Present company excluded, of course…but that’s the only explanation I can come up with for why, in a poll of 66 TV critics throughout the US, the winner for this season’s Best New Comedy and second-best show of the entire new season was…”Ugly Betty.”
God bless America Ferrera, the actress who plays Betty, but I’ve seen the pilot episode, and…well, not to spoil our upcoming Fall TV Preview piece, but this is what I said of the show:
“That sucking sound you hear is the testosterone departing your system at a rapid clip. This is ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ as interpreted by ABC Family…and Vanessa Williams ain’t no Meryl Streep, lemme tell ya. No, actually, this is an adaptation of the popular Spanish telenovela ‘Yo Soy Betty, La Fea’ (translated as ‘I Am Betty, The Ugly One’). I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that ABC was too scared to make Betty legitimately ugly; instead, America Ferrera has enough legitimate cuteness peeking through that you’re constantly waiting for the simple makeover that could make her into a knockout. Expect fans of the original show to be horrified at this poor translation. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that anyone other than girls on the cusp of pubescence or desperately single women in their 20s and 30s will be able to stand this for even 30 minutes. Oh, and did I mention that it’s an hour long?”
So what I’m saying is, forget “Ugly Betty.” If you need a comedy fix this fall, go with “The Knights of Prosperity,” formerly known as “Let’s Rob Mick Jagger.”
