Adorable Betty!

* This may be a rather long entry, but I hope you read it anyway.

Well, it's time I weighed in on Ugly Betty.

I like the show.  I've taped and watched all four episodes; actually, I've watched each one twice, and I've watched them objectively.  I like it. 

Here's why:

Betty is an intelligent, witty, educated young lady from Queens, who is of hispanic descent.  She is determined to someday own a magazine.  In order to get her foot in the door of the industry, she accepts a position with a magazine owned by a publishing company that she considers the cream of the crop.  It, unfortunately, is a fashion magazine, and the owner of the publishing company who owns that magazine has an ulterior motive in hiring her.

Now Betty truly does have no sense of fashion.  She is NOT ugly.  She has braces, wears glasses, is not stick-thin and does not know how to dress or wear her hair.  But she knows her job, and she takes iniative to get things done.  She makes friends at her new job, but, unfortunately, she inadvertantly makes some very powerful enemies as well.  Her boss, the editor-in-chief of the magazine (and also the son of the owner), who starts out appalled that he is being "forced" to hire her, tries what he can do to make her quit.  Forty minutes into the show, her prime enemy, a photographer who has a score to settle with her because of a perceived insult to him, talks her boss into getting her into a very embarrassing situation, sure that it will make her quit. 

This is a very painful scene to watch.

I have been the victim of bullying as a child, and also as an adult.  I know that that scene was very painful in a very personal way to many viewers.  But look past that, if you can.  What happens?  She puts on the skimpy costume, allows herself to be placed between two tall, thin models, and strikes outlandish poses (as a stand-in for a missing model).  Laughter erupts.  Her boss?  We see conscience coming to the fore.  We see sympathy and shame.  He tries to stop the photographer.  He commands him to stop!  Betty, red-faced, runs from the building.  He follows.  She quits.  She knows that's what he wanted, anyway. 

Her boss finds out that this photographer has conspired with his own arch enemy to bring about his downfall; that he has been duped and embarrassed, just like Betty, only not in such a personal way.  An important account is about to be lost.  He finds a proposal that Betty wrote that is very good.  If he can get her to come back and if they can convince their client to give them another chance he is sure that Betty's idea will sell. 

In the meantime, Betty is still feeling her anger.  Using that ,she tears into the "hoochie mama" neighbor that her boyfriend dumped her for at the beginning of the show.  Good for her!

Boss man comes to her house to beg her to come back; to tell her how brilliant her idea is.  Here is the conversation:

Daniel: Betty, I am so sorry........You didn't deserve what I put you through......I.....I listened to all the wrong people about a lot of things.  I have no one to blame but myself.

Betty:  Well, I appreciate that, Daniel.  (pause)  But you're going to leave here, and you're going to take your town car back to your Soho loft, and I'm still going to be here, out of work and dealing with problems that you'll never understand.

Daniel:  Try me!  Betty, come on, we've all got problems.

Betty:  And what are yours, Daniel?  What restaurant you're going to eat at?  Which model you're going to sleep with?  Try spending the day on the phone with some crappy HMO, getting  them to cover your dad's prescriptions, or try lining up a job, any job, 'cause you've got to help pay the rent next month.

Daniel:  (pause) I lost a brother a while back......He was the good one in our family......and I've never quite measured up.  But I'm trying.  (pause)  Betty, my problems could never compare to yours, but they're mine. (pause and smile)  I saw the layout you made for Fabia. 

Betty:  (pause) You did?

Daniel:  I thought it was very smart.  And beautiful.

Of course, she ends up helping him.  The presentation is a hit.  The client approves it.  Daniel tries to give her the credit with his father, the owner, but she diverts it back to him, telling him that next time she'll take the credit.

That was just the first episode.  It gets better with each one.  We also discover that there is some mystery about Betty's father, and there is another mystery about Daniel's father. 

The actors have been cast very well in all the main roles.  Really, everything is exaggerated and over-the-top.  I mean, Betty is made up to be more unattractive than I can imagine someone of her intelligence being.  The snotty people who work at the company are Uber-snotty.  The characters of the receptionist and the assistant to the Creative Editor are over-the-top shallow, mean, conscienceless creatures, (and funny as all get-out) and Betty comes out on top when they tangle.  Her nephew is a fashion-whiz!!  Even the fictional television "Fashion" network is exaggeratedly, hilariously, over-the-top.  And throughout the episodes we get little snippets of a Spanish Telenovella (featuring Salma Hayak!), that, of course, is soap-opera at it's most over-the-top.

I was not offended by the show, because in my opinion it is not glorifying or putting a good face on bullying or on handling bullying.  I didn't think the show made fun of Betty's character or asked us to do so.  I believe the show actually asks us to embrace Betty, the Bettys we all know, the Betty that is inside of each of us.  I believe the show asks us to cheer for Betty and stand beside her as she faces some of the same things we face or have faced.  And I actually get a nice, satisfied, good feeling when I watch the show.

The second episode is my favorite so far, where we meet a down-to-earth, "beautiful-people" client of the magazine, who really is more comfortable with Betty than with anyone else at the magazine.  And in the third episode we meet an artist that the magazine is wooing, who just happens to be from Betty's Queens neighborhood, and who can handle the snooty magazine people without compromising his own integrity or trying to be what he is not. 

Betty does not try to fit in.  Actually she started to try at one point, discovered that it was not the smartest thing to do, and then informed her nay-sayers that she was there to stay, and they'd better just get used to her as she is.  I hope that if you've never given the show a try, that you will approach it with an open mind and then decide.  If you have watched it and find it offensive or painful, then I want you to know that I understand and respect that, and hope that I have not offended anyone.

I do want to quote my 10 year-old daughter after she watched the first episode:  "You know, I don't think Betty is ugly at all.  And if people treated me like that, I'd just go ahead and be myself anyway, just like Betty.  She's smart!"

Natalie asked what her readers' opinions were of the show, and this is part of the comment I left her:  "She's got 'cahones'! Lots of spunk and drive to be able to do what she wants to do, and when the going gets really rough, and she is taking a lot off of the "bullies" she has to deal with, she shows that she can kick butt intelligently and capably without having to come down to their level."

Tags: Ugly Betty