Rebecca Romijn is the weakest link on ABC’s Ugly Betty. (Supplied photo)

Rebecca Romijn stops every scene she’s in, but not in a good way.

We need to state up front that we still are pretty big fans of Ugly Betty, which unveils its first-season finale tonight (City-TV, ABC). But over the past couple of months, a problem has been detected.

Romijn, a 34-year-old former super-model who still walks the walk in the looks department, just isn’t a great actress. She’s a little wooden, a little stiff.

And the thing is, Romijn is surrounded by good actors and actresses on Ugly Betty, so her shortcomings tend to stand out.

Admittedly, perhaps we’re being harder on her than we are on other actresses because we’re uncomfortable with her character on the show.

But then again, when you’re adding a character who has undergone a sex-change operation, maybe you need to make doubly sure that you cast someone who’s really, really good. The character is going to be a tough enough sell for a great actress, you know?

Romijn plays Alexis Meade, who, for anyone who is not a weekly watcher of Ugly Betty, used to be Alex Meade before he/she went under the knife.

The first challenge, of course, is imagining Romijn as a guy. As comedian David Spade observed, “I can’t picture a penis on her ... unless it’s mine!”

Anyway, when Alexis showed up at mid-season, the plots and premises of Ugly Betty went from being mildly goofy to significantly, ridiculously goofy.

We’re still hanging on, barely, for the sake of some of the characters.

On the plus side there’s America Ferrera as Betty, Ana Ortiz as Hilda, Becki Newton as Amanda, Michael Urie as Marc and the spectacular Vanessa Williams as juicy villain Wilhelmina. Far less intriguing are Eric Mabius as Daniel, Alan Dale as Bradford, Ashley Jensen as Christina and Christopher Gorham as Henry.

Have you noticed, by the way, that while Henry — Betty’s love-interest — is supposed to be a geeky accountant, they basically just slapped a pair of big glasses on an actor with model-esque good looks? Wasn’t the moral centre of Ugly Betty supposed to be about embracing different body types?

Ah, the more things change on TV, the more they stay the same.

Speaking of staying the same, tonight also marks the season-finale of Grey’s Anatomy (CTV, ABC). The whirlwind cycle of birth-death-sickness-health-romance-wedding-betrayal-redemption continues!

A couple of weeks ago, as surgical interns Izzie (Katherine Heigl) and George (T.R. Knight) shared yet another forbidden kiss in an elevator, someone in my household exclaimed, “That’s it — this is the last week I’m watching this crap!”

The frustration, to our ears, was based on the notion that the characters in Grey’s Anatomy aren’t behaving even remotely like normal people anymore — even TV’s version of normal people.

Grey’s Anatomy is schizophrenic. Every good feeling is punctured immediately by disaster. Every catastrophe is countered immediately by hope. Grey’s Anatomy essentially is a primetime soap-opera, we get that. But man, this desperate attempt to entertain is wearing us out.

We’re half-expecting to see Romijn show up as her character from Ugly Betty. The interns could turn her back into a dude.