I'm very happy (and ...
Vanessa Williams and Michael Urie, Ugly Betty
Question: I'm very happy (and surprised) about
Ugly Betty's move from Friday to Thursday nights. I'm a huge fan of
America Ferrera and the original Spanish series, so I'm throwing my full support into this show. Who knows, maybe I'll even stick around and catch
Grey's Anatomy afterwards. Thanks for the great column, Matt!
Answer: You're welcome, but if you really want to thank me for something, stay tuned for
Grey's. You won't regret it. And if enough people follow your lead, ABC will feel justified in making this move, which I praised in the
Dispatch I filed after learning of the time switch from the dead zone of Fridays at 8 pm/ET to the competitive hotbed of Thursdays at 8. On paper (or, I guess, on computer screen),
Ugly Betty looks like a hard sell, but maybe there's something about this premise that will strike a chord in the U.S. audience the way it has in other cultures. We can only hope. If it holds its own and delivers at least some audience to
Grey's (which will probably be a strong No. 2 against
CSI), then it will look like a triumph.
For Shannon, who asked about Betty going on hiatus, that was just a one-week production shutdown for the show to get its creative bearings. As a Variety story noted, this isn't that uncommon. Grey's Anatomy did the same thing, and look how that turned out.
