By Ryan McGee

If you believe the economic realities on display in several of ABC’s recent comedic programming, then you think that current vocational trends predominately favor women. In terms of television, however, this “mancession” simply doesn’t exist, especially when it comes to developing strong three-dimensional women that can support a program’s narrative. Characters like Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation and Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife are exceptions that prove the rule, to an extent. But even their arcs are based within an ensemble structure, a structure which has strengthened the shows even while decentralizing their female protagonists.

Should shows be built around a single character pillar, regardless of gender? That’s a perfectly good question to ask. Breaking Bad didn’t really gain power until Walter White stopped overshadowing his onscreen compatriots. And Parks started to flourish only after simultaneously toning Leslie down while expanding the world around her. But it’s infinitely more likely to launch a show based around a chemistry teacher gone to seed than an overly optimistic female government worker seeking to improve her community. We’re somehow more OK with the former than the latter, at least in our entertainments.

The problem isn’t just that there are so few females in the anti-hero position. It’s that the anti-hero position is such a default in television following The Shield that it’s limited the way in which stories can be told on the small screen. Leslie Knope’s optimism is downright revolutionary in comparison to her narcissistic, self-loathing, yet self-justifying counterparts in primetime. It’s not enough to simply be an ordinary person that strives to do good only to face obstacle after obstacle in achieving that goal. We have to watch shows give us walking talking figures that are grotesque, funhouse mirror versions of our own worst impulses in order to either work through our own issues or take heart in knowing our vices pale in comparison to the Tony Sopranos, Vic Mackeys, and Jax Tellers of the world.

When females do end up in this “anti-hero” slot, the shows don’t often know what do with them. A long string of semi-recent Showtime programs have dealt with complicated women, but often in uncomplicated ways. Other than The United States of Tara, which spent three seasons coming to grips with its own conceit, the network’s signature female-led shows demonstrate women behaving badly without true context for their actions. As such, their supposedly outlandish behavior exists in a curious vacuum in which Jackie Peyton, Cathy Jamison, and Nancy Botwin pantomime grief, rage, and illicit behavior in a relatively sterilized environment. They don’t get into the true moral muck of their male counterparts, often because the shows shy away from making these women into the monsters men are so often allowed to become.

All of which makes me wonder why we’ve decided that horrible people need to be at the center of shows, when simply having flawed ones will do. Enter Cordelia Chase, someone not high on the list of even Joss Whedon acolytes as the poster child for basing an ideal television lead upon. I’m not here to start a flame war over whether or not Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel was the overall better show. But I am here to say that I tend to prefer Angel by a slim margin, and Cordelia Chase helps tip the balance in that show’s scale. That may make many of you reach for your replica Mr. Stabbys and seek to stake me. But hear me out.

Cordelia Chase appeared in the very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on March 10, 1997, and made her finale appearance on Angel in its 100th episode nearly seven years later. Like many characters on Buffy, she was initially written as a stereotype only to reveal hidden layers along the way. Big deal, you say: so did everyone else on that show. Which is fair, but what’s intriguing about Cordelia is that her story, like that of Xander’s, was initially one in which she was an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Buffy was the Slayer, Willow eventually turned into the world’s most powerful witch, and Giles was both a Watcher and an excellent performer of Who covers.

But Cordy? She didn’t have anything going for her except the nagging feeling that she should be doing more with her life. Her original status as the Mean Girl stemmed from economic and social superiority, but like many pop culture figures in that position, it was a façade more than a reality, a role that she played because she saw no other way. It’s interesting that what inspires her trip to Los Angeles (and, by extension, over to Angel) after graduation from Sunnydale isn’t anything demonic, but rather mundane: tax fraud. Stripped bare of both economic comfort and psychological comfort post-graduation, she moves to LA to become an actress. Of course, what she finally finds is purpose.
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Since I read it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking reading Amanda Marcotte’s excellent essay on why the television shows that are critically considered to be the best we’ve seen in the last decade all focus on men, almost all of whom are anti-heroes. There’s no question that some of this is a result of who’s creating these critically-lauded television shows: lots of Davids for the big three of Deadwood, The Wire, and The Sopranos, and lots of dudes generally. But it’s not that men are incapable of creating astonishingly good female characters, and in fact, many of the shows that occupy the second tier of great television programming feature innovative, emotionally compelling female characters. It’s not a question of creating great women. It’s a question of getting them at the center of the frame, and of getting their perspectives to be the dominant ones for a change.

To try to figure out how to do that, and what we can learn from some of the best female characters of the last 10 years, I’ve asked Amanda, Ryan McGee, and Rowan Kaiser to put some thoughts to paper about the fictional women who have touched them most. Amanda’s post on Community‘s Britta Perry will go up tomorrow, followed by Ryan on Buffy and Angel‘s Cordelia Chase, Rowan on Veronica Mars, and me on Gemma Teller Morrow on Friday. I’d be curious to know what some of your favorite women are, particularly if there’s someone you think I haven’t come across yet but who I might love.

I just finished W. Scott Poole’s Monsters in America, and while I think the book has an unfortunate tendency to wander away from its central thesis (and as a result to not entirely prove it), the premise is interesting enough to merit further consideration. Essentially he argues that “the narrative of American history can be read as a tale of monsters slain and monsters beloved” — and more specifically that in the United States, monsters exist not just as engines of social control and reflections of our anxiety, but as things that we define ourselves by conquering. Poole describes one delightful example, the arrival of what a lot of people thought was a large sea serpent off the coast of Massachusetts:

Numerous New Englanders claimed to have seen it, and everyone tried to invest it with meaning. The Gloucester serpent quickly, in fact almost immediately, mae its way into political discussion. The anxious maritime entrepreneurs of Gloucester gave their sea monster the nickname “Embargo,” a reference to the controversial Embargo of 1807…The 1817 Boston broadside certainly makes it clear that destroying the monster in Gloucester harbor was the community’s first priority. On the first day of the sighting, ‘a number of our sharp-shooters’ were in pursuit, firing muskets at the serpent. There seems to have been no public discussion of this effort. It was assumed that killing the monster was the only possible course. The men of the New England coast killed giant sea creatures for a living, and this particular wonder would receive the same treatment. The monster in American history is not simply that which destroys. It is a being that must be destroyed.

Poole doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining how that American mindset is different from that of other countries, mostly asserting that it’s the case, even though I think he might have built a stronger one. The Puritans’ commitment to destroying monsters didn’t stop at self-control: Cotton Mather and others were all too eager to visit bodily destruction on the people who they believed had become monstrous in the country they’d come to subdue. The transformation of slaves who rebelled against their treatment into monsters in the canon of American mythology certainly had real-world consequences in the militarized mindset of the pre-Civil War mindset, and the treatment of fugitive slaves. But there’s no question that America is very good at mobilizing swiftly to absolutely destroy the kinds of things we’ve decided are monstrous, whether they’re New England sea serpents or al Qaeda.

It would be interesting to consider whether there’s a distinctly American approach to monsters that originate elsewhere. The edit and reframing that produced the American version of Godzilla turns the monster’s death from a tragedy and ominous warning into a triumph. In Europe, we desperately need Van Helsing to corner Dracula. Here, apparently, teenage girls can dispatch them either by slaying or seduction. The mark of real victory over a monster is when you don’t need to be afraid of it any more. America hasn’t defeated all of its monsters, and it never will. But to a certain extent, it can’t. It’s hard to remain exceptional if there’s nothing left to stand against, no way to distinguish yourself by the victories you can achieve that no one else can.

A couple of weeks ago, some literary wags started tweeting that we should #OccupyAvonlea, the fictional home of that infamous anarchist green hair dye fan Anne of Green Gables. Since, comic book characters have occupied Gotham and Metropolis. But Gotham seems like it would be a dangerous place to camp out in (and how much park space does it really have?), and Avonlea’s a little remote to keep an occupation going. So here are the five best fictional places to occupy:

1. Sunnydale: One of Scott Eric Kaufman’s students suggested it would be a bad idea to occupy a town that’s built on a Hellmouth. But given security concerns at Occupy encampments around the country, there could be a definitive advantage to having a slayer on the prowl, keeping an eye out for vampires and sexual predators alike. And Buffy and the Scoobies have special experience in taking down nefarious mayors, so Occupy Sunnydale wouldn’t have to worry about getting kicked out of their encampments:

2. Pawnee: Leslie Knope can conjure parks out of pits. She can throw harvest festivals while dispelling Native American curses. She can program repeated end-of-the-world vigils. She summons baseball fields out of vacant lots, and at next to no cost. As a mainstream Democrat who’s deeply invested in the electoral process, Leslie might not be fully on board with the alternative world-building element of the Occupy movement, but the woman can handle a logistical challenge. Occupy Pawnee would have the best tents, the most Port-a-Potties, and the tastiest Reasonablist-provided donuts:

3. Nellyville: St. Louis rapper Nelly’s created a fictional kingdom that sounds like a pretty great place to hang out. As he explains, it’s a town that’s already committed to rectifying income inequality, where “all newborns get half a mill” — so much for pesky student loan debt — paper boys have Range Rovers, the town’s redeemed the false promise of “40 acres and a mule” with “40 acres and a pool,” and the weather’s determined by democratic vote (if not by consensus). Still, Nellyville’s gender politics and criminal justice could use some work — automatic executions for murder are a little harsh.

4. Westeros: If the Occupy movement would be about perfecting a society that’s in decent shape in Nellyville, Occupy Westeros would be a somewhat more urgent proposition. After all, in this shattered kingdom, the 1 percent don’t just control most of Westeros’ wealth: they can rape and murder members of the 99 percent with impunity. There would be logistical challenges, too. In Westeros, when they say winter is coming, they don’t just mean you’re going to have to keep taking snow-soaked sleeping bags to the laundromat to dry them out until April. But holdfasts are easier to defend than public parks. As are giant walls made of ice. And nothing brings the 99 percent together faster than hordes of ice zombies:

5. The Ministry of Magic: Those sections of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows may have turned off a lot of readers, but they mean that some of the most politically potent figures in magical Britain have a lot of camping experience. Plus, the ability to have tents that are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside solves overcrowding, and Hermione’s enchanted purse would solve a lot of logistics problems. Given that income inequality has a discomfiting tendency to produce a lot of genocidal racists in the country’s wizarding community, pushing the Ministry towards a more just economic system and more tolerant policies towards Muggles can go hand in hand.

The bridge is yours.

-Occupying Sunnydale would probably be pretty challenging, particularly in terms of getting folks through the night.

-Someone just give Spencer Ackerman a side hustle writing for X-Men already.

-Have Axe’s advertising campaigns worked too well?

-If you don’t want to read long fantasy books in long series, you probably shouldn’t read long fantasy books in long fantasy series.

-Seriously. Not good:

I like Tim Carmody’s piece on the value of old television shows for consumers:

It’s one of the few things that is an order of magnitude easier on a digital service like Netflix than actually popping in a DVD or managing a folder full of torrented movie files: the service perfectly maintains your place in the series, no matter what device you’re using, and you can just hit “play next episode” over and over again. Or you can easily scan for a rewatchable favorite. (Readers with kids know this is particularly useful.)

Full seasons of old television shows perfectly suit the pseudo-ownership viewers have with streaming video. You might keep DVD box sets of some of your favorite series, but you’re not going to buy the complete run of Cheers just to see what the fuss was about. At the same time, you’re unlikely to wait to bittorrent the entire thing or see every episode in syndication, either. It offers a service above and beyond what you can get with a cable subscription or internet broadband alone, for which a broad base of viewer are happy to pay a small sum.

But I think he could have taken this a step further: these services are particularly appealing and valuable because they allow you to do a big-gulp catchup on things you might have missed. If you’re like me and grew up without a television; if you’re an immigrant trying to pick up a bunch of American culture all at once; if your tastes changed over time and where you once cared about 90210 you now care about Roseanne, the ability to sit down and watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Cheers in an extended gulp rather than spread out over the years is invaluable. There’s no question that the Internet’s sped up and fractured the conversation around culture, as it has with politics and almost everything else. But it’s also given us tools that let us catch up to and participate in that conversation. Services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Prime serve up nostalgia, but they also let people join in a set of references that would have been inaccessible to them before.

The awesome Feminist Frequency presents the latest in their Tropes vs. Women series, a look at Straw Feminists in popular culture, characters whose feminism is presented as so extreme or irrational that their presentation discredits feminists and feminism:

Getting so upset over a name feels silly sometimes, but if you can get people to reject membership in a group, you’re a step closer to getting them to not make more substantive gestures of membership, like, say, donating time and money to Planned Parenthood. Of course, it doesn’t help that awesome feminist creators may put strong women on screen, or situations that explore the systematic oppression of women, but neglect to (or carefully avoid to) name feminism for what it is. Correct me if I’m wrong, but does anyone ever explicitly label themselves a feminist or call sexism by its name in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Though I will say, hearing Anya, talking through her wedding vows, declare that “I, Anya, promise to… love you, to cherish you, to honor you, but not to obey you, of course, because that’s anachronistic and misogynistic and who do you think you are, like a sea captain or something?” is awesome.

A good post from Nikki, in response to some of my writing, saying that it’s not enough to want more women writing and directing television episodes. She writes:

If we suggest that increasing the number of women ON television might increase the number of women BEHIND television, thereby effecting a change in how sexist or feminist television shows might be, we excuse men from the process entirely, except as Upholders of the Status Quo. Set aside the question about women behind the scenes and focus on the men behind the scenes, who are definitely still in power in the media and it’s that power structure that should be held accountable for the current portrayal of women on TV.

Amen. I’m a pretty firm believer in the carrot-and-stick thing, though, because it’s relatively easy for male creators to clap their hands over their ears when they’re being criticized for not giving us wonderful, developed female characters and just not listen. And it’s much easier to get people to listen when you’re praising, and for other people to see that praise and think “I want that!” So without further ado and in no particular order, 10 fantastic female characters on television who were created by men.

1. Trixie, Deadwood, David Milch: I know this list isn’t in order, but if it was, I’d still put it at the top. Milch’s prostitute-turned-accountant, pimp’s-trick-turned-Jewish-businessman’s-girlfriend would still be at the top. We meet Trixie at the beginning of the show when she’s been accused of murder, and watch her help another woman beat a drug addiction even when it means defying her employer’s orders; seek out an education no one ever gave her so she can have more options in life; stand up for her friends when they get married and grieve for them when they bury their children; and develop a new relationship. She’s always making choices. And when she takes steps backwards, we understand why, at the gut level. She’s empowered, but the show doesn’t fall prey to the trap that strong female characters created by men often do — that women’s liberation is purely a matter of will, not circumstance.

2. Alice Morgan, Luther, Neil Cross: Alice, who enters the scene when she murders her parents, melts down the gun, and feeds the remaining parts to her dog, is a certified crazy person, but she’s not a victim. Her attraction to John Luther doesn’t make her a nymphomaniac. And her decision to work cases comes out of a clearly defined alternate morality and worldview. Rather than setting her up to be judged by the audience, she’s a compelling — and sometimes very scary — way to see the universe.
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As the title suggests, these are my first impressions of these shows, and therefore not definitive judgements. Obviously, all the posts in this series contain spoilers.

The sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a controversial one: the creators didn’t know they were going to be able to make it; Buffy’s decidedly dark and depressed; and Willow’s addiction is admittedly uneven. But I love it because I think it’s a fantastic acknowledgment of how hard that first year out of college is for everyone, and in particular, how difficult it can be to make it in the adult world without the academic credentials you’re expected to have if you’re someone of a certain class background. I also just think that Sarah Michelle Gellar is very, very good at playing fragile and scared, and showing what it’s like to summon your strength when you’re at the absolute bleeding edge of desperation.

All of which means she’s working a lot of her strengths in Ringer, the first episode of which aired last night, which looks like it’s going to be an extended meditation on the difference between the appearance of goodness and its actuality. Gellar plays twins, first Bridget, a former stripper and recovering addict who caused the death of a young boy, then later Siobhan, Bridget’s twin. When Siobhan disappears off a boat, Bridget impulsively jumps at a chance to reset her life (and avoid testifying against a dangerous crime figure, one of the few Native American characters I’ve seen on television in a long time) and pretends to be Siobhan, knowing that Siobhan’s husband and friends don’t know that Bridget exists.

The plausibility of this ruse is pretty dubious. Bridget has next to no time to do research on Siobhan’s life, and her impersonation is, well, imperfect. “You look absolutely anorexic,” chirps Siobhan’s best friend Gemma. “You must share your secret.” And when Siobhan’s husband Andrew comes home, he immediately notices huge differences in the way his wife is reacting to circumstances, explaining that “I love it. I just don’t believe it.” And now Bridget’s going to have to fake a pregnancy, which I’d suspect will work about as well for her as it did for Terri on Glee.

But if she can pull it off, it will be because Siobhan turns out to be such an awful, manipulative person that the people around her chalk up her inconsistent behavior to her terminal duplicitousness. It turns out the so-called good sister is sleeping with Gemma’s husband Henry; driving Henry nuts by refusing to see him — and then refusing to acknowledge that she’s carrying his baby; engaged in what’s essentially a fake marriage with her own husband; shipping her stepdaughter off to boarding school. Maybe she lied about Bridget’s existence not because Siobhan was ashamed of her or hurt by things she’s done but because it’s part of a pattern of bad behavior and lies. And maybe whatever happened to her on that boat was by Siobhan’s design, not a suicide but an escape, a vindictive attempt to stick Bridget with her life. We have a lot of television about bad behavior by rich people, but less about the fact that we tend to equate wealth with virtue, often as a way to make ourselves feel better about wanting it. Having a main character repeatedly come up against the fact that what she thought about her sister’s life based on its polished surface was wrong is an interestingly direct way to engage with that myth.

I don’t really think Ringer is good—for it to be that, it would have to build its mythology a bit more slowly. The pregnancy reveal should have been a couple of episodes in, and we should get more time to see Bridget make the decision to replace her sister and figure out how she’s going to pull it off. And if it’s going to be this dark, we need to see the darkness, not just be told that it’s out there, somewhere, in this brightly-lit, fancy world. Bridget’s terror should feel real. And the show should have at least some sense of fun about Bridget’s new life. If she’s stolen Siobhan’s place in the world after years of living lean in Wyoming, there should be some guilty humor in the gorgeous clothes, house, and husband.

There will be a lot of new television shows competing for your attention over the next couple of weeks, but there’s only one that will only take a couple minutes of your time each week and is pushing forward the pop culture conversation about marriage equality, sexual orientation in sports, and the relationships between gay men and straight women. That’s Husbands, a new web series from Jane Espenson, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica and director Jeff Greenstein, a veteran of Friends, Will & Grace, Parenthood , and Desperate Housewives . I spoke with them and the rest of the show’s cast and crew for a two-part series about the state of web television, and the state of gay relationships in popular culture:

“When we did Will & Grace, we were attempting to extend the recent gains Ellen had made when it revealed to America that the spunky gal they were already in love with happened to be gay,” says Husbands director Jeff Greenstein, who won an Emmy in 2000 for his work on Will & Grace, and is a writer and executive producer on Desperate Housewives and State of Georgia, which premiered this summer. “Over the course of eight seasons, we were able to gently move both these men into mature relationships. And by that I don’t just mean two guys lounging on the sofa watching Funny Girl, but falling in love, planning a life, kissing on the lips and sleeping together. Which for the time was kind of a big deal. It’s been six years since Will & Grace, and gay guys on network TV are still lounging on the sofa watching Funny Girl.”

Rather than emulating dramas like The Kids Are All Right or comedies like Modern Family as a way to explore the realities of marriage, the creators of Husbands looked to stories about young married couples no matter their gender. Jane Espenson, the show’s co-creator and a veteran of shows ranging from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Battlestar Galactica, took television shows Mad About You and Dharma & Greg as inspiration, while Greenstein looked to Barefoot in the Park. While most looks at gay couples tend to treat them as if they’re established, Cheeks, the show’s co-creator, says he and Espenson stumbled on the idea of looking at the beginning of a marriage. “It seemed like such a classic, yet timely, premise,” he says, as couples line up to marry in New York.

“Yes, the issue is serious, but every individual marriage is funny,” says Espenson. “And just making that point is making a point about marriage equality—look how this is just a normal marriage in every way, including all of its own personal craziness.”

The show premieres at 9:30 EST/6:30 PST tonight on its website. I’ve read through the first season’s worth of scripts, and it’s a fresh, funny show, a genuine bridge to something new and different. And more to the point, Husbands is effectively a pitch to a network. This first season is really a first-episode pilot. If an audience comes together around the web series, a network won’t have to speculate about whether there’s an viewership for an irreverent equal marriage comedy — they’ll know for sure that audience exists. Tuning in is mostly an abstract way to show support for something fresh and different unless you’re a Nielsen viewer. This is a time when we can actually cast countable votes with our mouses.