Oh boy. Ugly Betty [1] begins a story arc this week on a topic that tends to make me squeamish when it pops up in my entertainment: the choice between family and career. In The Devil Wears Prada [2], Anne Hathaway's character is told straight-up that once your personal life suffers, you know you're making it in the business world, and that now seems to apply to Betty as well. In this episode, she attempts to balance work and family obligations, but ultimately one part of her life will suffer — because clearly, you can't have it all.

Things get tense for Betty, and the stakes turn out to be higher for her personally than Hathaway's Vogue intern character, because Betty nearly loses something much bigger than a boyfriend. Basically, there's a lot of guilt going on, and that made me feel kind of crappy. Let's get down to business and chat about it. Just .

• Seriously, so many guest stars! We have Zac Posen, a pretty hilarious Nikki Blonski, the lovely Bernadette Peters, and real-life Elle editors [3].
• So Bernadette's character is Betty's idol in publishing and her YETI teacher. She does what all good mentors do at first, which is to be really super hard on you.
• Just when Betty's seeing stars and getting all career-ambitious, Hilda's reopening her salon/purse store place and is really stressed out planning the re-opening party. The name is pretty awesome: Hilda Beautilities Plus.
• In addition to impressing her YETI teacher, Betty gets pressure is piled on at work. I love the scene where Daniel tells the staff that Elle is kicking their butts and it's not going to happen again. Wilhelmina chimes in bad-cop-style with, "If we do, one of you dies." Ha!
• That scene's full of awesome Willi lines, actually. Connor says he loves their good cop, bad cop dynamic and Daniel says, "It's more like I'm nice. She's not," to which Willi replies, "Can I help it if my balls are bigger than his?"
• So Willi is full steam ahead on helping Daniel win over Molly. When she shows him the security footage of them kissing, he assumes she's being awful, but she says, "Perhaps in the past but not this time."
• Christina kills me with laughter this episode because of how hormonal she is. Hilarious lines include, "I'm carrying her little rodent" and the end of her crying rampage to Betty: "And the internet's gone down!" Although, honestly the internet not working has had me close to tears as well, lemme tell ya.
• There is practically zero Amanda this time around, but Marc does a good job filling in the hole in my heart. Like at the YETI class when Betty can't name anyone in the room but Marc, to which he responds, "Who are you?" Hee!
• And networking. The networking scene! Marc was on fire! For example: "I once had a threesome with Jon Hamm and Mia Hamm, I called it the night of the Hamm sandwich."
• Then to Betty: "You're a mean, not so lean, contact-getting maching. You're the Terminator. You're the Bettynator!" Her "Bettynator" vision was pretty amazing too.



• This is of course where she meets Nikki Blonsky's character, and they're so cute complimenting each other on braces and pink stripes in hair. Kindred spirits!
• The best ever, though, is the physical fight between Nikki and America. Holy cow, I laughed hard. I also died of laughter when Nikki's character screams, "Oh yeah? Prove it, brace face!" through the video-phone thing.
• Finally, what a load of guilt Betty's family lays on her! They are very tight-knit, so these kinds of conflicts are bound to come up, and I get how this was really important to Hilda, but jeez. Betty's starting out, and when you're starting out, you sort of live and breathe the job. What do you guys think?

So Daniel and Willi both get what their hearts have desired — now what? And poor Ignacio has a heart attack! That's got to make Betty feel even worse for going after her dreams than she already does, sheesh. What did you guys think of this episode?

You kind find all the fashions from this episode at CelebStyle [4].

Photos copyright 2008 ABC, Inc. [5]