TV and movie portrayals of men are more credible and nuanced than ever. Is this ever going to be true of the women playing opposite them? In this week's batch of NY Times reviews, Alessandra Stanley had some thoughts.
On at least two new shows (Chuck and Big Bang Theory), "the networks are giving nerds another shot." Stanley attributes this in part to the success of various Judd Apatow projects, wherein "the nerd is the hero, and he even gets the [ahem: hot, blonde] girl." In a review of Reaper that ran the very next day, Stanley namechecks Apatow again, this time comparing him to Kevin Smith (who directed the show's pilot episode).** Seems both are "connoisseur[s] of downward immobility, a status that appears to have lasting resonance in popular culture."
So, for a bunch of what I’ll very reductively call "boy shows," the ever-popular Apatow is a kind of spiritual guide. And of those shows, Stanley finds Chuck "very funny," Reaper "quite rewarding" and Big Bang Theory at least passably good.
But enough boys! What about Bionic Woman? Ah, despite the title, Stanley thinks it's "oriented toward young male viewers." And it seems the Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice is at least as excruciating as it appeared in a preview last spring. The characters, Stanley writes, “collectively offer one of the most depressing portrayals of the female condition since The Bell Jar." It all makes her fairly pine for the original Bionic Woman, "an accomplished professional who was courteous, well balanced and actually seemed to like herself," and who appeared on television back in the days of an "overearnest women’s lib" that's ultimately preferable to this dumbed down "postfeminist sensibility."
**Smith was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air this week. Explaining what attracted him to Reaper, he referred more than once to the novelty of its creators being "chicks."
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I'll admit, I watched PRIVATE PRACTICE this morning while eating me a breakfast burrito, and it was just that bad. What's interesting is that the preview last spring featured a terrible plot device in which Kate Walsh's character seemed heard a voice talking to her in the elevator. These elevator moments were totally reminiscent of Ally McBeal at its worst, and its depressing portrayal of a professional woman as a total neurotic nut job. Private Practice's premiere last night was thankfully free of elevator voices, but there were plenty of McBeal-esque moments, like Kate Walsh shaking her naked booty around her house, only to realize that Taye Diggs lives next door and could totally see her. OMG! The Ally McBeal-ification of the Kate Walsh character is especially depressing, because while she was an adulteress on Grey's Anatomy, she was also one of the saner, stronger chics. No longer. Hooray from the return of Ally McBeal feminism. Not.
I didn’t watch Private Practice; instead I watched Gossip Girl, partly because I have never come close to anyone who went to a private high-school on the Upper West Side, partly because I deluded myself into thinking this show would be about blogging, and partly because I was curious to see how the O.C could be transposed to the East Coast. Transposed it is: the young and rich have young and rich, wrinkle-free parents (the father wears a surfer necklace even though or because he lives in Williamsburg, –we get the idea).
Chandeliers, croissants, namedropping, exciting lingerie, condos, threesomes and so on : determinism is at work, the Gossip Girl’s U.E.S is a world saturated with signs of wealth and decadence. This could have been an enjoyable and immoral series (as MELENA RYZIK writes in the Times, “The sex starts about five minutes into the premiere of “Gossip Girl,”, see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/arts/television/12goss.html). Turns out it is appropriately balanced with a heavy dose of morality (moralism?) : yes everyone sleeps with everyone BUT, and that’s the rather disappointing plot, Serena slept with her best friend Blair’s boyfriend. Therefore she is a “whore” - end of the story.
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