“Oh please, Ugly Willy, you’re my only hope.” I think Bradford said that before the blue pill. Directing his only episode of Ugly Betty, Tucker Gates is a weird one to pin down as he does lots of 2000s shows like Alias, Weeds, Heroes, Lost, and Californication. However, I know his work more for latter-day House, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, and interestingly enough, “Majority Rule” from The Orville. While writing comes from our story editors this season, Sarah Kucserka and Veronica West. The two previously did “Fake Plastic Snow” and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Brilliant, under the advice of Gio last time out, Betty takes up a writing class after she realizes her dreams aren’t going to come to her as the assistant to the EIC of Mode. Sadly, it is Professor Callahan she’s got long before his stint as Admiral to the Planetary Union. As Betty goes back to school, so does Justin with a new Danny Zuko cosplay and a moody teenager attitude out of nowhere. Meanwhile, Breasts the clown has come back to the office with a few too many buttons undone for the workplace, and I’ll be filing an HR complaint. I am HR at Phenixx Gaming.

Love is in the air, maybe someone needs to get the air freshener out, as Bradford gets handsy again and Wilhelmina… is scheming again. I can hear you drone it in unison too. Also, Justin is already failing algebra, apparently, but honestly, so did I. I couldn’t find it in Eastern Europe for love nor money. With the help of Henry, he still has apathy for the North African nation. Meanwhile, we get Amanda asking Fey’s ex-assistant details about her dad, and Mode is bleeding advertisers because we’re once again showing that 2007 had transphobia.

I can’t catch a break from this Alexis storyline, can I? We’ll get into the advertiser thing later, but Mystique is standing next to her brother, arm-in-arm, and is dragged through and into the office with more makeup than she probably had to for X-Men: The Last Stand. Or as that film was marketed as for no reason whatsoever, X3. Working alongside Daniel as co-editors, the two are in a meeting about the cover model, to which Sgt Pepper name-drops that Mode has lost Winona Ryder. What could go wrong here if Alexis makes a suggestion?

“She’s big, she’s sexy, she’s outrageous… Anna Nicole Smith!” October, 2007. I don’t like saying “too soon” on jokes because I do love dark humor, humor so dark you can’t even see it at night, but maybe this one was a bit premature? It won’t properly kick in until after “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and won’t properly affect the show’s writing until “Twenty Four Candles.” However, with that said, I think the looming effects of the WGA strikes of 2007 are about to hit Ugly Betty like a ton of bricks.

Long story short, that suggestion by Alexis went down like a lead balloon and left her crying in the bathroom. I’ve said it time and time again, Daniel shows here that he’s grown past his anger at Alexis for transitioning by comforting her. He does it both times, but we’ll get to that later. I need something a bit lighter to rip into before I have a go at someone for that storyline.

I’m not going to beat around the fur, as “Grin and Bear it” isn’t a very good episode overall. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say that it is a good episode in general. It feels very lost in terms of focus. We have Betty dealing with this very weird old man, who seems to never age from this point in the 2000s, and his stereotype of students who are beige. Justin has done a 180° of his personality without the buildup, Wilhelmina is shopping for new magazines to run against Mode within the Meade family, and you have Henry just being a hanger-on.

Much like my editor Alexx, I love seeing Victor Garber in stuff that you don’t really expect him in. Yet here he’s clearly been told that the role is big, bold, and overpowering. As someone who has been in that role of “today class, this is what we’re going to learn,” I hate everything about this overbearing, overpowering, “I am always right” way of teaching.

Especially when it comes to writing. I had an English teacher who wasn’t too dissimilar in his horrible traits, and as a dyslexic, that is the worst thing to experience. Garber’s Professor Barrett, much like my English teacher, seems like the type of person who would shout at you for reading a book ahead of everyone else in class. That’s a true story, and I’ll never forgive any teacher, fictional or otherwise, who does that. You are supposed to encourage education, not be Alex McAvoy in The Wall.

Demanding perfection, but not outlining perfection, Professor Barrett commands the whole class to write 1000 words on their most defining moments, with Betty singled out as the one to read hers out loud at the front of class. Surely he can’t be that bad? “If you have nothing to write, try killing yourself. If you fail, you’ll have something to write about. If you succeed, your troubles will be over,” indeed, Barrett, but Malcolm Tucker you are not. If I were to quote anything from Tucker, though, I think I’d be fired.

The whole point is that Daniel “offered” to look over Betty’s work before Barrett hears the story. Betty has someone else’s piece that is supposed to go in Mode. She pulls out both essays and starts reading the one for Mode, and Barrett is excited by the title. “Girl Gone Wild: How I Survived a Bear Attack,” I wonder what the title of the episode could be referring to. Cue Barrett softening at the harrowing tale of Rebecca Wisocky’s Marsha Worthington’s survival of a bear attack while pregnant, he tells an Editor at The New York Review (New Yorker), and it makes it back to the original writer.

This whole thing feels like an exercise to get us back to the point that Betty has ambition, but forgets her whole character in the process. If the idea of Betty lying and being concerned about that isn’t enough, we have all the heart of the show turned down, so we can allow for the story of a pregnant woman getting attacked by a bear to move a no-nonsense disciplinarian to have his emotion, just one. There is no heart in it, no soul, just “let’s do something whacky to get away from all the depressing stuff.”

We’re just going to skip Wilhelmina scheming this week because that’s business as usual. It isn’t old-hat yet, but there is nothing special about it. What I do want to talk about, though, is Amanda and her search for daddy. With the help of her gay, who seems to have run through his closet, she’s told to go check out back issues of Mode to find Papa. No, but seriously – a checker print trilby, with a pink shirt and off-white neckerchief with blue bean-shaped polka dots, black pants, and a white snake-skin belt – honey, you need a boyfriend. His fashion might be off, but he’s right about the back issues, though.

Now with a sense of direction, thanks to the dog and our cowardly lion, Dorothy in the red dress clicks her heels and finds an image of Fey with her assistant, Wanda. Before I get to Ugly Willy, between the comments on Marc’s outfit and calling Amanda Dorothy there, could I be any more stereotypically gay in this review? Caught in the act of discovering who Wanda was, Amanda is dragged into the wicked witches’ lair so the flying monkeys can eat her alive. Or rather, Amanda gets to ask Fey’s assistant, Wilhelmina Slater, the question we’ve all been asking: Who’s the daddy?

This is what I mean, though, there is some heart in this story that I’m not getting from Penelope Pitstop, the Slag Brothers, and Dick Dastardly. I believe that for my next reference, it will be the first cave painting. The point still stands, though. Victor Garber being directed to overperform as an angry old man who doesn’t know how to teach isn’t pulling anything out of Betty we don’t already know. Amanda’s storyline, however, is drawing out details about Amanda, Wilhelmina, Fey, and Daddy. Ok, maybe not the latter.

What gets me is that at the start of the show, you have Amanda putting on this impenetrable shell to hide her insecurities, and we’re getting a version of her that is kind of lost. Effectively, we know who Amanda performs as for everyone else, we know who Amanda is for Marc, but now we’re getting Amanda finding out who Amanda is. It takes this exterior look of Becki Newton and breaks it down to show she’s actually fragile on the inside, and Becki Newton wonderfully pulls it off. “Oh please Wilhelmina, you’re my last hope.”

Now we’re on the search for a man with a Tweety Bird tattoo above his ass, who was at all the hot clubs in the late, very late 80s. Amanda is totally in her very early 20s. Well, that could be anyone. It is not like it is going to be a singer in a rock band or someone trying to get a Hogan Knows Best-style show.

Let’s get to the advertiser storyline and try not to talk too much about how, in his latter years, James Van Der Beek became a bit anti-vax. Playing some super-rich advertising psycho, Luke Carnes has a meeting with Daniel that goes well. In fact, I’d say he’s a Daniel pre-“Pilot;” he has that awful, punchable face sort of attitude. Asking a favor before signing the advertising deal, Van Der Beek’s Luke Carnes demands that Alexis be fired because “I’m not sure we want to be associated with a magazine run by a cross-dresser.”

Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to dig myself out of a hole here. I think I’ll do better than Carnes, with his defense, “I am the most tolerant man in town. I got a Black and a Jew assistant, all right? And the gays? Couldn’t have an Oscar party without ’em.” Do you just want to drop the pretense, mate, and use the racial, homophobic, and antisemitic slurs bare-faced? It is faux-Liberalism from another White guy who’s got more money than he could ever spend. It is left-leaning for the cameras and PR, but hard-right opinions behind closed doors.

If there is one thing I keep saying with this storyline about Alexis being trans, it is that to be real, to be honest, and to have heart, it is difficult to tell that story of a trans woman without showing the hard stuff. The type of thing trans women (LGBTQ+IA people in general) deal with daily as is. Part of me wants to say that without it, it wouldn’t feel authentic and would feel hollow. Yet, when you have scenes like this, moments like this, and where Wilhelmina casually throws out “she’s a tranny, not a drag queen,” there needs to be a bit of consequence for these lines.

The consequence shouldn’t be to appease the guilt of straight folks, as lines about racism shouldn’t be to appease White folks, but to make sure anyone watching knows that isn’t acceptable. It isn’t about “pushing an agenda” as the people who shout “WOKE” would say, it is about having something to say in the arts. Every great show you’ve ever watched had a message to say, and for whatever reason, the message is in there but isn’t really shown. Daniel rightly rejects the transphobe’s money, and we get Daniel again growing.

What I have trouble with is that Mode is the one punished for this. We get into it next time, but because Daniel sticks by Alexis’ side, there is a cascading effect. If Carnes got a broken nose (just as an example) and we had this cascading effect, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem. However, because of the storyline, it is just Mode, it is just Meade Publications that is punished for Daniel standing by his big sister because he knows it is right. He also knows, unlike her, that it’s not right to hug your brother when he’s got his little fella in hand.

That’s not the end of it for those two, though. Another ripple in the Alexis storyline takes place as Daniel finally breaks down and tells her that he’s the reason they crashed Bradford’s big-flashy Merc’, not knowing Alexis called a hitman to snip the brake line. Again, it is Daniel growing. Admitting he lied and owning up to it, previously assuaging the blame onto a deer that Alexis supposedly swerved to miss.

I don’t like coming back to this one on a rewatch, a bit like “Petra-Gate,” it is just an unpleasant but functional episode you’ll watch once and never want to again. Be it my personal gripes with Garber’s Barrett or the hard-line transphobia, it is not one that gives a lot of fond memories, nor does it give many long-lasting plot points. Yes, things are quite literally happening, but it doesn’t feel like many of the storylines are being influenced by the characters. There has been a step missed between episodes on the Justin storyline, and Betty feels passive in a storyline about her ambition.

Ultimately, there is plenty to bemoan about with “Grin and Bear it,” but if I must bear it as I praise something, it is Amanda’s search for daddy that pulls me through an otherwise passive episode. I enjoy that Daniel is standing up for Alexis in terms of business, but characters like Carnes should have their own ramifications before leaving out the back door with the sign “one-off guest star exit.” The only guest star I don’t hate this week is John Cho’s Kenny, who is just a crypto bro in accounting before they were actively selling you pyramid schemes.

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Ugly Betty "Grin and Bear It"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Amanda is the only true star.
• John Cho just annoying Henry, you love to see it.

Cons

• Why is everyone so passive in their own story?
• The writing for Carnes is shockingly bad, to say the least.