He looks like the investment banker who makes a mess of a train on a Tuesday after being a skinny, pretty woman’s 13th reason on the Saturday. Directed by someone new, the first of his three episodes, Matt Shakman joins before going on to direct Chuck, more House, Mad Men, Fargo, more Always Sunny, season 7 of Game of Thrones, The Boys, Succession, all of WandaVision, as well as 2025’s Fantastic Four film. Our most successful director? While the writing comes from long-term producers Sheila Lawrence & Henry Alonso Myers, I’ll hold while my editor gets painkillers ahead of this one.

Back to normal, Hilda is using Betty as a model for her training, as Betty gets ready to go out to Henry’s band. He isn’t in the band; he’s the manager of a monotonal cover band full of nerds who can barely hold a tune. Meanwhile, Christina has her legs over her head and not just because she likes sex five times, but Wilhelmina thinks Bradford’s jizz will fall out. I’ve given up the pretense almost as fast as Gabrielle Union’s Renee gave up her pretense when her gay biker “boyfriend” started making out with his own boyfriend.

Meeting at Henry’s band’s awful gig next to a gay bar called the Bear Hole (it is June as I write this), Daniel and Renee become a bit of an item, going back to Daniel’s place so Daniel can cop a feel of his mother’s breast. Maybe a rain check on banging on the bed Mother Dearest was just lying on in the dark? Before Daniel left the bar, though, he needed Betty to find a writer to do an interview and write up a thousand words by Friday. If only he weren’t Richard La Ruina. Also, Amanda is making a music video for Daddy.

Where to start(?), where to start(?), I think we’ll start with what my opening line references, since it is Betty’s main storyline this week. A writer dropped out of interviewing Phil Roth, who notably isn’t Philip Roth. Assuming that the interview was with the writer of American Pastoral and Goodbye, Columbus, Betty is bitterly disappointed by the fact that it is Paul Hipp’s Phil Roth, a superseducer-wannabe who promotes “negging.” Indeed, he might also be my 13th reason why, if I have to put up with his tactics between Henry and Gio.

After initially sitting down to do the interview and Betty not liking everything Phil is, she goes to Daniel with something else she’s written and tells him just how much of a horrible person Phil is. So instead of bringing this up to Alexis and having a discussion on it, Daniel uses reverse psychology and effectively forces Betty into giving Phil a second chance. What happened to either being the boss or, and this is a mad notion that no one else might have thought of, discussing it like adults?

Speaking of Daniel, he picks up, or rather is picked up by, a stunning woman who pretends to have a boyfriend, who just so happens to have a gay biker boyfriend of his own. As I’ve said, not the most awkward part of the story, as the two go home from the bar where Henry’s band is playing, and after Daniel gropes his own mother’s breast, Renee leaves for another attempt at this whole “gettin’ in ya pants” business. Have I mentioned that Gabrielle Union is absolutely stunning already? Daniel, you can’t mess this up like Lucy Liu and Salma Hayek.

Ok, third time trying, they get back to Renee’s place and have one of those “adult sleepovers” I’ve heard so much about, so of course, he needs to shower before leaving. Man, why are you standing naked in front of Wilhelmina in the shower, acting like she was going to be Renee? Oh right, I forgot: Wilhelmina’s got a hot sister! Don’t come shouting at me. Ron Canada’s Senator Slater has damn good genes for those two very attractive women who play his daughters. Away and shout at him, or most likely the casting director.

So yeah, Wilhelmina is seemingly hosting a party by having Christina staying over, Renee needing a place to stay, and later Daniel sleeping over and overachieving. I’ll stop, but she is stunning. Now that Daniel has gotten Betty to give Phil a second chance through totally mature and not HR nightmare ways, Betty and Henry read your man Phil’s book, and all I’ll say is, “good guy Henry?” Enjoying Phil’s opinions on picking up women a little too much, Henry suggests going out and putting them to the test. However, Betty thinks he’s too much of a nice guy, so Gio will obviously do it, right?

This is genuinely horrible. So back at the bar next to the gay bar, the fake Italian and fake nice guy (who got another woman pregnant) start picking up numbers from women by negging them. Tell me again how Henry is sexy, nice, and sweet, I dare you. As far as I know, Chris Gorham is lovely, but Henry is a “PoS,” as I believe the kids said in the 2000s. You got another woman pregnant, you are dating someone, and you are actively out here trying to prove your sex appeal by negging?

Seeing a wannabe sexual assaulter’s tactics at play, Betty agrees to sit down with Phil and do the proper interview this time and writes up the piece. She also confronts Phil about what Daniel said about how he “wanted a different writer” on the project… which he didn’t. And so shall the truth set you free, unless you have to face the wrath of Betty’s scorn. Shocker: Daniel was a moron; Betty wasn’t much better (even if she’s right, Phil’s a pig), and there was a way around this in the first place.

The conclusion of the story is simply that the interview/article, even after Betty wrote it perfectly, is that Alexis won’t print it because “When she was a guy, she loved Phil Roth, and as a woman, she thinks he’s kind of a pig.” I guess the positive here is that Daniel does see his sister as a woman despite her past? As I said, the whole thing could have been handled better if Daniel had acted like a boss instead of like a bit of a child. However, that’s not the only story with Jon Robin Baitz’s 2006 family drama – Brothers & Sisters.

It seems that mothers will make like their sons and never go to therapy, as Claire has decided that she’s going to start a magazine. Honestly, you could guess the name, and it wouldn’t be any better, because it might as well be called “Factory is closed” for how tasteful it is. Hot Flash, the hot new magazine for women of a “certain” age, who could prove to need a bit more… lube in the bedroom. Listen, I’ll just say it: It is The View/Loose Women in written form.

With Claire’s heart set on that, and we’ll get to it, this now means that Alexis has to set out budgets and constraints as the publisher. The publisher of her mother’s pet-project magazine, while her mother still owns the magazine that she’s publishing and that her brother is editing. I swear, this family’s drama is like a snake eating its own tail. This is a very Daniel-centric episode, isn’t it?

I would gladly say Paul Hipp’s Phil Roth isn’t the only guest star, but then we’d be ignoring Gabrielle Union, and I think my editor would prefer that before we get a restraining order. Neither of those is the biggest, though. Amanda has been convinced by Wilhelmina’s flying monkey to write music for Daddy, something to catch his attention. Yeah, there is a reason this isn’t part of the soundtrack – Becki Newton is purposefully singing terribly, and whoever wrote that needs to be beaten to death with an alto clef.

Sorry, but I’d rather listen to something written by Drake’s ghostwriters (but not by Drake) than whatever this is. That’s unfair; I still wouldn’t listen to that drivel. The point is, though, that it is purposefully terrible, and with the help of Henry’s Irritable Resonance System, Amanda gets to perform her awful song poorly in front of a half-baked audience who would rather be at the gay bar next door listening to the first single by Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Shut up, I know it is three months too early for “Just Dance,” and a season too early for Gaga.

Turns out Daddy found out about Amanda’s little performance, and by the way, Daddy is questionable celebrity number one: Chaim Witz, otherwise known as Gene Simmons. I’m going to have to poo-poo this whole thing by pointing out that, though he talks about doing a reality TV show and all this about having an illegitimate daughter, it is not real. To Amanda, it is; to Gene, it is for the sake of publicity and money (not touching that), but that’s all it is. He isn’t really Amanda’s dad, and that will come out in the wash, but we don’t see him again, and this storyline is kind of dropped.

We get more of Amanda talking about this for an episode or two, but if I remember correctly (I don’t), it is quietly dropped after what happens next. Amanda, trying to find Daddy, continues, but we do move in a different direction. So what is it that happens next? This was the episode that aired January 24th, 2008 – November 5th of 2007 saw the start of the WGA strike begin, which only ended on February 12th. A big change is about to hit this show like a ton of bricks.

As an episode, I think “A Thousand Words Before Friday” does fine for what it is. I think, like a lot of episodes by Henry Alonso Myers (co-written or otherwise), the drama is hyperfixated on and brutally distracts from its better parts. See Strange New Worlds and (I’ve heard) The Magicians to see my point in action; the man has a fetish for Spock being horny. You can’t just blame him, but when Sheila Lawrence is credited solo on “Fey’s Sleigh Ride,” you don’t get so much of this. Though she also wrote “A League of Their Own,” so you know, iffy.

Ultimately, “A Thousand Words Before Friday” does enough to be fun where it needs to be and moves some plot along, but we also have to put up with Henry and Gio beaching each other off. Yes, that film is hyper-commercialized, but it is one with America Ferrera in it, and like Gabriella Union here, she is very attractive in that. Aside from my appreciating two attractive women in Ugly Betty, “A Thousand Words Before Friday” is a fine episode of drama that focuses a little too much on hyperdrama. It is also interesting to see the early work of a major director, which is fine, nothing major of note.

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Ugly Betty “A Thousand Words Before Friday”

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Gabriella Union is a great choice for Willy's sister.
• We've hit the high point of Amanda's plot.

Cons

• Henry and Gio negging.
• Hot Flash could have been named a little more conspicuously.
• Gene Simmons' involvement is almost immediately dropped.