning. And it wasn’t wanting to “marry” Lance Bass, but something I can’t say in print. And it wasn’t Lance Bass, it was the Brazilian World Cup team.