IN THE QUEUE FOR MY NEXT ILLNESS, SEASON ONE OF DEADWOOD: Being stuck at home with a cold for a couple days last week gave me a chance to watch the half-dozen Ugly Betty episodes that had built up on my DVR. Ugly Betty is one of those shows that falls right on the cusp for me -- I have no desire to watch it in anything vaguely resembling real time, yet I like it enough that I never delete all the back episodes from the DVR to make room for something else. (A fate to which every post-pilot episode of Pushing Daisies has recently been subjected -- see ya on DVD, Ned.)
Parts of Ugly Betty are so pitch-perfect that I want to cry, and others are so off-key that my head aches from all the eye-rolling. Into the latter category falls pretty much anyone with the word "Meade" in his or her (or, in one case, his and her) name. Bradford, Claire, Alexis, and especially Daniel -- cue the eyes for rampant rolling. It didn't hit me how terrible Daniel was as a character until I saw him interact with James van der Beek's vicariously homophobic fashionista advertiser guy -- if freaking Dawson Leery can out-sex-appeal the guy whose biggest talent is supposed to be seducing women, then there is something very very wrong with the Daniel Meade concept.
But then there are Amanda, who I can't tear my eyes away from whenever she's on screen; Marc, whose relationship with Cliff and "Mr. Gutley" has been done supremely well; and Justin, whose fabulousness has been chronicled far and wide. (He doesn't really warrant mention in the main list, but Henry's cubicle neighbor Kenny -- John Cho, whose existence I would probably be more excited about if I'd ever seen Harold and Kumar -- is pretty darned funny. Just as he was on HIMYM.) And in watching these last six episodes marathon style, I have suddenly come to realize why this show works as something more than a rambling telenovela parody of life as a taco-eating Queens girl at a fashion magazine. Ignacio Suarez is the beating heart of Ugly Betty, and his absence in Mexico left the Suarez family -- and the show itself -- without its center. Welcome back, Papi.
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