7 Reasons Why ‘Ugly Betty’ Spirals Toward Ugly Fate

Once promising, Ugly Betty these days is anything but. Sometime this past year, the bubbly soap ran out of perk. It stalled on ideas and oddly enough, continued to refuse its anti-heroine the make-over the character probably would've given herself eventually. Y'know, since she works at Mode, a fictional equivalent of Vogue. Yes, we get it, exec producer Silvio Horta. Betty might, like a TLC song, be unpretty. But she has enough inner beauty to light up the darkest alleys of the Bronx. But we also know America Ferrera's beauty is nearly omnipresent, and three years at not-Vogue would've taught her character how to best use a flat-iron. And so now, because the monkeys behind the scenes failed some 100-level classes in plot construction, Betty's being shuttled off to Friday nights this fall, where it will suffer, Vanessa Williams-willing, a quick and painless cancellation. Seven reasons why Ugly Betty will be sputtering towards its end, after the jump.

1. Betty’s braces. As covered above, her orthodontic gear was cute and kitschy for the show’s outing. Then it just became plain redundant and exemplary of how, in three years of working at an upscale fashion magazine and bailing out her boss, Betty has still, at the end of the day, failed to claw her way up the masthead by any measure.

2. A lack of upward mobility. Through the three years this soap’s occupied Thursday nights on ABC, Betty has been privy to a lot of scandal in the lives of her bosses—and she remains an editorial assistant with no prospect of leveraging what gossip she knows. Inner beauty blah blah blah, but Betty’s also vigilant about being her own boss—and the latter would easily trump the former.

3. Getting rid of the hot chick. Rebecca Romijn’s “tranny fierceness” is a dubious feat for network TV. On one hand, Romijn assures repeat viewership from some male demographic that execs still covet for reasons unknown to anyone. And other the other hand, she was one of the most fully-realized transgender characters to surface in primetime. She was win-win. And then she was sent off to France to die a slow, painful death in TV limbo.

4. Getting rid of Ashley Jensen. Having cut her comedic teeth on Extras, it’s no surprise that she’s the only consistently charming and funny character to pass through Mode’s offices.

5. Thawing Vanessa Williams. At the serial’s outset, Williams’ Wilhemina Slater is a mythical snow queen, turning underlings to ice with a casual glare. Then, everyone decided she needed a baby—not to shoehorn her way into the publication empire, but to display her motherhood. And to appear relatable, and so her character careened straight into banality.

6. Betty’s romantic carousel. Surprise! Every above-average man that Betty meets falls in love with her! Surprise! Every above-average man Betty falls in love with is crudely written out of the show, perhaps to reappear in time for the finale! Surprise!

7. Dead trees in the time of TV. But here’s the primary sticking point why a television show about the magazine industry fails when speculation into the media’s future is at an all-time high. When they dealt with the idea of a media bailout, the exploration was half-assed. Then those at the top pulled back their chests and revealed hearts of gold, deciding to sell off their personal effects in order to keep the entire Mode staff on board. Consider the The New York Times, which would sooner charge subscribers a small fortune than find the Sulzbergers selling off their claw-foot bathtubs. In all honesty, Betty would be out of the Mode offices by now—but let’s save that for the series finale.