Class act

A silly, sudsy soap opera? Sure, but ABC's hit show "Ugly Betty" -- with its bracing look at class, ethnicity and economic disparity -- is also seriously subversive TV.

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Arts & Entertainment, Rebecca Traister, Life

Photo: ABC

America Ferrera in "Ugly Betty"

Nov. 4, 2006 | You've probably heard a lot about "Ugly Betty," ABC's new hourlong comedy-soap opera about a supposedly hideous young woman who scores a job as assistant to a foxy male fashion magazine editor. The show's tidily uplifting premise -- she is a beast in the beauty industry who in fact brings beauty to a beastly world -- along with its crack cast, cuspidate humor and sudsy plot, has helped turn "Ugly Betty" into a rare bona fide hit on fall's television slate. It garners around 16 million viewers a night and is one of only a few new shows to have received orders for a full season.

"Ugly Betty's" mostly laudatory notices have covered the wan irony of its unlovely title and winning appeal: "Ugly Betty Is a Beauty" and all that. Many critics have also pointed out that Betty, played by America Ferrera, is not ugly. She is merely encumbered by a mouth full of blue metal, one hellacious poncho and a wonky eye for color coordination. The show should be called "Badly Styled Betty." (And naturally, within a month of "Ugly Betty's" premiere, newspaper style sections fell predictably in line, touting a new "ugly chic" inspired by the program.)

But those who have taken the title's bait and examined only the aesthetics of the show have missed the point. "Ugly Betty" is not about being unattractive, or at least not simply about being unattractive. It's about class. And ethnicity. Its smart take on cultural and economic differences, enmeshed as it is in a fresh, funny package, makes it positively subversive television.

Betty Suarez is the 22-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants. She lives in Queens with her widowed father; older sister, Hilda; and Hilda's son, Justin, a fashion-obsessed preteen. But when we first meet Betty, it's in the marble lobby of Meade Publications, where she's awaiting a job interview with an H.R.-bot who needs only an eyeful of her metal-mouthed grin to shut the door in her face. But Betty catches the eye of company founder Bradford Meade, who hires her to assist his son, Daniel (Eric Mabius), recently installed as editor in chief at fashion-bible Mode after the untimely departure of Mode's legendary nuclear winter of an editor, Fey Summers. Daniel is the family fuck-up, a playboy who generally prefers his assistants under his desk, administering fellatio.

Bradford hires Betty because he assumes his son will never look twice at a not-anorexic Mexican woman in braces, red spectacles and polymer-fabric cardigans. As far as the lily-white Meades are concerned, Betty might as well not have secondary sexual characteristics: She's so "ugly" that she's not even female. But she is capable and smart, and as it turns out, that's what Daniel needs most in an assistant. He's under siege from Mode's creative director, Wilhelmina (Vanessa Williams), who was passed over for the editor-in-chief post. If this seems convoluted  remember, folks, it's a soap.

"Ugly Betty's" debut so soon after this summer's "The Devil Wears Prada" makes it easy to assume that it was inspired by Lauren Weisberger's epic lament of fashion servitude. (The pilot even nodded to the movie by ending with its catchy theme song, "Suddenly I See.") In fact, "Ugly Betty" is the American adaptation of the Colombian telenovela "Yo soy Betty, la fea," which began airing in 1999 and has since been translated and remade around the world.

Unlike "Prada," "Ugly Betty" is not driven by the traumas of the boss-lackey dynamic. This heroine doesn't flinch when she has to put cream cheese on her boss's bagel or get him tickets to the Harvard-Yale game. Betty has serious professional ambitions, but she's sanguine about starting at the bottom of the ladder, happy to be working at a major magazine straight out of college. When compared to her tasks at home -- like trying unsuccessfully to persuade the HMO to refill her ailing father's heart medication -- ordering a town car doesn't seem quite such an affront to anyone's sensibilities.

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