Sure, get in the EIC and Creative Director of Elle alongside Naomi Campbell to guest star, and someone else who looks like she has an English sister called Annie. I’m giving myself that “long” opener because it is only the fourth of sixteen episodes directed by Victor Nelli Jr, returning from “Odor in the Court,” six episodes ago. The writing comes from our executive producer and showrunner, Silvio Horta. There are so many big story beats I just want to jump straight in with, mostly to see what kind of message I get from my editor.

Daniel, meet Daniel Jr.; you’re related. Meanwhile, Betty is apparently now dating the guy who sexually assaulted her, because the people who wrote the season lost their damn minds. Both are a little distracted, though, as it is Mode’s charity baseball/softball (they are the same) game between themselves and rival (real-world) magazine, Elle; with the real Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director. Could be worse; Henry could show up unannounced professing his love, once again plunging us into this “who Betty will pick,” the sexual assaulter or the guy who got someone else pregnant and broke up with Betty the minute the baby was born?

Elsewhere, Wilhelmina is scheming again; the ocean is blue, the sky is blue, oh my god Eiffel 65, what did you do? Hilda is getting serious with Coach Diaz, and he’s bringing cafeteria food from school to the Suarez house for lunch. If that wasn’t enough, Betty is also reliving her high school years with Kimmie, which was 1999? Is Betty 24 in 2008? I guess about 15 going on 20-23, because no one in that segment looked young enough for that sort of thing, which is put into contrast when you see who Kimmie is. Oh yeah, and Coach Diaz competes with Henry and Gio for “worst man in a show” award.

Where do we even start with this one because it is memorable for a handful of things that are best built to? Oh, yeah: It is a baseball (softball?) game, so Marc and Amanda are cheerleaders – Marc looks gayer than a pink Christmas tree with lights spelling out a homophobic slur. Fine, let’s talk about the bits before that and the opening where Betty expositions a time jump and a sudden relationship with Gio. Do I honestly have to say why I hate this with a burning passion?

Woman, why are you in any sort of relationship with the man who forced himself on you after repeated rejections? Something that becomes a little on the nose shortly thereafter. Though between getting in batting practice with Gio, Betty sees Claire’s magazine is now out and her article will be in this one, for sure; this one will totes have her article, right? Kind of, but it is re-written heavily by an editor who got advice from their 12-year-old niece, with “naturally” being turned into “natch.” The magazine is called Hot Flash – 12-year-olds aren’t reading it – 65-year-olds might.

So going to have a chat with the woman who runs the magazine, Betty is told that her article was too safe. Yes, and natch that’s going to be corrected by shortening some words to appeal to a demographic that the advertisers are not selling products to? Then again, selling anti-aging cream to teenagers is something I believe could happen in a world where public figures are still in office after reportedly being to a certain island… which I might reference again in a minute.

Nonetheless, the point of Claire’s chat with Betty is to tell her to be more adventurous and take more risks. Blah blah, Betty thinks she’s going to lunch with Gio, who is effectively forcing her to get over her fear of sports and competition, which means she can be on Mode’s softball/baseball team for the Elle thing. Betty asks if she has to do this, to which Gio says, “Now stop saying no and start saying yes.” I’ll take what a sexual assaulter says to his victim for $500, Alex… Yet somehow I can make it worse: By getting her to verbally say yes to things, he “asks” her something else.

“Come with me to Rome,” less of a question and more of a statement, but he’s once again coercing Betty to agree to do something. If it was a couple in a romcom, that’s a fine line and an ok way of proposing a fun trip; not the best way, but it is one of those trope lines. However, as I keep repeating about this short, uninspiring, horrible little man, he committed a very serious crime after it was repeated multiple times that Betty wasn’t looking at Gio as “the rebound guy” or that she was flirting with him.

He never acknowledges that he was in the wrong, and actively doubles down when confronted about it. I have no reason to like this relationship between Betty and Gio, no reason to root for it, and all the reasons to hope for his death. Not the actor Freddy Rodríguez, but the character of Gio. He’s horrible, and I cannot just say “oh but it is of its time.” This isn’t 1953; this is in the lifetime of the majority of people alive and less than 20 years ago. Only about 33% of the global population is younger than this episode.

The fact that Gio is an actual criminal aside (I still want to kill him), Betty is kind of flustered but agrees and goes to Daniel to announce her news. Daniel might have bigger news though; we’ll get to that. So she takes it to the family, who have differing opinions on this. Hilda is positive, Papi is protective (and right because the guy is a sex offender), and Justin walks out when Hilda yells at Papi that Betty is 24 and not a virgin. Only for Justin to interrupt with someone at the door.

Henry is back and wants to ask Betty something… “Will you marry me?” WHAT? It gets worse: “Will you marry me? I gave your résumé to a guy I know at a magazine; he’ll hire you as a writer, you can move to Tucson (or wherever), and we can live together.” How about you go fling yourself in a volcano, Superman?

I’m sorry, but you got another woman pregnant, got in a relationship with someone else, broke it up with that second person to go look after the baby with the first woman halfway across the country, and now you want to marry the second woman and have her move thousands of miles away from her job and family to be with you? I have two words for you, and the first starts with an F and the second ends in “off.” Indeed, you’ll find it a hard problem to solve with your head so firmly planted up your arse.

Oh, the conundrum: Go to Rome with the guy who is a sexual assaulter or move to Christ-knows where with Superman after he got someone else pregnant and left you after the baby fell out her. Here is a mad notion, and it might just work: How about Betty not be in a relationship for a while, and she figures herself out? Of course not; maturity is overrated and totally (sorry Claire, “totes”) doesn’t work for drama, aside from all those times it does and characters feel more realistic and natural.

I bet I can’t be annoyed by anything else in this episode, right? So a little French kid shows up speaking French, and because education in the US is worse than practically anywhere else, no one understands him. What are you people, primitive? Half the language you speak is already French, German, and Latin, but act like it is your first time hearing it every time. Eventually the little fella makes his way into Daniel’s office and introduces himself, Daniel Meade… kinda.

With the help of a translator, Daniel tells Daniel that Daniel is here because of Daniel, but Daniel doesn’t believe Daniel. Let me clear this up: Daniel (the orange one) supposedly went to France at one point, and Daniel Jr (eyeliner) was told by his now-dead hand-model mother that she slept with Daniel and that Daniel Jr is the product of that night, which Daniel doesn’t believe one bit. One of these people is telling the truth; the other isn’t telling lies, which has probably just confused my editor even further.

Rejected by Daniel (Eric Mabius), we have Wilhelmina getting a glint in her eye and her education (at least there is one of you that’s educated) coming in handy to talk with Julian de la Celle’s Daniel Jr. I’m not even doing one of those playing silly bugger things, because the credit will always be “Daniel Jr” for the next handful of episodes. Nonetheless, the wicked witch spreads dirt all over him, sends him out onto the streets, and takes a video of him eating from a bin to leak to the Fashion TV press… to which I have questions.

If Daniel Jr wasn’t a Meade and you were just filming a dirty kid eating out of a bin, wouldn’t that raise questions about you? Wouldn’t filming someone else’s kid and publishing that without the parent’s consent be against some kind of law? Wouldn’t there be some legal action that could be taken because, at the time, you were a “responsible” adult who neglected a child, an unaccompanied minor, and allowed them to eat out of a bin? Wouldn’t this, if it were to be traced back to Wilhelmina, cause a legal case about Bradford’s baby and the possible neglect said kid would face under Wilhelmina?

All this to lose Mode an account with an advertiser to show Daniel’s incompetence and highlight that Wilhelmina can get the account back easily. Something Alexis agrees with a little too easily. I’m going to have a moan (not another one?), but I think it is something that makes sense to bring up. Alexis and Betty both feel like passive characters in their own stories: Betty has no agency of her own in relationships, and Alexis is always convinced by others to do what they want. It is not good viewing, and it is not fun storytelling.

Eventually Daniel accepts that Daniel Jr might be his son after seeing some of his documents and after Wilhelmina’s little leaked video. That’s when we get Daniel trying to connect with him, learn a bit of French (how old are you?), and the two connect over hot models and baseball… if only there was a baseball/softball game where there would be hot models, like Naomi Campbell. I also hear that Miss America 1984 would be there, but I don’t think she showed up.

We’ll quickly cover the Hilda storyline because I teased that I’d circle back to the questionable island. So yeah, Hilda says she wants to take things slowly with Coach Diaz as they have a lunch date at home. Not exactly a date now, is it? I’m not saying you need to be out and be seen, but all the same, weird idea of a date. Yet it is the conversation with Betty about Gio wanting to take her to Rome that makes her take the jump, if you will.

It is also the point where Justin reveals what the kids call him, Lizard Man, because he doesn’t sweat. Here was me thinking that was Pizza Express or losing a World Cup semi-final. If you don’t understand why that ties into that island full of Gio’s friends, then I can’t help you without being more explicit.

After taking the jump to take another few steps closer to Tony, he reveals to Hilda something he’s been keeping from her. He’s got a wife. They’ve been separated but on and off again, like a crap American “comedy” that is the worst version of Coupling. I am once again asking, what is it with men in this program and their horrible track records with relationships or being good people? I’m not asking them to be saints, but is it so hard to have a straight guy who isn’t utterly horrible? Is it so hard elsewhere to have a gay man who doesn’t die for his lover’s progression?

As an episode, “Jump” isn’t terrible, but if we’re looking at it beyond the thing you put on and switch your brain off to, there is plenty to complain about. I make it no secret that I have issues with Gio and his actions (you might have noticed), and I don’t think too highly of Henry by this point either. Though beyond my problems with their actions and what they say is that it doesn’t feel like Betty is mature enough to have that sort of relationship at this point as a character because she’s never given that agency to tell them both to swivel.

Betty is mature enough to say “I did something wrong,” absolutely – we saw that with the Bradelmina wedding and Bradford’s death, but she’s never given enough agency to say “this relationship was a bad idea” or “you aren’t right for me.” Aside from that time with Kevin Sussman’s Walter, though immediately she’s into a story with Henry, who is suddenly back with Charlie before that relationship can happen. There hasn’t been a time that we’ve seen where Betty decides to be single and work on herself. At least without Sexual assault Smurf having something to say about it.

Meanwhile, we’ve got Wilhelmina working her way into control of the magazine, which was very early on established as never happening because Claire owns Mode, not Meade Publications. I guess Sarah Kucserka and Veronica West were flicking pens up each other’s backsides like an X-rated game of cornhole? Again, a plot point that an editor should spot and understand needs editing or guided in a more plothole-less direction. However, that’s the big season finale plot point: Wilhelmina running Mode and just getting handed it? For me, it’s not a great finale point to end on.

Effectively, with Daniel being forced out, that leaves Betty without a job and not only leaves our protagonists (Daniel and Betty) without a place to come back to in season 3, but also it means the villain gets the keys to the kingdom. As a story point, it doesn’t leave us anywhere interesting to come back to because effectively there is no Mode to come back to. This isn’t the act 2 “all hope is lost” point of the structure; it is that the heroes have lost and there aren’t any work-based threads to come back to at all.

Betty packs and leaves with the implication we don’t know which one of the creeps she’s left with. Was it Rome or was it hell? Sorry, I mean Tucson, a whole Texas and New Mexico away from Ar-Kansas. I’ve already gone in on education, so I might as well go in on place names fully. Thankfully, only two months on from this, showrunner and writer of “Jump,” Silvo Horta, said to Mediaweek in promoting season 3, “On Ugly Betty I think we started to veer a little too much into the romantic storyline, where it started to really become the show.”

Yes, there is a third season, and we’ll get to that after a break (or I’ll break Gio’s face), with other interviews by Horta at the time suggesting the show is about to move into a direction of growing up. That said, we don’t (as viewers) know much about where we’re supposed to see our characters now. My point is that it is a flat ending that doesn’t feel as built up to despite two seasons of Wilhelmina scheming, so where does she go from here? If Betty doesn’t have a job at Mode, does she move on to now write for other places? That’s what I mean: What’s the jumping-off point to get viewers excited for next season?

You could argue that it is Kimmie because you don’t bring her in for one episode with an uncredited actor (who I’ll show at the end), but it is effectively in a throwaway scene about Betty’s past. To again use Ted Lasso as a beacon of writing and good storytelling, there isn’t that “win the whole f#!ing thing!” moment. To use Ugly Betty’s first season, it is not Hilda sobbing into Betty’s arms, leaving me crying at 08:30 on a Tuesday morning in March, 20 years later. As I say, flat.

The episode itself does most things fine. I will bemoan Naomi Campbell calling baseball/softball “cricket,” because that’s just an American writing someone who’s English with a hint of ignorance. No one in the UK would compare baseball to cricket (and I hate cricket on principle) because they are not the same. Baseball is an excuse for adults to play rounders. One of the earliest written records of rounders is found in Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, where it is called “Base-ball.”

Otherwise, the episode is exactly what Horta says about season 2, where it got lost in the sauce of Betty’s relationships and the show desperately needs to grow up, move on, and find something stable to let Betty be that young woman in the big city growing up. I’ve said plenty about why I’ve got a dislike towards certain characters and certain things this episode out, but I think almost as a clean break, it does ok.

Ultimately, “Jump” possibly jumps the shark with certain aspects and tries to offer itself up as a clean break for a new beginning in season 3. I like it more for the latter than its hyper-dramatic former. Yet all the same, there is a statement made with the level of guest stars to suggest that maybe we’re not shifting away from that aspect of the show while also moving away to other ideas. I guess that alcohol detection bracelet is indeed off rather quickly, though.

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Ugly Betty "Jump"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Hi Kimmie!
• Papi is right, kinda.
• A lot of clearly storylines to start anew.

Cons

• Stockholm Syndrome?
• So much relationship drama, please stop!
• Doesn't really feel as impactful as a finale.