Ugly Betty: It ain't so superior
Oops, this is in response to someone else's post. It was too long to leave as a comment so I'm posting it here. I'm so not used to actually posting my own journals that I forget others can read it and would appreciate not having a 14000 character post so I'll put it under the cut and you can move along if you wish.
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I'm so behind on Ugly Betty, it's just sad, but I agree with everything that you've said here. I even watched some of the original Betty La Fea, when it aired in the States, but my Spanish is only halfway decent, so I missed a lot. I like how you pointed out that the original Betty "did ugly things". That's a nice twist on the title (and true since a lot of the stuff she did wasn't really heroic.)
I do ship Daniel/Betty, since best friend ships are my weakness and the show certainly gives us a lot of nice moments. Betty and Daniel don't ever particularly give me the "brother/sister" vibe, probably because Daniel regularly gets that "Betty" look. Sometimes he looks at her like he's just so impressed with her and just being with her makes him so happy, he doesn't know what to do with himself. It's probably the purest love Daniel's ever experienced. If I wrote fic, (Oh, wait! I do!) I would ID the moment at the end of the first episode when he first had that Betty look as the moment that he probably started to fall for her. I think anything more than that would have been too much. In fact, Betty and Daniel are one of those pairings that work out the older that they get. I can see them getting together when Betty is in her late 20s/early 30s and further along in her career. And since it was unlikely that Ugly Betty would last 8 to 10 years, I was fine with Betty/Daniel not happening on the show. (Providing that they left the ending open enough that I could imagine a future for them a few more years down the line.)
Where I think the show goes wrong a lot is that they try to manufacture drama instead of going with their strengths, which would be the character interaction. They keep manufacturing internal conflicts (Daniel and Betty have a failing out, Amanda and Mark don't speak, Betty moves out of the house) instead of going with an outside force that causes everyone to react.
In fact the only boyfriend I evaluated in relevance to Daniel was Matt because he was rich, ended up being her boss and had a sex addiction. I couldn't not speculate on what those similarities meant.
You know, I wonder if Matt was created deliberately as a Daniel-like character to appease Detty fans. That happened on another show I used to watch and it failed miserably, because the show creators didn't get that it was something deeper than the surface relationship that people liked and so recreated an imperfect copy. And then they were shocked when nobody liked the character or the relationship! I don't think that's what happened with Matt (I'm so far behind on the show that I'm completely out of step with the fandom) but it's interesting to think about.
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Where I think the show goes wrong a lot is that they try to manufacture drama instead of going with their strengths, which would be the character interaction. They keep manufacturing internal conflicts (Daniel and Betty have a failing out, Amanda and Mark don't speak, Betty moves out of the house) instead of going with an outside force that causes everyone to react.
Absolutely. Another drawback is that they have the characters make progress only to regress them again. I have no clue why they thought it was a good idea for the characters of Amanda or Daniel to put them back into their "friends with benefits" storyline while she was his assistant.
Or like when they moved Betty out of house and in with Amanda (inspired) but then put her back in Queens.
You know, I wonder if Matt was created deliberately as a Daniel-like character to appease Detty fans. That happened on another show I used to watch and it failed miserably, because the show creators didn't get that it was something deeper than the surface relationship that people liked and so recreated an imperfect copy.
That's a good question. I just find it a huge coincidence that Betty gets Matt at the same time that Daniel gets super sweet Molly. What was the show that tried to create a similar character? Showrunners can be so...dumb sometimes.
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Oh, you would never have heard of it. It was a Canadian family sitcom called Life With Derek. The show was only okay, but the fandom is incredible and totally sucked me in. It was a Brady Bunch/Step-by-Step sort of premise about a blended family, but most people loved the dynamic between the two oldest step-siblings Casey & Derek. Of course, the show didn't want to hook up the characters, because of the step-sibling thing, so their solution was to create another "bad boy" character in the last season for Casey. This failed for a number of reasons, but mainly because (1) the new boyfriend was a total jerk, with none of Derek's redeeming characteristics and (2) people didn't want Derek with Casey because he was a bad boy. They wanted him with Casey because they seemed like they would be a good couple. (Plus the two actors had a lot of chemistry.)
I'm pretty sure there are other cases of this happening, but that was the one that immediately sprung to mind.
And OMG, I just went to your LJ and you're a Life fan too? Wow.
Oh, you don't know the half of it! You remember marymary? She was the one that got me into the show. Back when it was still airing, she would recap the show and we all go and talk about it afterwards.
Actually, Mary, I and a few others from the old TWoP J/D thread started a tv watching community keytus_tv a few months ago since a bunch of us are still in contact. We're getting the hang of it, but so far so good. We actually had started a Life rewatch, with Mary hosting the threads, but we decided we were trying to do too much to quickly, so we've put those on hold until a later date. But you should definitely stop by and check things out. There should be a familiar face or two.
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