Ugly Betty Shifts into Manic Mode

Ugly Betty' shifts into manic mode
REVIEW | Guns, love triangles, over-the-top acting spoil a soap that had heart

September 27, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

What in the hell happened to "Ugly Betty?" When it started last year, it wasn't the best show on TV, but it was quite good for what it was -- a zippy, heartfelt nighttime soap.

But now it's this ... this ... abomination. There are all these guns, and stupid love triangles, and conspiracies, and over-the-top acting and writing. It is shockingly hard to watch.
» Click to enlarge image
America Ferrera in the season premiere of ABC's award-winning "Ugly Betty."
(ABC)

'UGLY BETTY' ¼7 to 8 p.m. Thursdays on WLS-Channel 7

I rarely point to ratings as barometers of good taste, but maybe the reason a lot of people are ditching the show is because it got terrible. The first season certainly ended with too many melodramatic cliffhangers:

• • Betty (new Emmy winner America Ferrera) moped because her love, Henry, went to Arizona with a woman who told him she was pregs with his baby. But is it really his?

• • Betty's sister Hilda (Ana Ortiz) found out her man got shot in a random robbery. Is he alive or dead?

• • And Daniel (Eric Mabius) got in a wreck with his brother-turned-sister, Alex/Alexis (Rebecca Romijn), while Alexis was driving him someplace for his drug problem.

The new season starts tonight with just as much too-much. Betty feels romantically tortured and accidentally hurts herself when she walks into a small billboard that reads, "Love Hurts." Ouch.

Mode magazine villain Wilhelmina continues her power moves against Betty's boss, Daniel, partly by trying to stay engaged (unlovingly) to Daniel's dad, Bradford (Alan Dale), the owner of Mode.

I can't even force myself to keep thinking about the clunky lunacy and all the things that are wrong with "Betty." Almost nothing works. I used to enjoy this show on occasion, believe it or not. It had heart and brains. Now it's a glitzy, zany corpse.

There are only a few bright spots. Tonight, a scene with Hilda becomes highly engrossing when you least expect it. And the two effeminate gay characters -- Justin (Mark Indelicato) and Marc (Michael Urie) -- seem to be the only two people consistently earning their scenes with smidgens of humanity or charm.

Well, the fantastic Illeana Douglas also has a few small scenes as a worker bee. But for some crazy reason, she's not being written into every shot of the show.

There is exactly one good line tonight that's a shadow of former goodness, and it's delivered nicely, when Amanda (Becki Newton) walks into her sketchy parents' home and sneers, "This is it. The house of lies. Mother!" Then she says under her breath, "If that is her real name."

I vote for Douglas, Newton, Urie, Indelicato and Ortiz to take over the series, with new writers reinventing the thing under the new title of "Not Ugly Betty."

And that's that. "Betty" strove to become a warm nighttime soap with light comedy, and it has ended up a chilly, unfunny, glorified daytime soap. Oh, the horror.

Chicago SUn-Times