At some point during the second season of "Ugly Betty," creator-executive producer Silvio Horta felt the show's operatic shenanigans had gotten out of control. A little too telenovela, if you will.
"There was one episode where Betty was talking to a ghost in a fridge, there was this dwarf, and Betty and Daniel were trying to break someone out of rehab," he says. "And I just thought, 'Oh, my God, what are we doing?' "
An ugly-duckling story set in the fabulous, fantastical world of fashion journalism, "Ugly Betty" was the surprise success of ABC's 2006-07 fall lineup. In its Thursday night slot, the show won an Emmy for star America Ferrera, became a ratings boon for the network, and created buzz for scaling new melodramatic heights week after week -- a transgender sibling returned from the dead, dark corporate secrets (including a hidden "love dungeon") infested the workplace, and one evil baby mama in Season 1 alone.
But the upkeep of the multiple story lines soon became overwhelming, and Horta and ABC executives felt as though "Ugly Betty's" original conceit -- a Queens, N.Y., girl with journalism dreams works her way up from the bottom at cutthroat fashion-mag Mode -- had been lost in all the intrigue. Viewership began to slip.
"It felt like we were letting the fun take over and maybe kind of losing the soul of it," said Horta of an epiphany that occurred during last season's writers strike. The show needed to get "a little more real" and "a little more relatable" fast, he remembered thinking.
Now in its third season, the crackling dialogue remains -- Mode's cold-hearted creative director Wilhelmina on Betty's outfit: "That's hideous. Like driving through Ohio" -- but what of the show's signature outrageousness?
Things have gotten decidedly more tame. The magazine was hit by the recession. Betty's boss, Daniel, once an unrepentant playboy, and his rival Wilhelmina put their squabbling aside to pursue serious relationships. And while Betty has advanced her career by participating in YETI (Young Editors Training Initiative), her love life has been rather straightforward.
--
Fan dissension
Did the creative shift help? The show is averaging 8.7 million viewers, off 15% from the second season, and the mainstreaming has caused some vocal fans to fall out of love. Television Without Pity blogger Jacob, a once die-hard fan, quit writing about the show halfway through this season, and the Fug Girls have publicly pleaded for writers to "bring back the soapy tone" that made "Ugly Betty" unique in the first place.
