Premiere Watch '07: Ugly Betty

Starting off the Betty review with some highlight bullets:

• The telenovela sequence in the beginning was funny.
• Justin looks much more than three weeks older.
• I like Yoga: "Everyone thinks I'm the maid. Or Gayle King."
• Hmm, I could have done without the oppressive Victoria Secret product placement that never seemed to end.
• Um, I think that Amanda would prefer not to be related to her parents. They're creepy :-)
• Eeeew, Amanda did sleep with Daniel! That totally didn't even occur to me when Mark first suggested that Bradford is her dad. Gross! I love that Amanda pointed out: "That's the kind of dirty that doesn't wash clean." Poor girl.
• Santos: "Man, the hooker had her baby kidnapped and now she has Tetanus? That's a bad Monday."
• "Dadford." Ha!
• Wilhelmina: "N. I don't have the energy to say 'no' anymore."
• Wilhelmina: "Is it just me, or does anyone else see the little fashion elf?"
• Wow, Willy's too smart. She didn't fall for Claire ploy for a second. Wilhelmina should hang out with Patty Hewes--the two of them would take over the world!
• Mark: "You? I may never be able to watch The Sound of Music again!"
• Oops. Alex(is) doesn't remember (s)he's a girl now. That's interesting.
• Aww, Santos is so hot; why does he have to be the one who is dead?
• Henry looks pretty good for having just taken the bus all the way from Arizona to NYC.

Good episode. Much better in my opinion than the overly dramatic Season 1 finale. I liked the Mark/Amanda stuff, and any time Wilhelmina and Justin get together is awesome. Also, Daniel seems to be making some solid progress, which is good.

But, wow, poor Santos. The scene where it is confirmed (I already had it figured out) that he's actually dead and Hilda's daydreaming was heartbreaking. Definitely the saddest moment I've seen on TV in a while. Poor Hilda. She and Santos finally got it together and now look what's happened.

What bothered me was that in the scene where Betty was comforting Hilda, she was seemingly equating Hilda's loss of Santos with her "loss" of Henry. Not the same, Betty. Hilda has a kid with Santos and was just about to marry him. You flirted with Henry occasionally at work. Santos was brutally killed in a robbery. Henry moved away with his pregnant girlfriend. Betty has reason to be sad, but her situation is no where near as tragic as Hilda's. Move on, babe.

Speaking of moving on, didn't it seem weird that Justin appeared to be totally over the death of his father after only three weeks? I know they weren't super close, but still. He was far more upset about the craft projects at his summer camp than he was about he dead father.

Premiere Rating: 7.5 / 10