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.

Thank goodness ABC’s humiliating Work It premiered to ratings worse than the now-canceled show it replaced. It still doesn’t restore my faith in humanity that the so-called comedy beat Parenthood, but I’m narrowly relieved that it’s not an instant hit. Work It made me sadder than anything I’ve watched in a long time, sad enough that it’s proved difficult for me to muster up the same level of outrage as some of my colleagues.

It makes me sad that anyone would feel so vulnerable that they’d start darkly speculating bars, as a friend of main characters Lee and Angel, that “It’s not a recession, it’s a mancession. Women are taking over the workforce. Soon, they’ll start getting rid of men. They’ll just keep a few of us around as sex slaves…Not the kind of sex you like, Angel. Just kissing, and cuddling, and listening.” It’s not just that the mancession has been manifestly debunked, and men are doing better in the recovery of women. It’s the idea that people feel that lost and angry, that the idea that for women to succeed men have to lose, and lose badly, still has currency. It makes me sad to think that there are women anywhere who are waiting for men to buy them things but are doing for self because “none of them have any money.” It makes me sad to think that men and women know so little about each other that women find car maintenance mysterious and men think that the essence of femininity is nibbling on lettuce. And while I don’t normally like to complain about television networks being out of touch, because it’s not like market research doesn’t exist, it makes me profoundly sad that anyone, anywhere, would look at this show and think that audiences would see themselves in it.

Work It‘s approach to revelation via gender-switching is particularly grating given that Up All Night is doing the same thing, with vastly more tenderness and perceptiveness. It’s particularly ugly to see Lee pretend to have been sexually harassed at his old job, telling his new potential boss at the pharmaceutical sales company where he goes to work that “The guys were always sassing me, or patting my fanny, or ogling my teats.” In pretending to understand female experience, he’s demonstrating his ignorance of it in a way that minimizes sexual harassment, making it cutesy and adorable. The same thing happens when he goes to the taco shop where Angel works to try to convince him to join the masquerade. His complaint that “My eyes are up here” is glib, rather than revealing new understanding of how uncomfortable it can be to be ogled.
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There’s been a lot of discussion prompted by Good Men Project founder Tom Matlack’s recent essay, in which he suggests that women want men to be more like them, and that manliness is a good thing. I’ll leave Amanda Marcotte to take on some of the larger assumptions in this piece (and to mount a defense as Matlack appears to denounce feminists and insist attacks on him are unfair because he’s a simple oral historian, or something), because I want to address this one: “So are dudes as a gender really assholes? If you look around in the press, on TV, and in popular culture you certainly might conclude that.” I’ve written in the past about some of the best shows about masculinity on television. Sure, it’s true — there are men who behave badly on television, but a lot of women who do same. But I also think that there are a lot of great manly male characters in pop culture right now. Among them:

1. With a bullet. Or with U.S. Army issued mustache trimmers. Parks and Recreation‘s Ron Swanson: Ron Swanson eats steak, drinks whiskey, smokes cigars, venerates John Wayne, reads Patrick O’Brian, hunts, camps, lays wreathes, lights torches, and teaches fourth-graders the importance of libertarianism. He also mentors women, loves mini-horses, shows up with hangover cures, self-sacrifices for the greater good, and dances with a fascinator on when he’s drunk. And he makes the point that none of these things are remotely inconsistent.

2. Because sometimes mentoring means you call the CIA on your mentee. And sometimes it means you show up with chicken soup. Homeland‘s Saul Berenson: Dude has one of the most serious beards on television. He blackmails the vice president of the United States in the name of justice. He talks around homegrown terrorists into giving up critically useful information. He responds to improper advances from his desperate mentee in an entirely proper fashion. He tries to woo back his estranged wife when she announces she’s leaving him to his workaholic tendencies, but ultimately respects her decision to go. Saul’s personal and professional courage are admirable. I’m going to be really sad if he turns out to be a mole.

3. Because sometimes being a good father means letting your daughter get mentored by Oprah. Up All Night‘s Kevin: Jason Lee’s had a bit of a wacky streak these past couple of years, but it’s turns out he’s exactly what this freshman comedy needed. As a contractor, he’s a nice counterbalance to the glitzy world new girlfriend Ava spends most of her time in without being an exploitable working-class fling. He spends Christmas with his ex-wife to create a smooth transition for his daughter. And he trusts and respects that Ava will find her way to a relationship with his daughter—and in expecting her to behave like a normal human, or as close as she’s capable of getting, helps her level up.

4. Cable executive. Tuxedo-wearer. Single father. 30 Rock‘s Jack Donaghy: Now, let’s be clear. Jack Donaghy has his flaws: a pathological hatred for his (admittedly dotty) mother, a disturbing level of comfort with turning children permanently orange, and a willingness to fake Dominican birth certificates to bolster Tracy Jordan’s struggling baseball team. But he loves smart women, whether he’s marrying first wife Bianca or talented cable-talker Avery Jessup or mentoring Liz Lemon; he’ll do anything for his father, include arranging a one-beneficiary all-star charity concert; and even if baby Libby is Canadian, you know that man will take all the care of her in the world.

5. The mismatched socks. The mad marksmanship skills. The naked omelet-making. Bones‘ Seeley Booth: I know Bones drives a lot of you crazy. But in the post-Bush years, and in this particular moment after Christopher Hitchens’ death, there’s something really valuable about throwing down a marker and declaring that while it may be manly to be able to use force, it’s morally correct to abhor killing even if you’re good at it. And even though David Boreanaz makes it look effortless, the character of Booth is all about the fact that manhood — whether in the form of resisting addiction, caring for a wayward brother, respecting and loving a strong but difficult woman, and holding on to your faith — is hard work. But it’s worth doing.

Well, this looks even more rancid than I expected:

Ladies! Always with the demands for homeownership! And wanting to punch their husbands in the face! Hatin’ on other ladies! And hipster dads! Using their babies for accessories, laughing about their incompetence, and complaining about their women! And of course, we couldn’t possibly have a gay couple in a movie that’s about the creation of modern families and parenting.

This is particularly embarrassing in the wake of Up All Night, which moved past its irritating-hipster-parenting stage fairly quickly, and has become a gratifyingly tender and perceptive look at what it means for a man to give up a career that he’s wonderful at to redefine himself as a stay-at-home parent. Sometimes it’s OK not to distance yourself from everything with a heavy layer of irony and artifice.

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.

I’ve been so focused on this fall’s crop of television shows about women that I haven’t spent that much time checking out the roster of shows about How to Man Correctly. The always-excellent Linda Holmes at NPR makes a persuasive argument that for once, television is actually handling men worse than it’s handling women. So if you don’t want to watch How to be a Gentleman but do to think about masculinity, try one of these currently airing shows — or watch them with a new focus.

1. Parks and Recreation: I give this show infinite props for its awesome feminism, but it’s actually a stealthily terrific show about what it means to be a man. From Tom, who thinks the road to happiness lies through the achievement of a particular lifestyle; to Ben who’s trying to prove that he’s worthy of responsibility after a burst of teenage arrogance; to Andy’s maturation from unemployed lump to husband, the show is all about how to be a grown-up man without any resort to extreme violence or Pickup Artist-style womanizing. And that doesn’t even get us to the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness:

The only thing that even comes close is Jack Donaghy’s video for his unborn son. But on 30 Rock, Jack’s really the only man, so there isn’t much of a conversation about masculinity.

2. Breaking Bad: I sort of assume everyone here is watching Breaking Bad already, but in a way, it’s a perfect dramatic counterpoint to Parks and Recreation. Walter White’s journey from decent cancer victim to monstrously pathetic wannabe kingpin is fundamentally steered by a toxic conception of masculinity: that he should be willing to do everything to provide for his family. That rationale’s evolved from a motivation for Walt to cross a previously unthinkable line to an excuse for him to behave terribly. As Skyler, Walter’s wife told him this season, “someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family.”
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