If I had breasts like that, I’d be playing with them all night, too. Directed by Victor Nelli Jr, this is Nelli the Elephant’s second of sixteen episodes of Ugly Betty, after six episodes of Scrubs, and would go on to direct America Ferrera-led Superstore too. Speaking of Scrubs through on a tenuous link long before writing “Two Aces,” “Rainbow,” and “4-5-1” from Ted Lasso, Bill Wrubel joined us here for several episodes. Wrubel is rather hit-or-miss, mind you, working on Modern Family in the following years, previously doing several episodes of Will & Grace, but his biggest war crime was writing for Men Behaving Badly… the American one.

Waking with about a 13 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, Alexis doesn’t know she’s fully transitioned and has spent all night cupping her breasts as Daniel and Betty watch on. I usually have to pay for that. A line that will never get old, Wilhelmina is still scheming and making everyone’s lives hell. Claire is making like Kate Bush – making a deal with god. Marc and Amanda are figuring out the Dadford situation, because maybe Amanda had sex with her brother a lot, maybe even fell in love with him at one point. Amanda has also contacted lawyers about her mother’s Will.

Meanwhile, as Justin is in one of his very Justin and very 2007 looks, Casa de la Suarez is a bit of a mess. Now that Hilda has gone through the grief of losing Santos tragically in a way that totally isn’t making me emotional again – I’m not on my man period, I promise – she has emptied Santos’ place into the family’s house. I don’t want to speak disparagingly about a dead man or Met’s fans, but it seems men from Queens with this faux-macho nonsense do have a lot of tat with no sense of style. I said what I said.

I mean it, if you have a single bowling pin lamp as part of your decor, I am slightly judging you. Not to be Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, but either you needed that to be a showpiece in the corner where you have some ten-pin bowling stuff, or you are just a man with about as much style as Ray Romano. Hilda, honey, bin it and bin it all. Maybe set fire to it so no one else has that terrible sense of style that was outdated in 1973.

To quote Green Day, here we go again. The Alexis storyline gets more complex to defend and complicated to talk about positively, as we literally have a character regressing in their mind following a traumatic incident. The only time I’ve said “maybe simmer down” about criticism of Alexis’ story is when I saw someone (who happens to be trans) claim that Wilhelmina is a better representation of trans women, which again goes into a serious discussion I don’t have time or energy for about the representation of Black women. Put simply, I won’t blindly defend Alexis pushing her boobs up while saying, “Oh, I’m a woman now.”

Broadly speaking, it is a story to serve a master in the following episodes that we start here. While Alexis is recovering and watching sports from her hospital bed, Dadford comes in for a talk. His confidence is blown when Alexis calls him dad, and she offers him a “softer touch” when it comes to her interactions. The retrograde amnesia caused by the accident where Alexis ordered a hitman to kill Bradford has gone back far enough that she doesn’t remember his harsh words: “He said if I went through with the surgery […] he said he’d rather I was dead.”

A “softer touch” would allow Bradford a second chance, a chance to right the “mistake” of those words by actions, offering his kid the love she should have expected before. Finding this out, Daniel is the one to actively confront Bradford. I said it at the start and throughout last season, and I am once again pointing out that the Daniel we met in “Pilot” to the Daniel we had in “Brothers,” to the Daniel we’ve got here. He might not be the focus of the show, but he’s one of the characters to make the most growth over time.

I say he has growth. When asked how they got into the accident, he lies and doesn’t tell her it’s because he was higher than an astronaut smoking premium-grade stuff. Of course, she couldn’t tell him that she ordered a hit on Bradford, and the crash was a result of the brakes being cut.

From one “interesting” story to a depressing one. Justin has a job at Mode for the Summer and is taken under another gay’s wing. I’m sure Marc would love to have his own assistants and be able to say “fly my little gays” as he orders them about, but instead, he’s helping “a little person” get his confidence back. This week’s magazine business is a photoshoot with someone called Shakira, and yeah, I’ve totally never heard of her either. With a collection of low-ranking editors and Justin, they’re all given a shopping list that only Justin can get right.

Again, it is another lovely, heartwarming story with the evil people looking at small, little, adorable Justin and being really nice. I love these episodes! Everyone gets a variation on the shopping list items, even if they aren’t to specifications; however, no one could find soy rice cakes. So, making like Easy-E in “Boyz-N-The-Hood,” Justin is cruisin’ down the street listening to a song on his Walkman (Spotify with an extra shuffle feature, for you young’ins) and he spots the rice cakes in a store. You know where this is going.

Justin takes them to the counter and offers to pay, but the guy refuses to take the money. This was where Santos got killed, this was the guy Santos saved that day, and that’s the counter Santos stood at when Justin was playing Tony in West Side Story. What I really love about this, despite still being misty-eyed about it, is the fact that we’re not doing this with Hilda, we’re not doing this with Betty, we’re not doing this with Ignacio. We’re doing it with Justin. We’re allowing this very dark and emotional moment, that’s visually bright and colorful, to happen to a kid.

Shows and films now will have kids in a dark room crying as the gore hits their face while a parent is being beheaded off-screen or whatever. Which is fine if you want to do big, shocking emotional stuff. Yet a scene like this, where you have Justin being built up for half the episode, feeling happy, as well as given confidence and encouragement, only to be hit by this ton of emotional bricks, is far more impactful. It is far more truthful to the experience of loss. I prefer this to the “big emotion” scenes.

A scene like this, a moment like this, as well as Hilda’s two moments previously, feel more earned than a character suddenly sobbing. The wonderful Mark Indelicato is left to have that emotion as those metaphorical bricks rain down on Justin while this stranger tells him, “Your dad means the world to me, because of him I’m standing here right now.” More modern shows, especially with kids and teens here, would have Justin say something about wishing the guy were dead, storming out, and crying somewhere. No, it is just that blank “Oh” expression.

For a show called Ugly Betty, I’m not talking a lot about Betty. You’ll see why. Ordered by Daniel to get The Book – the same thing from The Devil Wears Prada and prior episodes – Wilhelmina has been acting as the EIC and approving everything while Daniel is nicknamed “wheels.” Indeed, when will that woman stop scheming? When she’s dead and given the total lack of facelifts and other cosmetic surgeries she’s obviously never had, heaven only knows when that will be. Now, if only Betty could focus on her job, hold on, he’s standing right behind her, isn’t he?

Henry is back… YAY! Given the lack, and I’m not being sarcastic this time when I say that, of accounting jobs in Tucson, Henry is back at Mode to make money for Charlie and Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s baby. Sorry, I’m supposed to be impartial when recounting details until they are revealed, but I genuinely hate this whole thing. It is messy and not just fun soap opera messy, but genuine red flag messy. Much like Hulk Hogan in 2003, Charlie was just waiting for “the right gay guy,” but just at the wrong gay time.

Now we return to your regularly scheduled adults being teenagers because relationships are hard to write, apparently. So, as Betty confides in Christina, Christina does what all Scottish women do and is honest, and sometimes a little too honest. After Betty fights with Ignacio’s immigration status, which we’ll get to here in a minute, Henry shows up drunk on flavored water, declaring his love for Betty and how he knows the baby might not be his. He hasn’t phoned Charlie and hasn’t had a test done to see if he’s any good at Evil Tortilla Games’ 2015 game, Who’s Your Daddy?

Turns out, Betty and Hilda’s Daddy is still stuck in Mexico after he thought he killed the guy who hired him as a cook. Spoiler, he didn’t, as Papi is held at gunpoint. To pull the curtain back a little, I wrote the synopsis bit of this story’s continuation here, forgetting Ramiro turns up next week, but if we’re honest, that’s the only place this story was going. Who else in Mexico was going to have this delightful old man, who could make a great flan, shot and killed at gunpoint?

Back to The Book, Betty is trying to get this thing so Daniel can look over the magazine, but it is at Wilhelmina’s place, so Betty and Christina break in. I say break in, Betty stole a key from Marc. Too bad Wilhelmina’s new bodyguard is to protect from crazy Claire Meade, who is built like a tree, as solid as a rock, and is Vanessa Williams’ ex-husband and ex basketball player for the Celtics and Lakers, Rick Fox. He isn’t in the apartment when they break in; he’s too busy having an affair with the soon-to-be Mrs Meade when they return to the apartment moments after Betty and Christina break in.

Two hours under the bed while two people have sex? What is this, Utah? Obviously, Wilhelmina finds out that Christina and Betty were in the apartment and wants Betty to keep this little sexcapade quiet. In return, Wilhelmina offers a fast-tracked immigration process for Papi due to The Senator or simply Wilhelmina’s daddy. Much like the check for the lawyer before, Betty has reservations, but this is one she can’t refuse. Not that she knows yet that Ignacio is being held at gunpoint.

I said last time in “How Betty Got Her Grieve Back” wasn’t the “Petra-Gate” of the season, but part of me wants to say that’s exactly what we’ve got this time out. “Family/Affair” isn’t bad and isn’t something I’d never want to see again, like the aforementioned “Petra-gate,” but it does very little in terms of payoff and a whole lot of setup. I think the only payoff we’ve got is Justin confronting that emotion he’s been allowed to metaphorically run from. However, even that results in him picking out Santos’ basketball from his pile of junk to keep.

Under the advice of Papi, Hilda looks through all of his stuff and restricts herself to picking out one thing to keep. Sadly, it isn’t a Genie’s lamp; she’s decided to keep the gaudy bowling pin lamp. Woman, I told you to burn that! I guess, if it keeps her happy, so be it. Though this is the last we’ve really seen from Hilda about the Santos storyline.

Ultimately, “Family/Affair” does everything it sets out to do; it propels us properly into new stories and new ideas going forward, but beyond a bit of mischief and Justin’s heavy realization, it does very little in the moment. Even that ugly rat Amanda gets from Fey’s last Will doesn’t culminate in much yet. I think the only climax for this episode I’d love would be Henry being shot, but that’s because I’m sick of the “Will They/Won’t They”; it is tired and doing nothing interesting with it.

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Ugly Betty "Family/Affair"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Marc and Mark, I love seeing this side of our "villains."
• Wilhelmina is always scheming in one way or another.

Cons

• Henry, again?
• I wouldn't call that rat a dog if you paid me.