Bette: You’re not?

Kit: I am. But I don’t need you to tell me that and neither does Ivan. The way I see it Ivan is the one who gets to say whether he’s a man or a woman. And he’s been telling me he’s more of a man.

Bette: That’s delusional thinking. It doesn’t work that way.

Kit: Maybe in the ’world according to Bette’. But the world according to Bette doesn’t have the same props it once did. You know what I’m sayin, baby sis?

***

As much as Kit challenged Bette she also supported her especially when Bette had fallen from grace after the affair with Candace.

Kit: Let me talk to Tina.

Bette: What would you say?

Kit: That my sister is a pooty chasing dog who deserves to be tied down and whupped upside the head, but it doesn’t change the fact that she loves you more than she loves her own life, and that you should finish punishing her and get back to figuring out how to live with one another for the next fifty years or more.

Bette: You could give it a try.

Bette was already on the road to self-destruction even before Tina found out about the affair but afterwards she hit rock bottom. It was with Kit’s help and that of her friend and adviser Julia that she was finally able to get back on her feet. After Tina left, Bette’s ‘I’m in control façade’ crumpled. When she could no longer cope, she started smoking and drinking heavily.

It was ironic and hypocritical that she was intolerant of Kit’s drinking yet she herself sought to find solace in a bottle of whiskey. However that wasn’t the only inconsistency in Bette’s character. She’d also gone against her own moral convictions and beliefs by having the affair in the first place. Considering she was such a staunch believer in monogamy and faithfulness her self-recrimination was beating her down as much as Tina’s rejection.

Just a few months earlier Bette had learned that her friend and neighbor Tim Haskell, was being made a fool of by his fiancée Jenny and their friend Marina. She was appalled at the knowledge that the women were having an illicit love affair right under his nose. She’d berated Tina for not taking the same moral stance as she had. Now she was faced with looking herself in the mirror and being judged just as harshly as she’d judged others.