With its occasional glimpses of steamy telenovelas on the Suarez Family TV, Ugly Betty has never hidden its affinity for the soap operatic. They’ve done the coma and amnesia thing, and last night it was time for the obligatory trial.

While there were no “Joan Collins walks into the courtroom” shockers, it was at least mercifully short and finally put an end to the whole Fey Sommers murder plot that’s been lingering since the pilot. I’m grateful because the Meade family and their problems never hold much interest for me, although I really like Judith Light and am looking forward to seeing what she'll do next, now that she’s free of orange jumpsuits and Chained Heat innuendo.

The best thing about the trial was seeing guest stars Paul McCrane (a.k.a. E.R.’s evil Dr. Romano), and Barry Bostwick as dueling attorneys. Which meant we got to see the gay guy from Fame go head to head with bisexual Brad from Rocky Horror. If either of them had started singing (“I want to go crazy like those dogs in the yard” or “Dammit, Janet, I love you”), I think I might have become as deliriously giddy as Betty during her 48-hour bender.

Betty spent most of the episode tripped out of mind, having spritzed herself with frog venom perfume that Fey had used to try to kill off Claire. Suddenly, Betty was acting just like Lisa Simpson after she drank the acid-laced water at DuffWorld and got all “I am the lizard queen! I can see the music!”

America Ferrara did such a good job acting stoned, and the show used music, camera angles, and trippy costume designs so effectively to show her POV, that I started to feel kind of queasy myself. It was like watching a Skittles commercial drawn out for 45 groovy minutes.

The drug trip provided another opportunity for Gio to mess with Betty, who was particularly surprised to find out from Amanda that Gio has been crushing on her:

Amanda: I watch how he looks at  you … I saw it with every single guy I knew growing up. And their fathers. And some of their mothers.

Outraged, Betty sent Gio a “strongly worded note” in which she called him “annoying jerk … obnoxious … arrogant,” but then claimed she didn’t know what she was doing since she was strung out at the time. I don’t know about that excuse. I feel the same way about him, and the only potentially mind-altering substances I’ve been exposed to are glimpses of A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila while channel surfing.

Gio’s been around for a while now, and no matter what they try to do with him, I’m just not warming up to him and probably never will. Maybe when the show finally comes back after the writers’ strike, I’ll be so relieved to have it back on that I’ll be more forgiving. But I doubt it.

In the end, Betty saved the day, as she’s prone to do, showing up at the trial to explain that Claire, under the influence of Fey’s perfume, wasn’t in her right mind when she had Fey killed. Except it wasn’t really Betty who saved the day but Marc, given he was the one who provided the crucial evidence.

For me, the real story of this episode was The Two Faces of Marc, as we saw him careening between evil plotting and an increasing inclination to do the right thing. He’s become the Luke Skywalker of the show, caught between the dark side of the force and Darth Wili on the one hand, and the “feels good to do right it does” sermonizing of Yoda Betty on the other.

Marc was completely comfortable furthering Wili’s plot to coerce Cristina into being artificially inseminated. Cristina reacted with horror at the idea that her uterus would be a holding place for Satan’s spawn, leading Marc to snark, “We’d ask for your purse, but we don’t want a baby that grew up in a Gucci knock-off.”

It’s actually been sweet to see how this little project has united Marc and Wili, who even referred to him as “a friend” who has stood by her through this ordeal. And he seems pretty eager to play parent, as evidenced by his reaction to Cristina questioning if he’s in fact the baby’s father.

Marc: We would make a good one. Her evil disposition, my eyes, that kid would be unstoppable.

Can you just picture a little Marcamina on the playground? Pushing the other kids around and saying things like, “Holy Suri Cruise! Who do your parents have dress you, Courtney Love? Onesies are so last season.”

He also helped Wili destroy the vintage Jackie Kennedy dress Cristina had been planning on using to raise money for her ailing husband by selling it on the black market. Who knew there’s a black market for dresses? Like there’s a thug in some back alley saying, “Pssst. Buddy. Over here. Wanna buy a Chanel suit? Cheap.”

And if you’re wondering what sort of person buys dresses on the black market, based on the one who shows up at Mode, I’d say it’s creepy guys who look like the secret love child of Lurch and Sally Jessy Raphael, the type who you’d expect would prowl doll conventions looking for that mint-condition “Pan Am Stewardess Barbie” from 1962.

The prospective buyer was disappointed to find the dress shredded to pieces. Marc, for his part, was disappointed Wili didn’t let them buy it themselves and take turns wearing it. “Not this time, sweetheart,” she said. I was intrigued about what that implied about last time. It’s tough for me to picture them sharing a dress they both have the figure to pull off.

While Marc gleefully participated in this little venture, he couldn’t go along with Amanda’s plan to destroy evidence that would exonerate Claire. Amanda might have been willing to do it if she knew what the word “exonerate” meant. But she also seemed pretty determined to make Claire suffer for having deprived her of the psychotic freak of a mother she never knew she had.

The exonerating evidence took the form of Fey’s secret diary pages, which Amanda found while trying to kick out Mode peons who’d turned the love dungeon into their personal break room.

Amanda: People, this was my late mother’s secret sex room. It was designed for lazy afternoons that blurred the line between pleasure and pain. It is not a place for salads or naps.

I don’t know about that. I’ve had some pretty painful salads in my time. Does anyone really get pleasure from fennel?

Anyway, Marc just couldn’t bring himself to burn the diary pages, having a sort of epiphany about varying degrees of evil and lines even he can’t cross …

Marc: Look, I do a lot of morally questionable things for Wilhelmina. But none of it is technically criminal, and it’s in service of my career.

Amanda: Oh, so suddenly you don’t work for me.

Marc: Actually, I never did.

Amanda: When you first got to Mode …

Marc: You were the receptionist.

Amanda: Yeah, and after that …

Marc: You were still the receptionist.

Amanda: I was never a tiny bit higher than you?

Marc: Not for one minute.

I’ve really been enjoying how this season’s found ways to flesh out both Marc and Amanda and show them both to be more vulnerable than their posh, polished exteriors. I was quite touched by the sight of her slapping him silly and then hugging him.

I was also touched by scenes of Justin bonding with his Aunt Betty over their mutual love of Breakfast Club Molly Ringwald (“How did she not win an Oscar?”) and with his mother over Grey’s Anatomy’s AWOL Addison (once again showing just how pop culturally savvy Justin is – after all, all the cool kids were firmly in Camp Addison over Camp Meredith).

And while Claire might have had the good fortune to escape life in prison, visiting Betty at the doctor’s office meant Justin got to escape gym class. I’d ask you which of those was more urgent, but we all know the answer.

Next week, Betty’s last in-the-can episode! In the meantime, here’s a clip of Claire’s lawyer singing. Enjoy!