TV on DVD: Ugly Betty
On a whim, Lauren and I rented the first four episodes of Ugly Betty (ABC, Thursday, 7 PM Central). We enjoyed those well enough to buy the whole first season. Last night, we watched the last two episodes, finishing up season 1. We anxiously await the second season on DVD, as well as the start of the third season this coming fall.
What is so great about Ugly Betty? There are a few things I particularly love.
1. The Mix of Comedy and Drama
It’s an hour long show, meaning there’s a lot of time to fill. The Office barely pulled off their few hour-long episodes, and if a show of that quality of humor has trouble filling an hour, a silly comedy, like Ugly Betty could have been, would have been doomed to fail from the start. But by serializing the episodes with dramatic elements, Ugly Betty is addictive, both for its over-the-top characters and ridiculous scenarios, but also for its drama. The last episode of season 1 perfectly illustrates this. We are left wondering about what’s next for nearly every character, worried that some have died or will be killed.
2. America Ferrara
Ms. Ferrara plays Betty and has the audacity to appear on every show in unflattering outfits, teeth shackled with braces, and to put herself in embarrassing situations (falls, spills, awkward embraces, bad wording). With this, she also plays the character straight – no sarcasm, no mean-spirits. In fact, in one of the few cases where she does something self-centered (purposely releasing Henry’s girlfriend’s hand on the subway, such that she is swept onto a car and Betty left outside) she immediately confessed to Henry what she did, even though it could have been a crushing blow to their budding romance. Overall, her performance carries the show, even as the episodes often place equal focus on the other storylines.
3. Multiple Storylines
As I just mentioned, Betty is not the only main character on the show. By my count, a single non-major character (Bradford Meade, head of Meade Publishing) has five individual storylines, all important to the show (his relationships with Daniel, with Alexis, with Claire, with Wilhelmina, and with Fey). Though sometimes the jump between storylines can be a bit jarring (for example, Betty finding her grandmother in Mexico, inter-spliced with Daniel’s drug addiction), the editing can be forgiven, due to the quality of writing. We care about each of these storylines, and because of the focus given to so many characters, we can even feel sorry for the obvious villains in the show (Wilhelmina, specifically).
4. High-Arching Plots
Ugly Betty is not content to keep its plot focused on the conceit of the pilot. The basic setup (fish-out-of-water, “Ugly” Betty working for a high-fashion magazine) is well and good for some humor, but it would leave the show dry for ideas after just a few episodes (other sitcom writers should take note of this). The show really takes off because the writers want to keep the plotline developing (often rapidly) and even spiraling into a carefully controlled freefall. I think Lauren and my frustrations would have been out of control had we been watching the series with commercials (and a week between each episode) – it’s often so exciting that cutting away from one storyline to switch to another can be painful.
If you haven’t seen the show, I highly recommend watching a few episodes. The serial nature of the show means you should probably start from the beginning, though it probably wouldn’t be too hard to watch some online episodes from season 2 if you did some reading beforehand. Whatever amount of work you put in to understand the show, it is most definitely worth it.
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