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What works: You know how every year there's one show that makes you wonder "how the hell did this get made?" Well, this is that show.

What doesn't: I was literally speechless after watching the pilot. I don't even know where to begin. I guess let's just start with Betty. Not content enough to just make her "plain," she's saddled with giant silver braces, giant Coke-bottle glasses and the worst fashion sense imaginable. It's literally like she's wearing a Halloween costume - which would be fine I suppose if this was some sort of campy, goofy show, but it's not. Everything is played extremely straight. And not only is she portrayed as this bull in the fashion world's china shop, she's a rampaging one at that. She doesn't just interrupt a meeting, she literally grinds it to a halt with her behavior. And it's this characterization that makes the "feel bad for her" aspect of the show a much harder pill to swallow - especially when she's more than willing to sell our her family (she misses her father's birthday to do one of Daniel's outrageous tasks) to keep her job. And that's not even factoring in the simple fact that she's not funny or all that charming. Her only redeeming quality is supposedly her intelligence, which is limited to writing a proposal and putting it in a high school report binder. Again, this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't played so absolutely straight faced. The strange part is there's some campy, goofy seeds around her - Wilhelmina's obsession with being young is played up comically as is the outrageousness of Gershon's character. Unfortunately they don't spill over into the central plot. Overall, I'm just... wow, words escape me.

The challenges ahead: Does ABC really think this show will create any sort of beachhead on Friday nights?

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