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.