YMMV / Yo soy Betty, la fea

• Arc Fatigue: While Betty finding Calderon's letter is seen as one of the series' highlights and a turning point for the soap, the aftermath is incredibly drawn out, with the following episodes being a recap of Armando and Betty's relationship under this new perspective, and the letter being read out loud over and over by the characters.
• Draco in Leather Pants: An odd case with Marcela regarding her enmity with Betty. Some fans of Marcela think that she only antagonized Betty because her fiancé Armando cheated on her with Betty, ignoring that Marcela was among those who belittled Betty as "ugly" long before she became aware of the affair. That's not to say that she didn't have symphatetic qualities, though (see below).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some fans of the telenovela ultimately found themselves liking Marcela due to having several symphatetic qualities: Besides being a victim of Armando's philandering (and ultimately finding herself with Armando leaving her for real for Betty), she was actually friendly to the Ugly Squad (bar Betty), and showed genuine concern at how Armando's actions threatened Eco Moda given that it was her family's company; compare and contrast with her brother Daniel, whose plan for the company if it fell into his hands was to simply sell it.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Partly due to Values Dissonance, but current audiences vastly prefer Michell over Armando as Betty's Love Interest, since he treats her kindly from the start and most consider what Armando did (lying to her about being in love and using her, even if he ended up Becoming the Mask) to be unforgivable and toxic.
• Fashion Dissonance: Having been made between 1999 and 2001, the series is firmly lodged in late The '90s fashion, especially with women's business clothing. One episode has Patricia, struggling with money, trying to keep people of realizing that she commited the awful faux pas of... not wearing pantyhose, which certainly can make modern viewers scratch their heads since nowadays it's not considered an essential garment unlike it was back then.
• Genius Bonus: Betty really loves Uruguayan poetry, even leaving one of Delmira Alfonsini's poems for Armando to find. Days later, during one of the couple's outings, Armando out of nowhere quotes Mario Benedetti's "Te quiero": "...mi cómplice y todo, y en la oficina codo a codo, somos mucho más que dos." ("... my partner and everything, and in the office side by side, we are much more than two.")
• Hollywood Homely: Betty's actress is a very beautiful woman◊ in Real Life. However, the producers and makeup artists went to great lengths to characterize her as Betty, including hiring a specialist in colour to choose all the colours which were most unflattering to the actress. The "Ugly Squad" also has this; it was lampshaded when Betty, after meeting them, and learning their collective nickname, asks why Aura Marí­a, arguably as beautiful as the models who work for Eco Moda, is included in the group (her supposed sin is that she is a very short woman who wears clothes too slutty for an office). There is also Mariana who is outwardly gorgeous, but due to racism and colorism of Latin American society, she is "ugly".
• Ho Yay: Between Armando and Mario, so much that Betty, overhearing their phone talk, thinks Armando is talking to a lover. Lampshaded by Armando, who even tells Mario that if they keep being so close to each other, people will start to think that they are a pair of Hugos (Hugo Lombardi is the company's Camp Gay designer).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Betty could get more special by not becoming one of the women under the womanizer's spell even if she appreciated him as a Benevolent Boss. That would emphasize her intelligence more, and make her effect on Armando more believable as an I Love You Because I Can't Control You than loving her because she was especially vulnerable and devoted to him. Ironically, the US version of the show, Ugly Betty would go down this road from day one, with the added twist that Betty refuses to take her boss's shit or listen to his excuses when he tries to avoid doing the right thing.
  • Marcela is, informedly, a strong woman, which in theory would give some interesting exchanges with Armando, as he constantly cheats on her. Instead, she condones being constantly cheated on like an Extreme Doormat.
• Values Dissonance: Needless to say, a story about a homely woman falling for a womanizer who is both lying to her about being in love and using her and already engaged to someone else (even if he ended up later Becoming the Mask and falls in love with her for real) plus playing the Beautiful All Along cliche (although it could be said that here it was still applied better than in infamous offender She's All That, made around the same time) sounds much less endearing today than it was in 1999-2001.

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