Despite its silly name, Don’t Trust the B- In Apartment 23 was one of my favorite pilots that I saw this fall. I like Krysten Ritter a whole bunch, and her odd-couple roommate schtick with Dreema Walker felt plausible and funny. Ritter plays Chloe, a manipulative New Yorker who takes roommates only to drive them nuts and keep their deposits, who ends up with more than she bargained for in June, a wholesome Midwesterner who came to New York only to find the job she planned to take wiped out by Bernie Madoff’s fraud. Chloe also maintains a nicely platonic friendship with James Van Der Beek, playing a slightly-altered version of himself a la Larry David, something that, as Ritter said today, is all too rare on television in particular and pop culture in general. I was intrigued by the Madoff references, and other riffs on things like June and Chloe walking out without paying a bar tab and blaming it on times being tough, so I asked creator Nahnatchka Khan what role the recession plays in the show.

“I think we’re trying to make it feel like it exists in the world. I know a lot of my friends are feeling the recession and it’s a real thing that exists,” she said. “Dreema’s going to continue to try to get a job. She’s trying to get hired by a Wall Street firm and people aren’t hiring, so she’s working at the coffee shop with Mark. But not giving up, and that’s the hopeful message. Times are tough but people aren’t giving up.”

I sort of like that perspective. 2 Broke Girls tends to tell specific stories about why the characters don’t have any money. Max grew up poor and has financed her attempts at self-improvement with debt, which haven’t yet paid off for her. Caroline lost her family’s money when it turns out her fortune was built on a foundation of lies. But the people around them seem relatively unaffected by the recession. Han’s trying to make the diner take off, but it’s not like there are very specific problems he has because of the recession. Hipsters continue to spend ridiculous amounts of money. Peach’s friends are only affected by Ponzi schemes, not by their tanking investments.

Other shows are doing one-offs. I think we’ll see a lot of things like Raising Hope‘s planned Occupy Natesville episode, that weave in the symbols of the recession in the same way most people will have glancing contact with the bleeding edge of the conversation without being permanently on the vanguard. But getting that persistent environment right is a tricky thing that involves thinking out your characters’ motivations in a really complete way. People are affected by recessions in ways that they don’t necessarily name, and figuring out how to articulate that and keep their motivations consistent is important.

Once upon a time, ABC was planning to air two shows in midseason with the word “bitch” in the title: Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23 and Good Christian Bitches. Then, the shows became Apartment 23 and Good Christian Belles. And now they’ll come on air in midseason as Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 and GCB. When he was asked about it in Pasadena today, Paul Lee, the president of ABC’s entertainment group, said, “on broadcast it turns out it’s a not a word you want to use in the title. But at the same time, [Apartment 23] is a show with so much attitude, and we felt, and the showrunners, that it reflected the irreverence or the outrage of that show…Look, GCB, which officially stands for Good Christian Belles, a good title, a good show.”

This doesn’t really make any sense. Abbreviating an obscenity to its first letter reads reverent, rather than edgy. This is church-ladies-being-naughty language. There’s nothing brave or outrageous about it. And there’s something strange about the idea that “bitch” is the best expression of toughness, or unwillingness to compromise, or to be edgy or interesting. Meredith Brooks has been there and done that more than a decade ago:

And we all know how that turned out. I’m not necessarily the right audience for a reclamation of “bitch,” but I’m not particularly persuaded that the term is evocative by Leslie Bibb’s argument today that “Every human being has a moment of being bitchy. I think on the show is we all sort of test each other. I think when a woman’s a bitch, it’s based on being scared.” We can find non-gendered language that captures that emotion more specifically and precisely. “Bitch” isn’t a word that can sell a TV show because of decency issues. It’s because it’s uncompelling.

I’m on record as being pretty excited for Tower Heist, and for a movie that considers the non-extremely wealthy of Bernie Madoff’s fraud. And it seems like Bernie Madoff revenge fantasies or victim stories are everywhere this fall. Ponzi schemes play a role in 2 Broke Girls and Apartment 23. A Bernie Madoff grotesque is one of the assassination targets in Colombiana

But the obsession with Madoff isn’t just a bad thing because it’s a derivative trope. If pop culture makes him the sole scapegoat for the financial crisis, our television shows and movies will be dodging a complicated but important issue. I understand why Madoff’s convenient. If he’s to blame for people losing their trust funds and job opportunities, shows can give us a slightly shrunken New York, a recessionista version, as it will, without blaming all those cute investment bankers who are potential love interests for our heroines. But that’s a dodge. Not every story should be a complete chronicle of the entire financial crisis, but shows set in New York or with interests in our reshaped economy should be clear that you didn’t have to be criminal to cause an incredible amount of damage even if they’re not incredibly specific about the mechanisms of the damage.