Even if that doesn’t happen, the success of “Ugly Betty” is heartening, not just because the show is a touching dramedy with a starmaking performance by America Ferrera at its center. It’s also a thrill because the show is chock-full of things that just aren’t done on TV - or usually aren’t done well.

Until Betty and her un-chic “Guadalajara” poncho swooped into the snooty offices of Meade Publishing, we rarely, if ever, saw clashes of class and culture like the one we’re seeing now between the highest echelons of Manhattan society and this lower-middle class resident of Queens - a clash in which, by the way, neither side is necessarily held up as the gold standard.

Maureen Ryan writes about the innovations and/or differences that ABC’s Ugly Betty brings to network television, along with the how and why they are a plus to network viewing.

via PopMatters