Debuting Thursday, September 28 at 8:00EST, is America’s first response to the moneymaking, country-captivating and saucy Spanish-language novela. Known for keeping your mother, your grandmother, your sisters and your girlfriends glued to the television (sometimes your father, too) if you’re Latino, you learn what a novela is at an early age. (I still remember what Thalia looked like in Marimar and I still remember that Chayanne’s speedo in the opening credits of Volver a Empezar was yellow. I’m not the only one who does. Am I?)

Anyhow, novelas are a very important part of our culture. Whether we watch them or not, novelas are due a great deal of respect for their ability to captivate an entire people. Sure people have their favorite novela-producing countries, i.e. Mexico and Colombia: but Latinos are really concerned with the best cast and the best story. Period. ABC’s Ugly Betty borrowed from the most successful novela ever, Yo Soy Betty La Fea is long overdue.

A 22-year-old, yet mature and outspoken America Ferrera, who you might remember from HBO’s Real Women Have Curves and from WB’s Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants takes on the lead role as the “ugly” but talented girl who gets a job working in an upscale Fashion magazine. (Yes, did Lauren Weisenberg steal this idea somehow for her trillion-dollar producing “Devil Wears Prada”? The world will never know…) If you don’t know what happens after that… use your imagination. (Really, it’s not that hard.) Is America Ferrera ready for this role?

I don’t know.

I haven’t seen anything but the trailer. From the looks of it, it looks like she is. Produced by Salma Hayek, who purchased the rights for “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” in 2004, the show looks like “Good TV.” (Now, I’m saying “Good TV” because well, everyone should know that TV, is inherently bad and to see something that does not portray New York City as cardboard, see Jennie Garth in “What I Like About You”, or make NYC look like a place where 98% of the population is white-American and earns over $250,000 a year, a-la “Friends” and “Seinfeld” is “good TV.”) NYC is a wonderful place filled with everything from the very rich to the very poor, the best of stories, the saddest of stories, luck, misfortune: it is every single color of the rainbow and in fact, goes as far as inventing colors on a daily basis. (If Crayola were located in NYC it’d go out of business.) That is what NY is to everyone who lives here. We love it; we hate it; we are it. “Ugly Betty” which takes place in NYC–and I hope Queens—is welcome in my book. It is insulting when Hollywood tries to imitate NY on a set in CA. NY is never CA. (But I’m going off topic.)

“Ugly Betty” will do well. A large percentage of Latinos, the Spanglish ones as termed by Ed Morales in his book Living in Spanglish will watch this show. (Recalling fondly the loveable Betty.) Really, it’s a great story. It’s Cinderella without the obvious gender roles women should play strewn throughout. My only question is: how will Americans take to a story that has an obvious, predictable and predetermined happy ending? (I’m assuming Salma doesn’t want to make this a ten-year run, right?) I think culturally, one of the aspects of novelas that appeal to Latinos is this notion of “knowing” what’s going to happen. It’s directly tied to our, sometimes uncontrollable, desire for chisme. (Disagree with me as much as you want. I know I’m right.) Can the American handle it? American TV culture dictates: comedies must last five+ years to become “dear to our hearts”; and the hour-long drama must be anything but predictable.

Stay tuned.

For a glance at what America will look like at the end of the show,click here.

Image Via / American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.