Ugly Betty: Season 2 Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Ethan Riley]

Only one more day 'till the premiere. I really did enjoy the multiple-cliffhanger ending of season one. I haven't seen anything like that since probably the 80s with Dynasty or whatever. Except that Betty's cliffhanger was handled far better than anything on those old primetime soaps. To recap:

Betty was consoling her sister Hilda after news that fiance' Santos had been shot. We do not know if Santos died.

Daniel o.d.'d on drugs in Alex's office, so she tried to drive him to the hospital. But, it seems that Alex planned to have her father, Bradford, killed, and so her paid assassin cut the brake lines of his car. Meanwhile, Alex, with Daniel, stupidly took off in that same car, not knowing about the brakes and crashed it.

Christina & Amanda were locked in Fey Summers' lair. They cracked open her safe, and found papers that indicate that Amanda is really Fey's daughter!

Claire Meade made a great escape from prison and is on the run, chained to another convict.

Doubt was cast on the fatherhood of Charlie's baby, while Henry decided to marry her and return to the southwest. But the baby may actually be the child of Betty's orthodontist!

Ignacio was still in Mexico, not knowing that relatives of the man he killed years ago are after him...

 

[Walter C]

I just caught up on the episodes that I missed on ABC, on DVD.

Looking forward to tonight!

 

[Nick Martin]

Fantastic opening tonight, made very bittersweet by the resolution of Hilda and Santos' story.

 

[Chris]

Funny & enjoyable. Damn, though Amanda put on the weight.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Was anyone else fooled by the Santos thing? 'Cause I sure was--sheesh! I almost cried at that last scene. What a hell of a thing to have happen to her!

I noticed something very refreshing about the season opener...it had almost no drop-off from season one, in terms of production values, script quality, acting quality, etc. Everything was just as good as the first season, meaning, no sophomore slump! This is incredibly rare in television! You could tell that everybody on the show was just as interested as they were a year ago. Nobody seemed to be phoning it in, and that includes the writers. The energy level of this episode was very high. Most shows already are starting to get stale in season two--not Betty, apparently! Looks like somebody deserved their Emmy!

 

[Nick]

I recoreded the show but only watch the first five minutes of it just be sure that it got recorded. I like Betty dream sequence, it was funny. Betty's little brother Justin got a little bit taller. I can't wait to watch it this weekend.
So many new shows that I recorded. It's gonna be a busy weekend for me.

 

[Malcolm R]

Justin is Betty's nephew, not brother.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Wasn't as into this season opening for Ugly Betty, though the opening in Spanish was cute. I had already known about Santos and Hilda (saw Shark last week as well), so the big reveal didn't have the same impact on me. Overall, a clearing of slates for some, and a few more twists to come for the Alex/Daniel dynamic.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I was glad to see that Santos was alive, I was worried there at the end of last season.

I tell you what, poor Betty is going to have grey hair and an ulcer by the time she's 30 if she remains as stressed as she always is lol.

 

[Chris]

Inspector: watch it again. The reveal at the end of the episode is some great television.

 

[Nick]

Yep, you're right... thanks for the correction.

 

[noswalc]

My reaction:
How could they tease us for a whole episode about Hilda & Santos?
I forgive them, though. Weaving the letter scene in with Henry and Betty's relationship's funeral was genius. That was great television.
I was shocked about Alexis...or should I say Alex.
I can't wait until next week.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The intercutting on that last scene was indeed great; especially when the outcomes were ultimately flip-flopped; Hilda's relationship with Santos is now permenantly in the past tense while Henry's reappearance moves that relationship firmly back into the present.

The Alexis/Alex reveal raises interesting questions. Is it memory loss that has prevented Alex from remembering he got a sex change, or is it the part of his psyche that fostered a feminine self-identity that was damaged? Talk about a holy shit moment when he looks in the mirror.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I had known that they had filmed the Hilda/Santos scenes last season, plus the guy playing Santos, Kevin Alejandro, was on Shark with longer hair, so for me, that pretty much drove that subplot into maudlin territory for me during the episode.

How long before Amanda gets back to a size 2 or less?

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

What a dumbass I am. I rewatched it last night and Santos did die, where the hell was I when that was revealed the first time? I think that I must have been abducted by aliens or something because I think I lost time.

 

[Nick]

Do you really think that Amanda is Daniel half sister?
I hope not, Like she said they slept together a lot.
But the scene at the elevator kind of make me wonder.

 

[Phil_L]

Uneven episode with a brilliant ending. Is Illeana Douglas' character a permanent addition? She really grated on me for some reason and seems superfluous. Hope the character doesn't return.

 

[Ethan Riley]

I didn't like that character either. There's already enough people around being rude to Betty...! Who needs one more. I think she was just there because Wilhelmina needed someone to talk to in that scene.

Other than that, I do love this show. I am not at all a fan of traditional situation comedies, but I love comedy. I admire a comedy show that dares to be funny. I abhor stale ol' sitcoms where Actor A says "breasts" and the studio audience roars with laughter. My nightmare is to be tied to a chair and forced to watch the entire run of "Two and a Half Men." Bwah hahahaha goes the studio audience; actually, most of the laughter you hear is the writers guffawing away at their own work, because they're trying to convince the studio heads that that brainless show is funny. I have been present at many live studio tapings; I have seen the writers do this very thing. It's all so phoney.

Betty doesn't have the luxury of fooling people into believing it's funny...it just is. You probably don't sit there cackling away, falling off your chair with hilarity, but you do laugh out loud when the characters have earned it. I like that feeling, that I'm able to laugh when I want to laugh, rather than when the writers tell me to. It's so rare and refreshing after going thru the 90s "must laugh tv" era. What a phoney, phoney era that probably won't last long in terms of future interest in those stale sitcoms.

 

[Chris]

I admit, if they make her his half sister, this show probably immediately gets dropped from my "Watch live". Not because of the incest angle, but because it would create lots of forced / weird scripting to either get around it or make fun of it, and that would be (to me) like listening to someone grate fingernails down hoops.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Wow, done bashing Cheers, Roseanne, Frasier, Home Improvement, Married with Children, Murphy Brown and Seinfeld yet? What does this have to do with Ugly Betty? The single-camera comedy is a different form of television than the multi-camera sitcom, but that doesn't make it better.