By Sabrina Cognata

After rescuing Claire (Judith Light) from a lifetime behind bars last week, Betty (America Ferrera) refocuses her energies on Henry and her overall career at Mode.  Betty gets another rejection letter from a piece she submitted and you can see that she’s starting to feel like a failure as a writer, get in line sister.  Wilhelmina (Vanessa Williams), on the other hand, is holding Christina (Ashley Jensen) hostage in her penthouse apartment in order to assure that the embryo of her unborn placed inside Christina implants and a baby is made.  Henry’s busy trying to make some side money for his own unborn child by promoting some nerd band that is terrible.  Speaking of fathers, Amanda (Becky Newton) spends the episode trying to connect with her father, Gene Simmons.

While at the gig that Henry is promoting, Daniel (Eric Maibus) runs into a seriously sexy woman who tricks him into dancing with her.  After they start dancing she admits it was a ploy to talk to him and the two hit it off awesomely.  Too bad her name is Renee (Gabrielle Union) and she’s Wilhelmina’s little sister.  You don’t find that out all at once and neither does Daniel, until he thinks he jumping in the shower with Renee and instead he gets a full on shot of Wilhelmina.  This causes Daniel some serious problems so he drives to Betty’s house in the middle of the night to talk about it.  Betty tells him that siblings can be absolutely nothing alike, and uses himself and Alexis as an example.  This makes Daniel feel better and he decides to purse a relationship with the sister of a succubus.  Wilhelmina tells Daniel he has no idea what he’s getting himself into, but that he’ll regret it.  On one hand it seems like one of Wilhelmina’s threats, but on the other it sounds like Daniel should be worried.  At the end of the episode Wilhelmina tells 


This week Betty has her hands full trying to come up with a thousand word article about an author’s latest book.  Too bad she gets confused and thinks the author is some prize winner when really he is a spin off of that guy that wrote The Pick Up Artist.  His name is Phil and his book is called Tap That, How To Score With Hot Bitches.  Betty can barely wrap her head around Phil or his book and immediately tells Daniel that she cannot subject herself to this.  Daniel tricks her into writing it by saying that Phil knew she was too narrow minded to fairly review his book.  Betty takes this as a challenge and decides to use Gio (Freddy Rodriguez) to help her test the validity of the book.  While she’s at the bar with Gio, Henry shows up and the two compete to see who can pickup more chicks.  In the end Henry wins, but his jealousy over Gio shines through as he tells Betty that he doesn’t want her hanging out with Gio anymore.  Later, Betty confronts Phil about what Daniel said, but Phil corrects her and mentions that Daniel used his very technique to get what he wanted out of Betty.  Oh, Snap!

Since Claire’s release from prison she doesn’t know what to do with herself.  Her friends at the country club don’t want anything to do with her and her husband is dead.  She pesters Alexis (Rebecca Romjn) and Daniel for most of the episode, but eventually realizes her calling and decides to start a magazine called Hot Flash directed at women over 40 that are not ready to give up and die.  Daniel and Alexis want to argue with her about starting the magazine, but as she’s the matriarch they realize they might as well allow her to give it a shot and see where it goes.  Honestly, it’s a great idea cause there are a ton of women from the baby boom generation that have recently realized they’re not 25 anymore, but they still can rock. 

Amanda has tried everything in her power to contact her father, but it turns out she might be coming across as a stalker.  Marc (Michael Urie) tells her that maybe she should write a song for her father so that they can communicate in Simmons’s native tongue.  She works on a song to express whom she is and that she just wants to get to know her father with the help of Marc.  This works out since Henry needs a new lead singer for his band and Amanda has a song and is fairly hot, which helps him get more people to the show and therefore make more money.  Gene Simmons hears about it and shows up, surprising Amanda and asking her to hangout with him so the two can get to know one another.  After Amanda leaves, Betty and Henry are left to replace her as lead singers in a really hokey karaoke sing-along sort of way.


Since the writer’s strike hasn’t ended this is the last episode of UGLY BETTY that we’ll see for a while.  I am not sure where they planned to go with things, but I sort of enjoy the fracas established by making Gio a more central character and I really want to see him step in when Henry has to leave for Arizona when his baby is born.  I also am dying to see what happens with Christina and Wilhelmina’s baby, as well as the relationship with Daniel and Renee.  Do you have any ideas, questions or problems?  Voice them in the comments.