Season Premiere Review: Ugly Betty (Season 2)

Ugly Betty [s2 ep01]: "How Betty Got Her Grieve Back"

*** Spoiler Warning ***

Key Plot Points of Season Premiere

• Betty is trying to balance things at work and at home. Daniel is still in the hospital, Justin is at some kind of day camp, Hilda is hibernating in her room, and Betty's dad is still stuck in Mexico.


• Claire Meade and her ally from prison have escaped and are hiding out in the beach house owned by a friend of the Meade family. Claire wants to see her children and get her husband back.


• Wilhelmina is still engaged to Bradford Meade and is trying to keep Claire away.


• Daniel's sister Alexis is still in a coma. She wakes up by the end of the episode but doesn't remember having had a sex change. She thinks she's still Alex, Daniel's brother.


• Amanda has gained a lot of weight on candy ever since she learned that Fey Summers is her biological mother. She's shocked further to find out her non-biological parents are swingers and that her on-again-off-again relationship with Daniel was incest, since he would be her half brother.


• Betty still misses Henry. Daniel convinces her to have a "funeral" of sorts in which she buries any items that remind her of Henry. At the end of the episode, we see that Henry has arrived back in New York, no doubt hoping to work things out with Betty.


• Justin sneaks out of camp and into Mode where he gives fashion advice. Later, he's given an apprenticeship at Mode for the two weeks before school starts again.


• We see Hilda spending time in her room with Santos, who supposedly survived his gunshot wounds from the store robbery in the season finale. But, by the end of the episode, we see that Santos has been dead and that Hilda has just been in her room grieving and wishing he was still there.

Opinions and Observations

• None of the Amanda subplot comes as a shock. I guessed that Bradford Meade was her biological father back in the season finale the instant it was revealed that Fey Summers was her biological mother. Her quick and excessive weight gain in just a few weeks seems unrealistic. I'm guessing she'll already be back to normal by next week or soon after.


• The Betty-Henry-Charlie love triangle is getting old. The Daniel-Alexis fued is also getting old, so maybe her amnesia will fix all that.


• I kind of had a feeling that Hilda's time with Santos was a dream, hallucination, or just wishful imaginings. Granted, I might have been more easily fooled had I not accidentally seen a spoiler on a blog implying he had died.

Hopes, Concerns, or Expectations for New Season

• I hope Amanda loses her weight at a realistic rate, not in one episode like Lee Adama did in Battlestar Galactica season three.


• I hope it's revealed that Bradford Meade has not been duped by Wilhelmenia and that he's known all along she's marrying him to get to his money and his magazine business. I'd like to see him dupe her back.


• I hope Hilda doesn't mope forever.


• I hope Daniel cleans up his act as he says he should during Betty's funeral of Henry-related items.