I’m a tad tired of Sacha Baron Cohen’s wacky antics, and thought Hugo was a nice showcase of what he can do if he’s trying to be something other than utterly outrageous. But is it me, or does The Dictator look…kind of good?

It’s Baron Cohen’s boldness applied to a project that almost no American filmmaker would dare touch (though the Brits have) and almost none could: treating terrorists as if they and their awful aspirations can be funny, as well as horrific. And there’s something really valuable in making terrorists small and pathetic, rather than giants we need to cower in fear from. Laughing at someone’s ideology is a good way to marginalize it. But I also like something I didn’t realize the movie was going to do, which is tackle the lives of dictators in exile. There’s something pretty funny in juxtaposing the tweeness of New York organic crunchiness with the excess of kleptocrats. Baron Cohen’s dictator has more in common with the Real Housewives than he does with them.

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter breaks the news that Current TV has let go Keith Olbermann, and will replace him starting tonight with Eliot Spitzer, denying Olbermann to give a send-off or special comment to his viewers. Spitzer, like Olbermann, also had experience at MSNBC, where he appeared as a guest anchor. Olbermann had been suspended by MSNBC for violating its rules on campaign contributions, an event that soured his relationship with the network, before his departure from MSNBC opened the door to his deal with Current. He was at one point a high-profile acquisition for the network, founded by former Vice President Al Gore to provide a more progressive take on the news. But his ratings fell and his relationship with Current quickly foundered.

In an open letter to Current viewers, Gore and co-founder Joel Hyatt wrote “We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before. Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.” Olbermann had complained about technical issues on his set and squabbled with the network over his role in its coverage of the Republican primary, though he ultimately agreed to anchor those segments.

A source familiar with the decision-making process at Current said the choice to terminate Olbermann was based on what the network felt were violations of three tenets of his contract: a series of unathorized absences, a failure to promote the network, and disparagement both of Current as a network and of its executives individually. The source said that Olbermann missed 19 of his 41 working days in the months of January and February, and that Olbermann was told that if he took a vacation day he had requested for the night of March 5, it would be considered a breach of his contract. Olbermann took the day off, and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm ran a two-hour edition of her show, the War Room, in his place. The charges that he disparaged the network likely stem from the disputes over election coverage, when Olbermann said in a public statement: ““I was not given a legitimate opportunity to host under acceptable conditions. They know it and we know it. Telling half the story is wrong.”

In a series of Tweets after that letter was released, Olbermann sharply criticized Current’s leadership and said that he would sue the network, writing:

I’d like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV. Editorially, Countdown had never been better. But for more than a year I have been imploring Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to resolve our issues internally, while I’ve been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract.

It goes almost without saying that the claims against me implied in Current’s statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently. To understand Mr. Hyatt’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty,” I encourage you to read of a previous occasion Mr. Hyatt found himself in court for having unjustly fired an employee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain. http://nyti.ms/HueZsa

In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is important only to again acknowledge that joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one. That lack of judgment is mine and mine alone, and I apologize again for it.

Olbermann’s longtime attorney Patty Glaser has vowed a tough fight with the network after negotiations over a severance payment for Olbermann failed. And Current has hired a team of crisis public relations experts to help guide their response.

It’s been tremendously disappointing to watch the kind of celebrities who could have used their influence for good in the wake of the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin target George Zimmerman and his family instead.

First, Spike Lee tweeted what he believed to be Zimmerman’s address. It turned out to be the address of an elderly couple who have a son whose middle name is George, but who have no relation whatsoever to the self-appointed vigilante who shot and killed Martin. The Zimmermans say they had to leave their home for fear that they would be targeted for retaliation, and Lee has since apologized to them personally and financially compensated them for the hardship and inconvenience he caused them.

As if that wasn’t enough, comedian Roseanne Barr, who happens to be a candidate for the Green Party nomination for president and is preparing for her return to network television with the NBC sitcom Downwardly Mobile this fall, last night tweeted George Zimmerman’s parents’ correct address. She subsequently deleted the address and tweeted “At first I thought it was good to let ppl know that no one can hide anymore,” a pretty disturbing statement from a long-term feminist who might want to consider what that means for abused women, “But vigilante-ism is what killed trayvon [sic]. I don’t support that.”

Whether the address was right or wrong doesn’t matter. It brings us no closer to justice for Trayvon Martin to terrorize or scold his parents. Holding out the possibility of revealing their address again if Zimmerman isn’t arrested, as Barr did, is utterly ineffective. They don’t have the power to arrest him, or to turn him in to a police department that’s failing to act. No matter how grieved or angered we are, the only way to honor Martin’s death is by demanding that the system work to punish his killer, rather than by joining Zimmerman in abandoning it.

I suppose Joel Stein thinks he’s being rather clever and sophisticated in his riff for the New York Times about why grown-ups shouldn’t read literature aimed at young adults (something he conflates with picture books). He sniffs:

I appreciate that adults occasionally watch Pixar movies or play video games. That’s fine. Those media don’t require much of your brains. Books are one of our few chances to learn. There’s a reason my teachers didn’t assign me to go home and play three hours of Donkey Kong. I have no idea what “The Hunger Games” is like. Maybe there are complicated shades of good and evil in each character. Maybe there are Pynchonesque turns of phrase. Maybe it delves into issues of identity, self-justification and anomie that would make David Foster Wallace proud. I don’t know because it’s a book for kids. I’ll read “The Hunger Games” when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.

Where to begin? First, with a bit of history. Adolesence as we understand it is a rather new invention, and more to the point, the idea of literature aimed squarely at children or at young adults is a relatively new phenomenon in narrative fiction. The first picture books begin trickling out in the 1600s as a combination of instructional or pleasurable reading. And the distinction between children’s, young adult, and plain literature doesn’t come until 1802 when British critic Sarah Trimmer proposed two categories of books, one for those younger than 14, another for literature specifically aimed at those between the ages of 14 and 21, a time when children transitioned into formal adulthood. In other words, those 3,000 years of fiction include an awful lot of writing intended for audiences of mixed ages, whether it’s Jane Austen’s novels or lives of saints, which can be decidedly R-rated.

Second, the ideas that children and young adults are only capable of digesting mush, or that the only way to discuss sophisticated themes is to include explicit sex and violence are pure hogwash. Young people are capable of fairly sophisticated reasoning, of empathy, and even of significant evil, and many of them can rise to meet fairly high bars as readers. A series like the Hunger Games franchise can keep Katniss a virgin throughout the majority of the three books and still communicate the horror of surrendering your sexual and romantic autonomy. Harry Potter may be the first encounter a generation of readers has with the evils of torture and nasty class bias. Tamora Pierce’s Provost’s Dog series is an unflinching exploration of crime and poverty. Simply because these novels are also appropriate for younger readers doesn’t mean the ideas in them are stupid or the prose is unworthy. Not all things written for younger readers are masterpieces, of course. But there’s plenty of bad trash, insipid prose, and deeply stupid ideas in books written for adults. Joel Stein is welcome to it.

While Community and Parks and Recreation are gems on their own, one of the things that makes me happiest about the continued existence of both shows is that they’re training and credentialing a generation of writers on a particular kind of smart comedy. Parks and Recreation is bringing optimism about government, women in escalating positions of leadership, and feminist manly men into the television ecosystem, while Community is uniting high and low art nerddom and clever racial and gender-based humor.

And some of these writers are starting to get their own stand-alone projects. Katie Dippold, who wrote some of the best episodes of Parks and Recreation including “Fancy Party,” in which April and Andy get married, and “Indianapolis,” in which Ron Swanson pursues the perfect steak, just sold a movie about two female cops. I’m particularly excited for this project, given both that we’re allowed to have two male cops as partners, but women always have to be paired up with men, and that the idea of anyone from Parks and Rec tackling any part of government bureaucracy is inherently thrilling to me. Then, Community‘s Hilary Winston has a pilot about a woman who tries to pull her life together after a brutal dumping in development for the fall at NBC. For those of us who always enjoy it when Community‘s women step into the center of the frame, or out on their own, that’s delightful news. And Community and Happy Endings directors Anthony and Joseph Russo are, amazingly, in the running to direct the Captain America sequel.

This is the thing to remember for those of us who freak out about the potential for cancellation of either of these gems. It would be a tragedy to lose Parks and Recreation or Community at this point in their runs. But the prospect of unlocking the talent from these writers’ rooms and applying them to other projects, too, should be an exciting one.

The bridge is yours.

-A great meditation on the importance of Adrienne Rich.

-Professional wrestling’s past and future.

-A bad proposal for video game labeling.

-More evidence for my fairy tale anti-heroine theory.

-The best of the Very Special Episodes:

This review contains some very mild spoilers for characterization in the second season of Game of Thrones. Recaps will resume first thing on Monday.

As a deeply committed fan of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire books, I was pleasantly surprised by the first season of HBO’s blockbuster show based on the fantasy series, and how well David Benioff and D.B. Weiss managed to capture a huge cast of characters and translate Martin’s concepts for a broader audience than they’d previously received. But in the second season, Game of Thrones is emerging as something rarer and more special. While the first season was a faithful, and sometimes dogged translation of Martin’s novel, in its second, Game of Thrones steps forward as a confident adaptation that isn’t afraid to diverge from Martin’s work, and has made his world strategically and emotionally richer as a result.

The essential plot remains unchanged. Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage, teeing up for another profitable awards season) is back in King’s Landing, attempting, with little success, to curb the excesses of his sadistic nephew Joffrey, who now sits on the Iron Throne, and his sister Cersei, elevated by her status as Joffrey’s mother to the role of Queen Regent, though she, too, is vulnerable to Joffrey’s whims. Arya Stark, the youngest daughter of the murdered Hand of the King, Ned Stark, is still fleeing North in the company of recruits for the Night’s Watch, while her sister Sansa suffers through an ugly pageant of betrothal to Joffrey in the capitol. Robb Stark’s victories in battle have given him confidence, but failed to end an essential strategic stalemate—he’s left to taunt Jamie Lannister, Tyrion and Cersei’s brother, now his captive, and to flirt with nurses from Volantis who clean up his bloody works in the field. Robb’s mother Catelyn finds herself negotiating between Renly and Stannis Baratheon, the brothers of dead King Robert, while Theon Greyjoy, Robb’s foster brother, returns to his home on Pyke in hopes of bringing his father, Balon, into an alliance with Robb. And Daenerys Targaryen is wandering the wastes of Pentos after the death of her warlord husband, her dragons no guarantee of victory, much less of her continued existence.

But Benioff and Weiss have begun to enrich the character’s motivations and backstories, and the primary beneficiaries are women. When Theon returns home, he’s disgusted to find that his father has more trust in his sister Yara (her name was Asha in the books, but it has been changed to avoid confusion with the wildling character Osha) than in his last living son. “She can’t lead an attack,” Theon protests. “And why not?” Yara asks—and Balon backs her up. The prostitutes in Littlefinger’s brothel get more extended sequences that make their fates doubly tragic. In a change from the novel, Shae, Tyrion’s lover, goes into service as a handmaiden to Sansa Stark, rather than to noblewoman Lollys Stokeworth, an adjustment that readers from the novel will recognize as a clever and efficient way of heightening a major future plot development. The sexist attitudes Daenerys faces in her struggle to emerge as a leader are sharpened. When a rival tribe sends back one of her guards’ heads in a bag, her bodyguard explains “They don’t like the idea of a woman leading a Khalasar.” “They’ll like it far less when I am done with them,” Dany spits back bitterly.
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Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, raised an important point in a recent speech when she talked about the disparity between the amount of sex we portray in our culture, and the amount of accurate information about sexual health that’s conveyed along with it. “I don’t have to talk about sex for young people to think about it,” she said. “I think of my own kids who grew up watching Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, let’s just go down the list. And yet somehow we don’t want to teach sex education or provide access to good information.” Her point is more about formal health education, but it raises an interesting question: can we make pop culture a source of health information that’s both verified and credible to viewers?

The non-profit group Hollywood, Health and Society has done a good job of getting accurate health and scientific information to the folks who are making narrative fiction for film and television—if they know to ask. It’s not as if fact-checking your science or medicine is a routine step in the production process for most television shows and movies. And a show like Fox’s House, its long-running medical procedural, probably depends on viewers not probing the science behind Dr. House’s tests and diagnoses. We accept that we’re here to be entertained, rather than informed, lest a show fall into the vale of the Very Special Episode.

But that raises an interesting question. Are we psychologically preconditioned to dismiss accurate information when it shows up on television, just as we do so many fictional conditions, miraculous cures, and half-assed lupus diagnoses? One of the great virtues of the early episodes of Girls, HBO’s marvelous show about the lives of 20-something New York women from Tiny Furniture director Lena Dunham which premieres on April 15, is an arc of the show where a character is diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. Dunham told me she took great care to make sure the medical information in the story was accurate, and the story hinges on the characters’ misconceptions about the disease in question. In other words, it’s a perfectly-constructed educational tool, and the kind of writing that Dunham ought to get a lot of credit for: accurate, engaging, funny, and emotionally involved. The question is whether folks are conditioned to recognize what she’s pulling off for what it is.

I hope they do. If more people could build drama for the facts like Dunham does, maybe Very Special Episodes wouldn’t have a bad name. And maybe our television would be broadly engaged in a way such that we don’t need Very Special Episodes at all.

This post contains spoilers through the March 29 episode of Community.

It was, of course, tragic that Community went on a long hiatus if only for the show’s prospects and for our collective enjoyment. But who knew that the show’s long absence from airways denied us a hilarious sitcom riff on Mitt Romney’s declaration in Iowa last summer that “corporations are people, my friend.” Because it’s hard to imagine a show other than Community where an actual personification of a corporation—in this case, a hunky blond named Subway who wants to open a non-profit shelter for disabled animals, reads 1984, and pushes all of Britta Perry’s buttons—would walk jauntily onto the scene. Especially at a time when the show’s deepest friendship is in the middle of a reassessment.

Subway’s appearance on the show is a continuation of the plot that began with Community‘s return: Shirley wanted to own a sandwich shop, but the Dean circumvented her by welcoming a Subway franchise onto campus. Subway (the person) is a way of getting around the Greendale bylaw that requires any on-campus business to be 51-percent student owned. It’s terrific not only for Community to get a chance to make a bid for some of the product placement money liberated by the end of Chuck‘s run on NBC, but for Britta to get a truly entertaining love interest who wasn’t part of the main cast. Britta gets a bad rap for being a buzz-kill, but I appreciate the show acknowledging that it may only be within the disastrous dynamics of the study group that she’s a bore, and there’s a place where her passion is a better fit, and where there’s someone who shares her values and is available for gratifyingly kinky sex.

In keeping with, though in a much more veiled key, I thought it was a nice touch that, as Troy and Abed are facing serious problems in their friendship, Air Conditioning Repair School Dean Laybourne showed up to drive a wedge between them along the lines of their aspirations. Community‘s done a nice job of suggesting that blue-collar jobs can be not just legitimately rewarding but a calling and an art as high as filmmaking. And Laybourne sought to divide his prized target student from his best friends by playing with that idea. To Troy, he implies that Inspector Spacetime and Abed don’t have sufficient respect for Constable Reggie and Troy, that they devalue the work and creativity of the world’s journeymen. And Laybourne exploited Abed’s elitism and nerdery, suggesting that Constable Reggie—and Troy—are a drag on Inspector Spacetime’s wild adventurism and creative spirit.

And if this does escalate to full-scale war, I’m Team Troy and Team Blanket Fort. As much as it’s probably time for Abed to learn some realistic life skills and to experience some failures, it’s also probably time for Troy, now that his friendship with Abed has liberated him from jerky jockdom, to figure out an identity that’s more authentically his own.

Dan Kois, who I had the pleasure of hanging out with at SXSW, has a flat-out fantastic profile of Peter Dinklage in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, just in time for the return of Game of Thrones (I’ll hopefully have a comprehensive review tomorrow as long as my screeners are there when I get home) on Sunday. What makes it so good is not just that Dinklage is a wonderful actor and an interesting person, but that it’s a great explication of what happens when an actor refuses to take roles that compromise his dignity, a conundrum that’s applicable not only to people of short stature. Kois writes:

Dinklage’s sudden stardom offers a pleasurable meritocratic twist to his career, given that the entertainment industry doesn’t typically reward those who turn down roles on principle, much less actors who don’t meet a certain physical ideal. Sure, James Gandolfini struggled before “The Sopranos” made him an unlikely leading man. But James Gandolfini didn’t eat potato chips for dinner every night because he conscientiously objected to playing one of Santa’s elves in Kmart ads…Dinklage stayed in New York and soon was landing stage work and the occasional low-budget film. But he couldn’t book commercial jobs, because he wasn’t interested in the kinds of roles that paid well for dwarves. Specifically, he wouldn’t play elves or leprechauns. Even after Dinklage’s memorable first film role in the 1995 Steve Buscemi indie comedy “Living in Oblivion” — Dinklage played an actor who’s annoyed to be cast in a dream sequence, demanding, “Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it?” — he still couldn’t get an agent. “Word got out,” he says. “I started to build up a resentment. And that fueled my desire to live in a cold apartment and be like: ‘I don’t need you! I’m gonna write poetry. Why would I want to be a member of your club if you don’t want me?’”

Standing up to that kind of commercial and financial pressure must be tremendously difficult, and knowing that he did it makes me admire Dinklage even more than I already do. Mark Povinelli, the actor with dwarfism who played Chelsea (Laura Prepon)’s coworker Todd on the otherwise-awful Are You There, Chelsea? joked in a recent episode that Dinklage hogs all the roles for devastatingly handsome men of short stature. But the fact that Todd’s character exists at all, and exists as something other than a joke, is probably attributable in part to Dinklage’s success. It’s hard to think of an actor who’s as clearly opened a previously-closed door in recent years.

On a less serious note, Colin McEnroe was kind enough to have me, Lev Grossman, and a couple other folks on his show this afternoon to talk about the resonance of A Song of Ice and Fire. Audio, including my dorky confessions about writing Star Wars fan fiction, is up now. I imagine y’all are as excited as I am.

New Yorker editor David Remnick, who caught Bruce Springsteen on his most recent tour, notes that the Boss has been playing “American Skin (41 Shots),” the song he premiered in 2000 in response to the killing of Amadou Diallo by the New York City police, in memory of Trayvon Martin. The rendition of the song from the Tampa stop is gorgeous, and tragic—and I think really enhanced beautifully by his backing singers here:

That refrain, “Is it a gun? / Is it a knife? / Is it a wallet? / This is your life” is so particularly chilling given the details of Martin’s death, the mundanity of that ice tea and the candy. And the caution the mother gives her son in the song, her injunction that “You got to understand the rules / Promise me if an officer stops you’ll always be polite / Never ever run away and promise mama you’ll keep your hands in sight” is a particularly sick reminder of how futile that promise is when you’re faced with someone determined to read you as a criminal, to do you harm, to execute their own twisted version of justice.

There’s been a lot of debate recently about how to define the Golden Age of television, whether it’s through Vulture’s Drama Derby, which set up a March Madness contest between great shows of the last quarter-century, or conversations between critics like NPR’s Linda Holmes, the Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Goodman, and Time’s James Poniewozik on Twitter. But wherever the conversations are taking place, they keep coming back to a central question. When we’re picking the pool of shows, why does the critical consensus tend to come up with a list that’s, well, awfully dudely?

The best answer anyone seems to have come up with is that there are more male characters of a particular variety that we’ve come to hold up as a gold standard: the middle-aged anti-hero. There are a number of answers as to why that’s the case: the number of middle-aged men who have been given the opportunities to make their dream shows; the fact that female characters are still under pressure to be perfect in every area of their lives, much less downright evil or morally depraved in one of them; or the fact that women, even as Christopher Hitchens said we aren’t funny, have found a great deal of creative life in comedy rather than in drama. Addressing all of these elements are important, and I’ll have some thoughts on them in weeks to come.

But if middle-aged anti-heroes are what we’ve decided give us an opportunity for moral sophistication as viewers and for complex, intriguing storytelling, where would we start in creating these kinds of women? It’s possible that one answer lies in a rising boom: fairy tale villainesses. Fairy tales are full of older women who are trying to hold onto the kinds of things about which great dramas about men are made: their power within their professional setting, their sense of sexual desirability, their status within their personal communities. In the trailers for Snow White and the Huntsman, we’re clearly meant to side with Kristen Stewart’s insurgent Snow White. But I’m intrigued by Charlize Theron’s evil Queen, who speaks of giving her fallen world the ruler it deserves, who commands armies and welcomes challenges.

And as production ramps up on the Maleficent movie, Angelina Jolie told People Magazine that she felt some ambivalence about defending her character (the movie will be told from the perspective of Sleeping Beauty’s rival for the throne): “It sounds really crazy to say that there will be something that’s good for young girls in this, because it sounds like you’re saying they should be a villain. [Maleficent] is actually a great person. But she’s not perfect. She’s far from perfect.” But why should we be so squeamish about suggesting that we should sympathize with female villains? Especially in settings where women have to be unusually tough to hold on to power and authority (which, let’s be honest, is not so different from the tightrope women have to walk today)?

If boys can grow up to sympathize with Tony Soprano, why shouldn’t women get a world where it’s permissible to sympathize with the stepmothers, crones, sorceresses and evil queens we taught were lying in our paths growing up? Reclaiming fairy tale villainesses wouldn’t just give us a crop of powerful female anti-heroines—it would help break a cycle of storytelling that valorizes younger and prettier women overthrowing older ones. Sisterhood is weird, and complex, and powerful.

Two shows doesn’t quite constitute a trend, but I was curious to note that both AMC and Showtime are developing shows about Native Americans. AMC’s working on a show about the football team at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which recruited students from what was then the Dakota Territory starting in 1879. Among its students? Jim Thorpe, the Olympian and football, basketball and baseball player who some people consider the greatest all-around athlete who ever lived. And Showtime is working on a contemporary show from Alexander Payne about the opening of an Indian casino in the Midwest.

These shows may not be perfect. Both come from white creators. And the AMC show seems likely to focus on Richard Henry Pratt, who founded the school and coached the team, which means it would have a white star (Tommy Lee Jones may direct the pilot). But that does, unfortunately, tend to be the way that marginalized people begin to move to the center of the frame. And in between these efforts, and the news that Robin McLeavy, the Australian actress who plays the most fully-realized part-Native American character in AMC’s Western drama Hell on Wheels, will become a series regular rather than a supporting character, we’ve got some movement in that direction. It’ll be a while before we know if these projects are worth their while, but I’m glad to see networks recognizing that there are interesting stories to be told in some of the diversity of Native American experience.

The bridge is yours.

-Anti-Flag v. Springsteen.

-It’s too bad New Girl‘s ratings have cratered as the show’s gotten much more fun to watch.

-Which science fiction scenario is most likely to happen in the (reasonably) near future?

-I’d actually like Michelle Obama even more than I already do if I thought she was reading Mommy porn.

-Time traveling Aubrey Plaza!

One of the major effects of Netflix and other streaming services’ move into the original content market has been the prospect of reviving cancelled television shows away from the networks that did them in. Netflix showed that it was serious in part by inking a deal to bring back cult favorite Arrested Development, which chronicles the experiences of a deeply dysfunctional family after its real estate empire collapses. Shows like that, and the long-mourned Firefly will always have their defenders. And now, any cancelled network show seems like it’ll go through the same process that Terra Nova did, where after its network cuts it loose, there will be at least a semblance of discussion about whether it should live again on one of the streaming services. But what of the shows that were cancelled before that option was added to the lifecycle? Or that haven’t developed Freaks and Geeks-like followings, but were solid and worthy shows none the less? Here are five shows that deserve a second lease on life—or a first look, if you haven’t checked them out yet.

1. Better Off Ted: Think The Office, but higher up on the food chain. The main character, Ted, runs a research and development division of a cheerily evil corporation, Veridian Dynamics, where he works for the conscienceless but strangely endearing Veronica (Portia di Rossi, absolutely on comedic fire). At a time when we’re both intensely aware of corporate callousness, but the economy doesn’t have a lot of room for us to run off and pursue our dreams, like Linda, the show’s product-tester-turned-children’s-book-author, Better Off Ted was both hilarious and cathartic.

2. Kings: Look, I’d pay money to watch Ian McShane curse the heavens as a standalone weekly enterprise. But there were terrific, long-game stories to be told here about the governance of Gilboa; Jack Benjamin’s repression of his sexuality in the name of dynastic succession (Sebastian Stan should have won Emmys for that performance); the role of the media in public opinion; and how health care reform affects a nation at risk of plague. Plus, it was a gorgeous example of how production design can create a new world that should have been a role model for other science-fictional and futurist shows.

3. The Unusuals: The casting was just ridiculous: Amber Tamblyn and Jeremy Renner as cops partnered in the wake of Renner’s partner’s death; Adam Goldberg and Harold Perinneau as another pair, the first of whom was dying of a brain tumor he refused to treat, the later terrified to die young; Chris Sarandon as Tamblyn’s wealthy father she’s trying to prove she doesn’t depend on. And the show was a smart, sometimes surreal reinvention of the cop genre, moving the cases away from murders to explore everything from New York’s old crime families to Alzheimer’s. If I could have only one show back, it would probably be this.

4. Prime Suspect: That this smart remake failed to find an American audience is a failure of that audience. We still need shows about sexism in American law enforcement. And Maria Bello was fantastic. Not every show has to be high-concept. I wish this smart, solid, fun procedural had survived.

5. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: I wish this show was still going less for the show itself, and more for the fact that it helped stand up Botswana’s film industry. It’s disappointing, if inevitable, that we’d get a show set in Africa and with African characters through the creation of a white male writer. But it would be really nice to get American audiences used to watching shows set in non-American countries, and with characters where the default setting isn’t white American. Especially when it comes to solving mysteries.

I’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that I consider Whitney to be one of the failures of last fall’s boom in television comedies created by women and centered on female characters—it’s been a prime example of the weird spike in deeply irritating supporting sitcom characters, it’s got more men writing its episodes than women, and Whitney Cummings is less appealing as a fictional avatar of herself than she must have been in person to network executives. But the show’s become more likable as it’s gone on. And it’s achieved something rather remarkable in its latest long arc: Whitney may be the only show on television that’s figured out how to handle a bisexual character with clarity and dignity.

I was nervous when Maulik Pancholy left 30 Rock for Whitney. It’s not that Pancholy isn’t a good actor who deserves to play something other than Jack Donaghy’s beleaguered, worshipful assistant. It was that I didn’t think he’d get the opportunity to do much that was interesting on Whitney, where he was part of the grating-friend ensemble, an accountant named Neal locked in a lovey-dovey relationship with a woman named Lily (an increasingly good Zoe Lister Jones). But the show has handed him an enormous slab of red meat: over a series of episodes, Neal and Lily broke off their engagement after it turned out Lily had been lying to Neal about some substantial things. And after their breakup, Neal began seeing a man named Steven he met through work.

In a terrific episode, Whitney handled Neal’s feelings about acknowledging his attractions to men with sensitivity and some of the better humor it’s shown. “There was never an opportunity to explore anything sexual. I mean, we couldn’t even explore cable,” Neal tells Whitney of his conservative family. When he confesses to Alex, Whitney’s long-time boyfriend that “Last night, when you came over, I was kind of on a date,” Alex’s response is entirely nonchalant. “Cool, can I get you a beer?…What, did you want me to offer him an appletini? Don’t be a homophobe, Whit.” And their other friends treat the situation with more investment. “I’m not attracted to all men,” Neal tells crude cop Mark in an effort to reassure him that he won’t get hit on. “You don’t have to be hurtful,” Mark tells him. And when Neal finally confessed to Lily that he’d been avoiding her because “I thought maybe if I waited, I’d have more answers for you…to how this could happen…to what I am,” she reacts with sensitivity—and a surprising level of insight. “You don’t have to be gay or straight, you’re just Neal,” Lily says. “Your sexuality’s fluid. Sometimes, people fall in love with people, not genders.” It might be the first time a sitcom has insisted that our sexual orientation categories aren’t sufficient to describe everyone’s experience, and that makes it rather extraordinary.

And the show hasn’t left it at that. It’s made an ongoing point of showing how Lily and Neal have navigated their post-revelation relationship, going out together, dealing with misperceptions about which one of them men are cruising. The show respects them enough not to make the question of who Neal loves and is attracted do disappear as if it was just an excuse for a Very Special episode. And the plot gave all the characters an opportunity to show off who they are without resorting to unfortunate tics. Neal, and everyone else, got to be fully developed human in a situation with stakes that ranged from re-assesing a friendship to reexamining what you thought your marriage would look like. And that’s worthy of some respect in turn. Whitney may not be my favorite sitcom on the air. But it’s given me a substantial reason to care about where it’s going.

The joyous news is upon us: after years of waiting, we’re finally getting a sequel to the seminal frat pack movie Anchorman. Ron Burgundy and his mustache and jazz flute will ride again! I hope, though, that Anchorman 2 is smart enough to recognize that a lot of what made the original—a story about an outrageously manly San Diego news team learning to deal with their new female coworker in the 1970s—such a comedic masterpiece was its feminism. As a satire of blustering, clueless masculinity and male misconceptions about women, Anchorman is nigh-unequaled in our recent popular culture.

The members of Ron’s news team are posturing, peacocking, competitive, wannabe gentlemanly idiots even before Veronica Corningstone, a sexy, smart female anchor transfers in to join their team as part of the rising tide of women’s lib:

Once she arrives, the team reacts with sheer panic. Has there been a better encapsulation of uninformed, sexist ranting in terror at the loss of privilege than Brick Tamland hollering “I don’t know what we’re talking about!” and “Loud noises!” in the movies since?

These guys know absolutely nothing about women.

And the great joy of the movie is that, by its end, it’s about feminism’s victory. The women at the station where Ron and his team work stand up for themselves and demand better treatment. Veronica proves herself as a smart, competent reporter and anchor. Sports reporter Champ Kind learns that just because Ron’s heart is engaged doesn’t mean he’s lost his best friend. No one loses, unless you count Luke Wilson’s repeated maiming in the news team anchor rumble, still one of the funniest action sequences in quite some time. We need more men in pop culture to have that realization that the rise of women doesn’t automatically make their lives poorer. When it comes to family bands and bear births, feminism can mean that everybody wins.

I don’t write much about poetry here, but I wanted to acknowledge the passing of Adrienne Rich, for whom poetry was a tool in “the creation of a society without domination.” Listening to her read “Diving into the Wreck” is remarkable. And it makes it all the more painful that with her gone, we can no longer access “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.” It’s harder for me to think of a better description of our broken world and the quest to bind it up again than her gorgeous quest for “the damage that was done /and the treasures that prevail.”

It’s been nine years since Augusta National Golf Club emerged largely unscathed from a battle with feminist activist Martha Burk, who led a protest outside the club’s signature event, The Masters, over its policy forbidding female members. But in two weeks, the club may be forced into the 20th — er, 21st — century, thanks to IBM’s decision to make Ginni Rometty its first female CEO earlier this year. Rometty’s promotion has the club facing quite the dilemma, as Bloomberg reports:

As Augusta National Golf Club prepares to host the competition next week, it faces a quandary: The club hasn’t admitted a woman as a member since its founding eight decades ago, yet it has historically invited the chief executive officer of IBM, one of three Masters sponsors. Since the company named Rometty to the post this year, Augusta will have to break tradition either way.

Change comes slow at Augusta, a club that clings to tradition proudly and loudly, even if that tradition is full of discrimination. The first black player won his way into The Masters field in 1975, but Augusta ignored outside pressure to admit a black member for another 15 years.

Its response to women has been the same. It trudged on in the wake of the Burk protests, winning over golf fans (equality be damned) by airing the tournament with limited commercials after she pressured sponsors to pull out. Just last year, it banned a female reporter from entering the players’ locker room, drawing protests from male and female journalists alike.

Rometty’s situation, though, gives her leverage Burk never had. The CEOs of the other two Masters sponsors, Exxon Mobil and AT&T, are both members, and they’ll both be donning the club’s signature green jackets next week. If Rometty isn’t allowed to join them (and given Augusta’s history, she probably won’t be), it will send another message to the 6 million American women who play golf and countless others who watch it that even if they are capable of breaking every last one of corporate America’s glass ceilings, they aren’t capable of playing golf with the boys.

The Masters, as CBS likes to remind us, is a “tradition unlike any other.” This year, though, Augusta has a chance to break with one tradition it should have ended a long time ago.

I may be a total naif here, but I’m not sure I realized precisely how totally naked actors and actresses got during sex scenes until I read this Vulture conversation with two actresses and an actor whose names were changed to protect their privacy. It covers everything from psychological prep for filming a sex scene for the first time to on-set arousal. And I thought their perspectives on whether men or women are more vulnerable during nude scenes was, if you’ll pardon the pun, revealing:

Betty: I dunno. Men are sometimes as freaked having to go shirtless as women are getting naked altogether. For me, once I was down to my undies, or a string bikini, I might as well go for broke. What’s a nipple or two between friends? Several times I’d be in some flesh-colored bodysuit or G-string, but they’d keep catching the edge of it on-camera, so I’d just take it off to expedite the filming process. Since I never did an X-rated movie, I trusted that whatever body parts they caught on film that they didn’t want, they’d deal with in editing. But unfair? Probably, but there are so many unfair things about being a woman in film — and other industries — what’s one more?

Veronica: No, I guess not. Let’s face it, for male nudity to be anything meaningful they have to show their dick. A woman doesn’t have to go all the way for it to be a big deal. Guys have so much at stake: “Is it big enough, is it shaped well, is it all shrunk up?” It is harder for a guy to be aesthetically pleasing when naked, in my opinion.

Archie: I don’t think it’s unfair that women show more nudity in movies at all. As a dude, the truth is that a man’s package is way more, well, visible. You’re never going to see much more than a bit of muff from a woman in a scene, and that is really little more than the coming attraction for what really lies beneath. On the other hand, once you see an actor’s dong, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the kind of firepower he’s packing.

Or it could be that women are expected to be naked and visually available in way that men aren’t, so actresses have to get over that expectation or lock themselves out of certain kinds of work while men are allowed to treat their naughty bits as if they’re delicate flowers that will wilt if exposed to the light, and millions of viewers. It’s why Jason Segel and Michael Fassbender get credit for going full-frontal while Sarah Jessica Parker gets treated like she’s a prude for not wanting to go topless in Sex and the City.