{"id":431,"date":"2006-10-01T11:29:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-01T11:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2006\/10\/01\/431\/"},"modified":"2006-10-01T11:29:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-01T11:29:00","slug":"431","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=431","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

I watched a little bit of a new TV show called \u201cUgly Betty\u201d<\/span> the other day. It\u2019s on the ABC network. ABC \u2013 are they still around? I don\u2019t 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\u2019s not much originality or risk-taking on that channel (ever since \u201cSports Night\u201d<\/span> 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\u2019s way too artificial, even by TV standards. I call it the \u201cEphram Zimbalist Junior\u201d syndrome. Yes, ABC did have a couple of hits in the 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s using dumpy looking actors \u2013 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<\/span>?). <\/p>\n

[I think that the pretty-face syndrome helped to kill Commander In Chief<\/span>, 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\u2019t 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.]<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what makes Ugly Betty<\/span> 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\u2019s 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<\/span> meets Dynasty<\/span> (yea, I know, that was from another channel; but it could well have been an ABC show!). Unfortunately, I don\u2019t 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\u2019s ugliness is fake. Betty is played by actress America Ferrera, who in reality isn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019t have been hard to find. <\/p>\n

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<\/span> on NBC, which is another NBC success story (it\u2019s 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\u2019s just too bad; it\u2019s another interesting TV show idea that somehow landed in ABC\u2019s lap and they just couldn\u2019t handle it. Oh well, at least I don\u2019t own any stock in Disney (ABC\u2019s owner).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I watched a little bit of a new TV show called \u201cUgly Betty\u201d the other day. It\u2019s on the ABC network. ABC \u2013 are they still around? I don\u2019t 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}