"Killer poncho." - Bitchy assistant Marc (Michael Urie) when he sees Betty's "Guadalajara!" poncho
Ugly Betty: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Recent college grad Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) wants to be a writer. She thinks she's landed her dream job when she is hired to be an Executive Assistant at the tony, Manhattan-based Meade Publications. There are just a few problems. The biggest is that she'll be working at Mode, a high-end fashion magazine, and Betty's about as fashionable as a gunny sack. Her boss, newly-christened Editor-in-Chief Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius) didn't hire her-his father did. It seems that Fashion TV refers to Daniel as a "notorious man whore" and Bradford Meade (Alan Dale) wants his son to have an assistant he won't be tempted to sleep with. Snotty, slutty Mode receptionist Amanda Tanen (Becki Newton) is determined to make Betty's life miserable because she wanted Betty's job. Snotty, swishy Marc St. James (Michael Urie), assistant to treacherous Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams), is determined to make Betty's life miserable because Wilhelmina wanted Daniel's job. Betty finds only one friendly person at the magazine-free-spirit Christina McKinney (Ashley Jensen) who is in charge of Mode's closet of designer goodies. Can Betty survive this viper pit and become successful at Mode? As Ugly Betty: The Complete First Season shows, she just might have the pluck and drive to do it.
She won't be doing it alone. She has the support of her loving family back in working-class Queens. Her widowed father, Ignacio (Tony Plana), has health woes and insurance problems...not to mention a few secrets...but he's done an excellent job of raising his family since his wife's death. Hilda (Ana Ortiz), Betty's older sister, sells the Herbalux diet supplement and attends beauty college to provide for her young son, Justin (Mark Indelicato), a happy-go-lucky kid who loves musicals, fashion, and all things sparkly.
Ugly Betty combines slapstick humor, outrageous situations, smart dialogue, and soap opera plot twists into a likeably frothy concoction. Based on a Colombian telenovela, the series is simultaneously cartoonish and stylish. Its ultra mod, candy colored sets would be right at home in an Austin Powers movie.
The first season is far from perfect. The show's writers are obviously making up the central storylines as they go along, abandoning some plots altogether while reshaping others. The Fey Somers arc, seen in the first half of the season, is ultimately toothless. The writers often seem unwilling to totally commit to the series' campy style. There are a few too many attempts to humanize Williams' Wilhelmina, for example, when the audience would be perfectly happy to simply watch her chew the scenery.
What makes the series truly memorable is America Ferrera's performance as Betty. Equally adept at conveying Betty's dorkiness, joy, and pain, she lights up every scene she's in. The supporting cast is equally talented. Becki Newton can twist her delivery so that even a simple hello sounds snarky. Michael Urie's Marc is a believable combination of unctuousness and insecurity (see "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in which he is terrified of telling his mother-Broadway vet Patti LuPone—that he is gay.) And Mark Indelicato delivers a brave, honest, and unaffected performance as Justin.
The season's final episode, "East Side Story," literally ends with a bang. As Justin performs in a school production of West Side Story, all of the plotlines come to a head. The intercutting of Justin performance of "Something's Coming" and the play's finale leads to several heart stopping-and heartbreaking-moments.
The twenty-three episodes that make up The Complete First Season are divided onto six discs. Each disc is adorned with portraits of the series' characters—Betty on disc one, Daniel on disc two, Wilhelmina on disc three, Marc, Amanda, and Christina on disc four, the Suarez family on disc five, and Bradford and Alexis on disc six. The discs are housed in a foldout case featuring publicity photos and production stills. The six discs attach to three panels-each of the panels holds two discs, one on top of the other, in a figure eight pattern. Another panel of the foldout case includes a folder which contains an episode guide. The case slides into a cardboard sleeve.
The full motion DVD menus are colorful and eye-catching. Viewers can play all episodes or choose them individually. There are no scene selection menus, but the episodes include chapter stops.
