TVSquad

Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth TV news seemed much simpler. You had your normal noon, 6:00 and 11:00 pm newscasts (sometimes 5:00 pm as well, if you were lucky). If something major happened, like an airline crash, the local or national news would interrupt Match Game with a 'BREAKING NEWS' bulletin, say what needed to be said, and then return you back to normal programming to watch Richard Dawson say something randy.

That's not the way it happens anymore in this 24 by 7 world of information saturation. Now, the 'Breaking News' banner is thrown onto any type of news story that crops up, from a winter storm on the East Coast to the continuing battle over Anna Nicole Smith's body. Not only that, but they now throw in banners like 'Developing Story' and 'Just In' on these stories, which just confuses the hell out of me. Frankly, stories that feature these headers all seem like 'Breaking News' stories to me.

(S01E16) To quote Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill and as The Chin on Ugly Betty, "You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?" Tonight's theme - "it's complicated." I ended my review last week by saying this, but I think it bears repeating. Watching good TV can be an emotionally masochistic endeavor. One of the first lessons you learn in "how to be a TV writer" class is to put the screws to your characters. This lesson is often phrased as, "Give the audience what they want, and then take it away." This week's episode was all about giving us what we wanted and taking it away. Betty opens up to Henry about her feelings for him. Done. Christina catches a break. Done. Alexis gets to feel a little human connection post-op. Done. Justin gets to see Hairspray. Done. Hope you enjoyed it because now those cruel, cruel writers are going to make us regret that we ever wanted those things to happen in the first place.

Ok, Ugly Betty fans, let's do some audience-participation for a second: if you had no idea that Betty's nephew Justin was gay, raise your hand.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Didn't think so. It's pretty obvious that Justin is gay, even if he hasn't come out and said it yet. That's not just me talking, though. Entertainment writer Lydia Marcus has an essay on The Advocate's web site saying the exact same thing. In the essay, she's responding to a previous Advocate article that quoted a representative from GLAAD saying that Justin can't be counted as a gay character because he hasn't come out yet. "He's a character with a flair for the dramatic and someone who has a sense of style. To say he's gay based on that means viewers are letting stereotypes decide for them the definition of gender and sexuality," said the rep.