Essayist William Deresiewicz has a fascinating look at the evolution of friendship between men and women in the New York Times—and a suggestion for why we don’t see these friendships in popular culture:

So if it’s common now for men and women to be friends, why do we so rarely see it in popular culture? Partly, it’s a narrative problem. Friendship isn’t courtship. It doesn’t have a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories about friendships of any kind are relatively rare, especially given what a huge place the relationships have in our lives. And of course, they’re not sexy. Put a man and a woman together in a movie or a novel, and we expect the sparks to fly. Yet it isn’t just a narrative problem, or a Hollywood problem.

This isn’t entirely true, of course: friendships have narratives and experience strains and uncertainties that can be just as impactful and interesting to explore as the stresses of new romantic connections. And one of the hallmarks of the Frat Pack and Judd Apatow is that they treat male friendships with that level of significance. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy’s growing connections with his coworkers, and the various ways in which they’re alternately respectful and insensitive, are the catalyst for him to develop his love life, and their friendships are almost as important as his first adult romantic relationship. In Wedding Crashers, John and Jeremy are the most important people in each other’s lives, and the movie is about how those friendships have to change when they start treating women as potentially permanent additions to their lives instead of as temporary interludes. I Love You, Man treats the process of finding a best friend as if it’s as significant as the quest for a permanent partner.

And even if you don’t want to do a 90-minute exploration of friendship in a movie, or believe that friendships are inherently less dramatic than romantic partnering (which strikes me as somewhat strange), that’s not an argument against including friendships between men and women on television, where they can be an established part of the background dynamic rather than foregrounded. New Girl, after a rocky start, has settled into a nice dynamic between Jess and her roommates, and has dealt with the sexual tension question by having the characters be honest about the fact that it exists while also being clear that they don’t intend to act on it. One of the many virtues of Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, which debuts on ABC this Wednesday, is that it features a significant friendship between a man and a woman, the equally funny Krysten Ritter and James Van Der Beek. Peggy Olson and Don Draper are arguably friends on Mad Men, and this season’s Game of Thrones involves Arya’s friendships—or at least alliances—with men. These kinds of stories are far from impossible to tell. It’s not as if men and women who are friends are fictional creatures who have to be conjured into existence.

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!

Six months ago, it seemed like we were at the verge of a promising new age in female comedy (at least, if you’re a white lady). Bridesmaids was a big, and unexpected, hit. And it was the beginning of a television season in which the hottest trend was sitcoms created by women. As much as I would have wished for a string of hits, the results have been more predictable. The shows have ranged from the toxic Are You There, Chelsea? and 2 Broke Girls, to the increasingly-tolerable New Girl, to the outright winning Up All Night. And despite the boom in shows created by women, the episodes of these programs have been overwhelmingly directed by men. And men have written slightly more than half the episodes in six shows I examined. If a revolution for women in entertainment is under way, this fall may have been the vanguard, but in both employment of women and depictions of them on television, we’re a long way from victory.

Of Whitney‘s 20 episodes, just 7 were written by women, and of those seven, only three were written by women other than show creator Whitney Cummings. The other show Cummings created, 2 Broke Girls, has been influenced much more by showrunner Michael Patrick King than by Cummings (she wrote just one episode of the show), though it’s actually doing better than Whitney at getting episodes written by women on the air: women have written 9 of the show’s 20 episodes, while men have written 11. On New Girl, almost twice as many episodes were written by men (11) as by women (6). Liz Merriweather, the show’s creator, wrote two out of those 17 episodes. It might be hard to imagine, given how much the show seems like a Female Chauvinist Pig archetype, but a majority of Are You There, Chelsea? episodes are written by women—6 out of 10. And it’s the only show on this list where every episode is directed by a woman, Gail Mancuso, who’s also directed an episode of Suburgatory, and is reteaming with Roseanne Barr on her new NBC sitcom Downwardly Mobile. Suburgatory also has a narrow majority of its episodes scripted by women, including series creator Emily Kapnek, 10 out of 19. And Up All Night is the undisputed champion—in a world where having 13 of a show’s 20 episodes written by women counts as an overwhelming victory.

These numbers are a striking reminder that we can’t count on female showrunners and show creators to do all the work of getting more women working on television programs. And we shouldn’t ask them to. Being a woman doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy working with men, or that you can’t learn from men’s perspectives. And we shouldn’t ask women to deny themselves those pleasures and those insights just to make up the gaps created by men who aren’t curious enough to want to work with women, and as a result are missing out on fresh and exciting perspectives, as well as potential friendships and working partnerships. If women creators or showrunners are solely responsible for getting more women writing for television, then the cancellation of a single show or a mass decision by studios that lady-run or lady-created shows are no longer a trend they want to ride could create a massive dropoff in the number of women writers. Until men and women are equally invested in getting more women’s voices in writers’ rooms, those numbers won’t improve in a permanent way.
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I was looking through the acting nominations for the Comedy Awards, and it really struck me that in a lot of ways, 2011 was a richer year for women in comedy than it was for men.

In movies, Jason Bateman got a nod for Horrible Bosses, Steve Carell was nominated for Crazy, Stupid, Love, Jean Dujardin was tapped for The Artist, Zach Galifianakis for The Hangover Part II, and Owen Wilson for Midnight in Paris. None of these are particularly innovative roles, and all of them (except Dujardin, whose range I don’t really know) fall pretty squarely within these actors’ existing ranges: Bateman is a tense straight man, Carell is sympathetic and slightly clueless, Galifianakis is disconcerting and wild, and Wilson is winsome. There are a few things that I think were left off this list—I’ll defend The Trip until I run out of breath, Patton Oswalt was great and under-recognized for Young Adult, and I’m not really sure why 50/50, which was nominated elsewhere, didn’t score acting nods—but I can’t think of a performance by a man that’s not here that was a revelation. Ditto in TV, which was dominated by utterly predictable nods for Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock, Ty Burrell in Modern Family, Steve Carell in The Office, and Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’m glad to see Louis C.K. in there—his performance in Louie was arguably my favorite thing on television in 2011. But it’s not like he has a lot of peers.

For women, on the other hand, the nominations are actually a lot of fun. I didn’t love Horrible Bosses, but seeing Jennifer Aniston get totally raunchy and ridiculous was a fun stretch for her. Ditto for Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher—depending on how she takes her career next, she could leave horrid romantic comedies behind and steer more in the direction of Charlize Theron in Young Adult, who really ought to be here. Melissa McCarthy was a miracle in Bridesmaids, and Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne, who had an utterly breakout performance in that film also could have easily been nominated. Television has its predictable notes—Tina Fey, for a deeply uninspired season of 30 Rock and Sofia Vergara for Modern Family. But you’ve got Zooey Deschanel in there for a debut performance in New Girl, and Maya Rudolph could easily be there for Up All Night, along with Laura Dern in Enlightened, Kat Dennings or Beth Behrs in 2 Broke Girls (that show’s massive flaws are not their fault), any of the women in Community‘s cast or Eliza Coupe or Elisha Cuthbert in Happy Endings.

And if Whitney or Are You There, Chelsea? had been less terrible, and we’d fulfilled all the potential of the lady comedy boom, this could have been an even more crowded field. I may not be equally addicted to every female comedy performance on the market these days. But it seems like there’s a lot of space available for new actresses to enter the field, and for actresses with existing track records to step out of their comfort zones. If those conditions persist, that’s a recipe for an embarrassment of riches.

Over at NPR’s Monkey See blog, Linda Holmes has a provocative essay up chronicling the decline of Liz Lemon, the harried comedy showrunner who is the star of NBC’s sitcom 30 Rock, from competent if overwhelmed woman to cringing child:

A recent storyline featuring James Marsden as Criss, Liz’s boyfriend who drove a hot-dog truck, was very reminiscent of Dennis the pager salesman. But this time, she didn’t break up with him because Jack gave her the side-eye and forced her to come to terms with the fact that she didn’t want him. She broke up with him because Jack appeared to her as an apparition — her spirit guide, basically — and mocked Criss, mostly for not having any money…Over the course of six seasons, Jack has been fully transformed into a condescending, all-knowing daddy, and Liz has been fully transformed into a needy little girl who is eternally terrified of displeasing him. She’s always had a grudging respect for him, but now she simply reveres him and trusts his judgment more than hers. She was once frazzled but smart, harried but competent, capable of wrangling a bunch of crazy people and then slumping at the end of the day, exhausted but minimally victorious. Now, she’s just dumb, incapable of making her own decisions, and her relationship with Jack is entirely out of balance.

For me, the tipping point with 30 Rock actually came last season when the show decided the next logical place to go in finding ways to be funny about Liz was to utterly sexually humiliate her. Liz was, at the time, dating a commercial pilot with the unfortunate name of Carol and an unfortunate moustache, played by Matt Damon, and they were having bedroom issues. Or, as Liz put it “I freaked out and my junk closed for business. It’s like Fort Knox down there.” The reason? An incident involving a Tom Jones poster, roller skates, the worst haircut anyone could bestow on a child, and a pair of flowered underpants. Liz can’t just have garden-variety intimacy problems: she has to be utterly freakish—and of course, to have Jack help her reach her breakthrough.

The decline of Liz Lemon may be a particular tragedy given how great 30 Rock once was. But when it comes to sex, it’s hardly unprecedented. A number of television comedies have decided to get laughs out of suggesting that their female leads are sexually freakish, and not in a Ludacris-approved kind of way. New Girl‘s done this to Jess twice. First, when she was finally about to sleep with her new boyfriend, the show had Jess overcome her jitters by getting her tangled up in ridiculous lingerie and then had her act out so many exaggerated versions of so many fetishes that she almost scared the poor man to death. More recently, Jess, in an effort to prove that her perennial optimism is always well-founded, ended up almost having a threesome with her creepy landlord. Her inability to read signals in any rational way—and her dancing around her bedroom doing jazz hands after the man proposed a threesome—were not the actions of a rational person.

And Parks and Recreation, which has done an admirable job of making its public servant heroine Leslie Knope into a sex symbol, had a weird slip last season when Leslie’s boss, Ron, discovered that she was dating their immediate superior, Ben. Her big secret was revealed when she accidentally dialed Ron during foreplay with Ben, a leadup that involved the two of them pretending to be historical weird leaders. Ron was disconcerted by the fact that Leslie had kept a secret from him, but the joke was clearly Leslie’s sexual proclivities.

Now, it’s not as if there’s an entirely clear double standard on these shows. On Parks and Recreation, Ron, normally a manly, independent libertarian is reduced to jelly and silliness by the sexual wiles of his ex-wives, to whom he is dangerously susceptible. Jess’s roommates on New Girl are not uniformly romantically successful. But Jack’s sexual quirks are generally treated as evidence of his prowess and manliness. When Liz is shocked that Jack’s girlfriend Avery likes a particular sex act, Jack explains that she appreciates it when it’s well-executed. And during his relationship with liberal Congresswoman C.C. Cunningham, he consistently credits for being sexually adventuresome. It’s too bad that someone like Leslie, who’s otherwise competent, aggressive, smart and attractive couldn’t get credit for sexual creativity rather than becoming the butt of jokes for having specific tastes.

The bridge is yours.

-Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes.

-Because of The Hunger Games, we’re getting Battle Royale on DVD.

-In case you don’t have enough Zooey Deschanel in your life, she’s getting a web series.

-Israel’s conquest of American television continues.

-Jon Stewart is off to the races on spending Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC money, being a pretty princess:

I was talking to Foster Kamer yesterday about my post on Childish Gambino when one of my colleagues forwarded me Seyward Darby’s critique of Zooey Deschanel, and somehow, the combination of the two things made me realize that I feel essentially the same way about the giant-eyed gamine Hollywood phenomenon and the hip-hop collective from Los Angeles, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All: I’m just really bored by what they think are meaningful efforts to break the mold or challenge norms.

Darby writes:

My problem with the actress du jour has to do with a message “New Girl” pushes implicitly, but incessantly: that the measure of a person’s character—the test of what makes him or her nuanced and compelling—is the magnitude of endearing personality quirks…It seems she’s confident, though confidence is defined largely as wearing fake buck teeth to a wedding and picking up a guy with the line “Hey Sailor.” And I guess you could say she’s passionate, though our only clues are that she sobs over Dirty Dancing after her boyfriend cheats on her and sings to herself—even making up personal theme songs—anytime, anywhere. And it’s possible she’s creative, but the only evidence we have are things like her personally concocted version of the Chicken Dance.

There’s something weird about the sense that quirk, or the right of women to be as girly as they please, are somehow under attack. When New Girl, the show that’s making Deschanel a national star rather than an object of niche hipster-worship came out, I wrote that I had no idea what the show was making a stand for. Was the defense of Deschanel’s quirkiness meant to be a a rejection of gender norms? The right to wear hillbilly teeth at a wedding doesn’t demolish the female beauty complex, especially when you do it wearing expensively maintained hair and a gorgeous dress—instead, it’s the kind of thing models do in spreads precisely to call attention to how beautiful they are otherwise, and it buys into weird, classist assumptions. Access to dentistry is a big health issue. Similarly, I don’t know of any organized campaign against the right of women to like Dirty Dancing. It’s entirely possibly that my non-quirk privilege blinds me to deep and endemic prejudice against people who have as their highest value the right to be a little wacky, but I’m reasonably confident that I’m not missing something.

Similarly, I don’t deny that Odd Future has a right to be mad about things, whether it’s that Tyler’s father is epically awful, or racism, or how much it sucks to be a teenager. But the collective’s antics, whether they’re beating down photographers or treating service workers terribly, aren’t related to any of the things they could possibly be angry about. I’m not shocked by it: people who unexpectedly get a lot of money and attention aren’t guaranteed to act like saints or with great dignity, no matter where they come from. I’m bored by the idea that it’s supposed to be meaningful, or rebellious, or anything other than, as Steve Albini put it, “It’s being an asshole about being an asshole.” And Zooey Deschanel is being adorkable about her own adorkableness. They’re both endlessly self-referential systems that we’re being told are supposed to be about something larger.

This, from a New York Times piece on the comedy boom, seems somewhat off to me:

And then there’s the economy. Mr. Lee said it was a mistake to tie trends too simply to social developments, but in this case, it was inevitable to think of “things like the 1930s and screwball comedies.”

Indeed, socio-economic conditions are being widely credited. Mr. Lorre, who had hits before and after the economy tanked, said, “Comedy thrives during economic downturns. You know, if you’ve had a bad day, laughter is a better remedy than watching a coroner pick shrapnel out of some poor guy’s private parts.”

Ms. Salke said, “It’s all part of stress level.” She said people might look to comedy because they “don’t want to think too hard.” She added, “You’re probably sitting around the table talking about how you’re going to afford the tuition, or you’re not going to have a vacation, or you can’t afford a divorce. You need an escape from that.”

Lorre’s core comedy, the goofy, escapist Two and a Half Men, has seen its ratings fall from 28 million in this year’s premiere to 15 million for the last episode. And a lot of the comedies that are resonating — or, in an anemic ratings season, at least have gotten pickups — tap directly into contemporary issues if not into anxieties, whether it’s the class politics of 2 Broke Girls, the biggest new comedy of the fall, the post-college roommate scenario of New Girl, or the domestic trials of Up All Night and Whitney. Even Modern Family, cited for its excellence as one of the causes of the comedy resurgence, is nodding to the zeitgeist by having Claire Dunphy run for town council.

I do think it’s true that television has generally become more about providing aspirational models to audiences rather than reflections of their lived experiences. But even though that’s the case, the characters in popular comedies today still have problems that bear some small relation to those faced by their audiences, even if the consequences are cushioned by wealth or the scale is different — Jay’s business having trouble on Modern Family, for example, probably wouldn’t mean that his family gets foreclosed on. These are not the problems of, say, a con woman and a beer heir who meet cute on a cruise ship in The Lady Eve, or a professor and a gang moll in Ball of Fire, challenges that might be fun to watch but none of us could ever possibly have. We are not ignoring our mortgages to chase a leopard through the suburbs. Comedy characters today may be somewhat more secure than comedy watchers, but they’re helping us mediate the challenges of contemporary life, not escape them entirely.

This was supposed to be a great fall for women on television, but several weeks in, it feels like it may be better at the cause of getting women acting jobs than at providing entertainment aimed at women viewers. With that odd disconnect in mind, my friend Lux asked me what I thought made a show woman-oriented a while back, and I was reminded of it again reading Nellie Andreeva’s meditation on The Playboy Club, Charlie’s Angels, and Prime Suspect*’s ratings troubles when she wrote:

For Playboy, there was a lack of clarity who the show is for. With a popular mens magazine in the title and the promise of scantly-clad bunnies, the series seemed to be targeting men. But it was at its core a female soap. The confusion with its mixed identity was clearly visible in the pilot, which looked like a soap, felt like a soap and behaved like one until it suddenly veered into dark territory with a murdered mafia boss’ body being dumped in the river.

As with most of these things, I think it’s easier to narrow down a definition by figuring out what’s not aimed at women. New Girl, despite its name and female protagonist, really don’t feel to me like it’s aimed at women at all. The show’s advertising focuses on how the character is perceived (thus, “adorkable”) rather than who she is. Most of the episodes I’ve seen so far are on the surface about problems Jess resolves, but are actually about the things her male roommates learn from helping her solve problems — the show is about their emotional growth more than hers. Up All Night, by contrast, could work for either gender of coastal elites, but I think is slightly more aimed at women. It’s not that Will Arnett’s stay-at-home dad Chris doesn’t have a character arc, because he clearly does. But there are also women wrestling with a whole range of career and life issues, and the core couple’s storylines are, obviously, interdependent. Raising a small human tends to do that. And I can’t quite figure out if 2 Broke Girls is supposed to be aimed at women or not: it’s got female protagonists, but it remains unclear whether they’re meant to be points of entry or objects of consumption (which may be more a problem of execution than artistic intent).

Tone isn’t really determinative, either. New Girl may be all Dirty Dancing-themed sing-a-longs and sunshine, while Prime Suspect looks gritty and muted, lots of grays and washed-out purples, plus, you know, omnipresent brutal murder. But the show is essentially a funhouse version of what it feels like to work in a bad male-dominated environment. It’s kind of a horror story with a female protagonist who gets to be a hero without having to be a virgin. And it’s not really tone that’s wrong with Playboy Club. It’s that the show puts women’s bodies on screens but no concrete ideas in their heads to relate to. Finding your dad by posing for Playboy is not an idea Viewers at Home can relate to, or analogous to any situations we are likely to face in real life.

*You should watch Prime Suspect. Maria Bello is very good, and the show deserves to survive.

The bridge is yours.

-How to navigate PSN’s terms of service.

-This praise of My Boys over The New Girl is absolutely correct.

-An argument that I didn’t think needed making.

-How to think about obnoxious people who make good art.

-I know some people think Lana Del Rey is awful and manufactured and such a sellout, but man is this gorgeous: