THE TV COLUMN: Look for Ugly Betty to bloom on her new night

By Michael Storey

Posted: October 8, 2009 at 3:53 a.m.

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LITTLE ROCK — If you were all set for the scheduled season premiere of Ugly Betty on Friday, you’ll have to wait a week. At the last minute, ABC postponed the Season 4 debut until 7 p.m. Oct. 16.

I already had all the info set to go, so here it is early. The big question: Is America ready for a Not-So-Ugly Betty?

Note that the series airs on a new night this fall. It will be a two-hour premiere at the early time. The curtain normally will go up at 8 p.m.

Whoa! Ugly Betty on Fridays? Isn’t that the night to which they send fading, washed-up, declining old series has-beens to wither and die?

Fridays used to be the offramp to oblivion, but things seem to have changed. I don’t mean that the networks are going to fritter away their best bets on a Friday. The biggest night for TV has traditionally been Thursday (when folks are planning their weekends) and that remains true.

But Friday has taken on deeper meaning now that all the networks have blown off Saturdays with reruns and NBC has essentially pulled out of the 9 p.m. ratings race withJay Leno five days a week.

Add to that the fact that ratings people now have ways to count viewers who use TiVo or a DVR and suddenly Friday night appears to be competitive.

Once all the fall premieres have finished, NBC will offer Law & Order and Southland (Oct. 23) on Fridays.

Fox has a couple of sitcoms (Brothers is worth checking out at 7 p.m.) and the resurgent Dollhouse.

CBS tempts viewers with Ghost Whisperer, Medium and Numb3rs, while ABC has Supernanny (Oct. 16), Ugly Betty and 20/20.

That means Friday at 8 p.m. is no longer a dead zone where we can catch up with stuff we recorded earlier in the week.

Still, Ugly Betty seems to be a fairly big player, even for a resurgent Friday night. What’s up? Wasn’t it just yesterday that the series was thedarling of the nation’s TV critics and America Ferrera was on every magazine cover at the checkout stand?

As with most series that last past a couple of years, Ugly Betty suffered a creative slump last season. Sometimes writers and stars get bored after so many episodes. Sometimes the creator with the vision moves on to other projects.

There are any number of reasons for a show to stumble, but the good ones dust themselves off and come back strong. We’ll see if Ugly Betty succeeds.

It’s high time we took Betty Suarez (played by Ferrera) in a new direction. Our sweet, but un-chic gal can only tread water at fashion magazine Mode for so long before it gets tedious. So, brace yourselves for changes.

In Friday’s first hour of “The Butterfly Effect,” change is already under way now that Betty is the new associate features editor and her boss is her former boyfriend Matt Hartley (Daniel Eric Gold).

You’ll recall that Matt was royally peeved that Betty broke it off with him last season. Hmm. Awkward.

There’s a new co-worker,Megan (Smith Cho), who hates Betty, and Daniel (Eric Mabius) has the double-whammy of being lost without Betty as his assistant and grieving for his dead wife.

There are other developments, but these will get you started. I’ve seen the pictures from future episodes and Betty is looking pretty darned fashionable. She has lost a little more weight and the buzz is that she’ll lose her braces before long.

Now, your only decision is this: Do you watch Betty and record Medium or Dollhouse or Southland or vice versa or some other combination? My DVR can only watch one and record another, so two of the 8 p.m. shows will lose out.

The networks love making you agonize over this sort of Sophie’s choice.

At the office:

Don’t miss The Office at 8 p.m. today on NBC. Jim and Pam journey to Niagara Falls to get hitched. You know things won’t gosmoothly.

Matt’s back:

Attention, all you Matt LeBlanc fans. Yeah, both of you. Showtime has ordered six episodes of a series featuring the former Friends star. In Episodes, LeBlanc plays himself in a comedy about a couple whose hit British show is ruined in the American adaptation.

Hmm. Think Coupling, not The Office.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Weekend, Pages 32 on 10/08/2009

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