Summary
“My Best Frenda” makes for a nice reminder to remember who you are, where you come from, and who has always been there with you.
“My Best Frenda” is about lots of things, but two in particular — remembering who you are and where you come from, and female aging. Both make for funny gags and some astute points, and both complement each other well. They’re also — particularly the former — pretty deeply rooted in the show’s blue-collar underpinnings since it has always and continues to leverage differences in class to make its points.
The inciting incident here is Betty flirting with a trucker which causes him to crash on the 311, spilling Slim Jims all over the place, and leading to Betty being referred to as a “local grandma” on the news. She takes this hard, coming to breakfast acting like a teenager, dressed in an outfit that Violet hopes is the one she eventually haunts her in. Trying to make her grandmother feel better, Violet says she looks good for 60, which only makes matters worse — it turns out nobody knows how old Betty is, and she even hole-punched her date of birth on her driver’s license.
Quite by chance, Jenny meets a former acquaintance of Betty’s, Marjune Culpepper (a brilliantly cast Holly Hunter) when she and her stuck-up friends are eating dry salads at The Last Supper. Marjune wants Jenny to be the food and beverage coordinator at her upcoming annual charity gala, which struggling Jenny accepts just for the payment, knowing she’s sacrificing her values in the process.
It’s at the gala where “My Best Frenda” raises the awkward subject of female aging, which Betty is disturbed to learn has no cure. The symptoms, however, can be managed. Basically, the gala is a way to trick poor people into having plastic surgery, which Jenny is outraged by. However, when Marjune grossly overpays her because she thinks one-dollar bills aren’t being made anymore, Jenny once again compromises on her beliefs.
This includes making a mockery of her friend Brenda, who, after being stood up so Jenny can hang out with and be made over by Marjune and her friends, declares that her friend has been replaced by a “straight-haired hoity-toity hooker.” Jenny invites Brenda to the gala, but when she arrives she’s not allowed in, and Jenny has to feign some mixup with the seating arrangement. Brenda, in turn, feigns it was a prank all along, but we know better.
This is where the subplot of “My Best Frenda” catches up with the A-plot. Wayne, having agreed to take Violet to work cleaning windows with him, discovers that she’s exceptionally good at figuring out what people do just by peering through their windows, which becomes a bit of a problem when they discover a Bond-style super-thief type who they later spot at the gala and decide to follow.
At the gala, both Jenny and Betty come to the realization that this isn’t what they want for themselves. Jenny is horrified at her treatment of Brenda and ends up giving a tell-all speech, devoting it to her best friend, who happens to have hidden under the buffet table and heard the whole thing. Betty, meanwhile, having been given a grant for the surgery and thus denied eating or drinking anything on the buffet, chooses the enjoyment of food over the surgery. Good for her.
As for the matter of the looming thief, well, he just turns out to be a Patti LaBelle impersonator. Just when you think you know someone…
Thanks for reading our recap of Bless the Harts season 2, episode 3, “My Best Frenda”. For more recaps, reviews, and original features covering the world of entertainment, why not follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page?
