What I’m Watching: Ugly Betty

Ugly Betty: Season 4, Episode 16 “All the World’s a Stage” (B+)

I’m so enjoying these last few wonderful adventures before this show goes off the air permanently. I like where things are heading and how characters like Betty, Justin, Amanda, and Wilhelmina are being starkly defined to create some sort of conclusive portrait of how they’ve grown throughout the span of the series. It is still sad to see Betty get humiliated for the millionth time, but at least she’s doing something productive instead of just sitting back and taking it. When she went for it and kissed the playwright, I was cheering because it’s about time she worked up the courage to take her life into her own hands. When she almost made a move on Bobby but it turned out to be purely an imagined scene, I longed for more, and now we have it. Punching him in the face and refusing to give him a second chance just proved that she is serious about becoming a new person, starting with the presumable removal of her braces. Wilhelmina, on the other hand, is back to her old ways, which is a great thing because having her be really bad is what makes her so fantastic, and it will be a thrill to have her bad as ever for the end of days. I laughed at what she said at the start of the episode – “is that monochromatic blur Betty?” – and I think that the idea, however over-the-top, of Betty developing a fashion sense nearly killing Wilhelmina is hilarious. Hilda is so entertaining, and I loved her trying to show off her ring repeatedly instead of listening to Betty. She had a stellar line that didn’t come up again but was still great – “Does this say engagement party or dead hooker under a bridge, because Bobby’s cousin is a hooker, and I don’t want to offend her.” Marc and Amanda’s misadventures trying to quell the monster that is Wilhelmina were entertaining, and my favorite part was Amanda calling the doctor “Dr. So and So.” Of course the most notable development in this episode is Justin’s first kiss with a guy, which was brilliantly choreographed and filmed. Good for him, and good for Marc, who doesn’t have to feel the most alone he’s ever felt, as he sadly put it when Justin was talking to him about the girl he liked. It’s good to have characters who really get each other on this show.