Winning "Ugly"

When last we checked in with “Ugly Betty,” Alexis Meade (Rebecca Romijn) had wrested control of Mode magazine from her brother Daniel (Eric Mabius), who despondently abandoned his duties and returned to hard partying and easy womanizing. Tonight, he justifies his bad behavior to Betty (America Ferrera): “I’m being exactly the way my family expects me to be.”

Still, Betty tries to protect him from a Truman Capote-esque biographer (Leslie Jordan) looking to do a smear job on the Meade family empire; he scratches one source’s back in order to put the knife in another’s. Betty’s pal Christina (Ashley Jensen), whose star is on the rise, will have none of her workaholism; she takes her to a party at a trendy club in an effort to abandon her addiction to helping Daniel. Naturally, this doesn’t go as planned.

Meanwhile, Wilhelmina (Vanessa Williams) attempts to seduce Bradford (Alan Dale) in order to sink her claws into Mode, even resorting to unorthodox means to appeal to his foot fetish, and Betty’s father Ignacio (Tony Plano) continues his pursuit of his green card, while Constance (Octavia Spencer), the woman handling his case, continues her pursuit of him. All that need be said about that last scenario is that it’s accompanied by music from “Psycho.”

As its first season nears its conclusion (the final episode airs in a mere month), “Betty” has begun focusing more on conspiracies a la Mode and less on Betty’s high-spirited whimsy – the humor seems to have been shunted to the show’s margins. It’s still stylishly entertaining, though its brain trust might want to remember that it was sold to audiences as a comedy.

- “Ugly Betty:” 8 tonight; ABC (Channel 7 locally).