At the same time, Bette finds herself drawn to Candace Jewell, a carpenter temporarily working at the CAC who makes a pass at her despite knowing of her relationship with Tina.
[1][2] In the second season, Bette resumes her affair with Candace, but soon becomes desperate to make amends for her betrayal, and finds that her break-up with Tina is disrupting all the other elements of her life.
Her job becomes an increasing pressure, especially when Tina's new lover, Helena Peabody, is added to the Board of Directors, and her boss hires another curator who threatens Bette's elevated position.
A distraught Bette brings him home to die, so that he will not be trapped in a hospital, but this difficult experience leads her to reach out to Tina.
Tina's labor is surprisingly difficult, but their daughter Angelica is eventually born, and the end of the season shows Bette as calm and happy in her new family.
Desperate not to lose Angelica, Bette hires Joyce Wishnea, a gay civil rights lawyer, in order to file for sole custody, and warns Tina to stop her farce with Henry.
Joyce persuades Bette and Tina to reach an agreement themselves on the basis that the court will most likely put Angelica up for adoption or into a heterosexual foster family instead of granting either of them custody.
While working at the California University School of the Arts as a dean, Bette has an affair with one of her graduate students, Nadia, but soon breaks off the relationship because she realizes it is inappropriate.
Things become even more complicated after a disastrous dinner party, thrown by Bette for Jodi, where she learns Kit—a recovering alcoholic—is drinking again to deal with Angus's infidelity.
As a result of the argument, Jodi realizes that Bette's controlling ways are too much for her and takes a job offer in New York City.
She shows it to Jodi, who is touched enough that she decides to remain in Los Angeles with Bette, who is unaware that Tina is secretly planning to sabotage their relationship in hopes of getting her back.
To manipulate Bette further out of sadness and longing, Tina begins a flirtation with Sam, a woman who works on the set of Lez Girls.
By this time, Jodi has resigned from California University after one of her students held a realistic-looking gun made of soapstone to his head in front of the class as a form of art.
Later, Bette and Tina go to Lez Girls wrap party where their reunion and display of affection is admired by their friends, who are indifferent to the pain and heartbreak that they have both inflicted on Jodi.
However, this transaction is threatened when Joyce Wischnia informs the pair that Nevada law does not permit adoption to same sex couples.
Finally fed up with Phyllis' sexual confusion and desperation, Bette rejects her advances and submits her resignation from the university.
Bette later reconnects with her bisexual college crush Kelly Wentworth (Elizabeth Berkley), and the pair open an art gallery together.
At Bette and Tina's going away party in their home, Kit threatens Jenny to back off and is in turn shown the incriminating cellphone footage.
In response, Bette goes on Alice's new television show to tell her side of the story and arranges an interview with Felicity, with whom she renews her affair.
She successfully tracks down Pippa Pascal, a famous African-American lesbian artist who was forced into seclusion, and tries to persuade her to work with her, but she turns Bette down.
At the therapy session with Micah Lee, Angie reveals that Marcus is dying from kidney failure and wants to see if she is a suitable donor.
At Micah's urging, Bette confesses that she barely knew her own mother after she abandoned the family, but when she tracked her down, she instantly regretted it.
Though both share stories of being marginalized in school for their homosexuality and appearance, Bette rudely rebuffs Carrie and goes with Pippa to her house where they enter a sexual relationship.
With some encouragement from Angie, Bette decides to go to the exhibition with Pippa and make amends, but as she is leaving the house, she finds Tina standing at her door, who asks if she can come in.
That night, Bette invites Tina to her home and admits that on her retreat, she came to terms with her mother abandoning her and learned to love again.
They give chase in Angie's car, and are stalled in traffic due to Gigi having had an accident on her way to meet Dani.
[5] In retrospect, viewers of both the original series and Generation Q have become more polarized over Bette's character, as well as her relationship with Tina, which fans have dubbed "TiBette".
In 2015, Meg Ten Eyck criticized Bette's characterization on EveryQueer, citing that while Bette was depicted as the main breadwinner in the family with an education, a successful career and the one who did not carry Angelica, she refused to properly acknowledge Tina as an equal partner, repeatedly cheated on her and verbally and emotionally abused her whenever she questioned her power and authority, only used her position as a person of color for her own benefit, and was rarely held accountable for her actions by her friends while Tina was often ostracized from the group for similar reasons.
Ten Eyck concluded that Bette was essentially written as the "man" in the relationship, comparing it to "masculinity and double standards", and used her gender and sexuality to get away with her bad behavior, and inspired fans of the series to behave the same way, while Tina was repeatedly written as "second fiddle" to Bette and never allowed to develop in her own way.
The Los Angeles Times condemned showrunner Marja-Lewis Ryan for what was perceived as her unfair and superficial depiction of the dynamic between femme and butch lesbians by prioritizing outer beauty over inner beauty, and fans of Bette and Tina were widely criticized for fat shaming and cyberbullying Rosie O'Donnell after she was cast as Carrie,[7] while Showbiz Cheat Sheat cited numerous fans who expressed that they had grown tired of what they saw as the series glamourizing Bette and Tina's repetitive, immature and toxic storylines and the show constantly depicting Tina as nothing more than a "grand prize" that Bette needed to win,[8] a trope that had often been labelled by feminists as glorifying toxic masculinity when concerning heterosexual couples.