It didn't go wrong. It became a victim of what the shows setting was - fashions - people and shows move on. Just the way it goes.
I would rather it went out on a high - just look at shows like Scrubs that kept going on and on.
Series 2.
Ugly Betty was a one-series show - interest started to drop before the third series and it's lucky that it lasted so long.
I'm a huge fan of the first series, the second was OK...after that, dreadful.
She's so dull, c'mon rip her to shreds...
They are "seasons" not "series".
shareI'm going to assume Thats_Racist is from the UK. In the UK we call them 'series' - no reason to correct .. it's the same thing, just in a different 'language'.
shareSame language, different dialect. Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)
shareIn the UK we call them 'series' - no reason to correct .. it's the same thing, just in a different 'language'.
Yeah. They act like Americans are picking on them. We impose our culture on everyone, not just the Brits.
sharewere didi ugly betty go wrong?.....
it didn't, that show is amazing. It's such a shame it was cancelled.
Nowhere. it was perfect all the way.
shareThe 'brains' at ABC decided to move it to different days & times. It was hard to find at times. Being a spoof on soap operas, it definitely should have continued longer. Loved it!
shareThat and i genuinely think that the Writers Strike had a massive effect too. That's the reason the last five or six episodes of series 2 were so bad because they had to cram everything in before the finale. Remember the rushed story with Renee who went from sane to crazy in about three episodes?!
Also they focused far too much on the Betty-Gio-Henry triangle and then the four way thing between Daniel, Molly, Connor and Wilhelmina. Plus Betty sort of went backwards character wise through the middle of series 3 and the show never really got good again until the end of that series. That episode were Betty spends the entire time chasing after Jesse again was awful!
Like Heroes it was an one season wonder. They put so many storylines into season one(Hilda getting back with her ex, Betty and Henry, Daniel and Amanda, Daniel and Salmya Hayek, Alexis returning, Betty's Dad getting deported, going to Mexico, Amanda's Dad). Compare the other seasons and they look tame! I agree the writers' strike didn't help, but by then it was coming up to standard.
sharethe first season was a success- and by far the best and the most consistent season in terms of episodes. still my favourite season by a long mile.
sadly the other seasons failed to match season 1- season 2 was and is my most disliked season of the 4, season 3 i enjoyed a lot, in spite of the molly storyline and kimmie to name. however, many fans jumped ship for good because of it.
and season 4, in contrast to other fans i thought was ok; missed marc and amanda, yet it wasn't funny enough. i just missed the season 1 quality writing.
It never went wrong for me..it will still be one of my favourite TV series. Season 4 was amazing¬
shareSeason 2 was my least favorite, due to the writers' strike, I think. Even so, the worst episode of Ugly Betty was better than the best episode of lots of other series, IMO.
I didn't much care about the following storylines: Daniel/Molly; Willie/Nico; Willie/Connor; Christina and her husband.
But so many of the storylines were amazing. Really miss the show!
Well, I thought it was obvious where it went wrong.
The show invited a bunch of misfits to it. A bunch of people who didn't belong, didn't fit in, people who considered themselves ugly, just like Betty, etc. Season 1 was fantastic. An ugly girl begins her career she's always dreamed of in a place where she doesn't fit in. There's a reason why it all went downhill.
And yes, it's because of the end of Season 2 and nearly all of Season 3. The show began to focus more on her love life than it did her job. You might ask, "What's wrong with that?". Well, she started to have romances with a bunch of HOT GUYS that in reality, an "ugly" girl would never get. The reason it started out so successful was because people could connect with it. When this happened, the connection was easily broken.
Wilhelmina lost what made her badass in Season 3. She became a chick in love, and the whole "baby" takeover idea might as well have disappeared and just come back whenever. It barely focused on that. Not to mention the POINTLESS celebrity cameos that usually spell downfall for a show early on. (You hear that, Glee?) The whole Jesse sub-plot was great and really back to the roots of the show. She had a crush, but because she was ugly, he didn't like her back. Then for the love of god, they MAKE OUT (though drunk) AND THEN GO OUT ON A DATE! They did it again. Not to mention Alexis and Christina (who was hilarious) left the show, Willie was left without a real plot, Alexis seemed to just be gone, it was a mess. The new writers after the strike just didn't go well, they put to much of the DANG LOVE LIFE.
The show went from an average of 8-9 million viewers down to 4-5 million by the end of the season.
Then they moved it to the Friday Night Death slot, when Season 4 finally got back to how the show should have been. Unfortunately, the move had set it in stone. Once ABC realized the show had the potential to make a hit again, it was too late. With the loss of viewers and lack of interest, it was doomed.
Don't get me wrong, UB is my favorite show of all time. I love every second, but it's easy to see what went wrong here. It became way too unrealistic and we couldn't connect anymore.
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'And yes, it's because of the end of Season 2 and nearly all of Season 3. The show began to focus more on her love life than it did her job.'
actually it was the middle of season 2 upwards with the gio, henry love triangle thing that kicked off the whole love saga for betty.
'Not to mention the POINTLESS celebrity cameos that usually spell downfall for a show early on. (You hear that, Glee?'
again most of those from season 2.
'And yes, it's because of the end of Season 2 and nearly all of Season 3. The show began to focus more on her love life than it did her job.'
actually it was the middle of season 2 upwards with the gio, henry love triangle thing that kicked off the whole love saga for betty.
'Not to mention the POINTLESS celebrity cameos that usually spell downfall for a show early on. (You hear that, Glee?'
again most of those from season 2.
Romances with hot guys that an ugly girl would never get? I am far from what you would call "hot" by society standards. But I have had plenty of hot guys. Not everyone has the same taste in women.
shareseries three was where everyone jumped ship
but for me series four was the worse...after the Nico story hastily wrapped up, the script just become shockingly dull and unfunny...though it did kind of save grace with the last two episodes.
'but for me series four was the worse...after the Nico story hastily wrapped up, the script just become shockingly dull and unfunny...though it did kind of save grace with the last two episodes.'
i have to agree with you in that season 4 became unfunny as it went on- that's why i missed marc and amanda as a duo. i missed the humour in season 4 that the previous seasons had.
a lot of fans seemed to love season 4 more than season 3, but at least i laughed more often with season 3, when it had some funny moments than i did in season 4. for the exception of the weiner episode, the last season of ugly betty was rarely funny for a so-called dramedy for me.
"The show began to focus more on her love life than it did her job. You might ask, "What's wrong with that?". Well, she started to have romances with a bunch of HOT GUYS that in reality, an "ugly" girl would never get. The reason it started out so successful was because people could connect with it. When this happened, the connection was easily broken."
I have to give a big AMEN to this! It got absurd that all these amazing looking guys were falling for her. There is NO WAY these hot NY guys would fawn over her the way they did. It totally pulled me out of the show when it happened the 2nd time, 3rd, 4th...you get the picture.
yes i understand what you mean.
she was getting all these love interests that the show really diverted from the original premise of the show.
A big theme of the shows premise is recognizing inner beauty, yet you guys are on here going on about "someone who LOOKS like Betty would never get this guy....." Not only is this sad and shallow, it's really not true.
I'm wondering who it is that's having trouble "getting it"...
When you're 17 a cow can seem dangerous and forbidden...am I alone here?
I think guys like Henry and Gio were both good looking and appreciated Betty's inner beauty. The thing is, finding anybody that appreciates anybody else's inner beauty is a rare thing. A lot of the guys Betty's gonna run into are gonna be too superficial to give her the time of day, that's just a sad fact. Could've been more realistic there.
Might get grumbled at for what I'm about to say, and if anybody's got a scene on Youtube to show me to disprove it, I'm open.
To me the big issue with Ugly Betty is the arc with Betty and Daniel. Waiting to get them together is fine, but there needs to be more coming from Betty than puppy dog loyalty doesn't there? I could be wrong, but I believe during the run of the show, America Ferrara didn't want it to be about them getting together. I'm all for girl power, independent growth that doesn't require a man to be complete, but that doesn't mean you gotta ignore planting the seeds for the romance she can have when she's in a stronger place. When your lead actress (and for all I know Eric Mabeus as well) doesn't want Betty to hook up for awhile, if ever, with the guy you're expecting her to, shippers start to lose patience. The two actors obviously had chemistry, but it was applied in ways that made them dance perilously close to the friend zone. Being friends first is fine, but I didn't get much in the way of sexual tension out of them. I thought how Eric played that last couple of episodes and the final scene was really nice work. It really set them up for a future off screen. If Claire hadn't hinted about Daniel to Betty, we wouldn't have gotten much at all from Betty's side in terms of a reaction to the idea of the two of them together in a romantic relationship. If he hadn't gone to London, would Betty have seemed that traumatized? Didn't look like she was having a tough time of it being away from him in London. The pain of leaving him didn't seem to be about 'I'm leaving the man I might love' either.
The problem is Daniel's father hired Betty thinking she wouldn't be a temptation for Daniel because of her looks. He was supposed to turn that on its head and fall for her inner beauty. They saw the writing on the wall and got us to an end where it was implied that he finally made that leap, but I don't think America F. wanted it to seem like an attraction from Betty's end. That last hug didn't have much in the way of sexual tension in it on her part. I'm not sure the "I'm in love" leap has been made in Betty's head even at the close but the dinner he's taking her to will probably start that. I just wish the actress hadn't been so resistant. I think she could've made more of an effort to looked like Betty has 'those' kinds of feelings for Daniel and just didn't admit it to herself until the end.
"Do you think the world is crawling with Phyllises?"
For me it was a really sad, sudden and pretty shocking decline in quality that began during Season 2, and then that really kicked in, in season 3.
I loved this show in Season 1. Loved it. Never missed it. Bought the DVDs. It was just this wonderful moving balance of comedy and drama and pathos.
Then:
* The plot began to actively punish Betty for any step toward independence. (How dare she get an apartment? How dare she show up 5 minutes late to a family event -- despite her spending days and all afternoon helping her useless sister etc.?)
* The plot further made Betty out to be some kind of jerky villain for not moving back home ASAP to care for her (perfectly recovering and independent) father... then made her move back home. To QUEENS. I mean, come on. It's a subway ride away. The new apartment was such a cute step, and so important, the set was adorable... what happened? Then there is the ep with her Dad and she is actually treated like crap for missing a single phone call, when she works in publishing. Gah. Just totally unbelievable and gross.
* They turned Hilda into a raving beeyotch. Hilda was a handful in season 1 but her warmth tempered her attitude. But by the middle of Season 2 onward... shudder. I hated that woman. Hated. That. Woman.
* Betty's father? See above. A character who began as an interesting warm parental figure turned into a cloying, clingy, passive-aggressive creepy old man who played on Betty's feelings to get her to move back in even while having a fling with his hottie nurse. Just so gross.
* They expanded the Betty+Henry romance from star-crossed to just plain manufactured and silly (he leaves Betty to care for and parent another man's child, yet a season later he's being coy on Facebook and gallivanting all over the world? Come on!)
* They wrote Betty as an increasingly hopeless doormat from late Season 2 onward so that she was a tiresome unbelievable mixture of Mary Sue character (little miss perfect) and annoyingly infantile twit
* They turned Wilhelmina from a fascinating if closed-off, remote career-centric woman (who had a certain skewed loyalty and ethics system) into a cartoonish Cruella De Ville who even set up her own SISTER (not to mention endangered lives) in order to regain control. Just stupid.
* They then took the one fascinating plot element with Wilhelmina -- her romance with Connor -- and trashed that as well.
* They took Alexis from being one of the coolest and most unique characters on the show to being a cartoonish and wishy washy villain who was constantly doing things only because the plot demanded them.
* As others have commented, the show stopped acknowledging Betty's misfit looks and set her up with a revolving door of hotties. It just didn't work. (Not saying Betty wasn't beautiful inside. But with the braces? Her hooking up with the hottie musician then the hot billionaire's kid? Come on.)
I could go on and on. But I won't. (I know, you're welcome)
But seriously: This was a great show at its best. Great. Truly. But at its worst it was cartoonish trash. I can't believe the show I loved in Season 1, with all its nuance and great emotion, was the same show we suffered through in S3. At the end of that one, I had just had enough. I did jump back in a few times in S4 but I couldn't get over how horrible the writing was.
The only characters I thought had an interesting throughline consistently almost all the way through (at least as far as I got, into early S4) were Daniel and Mark. Daniel really does grow and in a believable way (Eric Mabius was great in this role), and Mark slowly becomes a sly friend to Betty in ways that I love. I also enjoyed Betty's nephew and his growth as well. But everyone else, gah. They even managed to make Judith Light superfluous and that's just not right. (The woman's character was awesome -- how did they screw that up so badly? Sigh.)
By S4, the show had ironically lost all those interesting grayscales -- the glimpses of good in Wilhelmina and others, the glimpses of bad even in Betty and Daniel -- and turned into a tiresome unfunny cartoon. It wasn't canceled because of an anti-gay agenda. It was canceled because it started out wonderful and ended up bad. It was a mercy killing.
Just my 2 cents.
I assume you refused to watch the show after it failed to live up to your standards.
shareThat's an odd way to put it, but yes. As I said in my post, I watched until early Season 4, but stopped at that point when I was disheartened and horrified at how bad the show had become.
I started out loving the show and still have affection for it. But I agree with the OP that it really took a wrong turn (or several) by its last season.
It's just my opinion -- everyone's mileage may vary.
It didn't go wrong. It was always very consistent quality wise. It just lost it's hype and getting Lindsay Lohan on the show didn't exactly help imo. It just made the show look desperate for viewers. But I honestly enjoyed all 85 episodes of it.
share
I envy you. For me, the terrible inconsistencies derailed the show. I could not enjoy it further and had to stop. At its best, it was a great show. Too bad the quality downslid so badly S3 and 4.
In reply to paramitch I understand what you are saying, but you obviously do not come from a latino family. Some of the problems you name, like going for independence, are typical in latino families especially those of us from 1st and generation in the us. Probably some will post and say that did not happen to them, but it's very typical. Our families are tight nit and the independence in the us causes a lot of problems that do not happen in many latin american countries. Our families do not understand "letting go" or "independence", the family is supposed to stick together
A villian for not moving back to take care of a family member? Happens more than you think. Clingy family? Absolutely. There's a lot of turmoil due to differences in culture and the usa independence. Playing on your conscience? Our parents are good at that.
I was born in the us 1st generation american, but live in mexico now. The things you name probably did not hit home with most in the us, but to families like they portrayed on ugly betty it sure did.
That being said I was mixed on the show as a whole.
Thank you for this -- it definitely gave me food for thought, and I liked hearing this alternative point of view. I'm not from a Latino family, so I agree that I don't have the perspective or experience to judge the storyline as accurate or not on this front.
And I think it's really interesting that you point out that the things that Betty went through with her family were very typical issues for adults leaving home in close-knit families. I wouldn't argue with that.
Where the show loses me, though, is that even if that is accurate, what the show did wrong for me was that it didn't just show us Hilda and Papi being judgmental and hypocritical of Betty's attempts at freedom, the show itself actually seemed to support them. It presented Betty's behavior as if she were in the wrong. There were ways the show could have presented this storyline and still actively shown us that Betty was in the right, or had nothing to apologize for, etc.
Instead, we had way too many righteous hypocritical scenes of Betty apologizing repeatedly to her father and sister (who was being especially nasty after Papi's heart attack), when she did nothing wrong. I was so turned off by the heart attack episode, where Betty spent visible hours helping her sister prepare, brought upscale goodies from work for the gift bags, and even spent hours helping Hilda prep. Then Hilda and Papi were total jerks because all that help kept Betty at her own job later than expected? It didn't work for me. It felt like bad writing that took the easy way out.
Honestly for me, this is where the show went badly wrong. The rest of the season was a steep downslide from here, from bitchy Hilda, to Papi's cliched (and completely inappropriate) romance with his nurse, to Betty regressing back further than ever before as a character.
In Seasons 1 and 2, her family visibly supported her dreams and goals -- it was one of the things I loved about the show. In Seasons 3 and 4, they treated those exact same dreams of Betty's as things she needed to apologize for. It was a jarring shift for me.
It wasn't canceled because of an anti-gay agenda. It was cancelled because it started out wonderful and ended up bad. It was a mercy killing.
I loved many of the episodes that dealt with homosexuality -- Mark was a wonderful character especially, and I'll always love the Patti LuPone episode at Betty's house, where his mother reacts so hatefully to the news that he's gay. It was heartbreaking and well-acted, and I loved the moment when Mark told Betty, "You'll always be my little chimichanga." It was the beginning of a real friendship for them.
I also loved the stories about Betty's nephew and thought many of those were beautifully done as well. Ultimately, since the show was always very accepting of its gay characters right off the bat, I really don't think it was canceled due to an anti-gay media agenda -- I just think it downslid in quality and in ratings.
I hated a lot of S3 and most of S4, but this show did have some beautiful moments, and at its best it was a lovely, big-hearted show.