Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Ugly Betty: “Pilot”

I really wanted to hate this series with a white-hot passion when I first heard about it. I wanted to hate it even more when I heard about the illegal alien subplot the show's writers added midway through the first season.

And yet now that I'm watching it on DVD...

I've grown to love it.

Not just because it's one of the few shows on the air with a Hispanic protagonist. After all, The George Lopez Show could have made a similar boast and yet I was never really attracted to that show.

And not just because star America Ferrera manages to be oh so cute in spite of her character's “ugliness.” (Though that certainly doesn't hurt.)

I suspect the reason I most love the show is the way it handles the issue of class anxiety. The feeling that one really isn't supposed to be working in a certain environment and the fear that the upper-class folks with which one works really are laughing at one behind one's back. I've heard quite a few fellow Hispanics express just such feelings and I'm kinda glad to see a TV show deal with such feelings instead of merely sweeping them under the rug.

It might be argued that this show takes an especially sunny view of such anxiety. And that it is a bit unrealistic when it comes to depicting the way Ms. Ferrera's character Betty Suarez manages to overcome the various obstacles in her new environment.

But at least it manages to acknowledge these issues instead of pretending everyone who matters is a white, non-Hispanic executive who lives in the suburbs. And that all Hispanics are gang members, drug dealers or servants.

Though the show is a bit cartoonish at times, it also manages to be quite intriguing in a way that most Anglocentric TV fare is not anymore.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this show in the future.