The second season of the American comedy-drama television series Ugly Betty started on September 27, 2007, in the United States and Canada, while the second part of the season began airing on April 24, 2008.
Mika’s song, "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)", a top-10 hit in the UK, was used as a promotional tool for the second season, with the altered lyric "Hey Betty, you are beautiful" and a music video featuring the cast.
In Australia, the show was put on hiatus after the July 2, 2008, episode due to the 2008 Summer Olympics. However, after the Olympics, only one episode, "Bananas for Betty", was shown on August 28, 2008, before the show was cancelled for no apparent reason. After the Australian network received complaints, the show went back to air on December 2, 2008, where it aired twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The final episode aired on Thursday, January 15, 2009.
Set three weeks after the events of the season 1 finale, Ignacio is still in Mexico, Alexis is in a coma while Daniel is recovering from the crash, Hilda is grieving in her own way for Santos, and Betty keeps herself busy at Mode to distract herself from her unresolved feelings for Henry. Amanda confronts her parents with the truth about her birth mother, Claire is in hiding after escaping from transport to another prison and Alexis wakes up from her coma with amnesia, having no knowledge of her gender transition.
Bradford tries to change the Meade family history by taking advantage of Alexis's amnesia; Betty suspects Wilhelmina's new bodyguard is doing a lot more than protecting her; Ignacio is in for a surprise from his past; Amanda receives a portion of Fey's inheritance...and the expenses and fees that come with it.
Even as Henry returns to Mode, Betty finds herself attracted to (and annoyed by) Gio, the snack canteen operator; Wilhelmina, Claire and Amanda bring a lot more unexpected surprises and expose secrets at the Meade Black & White Ball.
Betty tries to impress her writing class teacher with a story that was written by someone else; Daniel is pressured by an advertiser to fire Alexis; Henry tries to help Justin with his math homework; Amanda learns about Wilhelmina's past and the connection she has to finding Amanda's father.
Betty turns to Internet dating after trying to avoid Henry fails. Justin's rebellious behaviour continues, while Hilda starts sharing her depression with three old ladies whose husbands have also died. Marc meets fashion photographer Cliff St. Paul. The Mode staff discover they will be broke in 90 days if their current rate of advertising drop-out continues. Claire schemes to kill Wilhelmina while Alexis begins remembering things from when she was a man and still against Bradford, resulting in her realization it was she who caused her and Daniel's recent car crash.
Daniel tries to find advertiser support after Bradford favours Alexis to pull in money for Mode, while Betty's friends and family try to distract her from being "lonely" over Henry. However, Henry and Betty have plans to see Wicked, but Daniel is still in the dark over their reunification so Betty is forced to pretend she is attending with annoying sandwich-maker, Gio. Meanwhile, Wilhelmina is still fretting about her upcoming wedding, attempting to gain weight to fit into her dress.
Wilhelmina and Bradford's wedding day has finally arrived, but her maid of honour, Victoria Beckham is receiving all the attention; however Wilhelmina is still primarily concerned with marrying Bradford so she can take over Mode. On the day of his citizenship ceremony, Ignacio finds out about Betty and Henry's resumed romance. Christina's husband turns up at Mode.
Bradford lies unconscious in intensive care following his heart attack at the altar. Claire asks Betty to check Bradford's will before she leaves the country, but Marc and Wilhelmina are also scheming to get to it.
Betty begins seeing Bradford's ghost as a manifestation of her guilt over not taking her job back at Mode. After Claire fires Wilhelmina as creative director of Mode at Bradford's funeral, Wilhelmina unleashes a virus on the Mode computer network which deletes all the files of the upcoming issue and takes the opportunity to try to sway the Mode staff to join her new magazine, Slater. Betty gets back on board to help get a new issue out on time, but plans to re-shoot a cover featuring a model in rehab fall apart after she relapses and Alexis attempts to reason with a dwarf printer.
A video message recorded by Bradford for Alexis and Daniel specifying who will run Meade Publications causes conflict between the siblings after a technical error prevents them from finding out who, so they decide to settle it out in a paintball war. Slater is having trouble getting off the ground due to lack of financial support and Wilhelmina's insistence on looking younger. Hilda sets up her own beauty salon with help from Gio and Henry, but after Betty hears Gio's romantic approach to how he would spend his last days with someone, she begins to think she and Henry are not doing enough with their time left together.
Amanda turns to a psychic in her quest to find her birth father; Betty wants Daniel to use models of all shapes and sizes at Fashion Week after Justin's friends get a different impression on their class tour of Mode, but Alexis proves an obstacle due to her domineering ways. Meanwhile, Wilhelmina is hormonal and trying to find someone to be a surrogate mother for her baby.
Claire's trial for the murder of Fey Sommers begins, and she pleads not guilty due to insanity. Claire gives Betty her perfume, which drives her to become hyperactive, and may just be the evidence to prove Claire's innocence, while Amanda discovers pages of Fey's diary which reveal secrets of her affair with Bradford. Christina is propositioned by Wilhelmina to be the surrogate mother for Bradford's child.
Betty learns that an author she's been assigned to write an article on actually writes books on picking up women; Daniel dates a woman who happens to be Wilhelmina's sister; and Amanda and Marc believe that they might have finally found Amanda's biological father, Gene Simmons.
It is Betty's 24th birthday and she wants it to be perfect. Unfortunately, her plan of going out with Henry is disrupted when Charlie returns to New York to be with him, but Gio still tries to give Betty a dream birthday. Meanwhile, Daniel is still dating Renee, whom Wilhelmina unsuccessfully tries to keep him away from, and Claire's plans for her new magazine Hot Flash hit a snag after the budget becomes too pricey.
Renee becomes increasingly jealous and controlling after her lack of proper medication begins to take effect, and convinces Daniel that Betty is in love with him; meanwhile, Betty and Christina discover her dangerous past. Henry tells Betty that Charlie will be staying in New York until the baby's born after she has a panic attack at the airport, while Betty grows ever closer to Gio. Gina Gambarro returns to Queens with a new life, and Mode tries to woo a designer who is only shooting for one fashion magazine.
Story by : Dawn DeKeyser Teleplay by : Bill Wrubel
May 8, 2008 (2008-05-08)
7.99
Charlie continues to get in the way of Henry and Betty's dates, so after advising Daniel to go to therapy to deal with his emotional problems over Renee, Betty decides to change her own routine and befriend Charlie (again). Justin's PE teacher, Coach Diaz, threatens to fail him, but Hilda is not impressed. Wilhelmina plans to return to Mode, and Christina discovers the baby she's carrying is from Bradford's sperm.
Betty, still missing Henry, fights her attraction to Gio, but later finds herself stuck with him when both volunteer to chaperone Justin's middle school dance. Meanwhile, Hilda tries to get Coach Diaz (guest star Eddie Cibrian) to notice her; Amanda agrees to do a reality show with her dad, KISS rock legend Gene Simmons; and Daniel feels the heat when Wilhelmina makes her triumphant return to Mode amid a media frenzy.
Wilhelmina becomes the new editor-in-chief of Mode magazine. Elle magazine go head-to-head with Mode in a softball game, where a teenager arrives who may be Meade-related. Meanwhile, Henry comes back to propose to Betty, just after Gio asks her to come to Rome with him for a holiday. Naomi Campbell guest stars as an Elle magazine softball champion, and Lindsay Lohan stars as one of Betty's old classmates.
Notes:
Season 2 was originally slated to have a total of 24 episodes, but due to the Writers Guild of America strike, it had 18 episodes with the last five written and produced following the strike's end.[citation needed]
The Complete Second Season – Brighter, Bolder, Bettyer
18
September 9, 2008
November 10, 2008
November 10, 2008
This five disc box set contains all 18 episodes from the second season.
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment release of Ugly Betty Season Second, subtitled "Brighter, Bolder, Bettyer", would be September 9, 2008 in the United States and Canada. All 18 episodes were included in the set, along with additional bonus tracks.
a Ranks are for Channel 4 weekly, not for overall TV.
The gap between "Bananas for Betty" on December 14, 2007 and "Zero Worship" was taken for three reasons:
1. Channel 4 was originally scheduled to take a three-week break at Christmas and resume episodes in January; this hadn't happened.
2. The 2007–2008 WGA strike meant only three episodes were left after the last episode, so Channel 4 decided it was pointless to resume them for just a couple of weeks in late January unless there were no more episodes to be produced. The WGA strike was resolved in February, so Channel 4 had promised viewers the series would return later on in the year with new episodes, but had no idea of when to return them, as the next six months (February–August 2008) was already filled.
3. Channel 4 decided to wait until September after Big Brother 2008 had finished airing, as the episodes took up approximately 100 minutes of airtime on a Friday night, which filled Betty's slot. Prior to Big Brother, March–May was filled with the whole first season of Dirty Sexy Money, which occupied Betty's slot whenever it was not on, and moved accordingly. Betty made its return to Channel 4 on Friday 5 September 2008 between the two season finale episodes of Big Brother. Unlike Desperate Housewives' 3rd-season premiere, Betty's timeslot for that week was not changed as the first show finished at 9pm and resumed with episode 2 at 10pm, meaning that Betty could return to its normal slot. Episodes played straight through into season 3 without a break, and viewers who were desperate to see the next episode of the show could see it one night earlier on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday in its usual 9:00pm slot on E4. T4 then introduced weekend encore sessions on Sundays which replayed that week's episode from 1:30 pm–2:30pm.
Soundtrack
Despite never having a physical or digital release a soundtrack of the serie, the following songs were included in the second season of the series.
