After a little more than a month off, Ugly Betty was back last night with an extra sugar-coated dose of sweetness. The actual Betty plotline was a bit too smarmy for my taste, but at least Marc and Amanda were there to balance it out. Plus, it looks like Christina is about to come to the forefront of one of the most important story lines of the season. Lucky for us, this is one of the few shows with a couple more episodes left before the involuntary writers' strike hiatus. So let's get to chatting about the episode:

  • Amanda's search for her father amongst a wall of famous faces continues on, but this time Marc was there to help . . . with a crazy psychic lady who mostly talked nonsense. Of course, Amanda found a way to make her prophecy come true, even if it involved Lil Bow Wow.
  • Speaking of which, most random cameo ever? And he was kind of in love with Betty? Um, okay!

Don't want to get too spoiler-y before the jump, so to read the rest of my thoughts just read more

  • So Willi is looking for a surrogate (who doesn't have a side job in dominatrix porn . . .) and it looks like it's going to be Christina. Christina, of course, needs the money to pay for her former deadbeat husband's medical bills. Is this going to end all tragic where Christina is pregnant with Willi/Bradford's baby and her husband turns out to be a jerk? How hilarious was it when the doctor said that Wilhelmina has a "hostile womb" and Marc just said "aren't they all"?
  • Betty was in charge of taking Justin and his classmates for a tour of the Mode offices, during which the middle school queen bee was your typical b*tchy Mean Girl. Of course, we all know that teenagers can totally be like that, which is the sad part. To prove a point to the impressionable youth, Betty took it upon herself to convince Daniel to change the upcoming Mode fashion week show to be more inclusive of different "everyday woman" body types.
  • The scene with Daniel on the shorter chair in the conference room rocked. So belittled. Literally.
  • Love, love, LOVE hormonal Wilhelmina!
  • Best line of the episode, Betty's response to the models being on a cheesecake and heroin diet: "I could totally stay on half that diet."
  • Second best line of the episode, Amanda talking about her maybe fathers: "Today I feel particularly close to Jimmy 'JJ' Walker, Dy-no-mite!"

  • Of course, Betty's idea won out in the end (yay) and the catwalk was full of normal sized girls, including Betty herself, also getting Mode a lot of publicity (double yay). But then the middle school mean girl said it sucked (boo), but one girl came back to say it was actually kind of great (yay again).
  • And the best part (other than conniving Willi, which I love) is that through all the twists and turns and trying to make out with Betty (utterly classic) — Amanda thinks her dad is Gene Simmons from Kiss. Another random musical cameo coming our way? We can only hope.

What did you think? Are you happy to have Ugly Betty back? Am I too hard on Betty herself? Will Christina do it? Is her husband a jerk? Has Amanda found her dad? Can we please have more Marc and Cliff? Let me know what you think.

Photos copyright 2008 ABC, Inc.