Betty La Fea (Ugly Betty) Mas Bella Update XII

My wife has had it. Not with me, yet, but with Omar Carvajal. We've gotten to the place in the "Betty La Fea" remake, "La Fea Mas Bella," at which Omar's constant prodding of Fernando to seduce Lety has pushed my wife over the edge. She had been cutting him slack because the actor had played a really good guy on "Piel de Otono (tilde challenged)," but that's done. He's become a hot rock.

Of all the characters on the show, Oma (Mario Calderon in "Betty") really is the worst, and he doesn't get better (sorry, if you think this is a spoiler). In the "Betty" sequel "Ecomoda" (an unfortunate effort that should have been kept bottled somewhere, like the last seasons of "Friends" and "That 70s Show"), one of Betty's conditions on Armando (Lety and Fernando) was to stay completely away from Mario for what he had done to her/them. Mario, of course, insisted on being a bad penny, which caused problems that I didn't watch because (see above). Omar is just that kind of GUY. You knew it, didn't you?, when you actually felt sorrier for Alicia than for Omar when she was trying to trick him into marriage by faking pregnancy. (Don't worry--as far as I know, they do not produce offspring. "The Omen" has already been done.)

Omar stands out because all the other characters, good and bad, do produce sympathy. For instance, Marcia helps Lola and Paula Maria recognize their men problems as she desperately tries to hang onto a man she knows doesn't lover her. And they all display human frailty and failure--Marta and her diet, Tomas' unrequited (thank God) love (and Simon's, although you're beginning to see the turn there), Luigi's coming comeuppance. Lety, the good and noble heroine, is participating in cheating, about to become faux-adultery if Fernando can drink enough. In other words, they're human, some better, some worse.

And then there's Omar. He's not redeemable. He stays the serpent in the apple tree and gets the same fate, unless the writers change course from the original. As I've said before, this section of the show, with him as the catalyst, is the darkest and hardest part of the show, ending in real pain for both the leads. I thought my wife had understood that, but Agustin Arana, playing Omar, had been such a good guy before.

I hate to think he was just acting.

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