TV Recap: Ugly Betty - The Courtship of Betty's Father

Not too much happened this week on Ugly Betty. Someone said, “I love you,” someone else was caught making out on the porch, and someone was caught shoplifting. I guess a few things did happen but nothing so drastic as to change the course of Ugly Betty forever. Well, maybe the whole “I love you” thing will.

Betty’s back home, unnecessarily, and Ignacio is doing really well, thanks in large part to his nurse, Elena. Everyone loves Elena. She’s so nice and so helpful and so perfect. Why did she move home? Agh. I’ll skip over my frustration….All is good on the home front and at work, things are going pretty smoothly as well. Until Betty gets a call from Claire Meade. She’s in a pharmacy security office after trying to shoplift a $24 can of face cream. Seriously, Claire? Have you reverted to being a teenager? Betty bails her out and they have a chat.

Seems Mama Meade is kind of depressed. One kid out of the country and the other too wrapped up in his own life to make any time for her has Mama acting out for attention. Plus, when Betty tells Daniel about the whole mess, he remembers it’s her birthday. Nice, Daniel. Yet, when Claire asks Daniel to have dinner, he turns her down because he already has plans with Molly. Again, nice job, Daniel. Seeing Claire’s disappointment, Betty offers to throw a surprise party for Claire. Daniel, naturally, says yes because then he doesn’t have to worry about anything. Betty even says she’ll make a video montage of Claire’s life. Only, the home videos Daniel has are awful, so Betty decides instead to ask all of Claire’s friends and family to give warm greeting to her via video.

One little problem: there’s only Daniel left and all of her friends are really conniving, evil alcoholics. Betty’s camera did pick up one interesting thing: Ignacio feeling up his nurse when she left. Naturally, Betty thinks he did this on his own accord and so she talks to Ignacio about it and Hilda apologizes profusely to Elena. Turns out, though, Elena and Ignacio are both in on it because later that night, Betty catches them making out on the front porch. Everyone’s mad and Ignacio explains that he has real feelings for Elena. Whatever. Too much time wasted on this already so let’s wrap it up quickly. Betty has second thoughts about how she treated Elena and after bailing Claire out for a second time for shoplifting, she understands how difficult it is to grow old alone. She brings Elena home for dinner, much to Hilda’s dismay. Blah blah.

Back in the fabulous world of Manhattan, Daniel has been trying so hard to make his own memorable stories with Molly that he’s ruined every date they’ve been on. See, he and Molly were ice skating when they bumped into Connor and Willie. Molly and Connor, to prove how awkward this isn’t, started chatting and ended up being so relaxed around each other, it kind of looked like they were back together. Those two thought nothing of it but Willie and Daniel could have done without the whole scene. Now Daniel wants insta-history but after talking to Molly, she convinces him it’ll happen eventually and she’s not going anywhere.

Much more interesting is Willie’s reaction to the skating evening. She feels jealous but doesn’t want to admit it. She feels like she could lose Connor. She feels like…wait for it…she loves Connor? Yes, those words actually escaped Wilhelmina Slater’s mouth when she was discussing her situation with the ever loyal Marc. And he’s not the only one who overheard. Willie, in the trend of being an uber-caring girlfriend, agreed to watch Connor’s bird when he was away on business. This isn’t just any bird. Apparently it’s an eavesdropping one and now all it will say is “I love Connor.” She toyed with throwing the bird out the window but in the end, she decided to just suck it up. When Connor came back, she blurts out the news and he immediately walks to her and kisses her. It was cute, which is an adjective I didn’t think I would ever use to describe Wilhelmina.

See what I mean, generally uneventful. Oh, by the way, Daniel ended up scrapping the surprise party and just having a private dinner with his mom. He’s such a good boy after he has some pushing. Now they have some base layers so drama must be on the way. It’s just a matter of what will develop: Elena vs. Hilda, Wilhelmina vs. commitment, Betty vs. her conscious?