Building 'Betty'

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Down to the sets. "Would you look at the floors?" Horta is pointing at the floors in Betty's family rowhouse in Queens. The wood is brand-new but it has been scuffed and worn in the heavy traffic areas. Just as they would be in a real home in Queens. "It is amazing, huh?" Horta says. The pea-green walls. The macrame throw pillows. The verisimilitude of working-class immigrant life that a network budget can buy!

Next door is the set where they are shooting scenes of the Halloween episode. It is the Manhattan offices of Mode magazine, done in orange and white plastics, so absurdly chic, the place looks like an interior decorator's spaceship.

Horta slips into a canvas chair next to the episode's director, Ross Berryman, and watches them shoot the scene in which Betty is dressed as a butterfly.

It is often news to many TV viewers that unlike film, where the director rules, on TV the creators, writers and producers rule. Horta does not direct. Instead, the show brings in hired guns to shoot each episode. This is because TV is a cruel and unyielding assembly line that must produce a new show every eight days. Horta explains: As Director A is shooting an episode, Director B is preparing to film and Director C is in the editing room. "A train must leave the station once a week," he says.

The schedule is crazy. It's less Amtrak, more NASA. Many shuttles to launch. The team is outlining plots, writing scripts, casting actors, selecting music to film an episode, while simultaneously editing, reediting, adding music and credits to episodes already shot. Throughout the entire process, both the production company, Touchstone Television, and the network, ABC, are shown and are approving everything, offering a constant stream of "notes." "You have to use both sides of your brain," Horta explains. Or, if you don't? He thinks that's funny.

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Ahh, the fabled Writers Room. "At the end of the day the most important thing is the scripts," Horta says. "You've got to have one a week and it's got to be great." He says this with a kind of sweet sincerity. Around a large table and splayed on a couch are 10 writers responsible for "Ugly Betty." They are a sneakers, T-shirt and bluejeans crowd, four women, six men, drinking Diet Cokes and Smart Waters. They don't look exactly fried, but it wouldn't be right to call them fresh.

On this day, they are "breaking" the Christmas season episode, meaning they are forming a rough outline for the six acts of the show (each act ends -- taa-daa! -- with a commercial). And each act contains a dozen "beats," which are written on index cards affixed to a bulletin board, and say things like "Betty finds out who her Secret Santa is."

Horta takes a center seat. The back-and-forth continues, but it is directed at Horta, like a pitch.

Since "Ugly Betty" is a soap with a mystery (and lots of potential amorous hookups), the reporter must pledge not to reveal secrets. It is an easy promise because it is impossible to know what they are talking about. Excerpts:

Writer: "It's a cute beat, but so what?"