Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . Ugly Betty is arguably the breakout hit of the 2006-2007 TV season, garnering not only stellar ratings, but Golden Globes, Emmys, and a ton of other accolades congratulating the show on being far more than just a Thursday night Grey’s Anatomy lead-in. Good work, guys.

But Ugly Betty's importance is far grander than all this - it's notable because it includes: Judith Light.

This Emmy-award-winning actress had a brief stint on the short-lived series The Stones a few years ago, and she remains an archetype of ‘80s businesswoman chic due to her Who’s The Boss? role as Angela Bower. She shows up  in Ugly Betty as Claire Meade (the alcoholic mother of our protagonist’s boss), and every time she's on screen, this writer is in heaven.

The truth of the matter, though, is that if Judith had nothing to do with Ugly Betty, I’d run screaming. I appreciate the show’s bright-colored visual style (it really has stellar production quality). But there’s something so painfully retread and holier-than-thou about Ugly Betty that it keeps me from getting truly enveloped. Its storyline seems like a rehash of The Devil Wears Prada, but made less edgy for television. The show's backdrop: A young woman named Betty (America Ferrera) gets a job at a hip metropolitan magazine, but there’s a problem. She isn’t another size-2 waif of the hip urban world: She’s curvy and she has braces. So not only does she have to learn how to work in a office full of people who hate her because of the way she looks, but she has to save the day when things go wrong (and they always do).

There are friends around to help. For example, there’s Marc St. James (Michael Urie) - Wilhelmina Slater’s (Vanessa L. Williams in a devilishly evil role) assistant - but his struggles with his place in life and the complications of his own love life makes him a tricky yet refreshing shoulder to cry on. But overwhelmingly, Ugly Betty revolves around its eponymous protagonist’s attempts to live as the human being she is within the soulless, will-o-the-wisp world of high-profile magazine elitism.

Yet while it’s refreshing to see a Latina woman at the center of a primetime show – Betty’s Hispanic roots are neither marginalized nor made cutesy, which is an exceptional change of pace for primetime network TV – this writer simply couldn’t find an in-point to get invested in Ugly Betty. Vanessa L. Williams makes a great mean-ass boss, but she’s no Meryl Streep in Prada. And America Ferrera is cute as a button and is able to provoke a surprising amount of empathy with her performance, but I don’t find myself rooting for her the way I rooted for Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada.

And this third season is even more groaningly precocious than the last. We start with Betty making resolutions for herself in the new year - she wants a promotion, her own place, etc. (very by-the-books stuff here - and then these intentions slowly start unraveling. But the fact of the matter is that for all its cultural wherewithal, the writing for Ugly Betty is so mishmash that it's easy to shrug off the show altogether. Romantic plot arcs are unbelievable and wildly redundant (any time a character on the show has a kiss, you know there will be endless drama about it in the next episode or two), and - most disappointingly - Betty is never put in any kind of danger. I'm not talking about making her walk a tightrope over a volcano or anything (though this might help...) - I simply keep rooting for Betty to really get a chance to put it all on the line. Even with the setbacks on The Complete Third Season, she always lands on her feet and always gets right back to it.

But enough complaining - the reason I keep requesting Ugly Betty for review is for JL: Whenever Judith Light comes onscreen, it’s electric. She’s not just nasty – Vanessa Williams is nasty enough – she oozes mistrust. If you had a cocktail with this woman, she’d either bring you into her inner circle and love you like a child or she’d have you murdered on the spot; you wouldn’t have any idea what was happening until she figured out what to do to you.

So here’s the deal, Ugly Betty producers; I will absolutely keep tuning just as long as Judith’s part of the deal. Without her, your show is nothing new, but with her in tow, you’ve got at least one follower.

Viva Judith!