The Devil wouldn’t be caught dead in a Guadalajaran poncho, but he’d certainly get wicked enjoyment out of watching an ugly young woman going to her first day of work at a powerhouse fashion magazine in one. The Americanized version of the hit telenovela, ‘Ugly Betty,’ prides itself in a campy derivativeness bogged down in a soap opera grandeur. The show is a rip-off in every sense of the word: its storylines are recycled and there is a palpable sense of unoriginality everywhere (maybe because this entire idea was just done in “The Devil Wears Prada”), even in the sets. Uninventiveness, however, is crucial when attempting to mock things that are conventional. It is here that ‘Ugly Betty’ is ironically good looking.
There is a decided separation between good and evil in the typical telenovela. America Ferrera’s Betty Suarez is the endearing embodiment of goodness. She is a character that could have been wholly annoying and inappropriately whiny, but Ferrera’s juicily perfect creation may just have made being good the new evil. On her first day as assistant to Editor-in-Chief of Mode Magazine (a job that she surprisingly got just because of her looks), Betty ungracefully walks into a glass door, perhaps giving a sign to herself that she just doesn’t belong in the chic, unforgiving world of fashion.
Vanessa Williams’ Wilhelmina is the exact antithesis to the utter goodness of Betty. Everyone seems to be sabotaging everyone (in true telenovela fashion) in over-the-top circumstances and, with a critically satirical eye, it works. Editor-in-Chief Daniel Meade, delightfully nuanced by Eric Mabius, is the beneficent jerk who defies telenovela standards of characterization. The show both embraces and mocks its telenovela roots with a schizophrenic attitude that, though at times awkwardly unfunny, ultimately feels very right.
Hilarious interspersed scenes of a televised Salma Hayek in a mock telenovela curiously sum up the appeal of ‘Ugly Betty’: unconscious cynicism intermingled with witty mindlessness. It’s an uncanny formula whose unlikely success depends on a dual Americanization. The American take of the Colombian sensation adds an indulgingly analytical side to soapy trashiness while using clichéd laughs (but, really, it’s not nearly as schmaltzy as it sounds). America Ferrera’s delectable performance, however, is the real America-nization here. She has made a character so lovably imperfect that the obvious imperfections of the flawed ‘Ugly Betty’ become as unimportant as the anti-fashionista is to her unforgiving co-workers. And it all, in one way or another, perhaps by some unexplainable luck, becomes quite consequential.
