Ugly Betty was always one of those shows which I caught bits of on repeat during my childhood, and I had always wanted to rewatch properly as an adult. As the winter of eternal lockdown loomed late last year, I decided to bite the bullet and pay for the box sets (later feeling slightly cheated when all four seasons were added to Disney Plus). It was a show I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish, and whilst I am a firm believer that series shouldn’t just continue forever for the sake of it, I wished there had been twice as many seasons for me to enjoy.
The show is a US adaption of the Colombian Yo soy Betty, la fea, it ran from 2006 to 2010 and has since been dubbed a cult show. It follows fresh-out-of-college Betty Suarez from Queens as she lands a job as the assistant to Daniel Meade, the new editor-in-chief of the prestigious Mode Magazine. Betty wants to pursue a career in the magazine industry but is not your typical fashion-wise Mode employee. Characters like Amanda and Marc regularly tease Betty about her clothes and make her feel out of place in her new job. As the show progresses, we watch the characters and their relationships develop, and Betty becomes more switched on to the world of fashion, although she is resistant to admit it. Antagonist Wilhelmina Slater is constantly plotting ways to get her hands on the entire Meade company, as Daniel and his parents fight to resist her taking over the family business. What is remarkable about the show is how well it ended. Betty was allowed to get the career progression she deserved, loose ends were tied, and — most importantly to me — no unrealistic romances were forced.
One thing which many Ugly Betty critics note is how timeless it feels. The fashion is incredibly of-the-era and there are absolutely some elements which haven’t aged well, but overall, the show was almost ahead of its time. It deals with many tough issues such as immigration and cancer, as well as some ridiculous telenovela plot lines such as post-humous sperm stealing. Teetering from the heart-breaking to the bizarre, these themes are what makes the show so compelling and had me eager for the next episode.
The representation of LGBT characters in Ugly Betty was at the time praised, and I still feel that it was relatively progressive for the late noughties. Marc’s character is introduced as shallow and mean, but he develops and is allowed to become more complex as the episodes roll on. It leads to one of my favourite relationships, when Justin seeks Marc out as a mentor and role model; culminating in Marc helping the Suarez family allow Justin to come out in his own way and time. I can’t imagine how important that story line must have been for LGBT kids at the time. Conversely, the way that Ugly Betty treats its only trans character, Alexis, is unsurprisingly terrible. I never expected much for a show that started in the mid-noughts, but the fact that the best thing they did for Alexis was casting a cis woman rather than in a cis man, says a lot.
I was a fan of how the show represents class from the moment I started watching. The Suarez family are a single-parent immigrant family from Queens, with 3 generations living in one house. Betty seems to be the only person at Mode to have attended community college, and the first person in her family to attend college at all. Betty’s home life is juxtaposed against her colleagues at Mode, who all come from middle or upper class backgrounds, including Marc, Amanda, and Wilhelmina, and especially the Meade family. However, this is where some of my favourite relationships and interactions come from. Betty and Daniel’s friendship grew beyond their working relationship, despite their fundamental differences, and I think it is one of the key tenets in Daniel’s maturation over the four seasons.
With the number of wonderful shows I’ve consumed that have been released in the past 5 years, I was pleasantly surprised by how much joy I got out of Ugly Betty. It’s worth watching for the garish noughties fashion alone, but truly I think it is a hidden gem which never got enough credit for what it achieved.
