Of all the new shows I’ve been monitoring this fall, the one that confounds me the most thus far is The Mindy Project. I had what were almost certainly unfairly high expectations for the program, about a young ob/gyn based in part on Mindy Kaling’s mother, given Kaling’s work on The Office, her status as a fully-developed cross-platform comedic voice, and my enthusiasm for the subject material, including women’s health and medical billing. But I can’t decide if I like the show, in part because I can’t decide if I like its main character.

Low-level female difficulty on television tends to be most interesting if it’s to an end. Liz Lemon’s crazy is the result of a poor work-life balance and in response to the insane expectations of women in Hollywood. Hannah Horvath’s wild vacillations are the result of a girl being told she’s talented but never being expected or forced to turn that talent in any applied direction. So far, Mindy’s damage, seems more like a symptom of bratty entitlement than part of a larger constellation. I appreciated that her character carried out a competent delivery in the first episode, but not so much that it erased my real sense of anger at her for missing another patient’s delivery because she was being a mess and then acting irritated when another doctor got credit for and business out of doing her job. Similarly, the idea that she’d hire a nurse because of a shared affinity for romantic comedies turned me off. Mindy seems more like a child than the grown person with character and nuance the show seems to want me to believe she is, more the supporting character with her love of romantic comedies as a single, defined quirk that provides fuel for recurring jokes, rather than the multi-faceted main character The Mindy Project needs her to be. Some of these elements feel like natural transitions from Kaling’s stint writing and playing Kelly Kapoor on The Office, and perhaps an illustration of some difficulties Kaling is have extricating herself from a character who is drawn closely from her own experiences and viewing Mindy independently as the woman who is ushering her character into the world and into prime time.

But it remains a problem for the show that Mindy is someone who, if I met her in real life, I don’t think I’d want to spend much time with. The bar is lower for people I don’t have to meet in the real world and admits much stranger fictional creations than I’d accept real ones. But they aren’t completely divorced from each other. A character who falls in the dangerous zone of irritating, rather than being either genuinely compelling or a fascinating, illustrative train wreck is a difficult one to attach to.

The Mindy Project also feels to me, so far, like an illustration of why, while it’s really important to have shows that star women of color and women whose bodies don’t fit an exceedingly narrow Hollywood ideal, the presence of both of those conditions is not actually sufficient to make a show good or interesting. It’s nice to see that Kaling didn’t shrink in between her transition from a supporting player to a star. But it’s exhausting to see Danny (Chris Messina), the doctor who is her obvious love interest, tell her, with what seemed like apparent intent to hurt her, that she could stand to lose fifteen pounds. And I thought last week’s episode, in which Kaling repeatedly re-orders frozen yogurt while on a date with Seth Meyers, ended up making her look like a child (something that was also the case during her first-episode date with Ed Helms) rather than saying something sensual and interesting about her appetites or her relationship with food. Maybe Danny will come around about Mindy’s body, maybe the show’s thoughts about Mindy and food, which has popped up as a theme twice, will cohere. But right now, the show is in an odd interim place where more mean about Mindy’s weight than it is either treating her like a normal sitcom star no matter what she looks like or actually examining Mindy’s relationship to her body. I’m not sure it’s progress to put someone of Kaling’s size (which honestly, seems fairly close to mine, and thus not even truly that daring) on television if the joke and character beats feel old and slightly cruel.

Thus far, the show’s perspective on race feels like it’s coming from a bunch of different directions, and I’m more interested in the ways in which they’ll cohere into a complete picture. The scene in the first episode where Mindy, drunk and riding a stolen child’s bike down a dark suburban street, hollers “Racist!” at a driver who honks at her, is a very smart, subtle one-word joke both about the possibilities both that people’s actions are influenced by racism and that charges of racism can be not just spurious but frivolous. The show hasn’t commented directly on what it means for a South Asian woman to covet romantic comedy dreams, though Mindy’s boyfriend, who she meets cute in ideal romantic comedy circumstances, does leave her for a younger, Eastern European woman—the dream is only available to everywomen who meet certain racial and age criteria. Then, there’s her attitudes towards lower-income patients, which is inflected by both class and race. Mindy may act like she has a candy heart with a little boy who translates for his veiled, uinsured mother, telling him to lie to her about their family’s insurance status so she can accept her as a patient, but she complains bitterly about poor patients to her coworkers. That constellation of factors is sharper and more interesting than anything The Mindy Project‘s done with body image or Mindy’s relationship with food, and I think the show might be sharper if her relationship with romantic comedies was filtered through a lens of race and class rather than foregrounded. I understand that romantic comedies are the show’s hook. But I can’t help but wonder if the show would be more interesting if Kaling’s specific perspective on them was a bit more foregrounded so the show would feel like a conversation with a close, smart friend rather than a recapitulation of archetypal story beats.

And really, I suppose, that’s what I’m finding difficult about The Mindy Project, which should be everything I like on television. I need Mindy to give me a reason to keep her around. Because unlike her best friend Gwen, we’re not bound by chains of friendship stretching back to colleges that require me to do hangover maintenance on her and debrief over lunch. We’re still getting to know each other. And so far, though Fox has given the show a full season, I’m not sure whether I want to stay for another drink or another episode.

For more on The Mindy Project, Pitch Perfect, and other pop culture ephemera, check out the latest episode of A Movie and An Argument With Alyssa and Swin:

The Directors Guild of America has released its annual report on who directs television series, and the results are not exactly promising—and they illustrate one reason it’s hard for women and people of color to make gains in the industry. The percentage of episodes of television in the 2011-2012 television season directed by white men rose from 72 percent to 73 percent. White women directed 11 percent of episodes, the same as last year. And women of color and men of color basically traded work: men of color directed 13 percent of episodes, down from 14 percent last year. And women of color directed 4 percent of episodes, up from 3 percent in the previous season. In other words, the amount of work available to white men is relatively secure. And men and women of color aren’t making gains relative to the whole: they’re trading off gains with each other.

But it’s also worth noting which shows are doing better than average, some of which are predictable, and some of which are not. The Game, created by Mara Brock Akil, had 100 percent of its episodes directed by women or people of color, as did Single Ladies, which was created by Stacy Littlejohn, and produced by Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit company. Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal clocked in with 67 percent female or minority directors, Nurse Jackie with 60, Girls with 44 percent, and Don’t Trust The B—- In Apartment with 23 percent. If male showrunners are having trouble finding women and people of color to direct their television shows, they might do well to ask the women around them who are creating television shows who they hire.

But it’s not only shows created by and about women who have done well hiring women and people of color to direct episodes. 36 percent of the last season’s episodes of Sons of Anarchy, a show created by Kurt Sutter, himself a white guy, were directed by women like Gwyneth Horder-Payton, a veteran of The Shield, Paris Barclay, who won two Emmys for NYPD Blue, and Mario Van Peebles. Grimm, created by three men, had women and people of color behind the camera for 48 percent of its first-season episodes. And The Walking Dead, the bloody zombie show based on the comic books by Robert Kirkman, had 53 percent of its episodes directed by women and minorities under the leadership of Gale Anne Hurd in its second season after Frank Darabont left the show. Being a lady doesn’t mean you can handle veiled autobiography, or stories about dating and sex. Women can do the tough stuff, too. And some men seem to recognize it.

Awards are always a terribly flawed way of determining what makes for good popular culture. Limits on the number of nominees lock deserving contenders out of their categories. Differences between the people who watch television shows or movies and the people in the pool assigned to judge them can produce some truly baffling biases and decisions. And winning doesn’t automatically transform a show’s prospects of staying on the air or an actor’s chance of getting good work in the future. But all of those caveats aside, it can be hugely satisfying to see a small show get the recognition you assume it’ll be denied, or an actor break barriers. And if you want better television, here are the shows and performances you should root for get whatever boost it’s possible to wring out of the Emmys on Sunday.

COMEDY SERIES
Who’s Nominated:
The Big Bang Theory
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Girls
Modern Family
30 Rock
Veep

Who Should Win: Girls

Why: There are a lot of legacy shows on this list, and some very notable omissions, particularly Parks and Recreation, which had a much stronger season than its network counterpart 30 Rock. Given that, I have to root for Girls, one of the few comedies to arrive on television knowing exactly what it was and what its strengths were, even if during its run, creator Lena Dunham had to confront some of its more notable weaknesses and absences, particularly when it came to race. Flawed though it may be, those of us rooting for more personal, low-budget shows—and who would like to see folks of color get the opportunities Dunham and Louis C.K. have—should hope for Girls to take home the statuette over more commercial favorites like The Big Bang Theory.

COMEDY ACTOR
Who’s Nominated:
Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory
Larry David as Himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm
Don Cheadle as Marty Kaan in House of Lies
Louis C.K. as Louie in Louie
Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock
Jon Cryer as Alan Harper in Two and a Half Men

Who Should Win: Louis C.K. or Don Cheadle

Why: It’s impossible to compare C.K.’s exploration of wounded and uncertain middle-aged masculinity and Cheadle’s turn as a hyped-up management consultant struggling to raise his potentially transgender son with tenderness and consideration. House of Lies is an inconsistent mess in comparison to the jewel-like Louie. But C.K. isn’t exactly lacking in recognition. And Cheadle’s playing a character who’s more distant from his real self than C.K. Plus, a black actor hasn’t won the Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Emmy since Robert Guillaume for Benson in 1985.

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I had a lovely time at SXSW talking Islam and pop culture this spring, and I’m hoping to head back next year. Slate’s proposed a panel involving me, Slate editor Hanna Rosin, The New Republic’s Noreen Malone, and Girls executive producer Jenni Konner talking sex and raunch involving women on television. If it happens, I think it should be a good conversation. In between Louie, Girls, Don’t Trust the B—- In Apartment 23 and movies like Bridesmaids, I think we’re at an interesting moment where female characters are playing with dignity, instrumentalism and aggression in sex in challenging ways, and the reaction to these sex scenes and approaches to sex demonstrate how early we are in these sorts of conversations. If the right to be undignified without having it reflect on every member of every group you’re a part of is a marker of true equality, then this conversation gets at something particularly important. If you agree, I’d appreciate it if you’d take a moment to support the panel through SXSW’s Panel Picker. And if we get to go, I’ll be sure to arrange a meetup in Austin, especially now that I have a better sense of the city.

I spent an hour yesterday considering how to tackle Stephen Marche’s calamitously awful piece for Esquire, “The Contempt of Women,” an attempt at cultural analysis in which he strawmans Girls, Sex and the City and Fifty Shades of Grey all in one paragraph, praises President Bush’s myopia, and literally cites declining sexual assaults rate as evidence of women’s contempt for men. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say so much as I didn’t know where to start, at least until Marche tweeted “The women who show their contempt for my piece on the contempt of women prove my point by virtue of their contempt. Does that make sense?” It’s the perfect encapsulation of an idea that’s shows up in culture everywhere from the backlash against Anita Sarkeesian to the defense of comics who say that women aren’t funny: that women don’t have the right to determine what’s fit for judgement, particularly if their target is something admired by men or conferring of male privilege, and when they do, their judgement is inevitably tainted by self-interest or motivated by irrational contempt rather than the merits of the case.

It is, apparently, not okay for women to want clarity about the status of their relationships and sex that is fulfilling for them as well as their partners, as Hannah does on Girls, to attempt to negotiate the terms of their relationship as Anastasia Steele does in Fifty Shades of Grey, tease the president of the United States, who is also your husband and probably comes equipped with his own set of domestic idiosyncrasies and slight annoyances, or appreciate Louis C.K.’s self-examination. The thing is, there’s a lot of stupid in our culture, and contempt for women is embedded in that very stupid. I’m not sure why women are supposed to accord a heightened level of respect for narratives that tell us we should fall for inconsiderate schlubs whose inattentiveness is a theoretical down payment in future awesome, or the idea that sexual harassment is part of video game culture, or assertions that female incompetence is adorable and endearing. If people and concepts are going to treat women with utter, logic-boggling disrespect, I have no idea why I should bring deference to a contempt-fight.

But we are in luck! Because it turns out that even if I’m not supposed to feel contempt for things and behaviors, and men are supposed to ignore me, Marche is allowed to visit judgement down on his fellow men, and they’d do well to fall in line. “I suppose I should feel compassion, or some kind of weird gender loyalty, for the guys who can’t figure this out,” he writes. “In all honesty, I don’t. There is no masculinity crisis. There’s a crisis for idiots. The Tucker Maxes of the world are doomed. That’s not the end of men. It’s the beginning.” What a relief that someone is allowed to name nonsense for what it is! I hope Marche is ready and able to serve. Because I have a list of things I’d like him to hold in contempt for me.

Ryan McGee has a great post up in defense of comedies that don’t have traditional jokes, like Louie and Girls, and that end up confounding audience expectations as a result. He writes:

We don’t expect our dramas to be comedy-free. In fact, we’d lambaste such programs for having an enormous stick up an enormous orifice. “Mad Men” or “Breaking Bad” quite often is the funniest show on television on the week a particular episode airs. And we don’t ding them critically for making us laugh. If anything, the ability to make us laugh AND cry is seen as a bonus. Why do hour-longs get the benefit of the doubt while the 30-minute shows are greeted with widespread befuddlement when attempting the same magic trick?…Shows like “Modern Family” thrive because people understand what they will be getting. The ability to repeat that type of content is admirable, and certainly serves a purpose that television has provided as a genre for decades. But it’s time to also point out the shows that constantly have fans wondering what type of show they will be watching that particular week as well.

I’d actually go a step further than this—there’s something odd about assigning comedies thirty-minute slots and dramas to full hours. I understand that it may be more difficult to keep jokes coming over 42 minutes of programming as opposed to 22, and that some dramas require 42 minutes (or on premium cable) an hour to unspiral whatever problem’s been set up for the characters in any given week. But something like Louie’s “Duckling,” a predominantly funny episode of television with some documentary qualities, filled an hour easily last year and to great acclaim (and the next two episodes of the show could easily form an hour whole). And a show like Law & Order, which split episodes fairly evenly between cops and lawyers, shows a model for how you could make half-hour dramas—I feel like a half-hour drama about public defenders catching cases or cops working smaller crimes could work well. In any case, it’s a funny restriction, and it would be interesting to see people experiment around it.

The second season of Awkward Black Girl is here:

Watching, I was struck by something I hadn’t quite put together before: unlike most other sitcoms, the show is really wholly dependent on whether you can get inside J’s head. The show is clear on the fact that she’s an unreliable narrator, and that the interactions we see are presented to us as J sees them, which makes them less naturalistic and warm, and more cartoonish and brittle (this at times also seems like a reasonable workaround for the supporting cast’s limitations). In a way, it’s a much more directly challenging show than Girls to which it’s regularly compared: unlike Lena Dunham’s sitcom, Awkward Black Girl doesn’t really give you a break from J’s head, and doesn’t regularly call out J’s anti-heroic tendencies, her prickliness, her slackerdom, her self-absorption, with the same force as the other characters on Girls do.

There’s something fascinating at work in the way these shows challenge you to like characters who are, flaws and all, essentially reasonably likable people. They’re both doing the thing that Hannah tells Marnie that she does in their big dust-up: “No one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself, okay? So any mean thing someone is going to think of to say about me, I’ve already said to me, about me, probably in the last half hour.”Girls and Awkward Black Girl put their characters’ worst sides front and center constantly, and then if folks make it through that hurdle and insist they’re still interested in knowing J and Hannah, get access to their kindness, humor, and smarts. It’s the exact opposite of the slacker dude meme, where Judd Apatow and company present the most charming bits of their manchildren before showing the damage they can do, and forcing them to change when they face the consequences of that damage.

I’ve been writing on and off for months about where women fit into the current Golden Age of television (or are we in the Silver Age at some point? Someone who knows more than I do about mythology, help!), particularly into the ranks of masculinized anti-heroes. So I just loved Todd VanDerWeff’s brilliant piece on how the current standards for television excellence are defined by masculinity, and how shows like Girls and Enlightened are powerful—and uncomfortably received—challenges to those norms:

We have a very particular idea about what makes “good” TV in this age of episodic online reviews. “Good” TV is either a single-camera sitcom filled with pop-culture references or moments of pathos (ideally both), or a serialized drama—often on cable—that probes the darkest limits of the human experience and has a bad-boy protagonist. In essence, we’ve created a world where the only two shows that can be copied to make good TV are Arrested Development and The Sopranos.

There’s nothing wrong with this, actually. Copying those two shows has resulted in a lot of great series, including some terrific, distinctly feminist TV, be it the female heroes of Parks & Recreation or Mad Men’s multi-faceted portrayal of what it meant to be a woman in the ’60s. But copying those two shows has also resulted in a narrow TV palette, a limited series of colors to draw from when constructing the next “great” TV show. These series tend to have sensibilities that are very white and masculine, largely because they’re all created by white males, and, hey, write what you know. (It’s not like my reviews aren’t informed by this same perspective.) Even the shows created in this mold that have female characters at their centers—Damages, say—tend to define that female character by how well she fits into a traditionally masculine world.

I’ve long thought that Sex and the City, which I love, has been weirdly excluded from the narrative of the rise of great television even though it premiered before The Sopranos did and had as much to do with the rebranding of HBO as an adult, smart, frank network as The Sopranos did. I wonder if that is in part a response to fact that the default perspective in popular culture is male, so shows aimed at women are based in the assumption that men will never come along, or that women will find some sort of refuge from male-dominated culture hugely refreshing. And to a certain extent that’s true—shows that speak to my experience in any way that’s close to emotionally precise are so rare they feel miraculous. But I wonder if their particularity becomes a hindrance when it comes to acting as a model. It shouldn’t be that hard to extract from Sex and the City that frank, aspirational shows about female friendships and female sexuality are a draw. But somehow, that show becomes particular time, place, and set of actresses, exceptional in its depictions of anti-heroines, its excellence, AND its privileging of women’s experience, while The Sopranos is conventional in its focus on men and unconventional only in its focus on an anti-hero and the quality of its execution.

I hate that we still haven’t found the show with a female lead, about specifically female issues, and from a specifically feminine-coded perspective that’s such a smash and so well-executed that everyone wants to try to be as smart and as ground-breaking and as buzzed-about as it. I hate that quality shows about women remain exceptions rather than anything close to a norm. As much as I love Girls and Enlightened, they’re too low-rated to qualify. But they’re sparking hugely difficult and important conversations, and perhaps they’re turning over fertile soil for someone who will follow them, and strike gold in the same fields..

I had the enormous privilege to spend my Saturday talking about the employment of women in pop culture and the impacts it has on the representations we see in media with Jezebel founder Anna Holmes, Harmonix video game designer Alli Thresher (who you should know from her appearances around these parts), and Graphic Policy podcast co-host Elana Levin. We talked about a lot of things—Girls, Game of Thrones, DC Comics’ New 52, Naughty Dog’s video game designers, and the kinds of conversations that make guys realize what sorts of images they’re putting out into the world. Plus, the marvelous Jaclyn Friedman of Women, Action, and the Media made a guest appearance to help us field questions from what turned out to be a conservative blogger who wanted to convince us that all dudes are just horrible sexist rapists, or something. It was pretty great:

It was a great conversation, and the questions from the audience (which we restated for the cameras when they were actual questions rather than “I actually have more of a comment” sorts of things) got my thought processes going. Netroots may be over for the year, but the posts inspired by it are just getting started.