FIVE favorite commercials from this year

An unranked list:

1. Times Square flash mob for "Star Wars: The Old Republic"
I think flash mobs are starting to get passé, untrendy, and cosplay is easy to mock, but I still really like how this was put together.  Unmasked Darth Vader is much more horrifying that masked Darth Vader, and seeing him walk out into Times Square must've been a truly singular experience even for the jaded New Yorker (though I doubt that they'd bother to go to this busy tourist hotspot).  And I love how the people who seemed to be bystanders took out their own lightsabers and enacted countless more duels between good and evil.  Which side would I choose?  It'd be more fun to be the bad guys but, really, I'd have to follow my heart and fight for the Rebel Alliance.

2.  Super Bowl Volkswagon commercial
Of course I have to include this adorable ad.  So simple and effective even though there are no lines spoken and the commercial only highlights a single feature of the car, albeit a supercool feature.  I was slightly crestfallen when I found out that the child actor inside the costume had never even seen Star Wars prior to filming the commercial (!), but I think that goes to show that this commercial still does a good job telling a story.

3.  Kristen Schaal's commercials for the Sony Xperia PLAY
I already wrote a post on my favorite of the series because I didn't think I'd end up making a list of a bunch of my fav commercials.  Again, I like these commercials because they're funny and do a good job selling both the actor and the product.

4.  New Era Rivalry commercials featuring Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski
I think the first commercial is my favorite but they've all made me laugh.  New Era made a smart move in casting these two actors and using them as representatives of their respective baseball teams.  I wonder if the other 48 states are tired of hearing about the Red Sox vs. Yankees rivalry, but it still lives on and continues to be a source of frustration and satire. Here are my thoughts on the second, third, fourth, fifth, and last commercials from this series.

5.  Promo for season 3 of the NBC's "Community"
I watched all of the episodes from season 3 at leats twice in preparation for the fall premiere and was not disappointed with any of the episodes.  This show is so wildly creative and packed with pop culture references and bumps up against the fourth wall and pushes boundaries in unexpected ways, and seeing all those descriptors written out it's no wonder that this show hasn't been a ratings darling and has been cancelled postponed indefinitely.  All shows come to an end (well, maybe not Doctor Who) but it's much too soon for Community to end.  It's poignant to look back at this promo and see just the tip of what this third season has given.  How many other shows feature multiple timelines, a man with an elephant ivory toupee, shadow puppets, an epic Japanimation foosball showdown, and a Doctor Who parody in the same season?

One of my favorite commercials from this year

Kristen Schaal!  She's moving on up and out of the "oh hey it's that chick" category of actresses, I think.  She's been on the Daily Show, Flight of the Conchords,  and in an  episode of How I Met Your Mother; this year she did a smashing job at hosting the Writer's Guild Awards (well, from what I can tell from this opening monologue and song-and-dance number), she did these commercials, AND she scored what looks like a recurring guest role on 30 Rock (named Hazel Whatshername).

Out of the many commercials shot for the Sony Xperia PLAY, this one is my favorite:

Hehe, eyeballs. It's wonderfully bizarre and has that wonderfully weird juxtaposition of using a mobile device for looking at cat pictures and for fighting epic battles in full Xena battle regalia.  And it has no profanity in it, whereas most of the other ones do.  I’m not against profanity as a whole, and I think it’s used well in the other ads, really highlighting the contrast between her charming, girly voice and her intensely violent gamer side. Wonderful.

Schaal on the Daily Show

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Hosting the WGAs

English pronunciation

I find it hilarious that there are different types of spoken English language (American, The Queen's, Australian) and that there are distinct accents within those regions. So many words that are pronounced differently, and sometimes it's not even a regional thing so much as a personal tendency based off how one is raised.  What do I mean?

Take the word "new".  Do you say it as "nyew" or "nooh"?  I think I use the former for "New England" and the latter when I say "New York".  It's just too busy for my lazy tongue to go back and make two consecutive "y" sounds.

Or the word "aunt".  Should a someone teaching English abroad tell his/her students to say it as "ant" or "ont"?  Answer: both.  But there's no real rhyme or reason to which one to use.  I have a friend with an Ant Mary and Ont Michelle.  Why? Well, because.

Aaand the word that got me thinking about this topic is bagel.  Duh, you might say, it's pronounced "bay-gull".  Well, that's what I think is right, too.  I had never heard it said any other way until this:

This almost seems like some made-up pronunciation used for comic effect, right? Well, actually (yes, I'm pushing the bridge of my glasses further up my nose as I write this), creator Dan Harmon actually mentions in the commentary track for this episode that he says "bagel" weirdly.  The way he says it is more like "baegle", a cross between the regular version and Britta's version.  And he says it's not a regional funny Wisconsin thing.

And one last thing: pronunciation.  Some people say it verbatim, others say "pro-noun-ciation".  Not a regional or national thing, I think.  Curious, all the same

Everyone loves a good story(teller)

In Peter Pan, Wendy is highly regarded by everyone-- Peter, the Lost Boys, all the pirates-- for her storytelling abilities.  In that sense she's reminiscent of Scheherazade, the woman who had to keep telling stories to entertain the king, lest he get bored and decide to kill her.  In both cases, being a storyteller is related to being female; to me this is special/strange because most of the prominent storytellers I can think of are all male.  When I think of the word griot, a storyteller who passes on oral traditions, I see an African male.  I think of Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grimm, Walt Disney...

Life is just a series of stories, some interesting and some not.  In his appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon actor Patton Oswalt explained his take on being an actor:

Basically, it's great to earn money, but it's great(er) to have a memorable experience that over time will become an anecdote to relate at a dinner party or some other social event.  I feel the same way, and that sometimes it's worth some present-day discomfort that can be crafted to yield the laffs in the future.

Batman vs. Sherlock Holmes

Who would win?

image source

Batman/Bruce Wayne and Sherlock Holmes have much in common: they are both incredibly smart, athletic, and charming men who solve and fight crime.  To me it's interesting to note that in the latest movie adaptations of these characters, the former is an American comic book character played by Britain-born Christian Bale, and the latter is the second-most famous male British character (after Harry Potter, duh*) and played by the American Robert Downey Jr.  Both are my heroes, and I'm not the first person to compare and contrast them.  The following is just my own take on the debate, based on several categories:

In terms of physicality the characters are very well matched.  Had he so desired, Sherlock could've become a boxer and made a career out of it.  He's 6' 0" and has the capacity to be very energetic and athletic, but he has the proclivity-- and capacity-- to solve crimes without ever leaving the comforts of home at 221B Baker Street.  Batman, on the other hand, is always on call and, uh, gets into lots of fights with criminals.  He actively fights them in addition to solving and preventing past and future crime.  Due to the nature of Bruce Wayne's daily (or should I say nightly?) life, I think he'd be the one in better shape and more likely to win if pitted against Sherlock.

When it comes to a battle of wits: never bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

I kid.  I think neither men are even remotely Sicilian anyway. But I'd put money on Sherlock winning this round.  Batman is smart but he gets a lot of help thanks to the technology and information he has at his fingertips.  But Sherlock's brain is like a computer, and there's no wasted space in there because every iota of information stored is useful and important.  He's literally written the book on hundreds of types of cigar and pipe ash so that one may be able to figure out crucial information about the person who smoked and left the ash behind.  Sherlock's mind is purely logical and sharp as a tack, capable of deducing in the blink of an eye what Bruce Wayne's computers would take a few seconds to figure out. 

Okay, so both have brains-- good brains.  But what good are brains if you can't get women? I kid.  But that conveniently brings me to the matter of their skillz with the ladiez.  In this category the win goes to Bruce Wayne.  Sherlock is good looking and knows how to turn on the charm when it comes to women-- in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton he woos a maid and proposes to her within a week of meeting each other and she accepts him.  But he only wooed her in order to get information about the man she works for and the layout of his mansion.  If he wanted to, he could get a wife, but women don't interest him.  He's heterosexual, but only slight; he's mostly asexual and uninterested in the female sex and domestic life as it was in his time.  He seems to have had a complicated relationship with Irene Adler, who is the one woman named as a former love interest, but she seems to be mentioned only to prove that Sherlock is human.  Irene Adler was kind of like his Catwoman, except more mysterious and less tortured.


Batman/Bruce Wayne: 2
Sherlock Holmes: 1
But this is only beginning...


*I don't have any research to back this up, but I think that the boy wizard has eclipsed the singular detective.

Some cool award acceptance speeches

I came across this acceptance speech when looking for some Ken Jeong stand up for yesterdays video:

This is one of my favorite award acceptance speeches because it suits the MTV movie awards: it's profane but turns out very serious in the end..  There's nothing like an honest, hilarious, and heartfelt display of emotion (bonus point to me for using three adjectives that start with the letter h!)

Another one I like: Lin Manuel Miranda's for the Tony Awards, for In the Heights.

My favorite part is when he flashes the Puerto Rican flag.

Aaaan lastly is the first bit that pops in my mind when I hear the phrase "classy, humble acceptance speech"

embed disabled.  video available here: http://youtu.be/qx8yLvb0gZM
I can't say enough good things about this movie and its soundtrack.  Listen to it.  Love it. Share it.  If anything, give it a try because the musicians who are behind it are so genuinely talented. Make art!

Beginnings and adaptations

It's strange to think that about a year ago I was mourning the beginning of the end of one beloved book-to-movie adaptation (the imminent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I), and today I am looking forward to the beginning of the beginning of another one, as the Hunger Games trailer was officially released today.

A year ago I was in a tizzy about HP7.1 and avidly watching any and all retrospective video clips of the series as a whole.  My favorite is this one, with Tom Felton waxing nostalgic over past props:

  I think I reread the book, or at least revisited my favorite scenes and prayed that they'd be faithfully reinterpreted and edited to be properly cinematic and dramatic.  And the movie did not disappoint.

This trailer has me excited, as it hits all the right notes and right scenes.  There is a palpable ease between Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss and Liam Hemsworth's Gale, as there should be because in the book they are very close friends.  It was a solid trailer but only one moment made me almost choke on my yogurt, and that was the very last clip with all the kids rushing towards something (the Cornucopia).  There's still about five months before the movie hits theaters, and I remain optimistic about it.

This one time during a show...

There is no such thing as a perfect show.  Whether the oops happens on stage, behind it, or in the pit, it just happens.  Such is life.

One time, in the sixth show of a ten-show run, one of the stage hands or stage managers was absent, and the conductor told us in the pit orchestra that one of the transitions might take some extra time and that we'd have to repeat short scene change music.  So, when the time came, we all repeated the sequence.  After playing it twice the conductor made small circles in the air with his hand to indicated to keep playing.  And so we did.  For maybe 2 minutes, repeating the scene change music about 20 times.

This scene change music was obnoxiously cheery, and at first I couldn't stop giggling at the fact that we were playing it over and over again.  Eventually my midsection was sore from trying to stifle myself and I started to get concerned: what was happening backstage that was causing this delay? The audience, luckily, overcame its initial confusion and started to clap along to the music as it continued on and on...and when the lights finally were raised to reveal the new set, they applauded and cheered (with joy? with relief?).  The actor who walked onto that scene ad libbed the line, "It's funny, I've had this song stuck in my head...".  I don't know whose burst of laughter was greater, the audience's or the pit orchestra's.  It made us feel relieved and gave us a chance to make some audible noise that came from ourselves and not our instruments.

We learned during intermission that, in addition to being a man down, a piece of the scenery got stuck or hooked to one of the fly's that was being lifted up, and the delay was mostly due to trying not to have one or the other fly come crashing down onto the stage.  Eventually gravity helped to wiggle the stuck piece off and bring down the correct scenery for the next scene.

Most of the time the mistake comes in the form of a missed cue or forgotten line or mic issue, and these mistakes happen so frequently as to be almost unremarkable, forgettable.  But this is one instance I will never forget.

Adaptation



Gah OMG it's just like in the book yay asjdflj;dflwj!!!!111

(image source)

I have been fervently following the progress of the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games ever since I finished the series earlier this year.  I was cautiously optimistic about it and with every little trickle of information-- casting information, the teaser trailer, character posters-- I feel more relieved and less anxious that it'll all build up to a disappointing finish.  My main concern is how the intense interior monologue of protagonist Katniss Everdeen will translate; the books are all written in first person and use present tense, which creates a lot of suspense and makes every action and thought heightened and more immediate, and much of the story happens in flashbacks to Katniss' past.  The most logical way to approach this is to use voice-over, and the teaser trailer features just that.  I just hope that there will be judicious use of voice-over and narration.

I'm forced to think back to the walk-off scene from Zoolander, and what David Bowie says: "First model walks; second model duplicates, then elaborates."  This is how I feel about adaptations.  While I love to watch movie scenes that are completely peeled from the original source material, certain changes need to be made to accomodate the different storytelling medium and enhance the experience.

NOT John Krasinski's ringtone

This is not the ringtone that John Kransinski has in the New Era commercials but it's the first tune I could think of that even begins to compare.  The notes are very similar-- both go do-re-mi-do-la-- but the rhyme of the music is decidedly different.  I know this song because I watched "The Boondock Saints", and the only other similar music I own is the Riverdance soundtrack, which features more, well, dancey music.

These ads feature John Krasinski's phone rigning:
at the 0:11 mark


again, at the 0:11 mark


at 1:09

Commercial FTW!

Instead of typing "blogger" to get here I almost typed "bladder".  You'll see why in a minute:


This is my favorite of all these commercials.  Let me count the ways, yes?
1) Finally they show the two protagonists sitting down and actually watching a Sox-Yankees game together, and they act and react just as you'd expect. 
2)  And finally they show a Yankees cap (not that I was complaining or anything) and it's still not that close to Mr. Baldwin's head, but no matter.
3)  Great escalating trash talk that actually gets personal and makes reference to the actors' respective personas: John Krasinski is actually married (to Emily Blunt, who we never see and hasn't been referenced before), and Alec Baldwin has brothers with wildly divergent personal and political perspectives.
4)  Peeing your pants: it happens when you don't wanna miss a thing.
5)  My suspicions are pretty much confirmed: they put up these videos whenever there's a Sox-Yankees series going on.  For the record I think that whenever the Sox win in these videos they lose in real life.
6)  I relate to Alec Baldwin's unfounded superstition that doing something like leaving the room to go pee will jinx my sports team and cause them to lose.

Scarred my childhood

These are some of the movies that terrified me as a child:

ANACONDA

the whole thing.  Now it seems absurd.  Owen Wilson was in it?! And first time seeing J.Lo.  Jon Voight is a much better actor thant to have to be in that movies, but has to make a living.  It was so terrifying to me, yet I couldn’t look away.  I remember sweating while watching the movie and my cousins sort of teasing me for it, that I had gotten so into it.  Shortly afterwards, when talking about it with a friend it became less frightening and more of an interesting anecdote, esp. the part where the snake swims past the camera and skeleton bulges out of the body, the view accompanied by dramatic music.

The Empire Strikes Back

Luke gets his hand cut off; also blends in my mind with Darth Vader getting his mask taken off.  When I first heard of the phrase “back of the mind” that hand slicing scene comes to mind; it was years before I realized that right after that came the famous (and misquoted) line “No, I am your father” because that scene was so traumatizing and when I thought of the scaries thing I had ever seen it came to mind.  Now Star Wars V is easily one of my fav. movies.

Nightmare before Christmas

Don’t remember much except that I was terrified.  Yes, it is a much beloved movie but to this day I still have a kneejerk queasiness.  I should see it again, I know.  I just couldn’t handle the humorous-macabre style of the animation and songs and visual effects.

ET

A little bit.  I remember eating rice krispie treats while watching this movie for some reason.  I cried at the end, but some scenes are really terrifying—i.e. when ET has technically died and is mummified and chalky?!

Raiders of the Lost ark

End scene when everyone melts except Indiana Jones and Marion.  Temple of Doom not as much because I saw it when older and could stomach it better.

Newsies!

Newsies came out in the early nineties and was a box office flop a placed a moratorium on live-action Disney musicals for almost two decades.  Curiously enough, director Kenny Ortega was the one responsible for this movie and the seminal Disney Channel hit that made musicals "cool" (read: profitable) again.  Yes, I'm referring to the High School Musical trilogy, which bears the singular accomplishment of having its first two movies broadcast on television and then make the leap to the big screen with the release of the third and final film (High School Musical 3: Senior Year) in theaters.

I love Newsies.  I didn't see it as a kid but I've probably seen it enough times to make up for the time that I never saw the move, let alone know that it existed.  This movie is responsible for:
1) reigniting my love of theater
2) getting me to really love movies and movie trivia
3) my slight obsession with Christian Bale
(I'm not a fan of the trailer but it's the only one I could find)


Newsies was never converted into a live theater version in the way of Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King but that didn't stop hundreds of schools and musical camps from putting on shows of this story.  This week the official Alan Menken-approved musical production of Newsies will be presented to the world, and from the few clips I've found of it I am optimistic and excited to see how it goes and gets reviewed.  Understandably there are some changes to the plot, characters, songs, but the heart of the story seems intact.  Unlike the two aforementioned film-to-theater adaptations, this production isn't set to show on Broadway but in a theater in New Jersey.  Oh, if only I muster the time and money to go down and see this production...

Commercial analysis: Tresor Midnight Rose

My thoughts on the following perfume commercial:

- Emma Watson looks darling, gamine.  In other news, grass is green.
- As with most (all?) perfume commercials, this one essentially is a silent film, an art-y short story in video form.  It's cute, a little mysterious, and (thankfully) not as explicitly sexy (or sexxxyyyy) as perfume commercials go.  There's not that much tension in the storytelling, which is why I am indifferent to this commercial.  It's not too hard to figure out that she "accidentally" left this hat and will reunite with it through him, etc.  It's not that mysterious.
- But this ad actually does a good job at getting me interested in the perfume.  To me, the company that produces this perfume, Lancome, is a rich housewife's brand; it's not youthful like Emma Watson.  Is the scent Tresor Midnight Rose therefore a lighter and more youthful scent, perhaps not so heavy and musky as befitting a woman of a certain age?  I wonder, and actually I will keep this in mind the next time I walk through the Macy's beauty department
- I was wondering what book Emma Watson's character asked the bookstore clerk to fetch, and at 0:47 the title is briefly shown.  It's rather blurry but I'm pretty sure that the cover reads "Midnight Rose".  No author byline is shown.  The first hit of the online search "midnight rose book" revealed that there is indeed a book by that name but it does not have the same cover.  Quelle suprise, it's a harlequin book and one of the love interests is a vampire.
- This commercial is over a minute long; many perfume commercials get cut down to the regular TV commercial length of 30 or 60 seconds.  I think this commercial would be more effective if it were well-edited down to that amount of time.  Sometimes cutting a commercial down renders it confusing, as in the case of this commercial:
edited version

full length version

Concluding thoughts: Not a very engaging commercial, esp. as perfume ads go.  But not a complete waste of 105 seconds.  I liked the purple tint, and intend to look into this scent.

I can't help but include here my favorite (and quite absurd) perfume commercial so far:
Oh, actually this perfume doesn't exist.

Eyebrows!

Eyebrows-- did you raise them when you read the title of this blog post, wondering what I could possible have to say about eyebrows?  Or did they furrow, perhaps? Or maybe you just chuckled, probably inwardly, and let your eyeballs express your emotion for you by letting them roll.  Yes: eyebrows.  They are important.

Eyes may be the windows to the soul, but the eyebrows frame the eyes and are important, too, because:
- they work in concert with the eyes to express various emotions
- they help stop sweat from rolling directly down the forehead and into the eyeballs (usually)
- they are defining feature in the landscape of a face.  Groucho Marx and Brooke Shields are just two people (the first names I could instantly draw from memory) who are known in part for their distinct brows.  In the early days of the Obama administration, FLOTUS Michelle Obama was perceived has having "angry-looking eyebrows" for the way they were (and are?) very arched; I think that since then her eyebrows are not as arched or curved or sloping ( I can't figure out the most apt adjective so just choose one of those and pretend I got it right in one go).

Going back to the first listed point: considered the plasticine character Gromit, of the many "Wallace and Gromit" films, short and feature-length.  He doesn't speak at all but conveys exactly how he feels through the use of his motions, especially with his brow (singular).  Just look here:



Fantastic, yeah?  The Power of the Brow!  Often you hear or read about people raving about a celebrity's gorgeous eyes or full lips or curvaceous body but less often is there admiration given to eyebrows.  I don't regularly wear make-up but recently I've been filling in my eyebrows before going out.  Technically that counts as make-up, doesn't it... but it doesn't look like I'm wearing anything on my face (apart from my glasses, of course).  My eyebrow hairs are dark but they are sparse, so I draw short strokes wherever there are balder patches; to me the end result is noticeable and improves the balance of my face, but I wonder how much a difference it seems to other people.  It's a subtle effect, but I like the way it looks when I take the time to do it and do it properly.  I can't be bothered to alter any other facial feature on a daily basis but I do feel like it's worth giving my eyebrows some special attention, important as they are.

On a 9/11 musical, sort of.

In an earlier post I professed my love for the UK television program "Skins".  I've only seen the first two of three seasons; the last season features an almost entirely different cast.  Anyway, the second episode of the second season features a 9/11 musical, with the cast occupying various roles on and off stage. 

I think there was an off- Broadway or off off-Broadway musical on the same topic, titled "Clear Blue Tuesday" or something of the sort.  I believe that the musical in this show is called "Osama: The Musical!" (or, again, something of the sort).  Oh, the show is available to view on Hulu. I haven't the time or energy to rewatch it but I clearly remember how incredibly tasteless it was...and that was sort of the point.  In the show, the school's director wrote the musical himself, and though he is British he claims that he's a New Yorker at heart.  Yeah, right.  One of the lines from the main song is "Then came the day Osama blew us away/oh yes he blew us away", and in the opening number "hey girl" is made to rhyme with "bagel" (it works better if you try on a British-ish accent).  Like I said it's incredibly tasteless, tactless, and therefore hilarious in a sort of twisted way.  Don't get me wrong, I find little humor in the events of that day, it was devastating to say the least.  The musical as produced in this show is deliberately cartoonish and exhibits the worst of all the cliches and hallmarks of cheesy jazz-hands Broadway musicals, and that is what makes it darkly, bitingly funny.  It's nevertheless haunting, though, to remember the events of that day, even in this setting.

I bring this up because September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday in the second full week of the month, just like today.  But today was mostly overcast.

I'm thinking of a book...

I’m thinking of a popular book, one that was recently adapted into a movie.  It is set in the South around the 60’s and features a young white female protagonist who forms a strong and loving relationship with older black females.  No, it’s not The Help; I’m referring to The Secret Life of Bees.

The Return of... (more commercials)

Alec Baldwin's squeaky shoes!

Oh, the lengths people go to annoy other people...I should know, actually, because I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.

Still funny: jokes about how Alec Baldwin is rich and John Krasinski is not (as rich as Alec Baldwin, obviously, if he didn't know what '912' was).

Winner of this round: Alec Baldwin. He may have burnt precious Red Sox tickets and his apartment building, but he has no regrets and has made John Krasinski suffer (or probably will) from having to move into said Red Sox fan's home. 

According to Steve, sort of.

I was going to make this a post on "Steve-isms"; or, things that the character Steve from Coupling says.  I started making a list when I realized two things:
1) someone else out there on the internet made a much better, comprehensive list
2) Steveisms are funny because they're sexist, and his character is such a stereotypical heterosexual man.  He's the most sensitive of the three male leads but that doesn't mean he says or does infuriating things.

Examples:
from Season 1, Episode 4: The 4 Pillars of the Male Heterosexual Psyche:
1. Naked women
2. Stockings
3. Lesbians
4. Sean Connery best as James Bond

"When man invented fire, he didn't say, "Hey, let's cook"; he said "Great! Now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!"

from Season 2, Episode 9: 3 things all men should know
1. You're never going to be famous
2. You're fatter than you think
3. They (women) don't keep wearing stockings

I still like the show and feel that it's a solid sitcom, but it disturbs me that it took me so long to notice just how sexist the characters can be.  Each of the six leads represent different stereotypes based on gender but they're all still pretty homophobic, classist, sexist, and they're all white.  I don't feel like I'll have to turn my brain off to watch this show but I've come to realize why I find some things funny and accepted that some jokes are funny because they're sexist, etc.

Thoughts on...Ugly Betty

This show came out in fall 2006 and ended(/was cancelled?) after 4 seasons.  I heard many positive reviews on this show, and the actress who portrayed the eponymous Ugly Betty even won an Emmy for the role.  But during its run I was only tepidly interested and only watched maybe a few accidental clips while flipping through to other channels.  A week or so ago I went to watch TV to bore myself to sleep and an episode from the beginning of the first season was on and I thought, what the hey, I'll watch it.  And I liked it.

Fast forward to now: I just finished watching the entire first season on Hulu.  I'm kind of surprised that this show even made it to air; it deals with lots of Important Sociological Issues but in a very soapy, ABC hour-long comedy kind of way, with its slight fantasy-silly tone and caricatures of characters who you love to love and love to hate.  Some of the issues that the show comments on (in more than one episode):
- first-generation Latino immigrant family
- issues with immigration laws/citizenship
- difficulty of being a single parent
- sexual harrassment
- difficulty of being a gay child
- gay/straight men passing as the other sexual identity to be accepted by certain people
- the ridiculous beauty standards set for women, and the efforts women make to become beautiful (incl. hair, makeup, fashion)
- alcoholism
- gender modification through surgery/transgender issues/gender identity
- sibling rivalry
- workplace relations/the work family

Okay, so a lot of these topics are ones that are often found it soap operas.  Actually, this show was adapted from the Mexican soap opera Betty La Fea (Betty the Ugly), and a good deal of the episodes in the first half of this series featured a fake Spanish-language soap opera, complete with ridiculous plot twists and spontaneous make-out sessions between reformed pastors and the like.  Ugly Betty works because it embraces the silliness and makes every character quirk comically enormous-- but adjusts the goofiness according to the seriousness of the situation. I'm not deeply invested in any of the characters beside Betty and I still find the show a bit more twee than the comedies I tend to enjoy, but I really like Betty and have to hand it to actors Becki Newton and Michael Urie for having great chemistry and comedic timing.  I have the second season in my bag and can't wait to dig into it this weekend.