Ugly Betty: Skin Deep or Down to the Bone?

After a rough start, The Devil Wears Prada-style plot twists force Daniel and Betty to realize they need to look out for each other, if not at each other. After all, how else are they going to prevent fashionista Wilhelmina (Vanessa Williams) from taking over the company? Bradford's certainly no help. He's too busy covering up what appears to be murder.
If all this sounds to you like a soap opera plot gone prime time, consider yourself fashionably astute. Ugly Betty is actually an Americanized adaptation of a wildly popular Colombian telenovela—a type of Spanish-language soap that takes viewers on a 13-week roller coaster and then lets them disembark for the next series/ride. In many Spanish-speaking homes in the U.S. and in South America, telenovelas have been as much a part of the nightly routine as David Letterman and Jay Leno have in English-speaking ones. So for co-executive producer Salma Hayek, it was only natural to bring Ugly Betty to ABC and a wider American audience that's becoming increasingly Latino.
So far, Hayek's instincts are right on target. Her show's ratings have been solid. But what of its morals? On the comely side of things, Ugly Betty regularly bashes the impossible standards and negative influence of a fashion industry that "seems intent on making any normal human being feel like an outcast," as one character moans. "It's all fake and unattainable, but nobody seems to get it," adds another. Great messages, especially for young, self-conscious girls taking mental notes on what's hot and what's not. To top it off, in this intentionally broad-stroked world of over-the-top caricatures, the good guys win on a weekly basis, while the villains' evil plans are repeatedly foiled.

Tune in to this prime-time lead-in and you'll find that, as the 22-year-old Ferrera states, "[It's] not about being ugly at all. More than anything it's just about looking past what you see. Achieving that image is not all that we're on this planet to do." That's a beautiful and true idea. But it's woven into fabric that is both snagged and torn.

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