January 18 2007
TV Review: Ugly Betty
posted by Steven Shaw at 1:52 pm
Ugly Betty (America Ferrera) — 8.30pm, Tuesdays, TV2
TV2’s new comedy show Ugly Betty hit the ground running on Tuesday night, commanding more audience numbers than the channel’s long-running flagship show Shortland Street.
Local audience awareness was at a high. The show won two Golden Globe awards on Tuesday afternoon (NZ time), the first for Best Television Series (Musical or Comedy) — and Betty herself, America Ferrera, walked away with Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series (Musical or Comedy).
It’s a well-deserved win. Ugly Betty takes elements from Bridget Jones’s Diary (girl misfit paired with caddish boss) and The Devil Wears Prada (less than fabulous looking new girl starts job at fashion magazine) and serves it up afresh.
Betty Suarez’ dream is to break into the magazine publishing industry. She’ll take any job to get her foot in the door. But working for Mode fashion magazine isn’t what she bargained for. She’s a real fish out of water. The Suarez family is poor and recently lost their mother, so Betty is also expected to be there for her them and pulled every which way.
Ugly Betty is funny, but it’s also game enough to draw real characters. Her boss Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius) is a player, sleeping with every personal assistant he hires. So his father, Bradford Meade (ex-pat kiwi Alan Dale), who owns the company, hires Betty because she’s not a distraction for Daniel. By the end of the first episode we saw another side of Daniel — he’s a nice guy at heart who believes in credit where credit is due.
The star of the show is Betty — she may be “ugly”, but the show highlights just how warm, witty, caring, intelligent, and therefore attractive she is. In a time where the big TV hits consist of skeletal housewives and the unbearably shallow Nip/Tuck — it’s a relief that some shows are still keeping it real.
January 18th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
The star of the show is Betty — she may be “ugly”, but the show highlights just how warm, witty, caring, intelligent, and therefore attractive she is. In a time where the big TV hits consist of skeletal housewives and the unbearably shallow Nip/Tuck — it’s a relief that some shows are still keeping it real.
‘Keeping it real”? Oh, please…I know Ugly Betty is supposed to be campy and soap opera-ish, but I don’t see anything particularly ’subversive’ or ‘progressive’ about a show where the ugly duckling who is a rock at home, naive but good natured at work, and thoroughly patronised by everyone is played by a Latina with false teeth rather than Doris Day in Dame Edna specs.
January 18th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Point taken Craig, but where exactly did I say that the show was ‘progressive’ or ’subversive’? It already has more balance and depth to the lead characters than your average sitcom. Would much rather watch that than say, yet another CSI corpse-fest.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Another CSI corpse-fest please, with a twist – Check out the show called Dexter. It’s gold. Dark and pretty sick really
January 19th, 2007 at 6:49 am
You didn’t, but adjective like that have been thrown around in reviews like Cosmopolitans in an episode of Sex and the City and I thought they deserved some bitchy sneer quotes.
Call me a dizzy queen, but I like my campy sleazy guilty pleasures (S&TC, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy) straight up, no socio-political b.s. chaser.
I hope one thing they’re going to do with Betty is try making her a little less gullible. Braces – no matter how sweet-natured you are – doesn’t suck at least 20 IQ points out of your brain. The best (and most subtle) joke in The Devil Wears Prada is that the supposedly style-free, incompetent assistant is played by Ann Hathaway, who couldn’t do ‘ugly’ if she tried and is the closest thing to perfectly ordinary in the whole film.
January 19th, 2007 at 8:24 am
“In a time where the big TV hits consist of skeletal housewives and the unbearably shallow Nip/Tuck — it’s a relief that some shows are still keeping it real.”
Please.. Nip/Tuck is completely self-aware. Of course it portrays shallowness, the subject matter ensures this- and there are plenty of ‘real’ characters in that show.. one of the leads, and several bit roles spring to mind..
The series opener to ‘Ugly Betty’ was no doubt a promising start. But to take a cheap shot at an award-winning show coming into it’s 5th season is a little.. rich. We’ll have to wait to see whether the ‘realness’ of Betty will lead her to similar success.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:52 am
“the unbearably shallow Nip/Tuck”
You missed the episode where Christian and Sean attempted to surgically cut a more convincing “ugly Betty” (obese woman who had spent 3 years on a couch and had fused to the fibers)off of a 2 seater then?
I think the setting for Ugly Betty is quite lazy and old-hat ( under-dog girl working for fashion magazine/industry in NYC). I mean, it’s not hard to satirize the fashion industry really is it? It’s at it’s most hilarious when portrayed as is.
Americas Next Top Model has more accidental, and therefore funnier, laughs than something like Ugly Betty.
Plus, it takes the extremely shaky moral high-ground (that horrid films like Jack Black’s Shallow Hal like to tread) of ‘Hollywood says fat/ugly-chicks are o.k….. but we still won’t actually hire them!’