Not a fan a SitComs, as a rule, I think this is the best of its genre, with only two problems: 1. It is not a comedy, it is a drama, and, 2. It is an ensemble drama, not in a situational setting but often with several simultaneous story lines going at once. All of this category blur frustrates me a tad come Emmy time, when Ugly Betty is up against goonier (just my opinion) traditional Americana Sitcoms like The Office or 30 Rock. When was the last time one of those shows left you seriously frustrated for days about the state of one or several of the characters? Comedies don’t do that. Tonight in the 2nd episode of season 4, I found myself wondering why I spend an hour of Friday night, the end of another week of surviving NYC, being frustrated as the furies, several co-workers and an occasional family member conspire to ruin Betty’s life, purposefully or not.
If there is a theme to tonight’s episode, it is that love never dies. For Betty, for Matt, for grieving Daniel, for Wilhelmina and for Connor, the great lovers of this show to date- all are apart and all incomplete. No matter what any one of them has done or accomplished, all of it is hollow and our Betty cannot even conduct a business meeting without messing it up over the sight of Matt with another woman.
Betty gets a scoop on a new collection and arranges a dinner with the designer at the restaurant where her father and Hilda are working, Having, however, STILL, not learned to keep the mouth shut and not trust snakes, she tells Mark, who decides to skuttle it by sending Matt to the same restaurant for fashion lessons with Amanda. The mess up would be comic were it not so frustrating, and the designer walks out and gives the story to Elle. Concomitantly, Willie goes to Bermuda to find Conor who has just checked out, and while she is on the phone firing the private eye, Connor pops in to tell her she will never find him or the moey he stole until she loves him as much as he loves her and leaves Mode to be with him. She goes back to NYC and says nada to Mark??? Daniel meets a strange young woman at a grief meeting and winds up skinny dipping in a roof-top pool and, at the young woman’s suggestion, talking to his late-wife in heaven, which causes him to let go and sob. Matt and Betty seem to have come to a detente, but Betty is still an editor who has produced nothing to edit and the fact that Matt, Mark and Willie have killed themselves to undo her is no problem- to them.
