Television Review
'Ugly Betty' is still a sight for sore eyes
Thursday, April 24th 2008, 4:00 AM
Betty (played by America Ferrera) is still searching for love.
UGLY BETTY. Thursday at 8. Ch. 7.
It will take more than a writers strike to slow down our Ugly Betty, who returns Thursday for the first of five new episodes that finish out her second season.
She's still tripping over her own feet, still getting sabotaged by some of the sharks around her and still picking herself up to plunge ahead.
America Ferrara's Betty is a throwback to those plucky Depression gals like Little Orphan Annie, the ones who can shrug off the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and save entire cities through sheer force of will.
Tonight's episode starts with a fantasy straight out of "The Wizard of Oz," as Betty dreams she and her boyfriend, Henry, have been transported to a romantic wonderland where they are alone and "Young at Heart" plays softly in the background.
Real life, of course, is somewhat more complicated than that. Especially Betty's life.
It's her 24th birthday and she thinks she and Henry are going away for a romantic weekend.
She should know better by now, which of course is the running theme of "Ugly Betty."
Not only does the weekend not happen as she imagines, but her scaled-down Plan B leads her to a moment of major public embarrassment that will make every viewer cringe in sympathy.
Yet somehow, once again, she dusts herself off - well, in this case the dust is more like mud - and carries on.
It helps that after her plans more or less go bust, she's still surrounded by people who care about her, and that's one of the heartwarming cores of the show. As long as you can rely on friends who have your back and your father will bake you cupcakes for any occasion, you have blessings to count.
Whatever happens to Betty, however lousy her cards or however humiliating some of her small moments may seem, she always stops just short of letting us feel sorry for her.
While Betty is lurching through her birthday tonight, other minidramas continue to erupt throughout the Meade publishing empire for which she works.
Vanessa Williams' Wilhemina, scheming to land the editor-in-chief position she feels she deserves, runs into an unexpected complication.
Claire Meade, wife of patriarch Bradford, is told by their daughter, who now gets to make some of these decisions, that Meade doesn't have the money to staff and publish Claire's new magazine for older women, Hot Flash.
Encouraged by plucky Betty, Claire hatches an intriguing plan to circumvent this little problem.
As with all good sitcoms, or life for that matter, the problems keep rolling out and compounding themselves.
Fortunately, we have Betty.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
