Ugly Betty [TV Show] [Season 2]

---

Tools:
Recommend review to a friend »

---

Sophomore slump? What sophomore slump?

I was blown away by Season One of "Ugly Betty," ABC's single office woman version of "Desperate Housewives," and Season Two is just as slick, smart, and entertaining.

Betty Suarez (America Ferrara) couldn't be farther from the women of Wisteria Lane. She's no raving beauty, with or without make-up. If she turns heads, it's because her short stature, red-framed glasses, frumpy dress, and purple-blue braces (which project like a billboard because of her perpetual smile) are startling enough to stop traffic in the trendy high fashion district where she works at Mode magazine.

In the world of models and those who try to look like models in order to wear the latest designer clothes, Ugly Betty, as she's called behind her back, is also "fat" (not really). If she's desperate, it has nothing to do with being a housewife and balancing a relationship with her children or husband and a budding affair. And yet, ABC's latest hit is unmistakably similar to the network's successful dramedy, "Desperate Housewives." Call it "Desperate Housewives" meets "The Devil Wears Prada." There are even moments when the music plays it's darkly whimsical xylophonic strains and you're left briefly hanging from a plot-cliff having flashbacks to that showcase for suburban chicanery.

But the suburbs are far, far away. "Ugly Betty" has one foot in unfashionable Queens--where she lives with her widowed father, single-parent sister, and flamboyant nephew--and one foot in Manhattan, where she was hired at the insistence of publishing magnate Bradford Meade (Alan Dale) because she was so ugly that she wouldn't be a temptation for his sex-o-holic son, Daniel (Eric Mabius), whom he's elevated to the position of editor-in-chief at Mode magazine following the car-crash death of its long-time editor. And so Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams), the high-powered creative director who was passed over, conspires with other employees--and a woman shrouded in a rehab center who, in shadows, is posed and poised to suggest the Emperor talking to Darth Vader--to discredit and undermine the new rookie editor's efforts and ultimately take over the magazine. All that happened in Season One, and by Season Two Wilhelmina has conspired first to marry the Meade magnate who owns Mode, while Daniel learns things about her that make him take after poor Betty for not keeping him informed.

This season, Wilhelmina gets so desperate that she ends up stealing sperm to try to maintain her hold on the empire (yeah, with a soaper like this I'm not giving TOO much away), and then there's the little matter of Kiss's Gene Simmons turning up as the biological father (or not) of the catty Amanda (Becki Newton), who's best buds with that gay suck-up Marc (Michael Urie) who's been Wilhelmina's toadie. And Ugly Betty? Well, she ends up with two guys wanting her, the nerdy Henry (Christopher Gorham) and Season Two newcomer Gioivanni "Gio" Rossi (Freddy Rodriguez, "Six Feet Under"). This season, Betty's gay nephew Justin (Mark Indelicato) ends up an intern at the magazine, and quickly displays Betty's prowess for navigating the political waters--though with much more deviousness than Betty. And Betty tries to get back in Daniel's good graces.

---

---