Ugly Betty Episode 209 Recap: “Giving Up the Ghost”

Funny how last week that receptionist/security guard L’Amanda wouldn’t let a measly former assistant like Betty back into the building, but now that a powerful and extremely bitter former editor is planning on enacting some twisted revenge, she’s nowhere in sight. Hey, Betty writers — you’re brilliant and talented and I worship you and all, but there is something called “continuity.” You might want to look it up.

Wili tells Marc she had a feeling this day would come, so she prepared something that will have everybody remembering them forever.

Marc: Is this going to be some murder-suicide thing? Because Cliff and I have Chorus Line tickets for tonight.

Actually, Marc, you don’t. Little thing called the Stagehand Union Strike. But no worries. You can always go off-Broadway and see Naked Boys Singing again.

Wili proceeds to dial a yellow phone on a desk, leading it to transform into this high-tech, high-security command center, with an automated display case emerging from the top bathed in red lights. Marc says it’s all “so Mission Impossible III.” I guess that means it cost more than it will ever make, and won’t interest nearly as many people as its creators think it will.

If you ask me, it’s a fairly elaborate set-up just to store a single computer disk. Look, I’ve made my peace with the fact that Fey somehow had an entire sex dungeon installed without anybody at Mode noticing (although I still wonder how she managed to get a king-sized bed delivered to an office building no questions asked; I mean, who signed for it? L’Amanda?).

But I just can’t imagine that Wili took the time to find some custom furniture store and have them build this bizarre contraption to her specifications. Wouldn’t a safe deposit box have done the trick? But then again, it wouldn’t have looked so freakin’ cool, and with Wili, looks are everything.

Wili asks Marc to give her back the wallet she gave him. We used to say that would make her an “Indian-giver,” but since that’s not P.C. these days, let’s just say it makes her an “inconsiderate bitch.”

She tears the wallet in half to get to a secret key she’d hidden there, which she uses to remove the disk from the case. The disk is labeled “Medusa X,” which Wili says is something “the Pentagon cooked up” for her after she dated one of the joint chiefs of staff. Yep, that definitely sounds like how our government operates these days.

Meanwhile, Betty has returned home to trim the tree with her family. Justin’s upset she didn’t get a picture of Wili falling into the grave and gripes, “Way to turn a funeral into a tragedy.”

Hilda wonders if it’s weird for her to trim a tree after a funeral, and Betty says no weirder than the time they did it right after Papi passed a kidney stone. “And here it is,” he says proudly, holding up a glass Christmas ornament with the stone inside. If you think that’s gross, you really don’t want to hear what he did with his appendix. Let’s just say it made for one messy Easter bonnet.

They go through the family ornaments, including the rather pathetic popsicle-stick Santa that Betty made, and Justin’s “Madonna and child” featuring the Material Girl herself along with baby Lourdes. That stampeding sound you hear is thousands of gay men rushing to rip that idea off for their own mangers.

At the same time, Wili is putting the Medusa disk in a computer and is about to hit “Enter,” but Marc has a few final words …

Marc: Wait! I’ve been putting my gym membership on your credit card for the last five years. I just thought if this was it, I want to go with a clear conscience.
Wili: We are not dying, Marc. Mode is.

We cut back to Casa Suarez. Hilda tells Betty she thinks Mode is going to fall apart without her. But Betty modestly says they don’t really need her. After all, they’ve been putting the magazine together forever, so what could possibly go wrong now? And as we all know, that’s pretty much TV-speak for “watch everything go wrong now.”