Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council WARNING: Graphic Content!!! Do NOT push play if you don't want to see the explicit video!!!

Ugly Betty on ABC

Last November, the Family Friendly Programming Forum presented ABC’s Ugly Betty with its Family Television Award for Outstanding Comedy. But contrary to what the Forum and ABC-Disney apparently believe, bright settings, colorful costumes, and braces do not automatically make a television show “family-friendly.”  Case in point: the January 10th episode of Ugly Betty. Airing at the top of the Family Hour, the episode featured a character stealing her deceased lover’s semen, heavy sexual innuendo, and a mind-boggling scene set in a pornographic video store.

After the death of her lover, Wilhelmina quickly dispenses with mourning and begins scheming to inherit his media empire.  She bribes a morgue attendant to acquire sperm from the deceased so that she can become impregnated with his child.  When doctors tell her she is too old to conceive, Wilhelmina chooses a woman named Brandy, who appears to be a viable candidate for surrogacy. But -- like Ugly Betty itself -- appearances can be deceiving.

Meanwhile, Cliff and Marc visit the adult section of a video store.  They make multiple references to pornographic video titles, including one film entitled 400 Blows – with dialogue making it clear that the film is definitely not the Francois Truffaut classic.   Marc announces in disappointment that he sees straight porn, military porn, and shaved porn, but no gay porn.  Both are startled when they see Wilhelmina’s surrogate Brandy on the cover of one video, dressed as a dominatrix.  Before the scene ends, the program’s writers take the sexual dialogue to a grotesquely explicit level: Cliff exclaims, “If she could do that with a ping pong ball, it’ll make for an easy delivery.”

Unfortunately, this cloud of explicit sexual dialogue and content completely overshadowed the episode’s positive plot line, in which Betty encouraged Mode magazine to endorse healthy models. If this episode represents the entertainment industry’s idea of “family-friendly content,” the American family has little, if anything, to gain from prime-time broadcast television.  For continually offering deceptively unwholesome programming, Ugly Betty is our pick for Worst of the Week.