I watched a little bit of a new TV show called “Ugly Betty” the other day. It’s on the ABC network. ABC – are they still around? I don’t watch much TV these days, but the two or three programs that I do watch generally come from NBC and PBS. Once in a while I might catch something on CBS, but ABC is pretty much the dregs. ABC shows are mostly second-rate re-makes of things that worked on other channels. There’s not much originality or risk-taking on that channel (ever since “Sports Night” went down). About all ABC has going for their shows is that they always select the most handsome male actors and the hottest female actors for them. To me it’s way too artificial, even by TV standards. I call it the “Ephram Zimbalist Junior” syndrome. Yes, ABC did have a couple of hits in the 70’s and 80’s using dumpy looking actors – there was Roseanne, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Welcome Back Cotter. But those were the exceptions that prove the rule. ABC has always tried to make up with pretty faces for what they lack in plot line and originality. Don’t forget that ABC is where Bruce Willis got started (ah yes, remember Moonlighting?).

[I think that the pretty-face syndrome helped to kill Commander In Chief, which was an interesting idea (a woman as President of the US). CIC might have stood half a chance had ABC used realistic actors (akin to what NBC did with The West Wing). It also would have helped if ABC didn’t try to focus the plot so much on the super-stars, i.e. Donald Sutherland and Gena Davis (who wore way too much red lipstick to be taken seriously as the Leader of the Free World). But ABC is locked into the pretty-face philosophy.]

That’s what makes Ugly Betty somewhat interesting. According to the plot, Betty is a dumpy-looking secretary set into a pure ABC scenario, i.e. a fashion magazine where everyone is rudely glamorous. As such, it’s an interesting meta-twist against the standard ABC formula. Betty lives with her gritty Hispanic family in Jackson Heights, New Yawk. So Ugly Betty is sort of like Roseanne meets Dynasty (yea, I know, that was from another channel; but it could well have been an ABC show!). Unfortunately, I don’t have much hope that the writers and producers of Ugly Betty see and appreciate the irony; much less will they be able to play against it. For one thing, Betty’s ugliness is fake. Betty is played by actress America Ferrera, who in reality isn’t ugly. They have to give her braces and a bad hairdo and some nasty glasses in order to make her seem repulsive. And even then, she’s no worse than a mildy geeky high school girl (if there are still any like that these days). Come on, if they wanted real ugly, it wouldn’t have been hard to find.

And the show is an hour long, which is a lot of time to cover with a half-baked idea. The killer is that the second half-hour competes against The Office on NBC, which is another NBC success story (it’s become my one regular-network indulgence each week). So, I predict that Ugly Betty will be lucky to survive thru the spring following a time change. It’s just too bad; it’s another interesting TV show idea that somehow landed in ABC’s lap and they just couldn’t handle it. Oh well, at least I don’t own any stock in Disney (ABC’s owner).