Popular, not an episode that’s going to be pop-u-lar. The second of his run this season, Victor Nelli Jr returns from “Family/Affair,” which I only finished writing for yesterday as I write this one. Unlike having to put up with Henry’s existence, Nelli Jr has done popular stuff, but not much since 2023 with Home Economics, starring Topher Grace. I, too, would quit after that, but my editor might too as soon as he hears that the writer of “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is Henry Alonso Myers. His first of three for the season – a tradition he continues to season 4.

Henry and Betty decided that for the five months Henry has left in New York, before going back to Tucson, they are going to sneak around behind everyone’s backs and rut like rabbits. To borrow a line from Megan Hilty, don’t be offended by my frank analysis, but I’d be singing Elmer Fudd’s line, “Kill the wabbit!” Daniel is whoring himself out for ad revenue, Gio has returned with his little sister, who wants to go see Wicked, and Hilda finished beauty school and totally got a job in 2007. Meanwhile, Wilhelmina is scheming— Sorry, I mean eating.

So much like my thing about punching up, down, and all around, I think today I need to talk about camp. No, not the tents and bugs. I mean the sometimes overly effeminate, over-the-top, and often overly theatrical camp, because there is a fine line with that sort of thing. Musicals, telenovela, and the gays = good camp, while this episode = bad camp, and I am not just saying that for “ABBA means nothing.” Take that back, you whore! The episode itself has lots of fun/interesting lines, but forgets what Ugly Betty is almost entirely to become a cheap comedy of the week instead of what the show actually is: Comedy, mystery, and drama.

Sneaking out to be with bland Superman – or as I call him, Superman – Betty is interdicted by the family, trying to keep her spirits up after not being able to be with Henry. Oh my, how funny, I am not saying any of this in a monotone voice whatsoever as I write this. As I say, there are levels of camp, and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” does what “Grin and Bear It” did with being as wacky as The Ant Hill Mob. Yes, much like that review, I’ll reference Wacky Races again, because if Ugly Betty isn’t bringing culture, I will.

The whole episode is about Betty sneaking around with The Trash Man, but somehow I’d rather we had Danny DeVito, because once again, this story is just red flag central. To paraphrase, “We need to sneak around because if anyone finds out, they’ll tell me I’ll get my heart broken, and I know that, but I want to give this a try.” Ok, Betty, so why are you trying to sneak around so much? Why are you allowing this man, whom you know will break your heart, to do so on a timeline?

Love isn’t rational, I know, but if you know Henry is going to break your heart, if you’re smart enough to know that, then why does it matter what others say? Conversely, what benefit does being with him for five months before he goes back to hell, otherwise known as Tuc-son (it would be spelled Too-S-on otherwise), and you have your heart broken? Betty isn’t a dumb character, most of the time. She has flaws, but she’s not Amanda going the wrong way when giving her birth year, she’s not Daniel in that first episode, and she’s not that rat Amanda keeps calling a dog.

That’s why this story annoys me so much. You have a young, ambitious, and smart woman who is reduced to “I like a boy.” You have an accountant who has a pretty decent salary, might I add, so he should be smart, and he’s reduced to a bumbling idiot who gets one woman pregnant while also falling in love with another woman. If only there were someone else in the picture to make Betty one of the centers of a love triangle. Oh, hi, Gio. How are the five other dwarfs and the sleeping one?

We’ll get to that in a minute. I want something else to distract myself with. As Betty was sneaking out, Hilda was coming home from getting a job as a hair stylist, following that storyline in season 1 that was kind of dropped out of nowhere. Well, she’s graduated and got a job at a place where Madonna and other women we old folks have actually heard of go. It actually turns out she isn’t working there; she’s working at a place that Juliette Goglia’s Hilary calls “Oh yeah, it’s like Hooters, just not as classy.”

Young woman, she is in jeans and not booty shorts. Tight jeans, I’ll give you that, but she’s not one camel toe away from being completely indecent and arrested. Of course, Hilda is confronted by the only person who can confront her on that, her son, and we find out she’s not been cutting Madonna’s hair; she got into an argument with the people who work there and was immediately fired. Remember six episodes ago when I said I was crying as I watched Ana Ortiz break down because Santos got shot? Yeah, me too, good times.

We sort of drop the “your sister is trans, did you know that?” storyline, as the focus this week is on Daniel while he tries to one-up Alexis by saving the magazine, again. Yes, you could argue that it is still on that storyline, because Bradford mentions that Daniel could have removed Alexis from the masthead for a while, as he allowed the transphobe to hand over money anyway. Ignoring the fact that Daniel did the right, moral thing instead of taking money so someone horrible who has power and influence can get more money, power, and influence to push that “I’m not racist/homophobic, but” nonsense.

So, with the help of the wannabe sex pest from “Pilot,” Bailey Chase’s Becks is back because I guess working for the Initiative and researching demons doesn’t pay well. That’s just a reference for my editor to enjoy; I have about as much interest in the adventures of Buffy Summers as Rupert Manion has in teaching. Nonetheless, dull spice here suggests taking a 50-year-old jewelry merchant in Marlo Thomas’ Sandra Winthrop out and sleeping with her for money to save the magazine. Honestly, he could have done worse; he could have started working with someone just out of rehab.

Without getting into spoilers for next season, he decides to take her to Wicked. The same Wicked that Betty was trying to get tickets for after Daniel told her (paraphrasing) “I’ll fire Henry if you two are dating, I won’t let him break your heart.” Which is all under the pretense of “You look out for me, let me look out for you” – now, the trouble is, Daniel, is that you sleep around and were almost extorted out of money by someone pretending to be sixteen. Do you see where I am going with this?

This isn’t fun camp, this is over the top, can’t stop doing the dumbest thing possible, oh my god, how funny would it be to break character and do this thing “camp.” Betty is keeping Daniel from doing something that’s illegal, while Daniel is butting in and controlling someone’s personal life because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. As a friend, good guy Daniel. As a person respecting boundaries and understanding the differences between the two situations, maybe stay in your lane, bud. Just a little, huh?

So Betty lies about why she’s trying to get tickets for her favorite show; she’s getting them for her and her boyfriend… Gio. No, I didn’t stutter. Ramón Salazar (it’s an RE4 reference) is back and has to play pretend that he’s dating Betty because, despite best laid plans of mice and Betty, Gio holds the ticket hostage for reasons I can’t quite make out. What is he going to do with one ticket? If Betty can’t get two tickets without Daniel’s help, what can Gio do with one that is sitting right next to Betty? Oh, that’s right, take his little sister when Betty just gives him the other ticket.

He doesn’t do this for clearly established character motivations; he holds the ticket hostage and annoys Betty because he’s a horrible person. This isn’t good antagonist writing; this is just writing someone to be annoying, and thus, they become a default antagonist. Honestly, this whole episode is one timer or countdown that is present throughout the episode, away from being a Chris Chibnall-written Doctor Who. Keep in mind, I’ve only covered the first 20-some minutes and three of five storylines.

To cut a long story short, Betty and Henry meet Gio and Jasmine Jessica Anthony’s Antonella in the lobby of a theatre, which isn’t the Gershwin. It isn’t even the lobby of the Curran. If I am correct, it is actually the lobby of the Los Angeles Theatre on South Broadway, just two blocks down from Pershing Square. If not, that’s a very close-looking lobby given the fact we’re on the internet, and people are both creepy and obsessive with that, as I’ve just proven. It is honestly damning that I’d rather talk about where the episode is shot than the story itself.

You know how this is going, Daniel and the older woman show up, and he got tickets sat next to Gio and Betty, Henry is there, so he has to hide further back with Gio’s little sister. I said I’d talk about it, let’s do it. How far back are these house seats that Mode, with all its power, can get? They are in N110-115, like 17 rows back, and are technically cheap seats for the floor. If you’re a massive magazine with power up the wazoo, I’d expect the near front row tickets I’ve had for fairly popular shows, which weren’t obtained with “don’t you know who I am” power.

Believe me, I get it. This whole thing is to placate the story of Henry and Betty; even for how terrible that is, it just doesn’t make much sense when you apply half an ounce of thought into it. That’s my problem with not only this storyline but also “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” nothing in the episode is either fun, interesting, or exposing a new layer to the character. Unless we talk about Marc, which is another boiling kettle of fish I’d rather pour down my underpants than suffer again.

The great wedding of 2007 nears as Brad-elmina are almost hitched, with Wilhelmina starving herself to meet a target weight and overshooting it. After the line “What does Wang know about boning anyway?” we get that Wilhelmina doesn’t care about all the other things that would normally bother her, she even eats like a champion racehorse after the Grand National. The shock, the horror, why do I care? It is out of character for her not to care about things and to be eating. She does care about the little chocolates to be given out at the wedding, which have been segregated, though.

What I want to talk about from that is actually Marc’s boyfriend, or as he calls him when Amanda and Cliff meet, “friend.” We do get the line as Marc escorts Cliff out of Mode as he tries to set up a dinner date, “You know the fashion world, very homophobic.” Honey, if the fashion world were homophobic, you and all the other little gays in these roles wouldn’t get a job. Suck it up and snuggle with your big teddy bear boyfriend, you superficial queen!

Honestly, out of this whole episode, there is one redeeming quality, and it is the turn of Wilhelmina back to normal when Amanda and Marc are Bitchy™ about her. Turns out that her daughter, Nico, won’t be coming to the wedding to be her Maid of Honor, so she calls her “friend” Vicky. Is this one of them Lauren Cooper characters, a chav from Essex with massive hoop earrings and gaudy outfits? Part of me can’t wait for next week now, knowing who it is.

Not that this is where the episode ends or how the storylines wrap up. We’re already going long enough, so after Daniel and Old Spice (ok, that’s mean!) escape the theatre to have sex in the coat room and Daniel sells her on advertising in Mode, the two almost catch Betty and Henry. So this self-made forbidden love thing continues as they find somewhere else that’s quiet and “private,” with the two ending up backstage and eventually onto one of the props that would be rigged to fly.

Props like that don’t sit backstage and magically move forward to fly over the stage typically, but I’m already angry enough with this writing, so I’ll let it go. The two start kissing… cue the prop suddenly being over the stage, ahh, how did anyone find out as we kissed in the ring thing during “Defying Gravity.” I genuinely wish I could care, but I don’t.

As an episode, “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is insulting to the intelligence of the viewer, it is poorly constructed, this half Will They/Won’t They and Forbidden Love story is just ponderous, and nothing is redeeming about it. Daniel confronts Betty after the “Defying Gravity” bit with “You lied to me.” And? Several episodes ago, you were being bribed by someone because they were lying that they were sixteen, you were so high on drugs you almost OD’d in the offices, you slept with every assistant you had until Betty, you let Salma Hayek— Ok, that one is fair play, I’d do that last one too.

Daniel, on his high horse with Betty, doesn’t work here. Hilda trying to get a paycheck to pay for things in 2007 isn’t a big controversy in hindsight, either. Marc being superficial after what we saw last time, much like Justin’s moody teenage thing for three episodes, is another step back without a chapter to show why. The only thing that’s consistent is the Henry and Betty thing because it treats these two adults like actual children sneaking around, because no one knows how to write a romance story with drama at this point. While I’m at it, Gio can jump headfirst into a bin from the top floor of the Meade building.

Ultimately, if I never had to watch “Something Wicked This Way Comes” again, I’d be very happy. A handful of quotable lines does not make up for a genuinely insulting episode to watch, with maybe one redeemable point that it sets up a storyline for next time out in “It’s a Nice Day for a Posh Wedding.” That, the fact that Megan Hilty would also later go on to play Doralee Rhodes in 9 to 5: The Musical after this, and that’s just because I liked her Glinda here, and Bradford is a secret queen that wants Shania Twain at the wedding. The rest of it, alongside Henry Alonso Myers and Gio, can go in the bin.

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6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• That turn from Vanessa Williams in the bathroom.
• I knew Bradford was a flaming queen - let's go sing Shania-Karaoke.
• Megan Hilty's Glinda.

Cons

• Will They/Won't They is ponderous.
• Who gave Daniel the high horse?