In a sense, Whitney feels like the most conventional new sitcom to hit airwaves this fall (at least of the shows I’ve been checking out, and so I didn’t have extremely high expectations for it). Unlike 2 Broke Girls, also the product of Whitney creator and star Whitney Cummings, it doesn’t have a particularly strong frame narrative. And unfortunately, like Free Agents, it’s got a deeply annoying cast of backup characters including a piggish police officer, a drunk divorcee (who, to be fair, gets the great line when someone tells her she can’t wear pants to a wedding “I pay alimony to a husband who does spoken word for a living. I could wear cargo pants.”), and an irritatingly in love couple. Are we really getting less of Maulik Pancholy on 30 Rock so he can do this?

Fortunately, Cummings and Chris D’Elia, who plays her character’s long-term boyfriend Alex, have a really nice warm chemistry. The opening scene of them sparring over the bathroom mirror, eyeliner on Whitney’s temple, Alex using Whitney’s hoodie as a towel, all felt natural and fun, like an actual couple that’s been together for five years but still enjoys pushing each other’s buttons.

As for the rest of the show, Whitney feels like something that I’m glad exists, even if I don’t really feel engaged by it. Are there more dramatic, or funnier ways to illustrate the problems that couples, both straight and more particularly gay, face on things like hospital visitation than to have Whitney try to talk her way to Alex’s beside in the hospital while she’s wearing a sexy nurse’s outfit? Sure, but it’s still useful to have someone dramatize it. Is Alex declaring, “You can forget Cosmo studies, and your can forget your Mom, and forget all that stuff. This is about me and you. This is the best part of being together for so long. You can wear your hair up, or down, or hoodies, or whatever, I don’t care,” the last word in feminism? No, but it’s still the kind of thing that it’s good to have people say until women stop pressuring themselves about marriage.

At an event the Congressional Black Caucus put together to honor the Tuskegee Airmen and to promote George Lucas’s new movie about them, Red Tails, the movie’s stars, Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr., had some pointed things to say about the way Hollywood approaches black actors and directors. Howard said that Lucas had put together the movie with his own money, and that it would be a critical litmus test for a system that systematically devalues black actors and black stories:

The…problem, and what becomes the undercurrent is that it’s an all-black cast, and the villains are white. Now, Hollywood, for a number of years has maintained the status quo by saying black films do not have an international value. Therefore we’re able to pay black actors less, we can give them less money to make their films…If this film, if George Lucas, who is basically the Parrish of the film industry, as Col. Noel Parrish did for the Tuskeegee Airbase, he put his entire career on the line and stood behind these black pilots, these American pilots. What George Lucas did, he put his entire career on the line…when they wouldn’t distribute it, he put $30 million into distribution. If this film is not successful, it will become a stumbling block for all time where they can say that black films do not have value or merit. It’s important that this film is supported…if George Lucas does not profit from this, then the rest of the industry will see no profit in black people.

And Cuba Gooding, Jr. said that George Lucas had pointed to Tyler Perry as an example of the only way a black director can force Hollywood to listen to him—and even then, Perry faces hurdles to finding advertisers and distributors. And he described his own process of trying to find and cultivate African-American talent:

To strive to promote black independent filmmakers, I go to festivals, I meet them, and then when people offer me projects that don’t have directors, I tell them, what about this guy? [People like director Lee Daniels, with whom Gooding's made several movies], these are the new voices in Hollywood…With Spike Lee, this black director, now that we have him, we don’t have to look anymore. We’ve got one. I’m with CAA, and I tell [Gooding's agent], who’s the next voice? Men and women, let’s get them. Let’s support them in a big studio project.

It was a potent reminder of how high the hurdles for even well-established African-American stars can be. Last week, numbers from the Directors Guild of America revealed that during the last television season, women of color directed just 1 percent of episodes. There remain huge persistent pay gaps between men and women who write for Hollywood, and between white people and people of color. Even hugely bankable stars like Will Smith have been unable to convince Hollywood as a whole that black stars can be consistent box-office draws. I hope Howard is right that huge success for Red Tells could help tear down the barriers that treat black actors, writers, and directors like second-class citizens in Hollywood, though I’m not sure anything will. But I agree with his fears that if the movie tanks, thinks could continue to get worse.

This post contains spoilers through “The Straylight Run.” If you want to spoil beyond that, please label comments as such. And for next week, let’s finish the novel.

As something of a theology nerd, I particularly liked the parts of this section that are about the ways, both beautiful and terrifying, that technology brings us closer to the divine — or at least, redefines the boundaries of what’s considered possible and what’s considered miraculous. The Turing authorities who come to arrest Case are both literally and metaphorically advocates of those boundaries. They hold the guns to the AIs heads not simply because of practical concerns, because they see unincumbered artificial intelligences free to pursue their will to knowledge as a way evil comes into the world. As one of them says: “You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?”

Of course Case doesn’t accept that conception and forges forward. Wintermute kills his pursuers, freeing him to dive into the ice and encounter Wintermute’s opposite number, a boy on a beach in a dream, as untechnological a vision as we have in the entire novel:

“You’re the other AI. You’re Rio. You’re the one who wants to stop Wintermute. What’s your name? Your Turing code. What is it?” The boy did a handstand in the surf, laughing. He walked on his hands, then flipped out of the water. His eyes were Riviera’s, but there was no malice there. “To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men dreamed that, once, but now it is real in another way. You know that, Case. Your business is to learn the names of programs, the long formal names, names the owners seek to conceal. True names . . .” “A Turing code’s not your name.” “Neuromancer,” the boy said, slitting long gray eyes against the rising sun. “The lane to the land of the dead. Where you are, my friend. Marie-France, my lady, she prepared this road, but her lord choked her off before I could read the book of her days. Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead. But no, my friend,” and the boy did a little dance, brown feet printing the sand, “I am the dead, and their land.” He laughed. A gull cried. “Stay. If your woman is a ghost, she doesn’t know it. Neither will you.” “You’re cracking. The ice is breaking up.” “No,” he said, suddenly sad, his fragile shoulders sagging. He rubbed his foot against the sand. “It is more simple than that. But the choice is yours.” The gray eyes regarded Case gravely. A fresh wave of symbols swept across his vision, one line at a time. Behind them, the boy wriggled, as though seen through heat rising from summer asphalt. The music was loud now, and Case could almost make out the lyrics.

I think part of what I like about this moment is that it is, in a way, a strong statement in support of the appeal of the irregularity, mysticism, and oddness of humanity. An AI’s invested in the power of names, the life story and tragic death of the woman who dreamed him into being, whose youthful experiences he incorporated into the world he’s created for his ghosts. There’s something almost generous about Neuromancer’s wistful desire to provide a refuge for what’s left of Linda. Even technology strives towards heaven.
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Earlier this week, we wrote about bringing diversity to the coaching ranks of English soccer. The post mentioned racial barriers that players often have to deal with, including fans who make monkey noises and throw banana peels onto the field. Last night, the latter act crossed the pond and occurred during a preseason NHL match in London, Ontario.

The Detroit Red Wings’ 4-3 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers was marred by an incident during the shootout when a fan threw a banana peel at Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds, a black 23-year-old, as he skated towards the goal.

Simmonds, who still managed to score, said the banana peel “shocked [him],” but “[w]hen you’re black, you kind of expect (racist) things. You learn to deal with it.” The Flyers winger, who is a native of the Toronto, discussed the incident with the Philadelphia Inquirer afterwards:

“I’ve never had a banana thrown at me before. That’s a first for me,” he told the newspaper. “I guess it’s something I obviously have to deal with — being a black player playing a predominantly white sport. I’ve grown a lot playing in this league and throughout my whole life. I’m not going to dwell on that. It’s over with now.”

Though Simmonds handled the matter with class, his experience is one that black athletes have had to deal with all too often. During a European soccer match earlier this month, Bulgarian fans not only made monkey noises at black English players, but Nazi salutes as well. It’s an unfortunate reminder that we’re far from immune to the problems we point out in other countries’ sports franchises and fan bases.

This post contains spoilers through the Season 3 premiere of Community.

I watched this episode of Community after Parks and Recreation, so it’s possible that the absolutely stellar kickoff of the latter show left the former feeling a little wan by comparison. There’s potential there — it’s hard to imagine Community without at least the germs of ideas — but the show spent more time dealing with the problem of how to deal with Pierce’s expulsion from the group than actually laying down a new dynamic for the new school year.

First, let’s address the potential. I think it’s time, as Jeff’s subconscious musical theater suggested, that Jeff and Annie sleep together. For all that this is a show about college, it’s weirdly dodgy about the subject of sexual experimentation. Britta and Jeff’s friends-with-benefits arrangement may shake up the group once they learn about it, but they’re both adults — this is territory they’ve both explored before, and it clearly doesn’t shake them up much. Similarly, Shirley may sleep with Chang, but her baby ends up being her husband’s. But there’s something a little odd about the fact that the three actual college-aged students, Annie, Troy, and Abed haven’t had a single meaningful sexual relationship in the course of the show. Vaughn was here and gone, Abed smooched Annie in character and exchanged soulful banter with a Secret Service agent, and Troy, despite his status as a high school stud, hasn’t had anything close to a girlfriend in the course of the show. It’d be nice to see something happen for one of these characters that is both emotionally and sexually meaningful.

Second, I’m contractually obligated to be excited about a long-arc subplot about a community college that’s facing severe funding shortfalls. But I’m still pretty uncomfortable about how the show is handling the showdown between the dean and his deputy. If it’s not rectum jokes, it’s implied oral sex as means as dominance. Community is too smart to rely on lines like “You bring your head down to my appendage tomorrow, and I’ll show you wassup.”

But I’ve got a real problem with the way the show handled the Pierce storyline. There’s something interesting about the war between Jeff and Pierce, the displaced father-son dynamic. But for it to be genuinely engaging, they’d have to actually work through things, like Pierce’s unbelievably terrible behavior to everyone last season, or the actual roots of Jeff’s resentment of the older man. Not to mention the fact that other characters have to have some feelings about the way Pierce manipulated and abused them over the last two years. This subplot felt stuck, and for the rest of the show to shake loose, it has to be resolved in some way that doesn’t feel forced. Community is, to my mind, at its best with low-fi but creative storylines like “Mixology Certification” that take the typical college experience and make it intensely specific in a way that moves all the characters forward at lunch. This episode felt like overcompensation in the direction of normality, following the dean’s directive of “No more paintball, no more spaceships, no more trampolines.” But that’s sort of missing the point.

The bridge is yours.

-AMC follows Bravo in creating a fan-based talk show.

-The Getty’s sending more pieces back to Greece.

-A video game meant to address the lack of representation of LGBT characters.

-The implosion of Kevin Smith.

-Getting pretty excited for David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo even though I fully expect a lot of it to be hard to watch:

I’m reading my way through Powers right now (I’ve finished “Who Killed Retro Girl?” and “Roleplay”). And it strikes me that Deena Pilgrim is a pretty good cure for and critique of the stereotypical female action heroine who chooses her choice, rejects emotion, and embraces violence.

First, there’s that moment in the “Retro Girl” case when Deena has just been partnered up with Christian, and because she thinks he’s holding out on her, she kicks the holy heck out of him. In a more conventional storyline, her suspicion that her new partner was concealing superpowers would be correct, and proven out by her totally over-the-top attack on him. Instead, she’s not only wrong, she’s tried this tactic and been wrong before. “When I was in college I was dating a guy I was pretty sure had powers. I couldn’t prove it, but I was so-so sure. I mean, I asked him,” she explains. “But you know guys, deny, deny, deny! Alright so, my girlfriend told me that she was dating this guy who had powers—and totally denied it—and so she sucker-punched him and totally caught him lying. So, I tried it on my boyfriend, and, well…I punched him in the solar plexus and I broke my pinky against him.” I like that she’s kind of a jerk, and that she’s aware that she’s a bit of a jerk, but that she can’t help herself from being a jerk and she’s aware of that, too.

Later, when she’s offended Christian terribly, she tries to talk him into taking her back as a partner. “You don’t want me around. I guess I gotta respect that, but—I mean, come on,” she wheedles. “How could you not want me around? I’m totally fascinating. And shit. I wear these little belly shirts all day. That’s gotta do something for you.” I was glad to have her acknowledge that, because up until that point, her outfit was bothering me a lot, and I admit when I saw in the supplemental materials that original sketches had her much more professionally dressed, I was feeling disappointed with Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Avon Oeming. But the fact that she had that line, it makes her outfits a choice bourne out of her own internal logic rather than an act of sexist incongruity imposed on her by her creators that she’s unaware is jarring. It’s not a choice that I would have made in the same position and job, but that makes her more of a person to me. The character is written to force me to deal with her on her terms. And those terms are a powerful combination of tricky but not absurd and self-aware.

Also, now that I’ve read a bit of her storyline, I’m excited to see what Lucy Punch does with the role. Punch normally plays roles where she’s slightly ridiculous, the butt of a joke, and she’s good at embodying some off-putting tendencies. I’ll be glad to see her get an opportunity to fill in the other half of the equation.

As long as we knew it was coming, I’ve been a vocal, even loud skeptic of the idea of a Prime Suspect remake. Helen Mirren’s performance as Jane Tennison is definitive, I thought. American network television would never portray a character who’s that actively and interestingly difficult, an alcoholic who kind of uses the men she dates, who has an abortion as if it’s matter-of-fact. And most importantly, I thought that the way the show dealt with institutionalized sexism might feel kind of unfortunately dated. But you know what? I was wrong. And I’m quite sorry to hear that the show is going to sideline sexism in future episodes.

What changed my mind was a summer where two now-former New York police officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata, were acquitted of raping a woman they were supposed to help get safely home, in part because one of the jurors wondered, “What if [Moreno and the victim] became close? What if they hit it off, somewhere between the taxicab and the dead roach? A moment that turned into conversation, that turned into flirting? What if it all led to something that Moreno thought was consensual?” It was a summer where another cop, Michael Pena, was charged with 10 counts of rape and assault, and is now under investigation for attacking two other women. And it was a summer where the Manhattan district attorney walked away from a sexual assault prosecution but not before utterly hanging the victim out to dry.

I don’t believe all cops are rapists. I don’t think that Special Victims Units always let women down, though I’m confident what happens there is more complicated than what I see on Law & Order: SVU. But you know what? I do believe a force that includes people who abuse their power to assault people might also include people who say things about women detectives like “A squad is only as good as its beef trust, because the beef trust only cares about the work…The beef trust can’t flutter their eyelashes. All the beef trust can do is the work. That’s why the beef trust deserves the jobs. All the jobs.” That there are probably cops who hate sexual harassment laws and complain that “You scratch your batteries and it’s a hostile work environment…She’s one of us until it suits her not to be.”

And I believe that it’s important for there to be, among all the other shows that lionize our police forces, one that explores and is attentive to that reality; that explains that men can be both loving fathers to their daughters and awful to their female coworkers. The show is smart enough to have her obnoxious coworkers have a sense that they’ve crossed a line, even though where they draw the line is not even close to where I’d draw the line. At a benefit, when Jane offers to buy her coworkers a drink and one of the guys on the squad goes off on her, telling his colleagues not to take her money because “Tell that bitch it’s no good in here,” calling her an “opportunistic whore,” their other male coworkers tell the guy to can it, and get him out of the way. They may not comfort Jane, but they aren’t totally monsters, which makes the portrait of them as sexists much more convincingly damning than making them all monsters.

And it helps that Bello is very good, and her character isn’t a direct copy of Mirren’s Jane Tennison. She’s in a steady relationship with a divorced man, Eddie, whose ex-wife uses Jane as an excuse to make it harder for Eddie to see his son. She’s also aware about when she’s screwing up, as when she asks too quickly after one of the officers in the squad dies if she can have his case. “I just thought I gotta ask now while they’re distracted, before they can regroup, right?” she agonizes to her father. “I thought that was my only chance, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I should have waited. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked at all. Or maybe, I should have called Dan Costello and ask for the job because that’s what they all think I do anyway.” Just because she’s treated badly doesn’t mean she does everything right. After she discovers major new information in a case, she’s prickly with a coworker who is acknowledging the merits of her work. “Can I ask you something?” he says, exasperated. “You ever worry that someone might drop a house on you?” “This car won’t drive itself,” she tells him dourly. It’s not quite the moment in the original where Mirren tells a coworker who keeps calling her Ma’am and suddenly switches to Sir that “My voice suddenly got lower, has it? Maybe my knickers are too tight. Listen, I like to be called Governor or The Boss. I don’t like Ma’am – I’m not the bloody Queen. So take your pick.” But it’s it’s own thing. And in its own way, it’s as important a story now is it was in 1991.

This post contains spoilers through the Season 4 premiere of Parks and Recreation. Also, me freaking out a little.

It’s sort of depressing that this is the case, but I really believe that years from now, this episode of Parks and Recreation is going to be help up as a major moment in romantic comedy. To have a piece of pop culture where not only is love, or the possibility of love, not the highest value, but where the highest expression of love can be to let someone chase their dreams rather than stay with you, is genuinely revolutionary in a pop culture that preaches either that women need to get over their workaholism or that women can have it all. It helps that the episode was beautifully acted. But I hope that people recognize the writing here for the accomplishment that it is.

I can’t tell you how relieved I was when Ann raised the prospect of Leslie not running for City Council to stay with Ben, and Leslie responded automatically, “Which is out of the question.” I knew Leslie was going to make a compromise, but I was terrified that the show would decide to have her choose Ben, regret it, and get into the race late. The show’s always taken a slightly silly tack on Leslie’s ambition, whether through something like the omnipresent headshots in her office, or her explanation that “I was playing with the Geraldine Ferraro Action Figure. That I made myself.” But to have Leslie insist, and the people around her support, the idea that this is the dream of Leslie’s life is genuinely beautiful. It is such a higher exhibition of love for Ben to tell her, “Everything you’ve accomplished, you have earned and you have worked for. I don’t want anyone to think you got where you are by sleeping with your boss,” than to try to keep her with him.

And as I argued in April, this episode was a real victory for the idea that it’s Leslie’s optimism in government that is validated by Parks and Recreation, not Ron Swanson’s libertarianism. It makes sense that when Leslie runs from her fear of breaking up with Ben, she runs to Ron, who has fled his ex-wife with what is apparently an emergency camping kit and a warning to get the beef chuck out of his desk before it goes bad. Leslie and Ron are each other’s reality checks, a balancing act between extreme optimism and extreme pessimism about the potential of government. But tonight, Ron affirms Leslie’s most private dreams. “I might not win,” she tells him. “You’ll win,” Ron insists. And the show could have stopped there, letting Ron groan about the inevitable big-government liberalism that will propel Leslie into office. But it doesn’t. “I might not run,” Leslie suggests, still turning the idea over in her mind. “You should,” Ron affirms. Because at the end of the day, Ron’s skepticism about government doesn’t actually include Leslie. Her optimism and competence are just overpowering, inspiring Andy to competence, Ann to persevere through an inbox that is “literally filled with penises.”

This wasn’t the funniest-ever episode of Parks and Recreation, but it strikes me as a genuinely important one, from Leslie’s run; to Chris’ unquestioning support for Ann once she becomes an accidental sexual harassment victim; to Leslie’s emergence as the perfect campaigner when she tells an interviewer “When men in government behave this way, it betrays the public’s trust. Maybe it’s time for more women to be in charge.” These are little things. But the episode was a weird glimpse of what it would be like to live in a much more feminist world than the one we actually reside in. And it’s hopeful, and funny, and genuine. And I want to go to there, much more than I’ve ever wanted to go to any slight alternate universe I’ve seen on a sitcom.