SFist Watches: TV Tonight

No new premieres tonight, so let us take this opportunity to speak of a series we weren't able to get to last week: "Ugly Betty." As you might have heard by now, it's based on a very popular telenovela, and produced by Salma Hayek, no stranger to telenovelas herself. We watched the pilot, and like most viewers, we were pretty much enchanted. The show has a weird power. It's a little too goofy, a little too silly, and a little too cheesy, but somehow when you put it all together, it works.

America Ferrera is the Betty of the title, and while she's not exactly ugly, her braces, glasses, and total lack of fashion sense don't fit in well with her job as an assistant to the editor of a high-fashion magazine. How she got the job, and why she keeps it, is the main storyline in the pilot, which you can watch online for free at ABC. We understand that 8 p.m. on Thursdays is a pretty crowded hour of television, and we really wish the network had kept it's original plan to air the show on Fridays, but with ABC offering free streaming video on their site, there's really no reason to miss out on "Betty."