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So all at once this week I got the news that Eastwick and Dollhouse have both been cancelled, which makes me sad, because the former was SO FUN and the latter was VERY GOOD. I suppose if both of those things could have happened in the same show, that'd be neat, but it's an imperfect world.
My only worry now is whether or not they'll put out the 13 episodes of Eastwick on DVD (they seem to be planning to burn them all off...sometime...which, great. See, this is why people don't like to commit to new shows. We know that not only will you cancel them, you *won't even tell us* where to find the episodes you've already filmed. Which just comes across as petty.) Other than that, I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that a show with four foxy, funny grown women and Paul Gross was in my life briefly, and then gone. TV fandom makes you philosophical like that. Anyway, now I'll just have to watch the spinoff in my head, where Kat and Joanna quit declaring their eternal love for each other and just *do* something about it, already. Actually, the sitcom about Joanna trying in her wonky, spastic way to be the big, gay stepmother to five little kids would be FUCKING AWESOME -- I mean, they should actually put that on the air! People would totally watch that show. If you somehow missed Eastwick, grab what chances you can now. The pilot is a little clunky, as pilots often are, but it gets consistently better and better, imo.
On a related note, as the year winds down and Best of the Decade stuff starts to pop up, The AV Club just posted its list of the best tv shows of the last 10 years. (I can't say enough nice things about AVClub, which is the smartest, coolest place on the internet to get your non-fannish entertainment news & analysis. Okay, the one bad thing I can say is that it's gotten so popular over the last couple of years that a good article can get well over a thousand comments, which means it's a full-time job to keep up with everything happening on AVC all the time, and if you don't jump on an article within a couple hours of its posting, you're buried on page 3, so there aren't as many conversations happening in the comments as there used to be. But it's still cool.) I think it's a totally reasonable list (particularly in combination with their supplementary lists of one-season wonders and best episodes from shows that didn't make the main list), so bear in mind I'm not picking on AVC's list as such when I note that only four of the 30 shows had a female headliner, and holy shit, that makes me sad.
After being sad about that for a while, though, I noticed one other interesting thing, which is that three of those four shows -- Veronica Mars, Freaks & Geeks, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- were actually centered on teenage girls (or closely post-teenage, in the case of the back half of Buffy, the part that falls in the 2000s). That means that of the list's 30 shows, ONE was anchored by an adult woman -- 30 Rock. I found it not remotely coincidental that the grown woman who stars in that show just happened to get there by starting out as a wildly influential writer-producer, so that basically my take-away from this list that if women want to star on great tv shows, they're apparently going to have to plan on building them by hand.
In fairness, lots of the shows on the list featured amazing actresses in amazing roles. Battlestar Galactica is so female-heavy that Mary agitated with me to include it as the fifth "woman headlined" show on the list, and I almost went for it. Big Love is a similar actress bonanza, and I don't think there are really better acting roles out there than CJ Craig on West Wing, River Tam on Firefly, or Carmela Soprano. I haven't gotten off my ass to watch Six Feet Under or Mad Men (I know, right?!), but I am assured they have all kinds of cool women. Which is all great, but it still makes me sad to realize that on some level, even the best writers in the medium seem to feel that either the stories or the audiences demand that those characters work in the service of the overarching Heroic Narrative of some dude.
Anyway, I still have True Blood in my life, albeit between seasons. While Joss has been crafting his skillful but incredibly grim treatise on the nature of objectification, Alan Ball has been more Joss Whedon than Joss Whedon these last couple of years in his ability to whipsaw between shock-value, hilarity, hotness, and thoughtful meditations on the human condition as viewed through the mirror of the nonhuman. Although I swear to Zod that if he turns Eric into a fucking whiny-ass pansy like Spike, I'm going to hunt him down and skin him.
My only worry now is whether or not they'll put out the 13 episodes of Eastwick on DVD (they seem to be planning to burn them all off...sometime...which, great. See, this is why people don't like to commit to new shows. We know that not only will you cancel them, you *won't even tell us* where to find the episodes you've already filmed. Which just comes across as petty.) Other than that, I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that a show with four foxy, funny grown women and Paul Gross was in my life briefly, and then gone. TV fandom makes you philosophical like that. Anyway, now I'll just have to watch the spinoff in my head, where Kat and Joanna quit declaring their eternal love for each other and just *do* something about it, already. Actually, the sitcom about Joanna trying in her wonky, spastic way to be the big, gay stepmother to five little kids would be FUCKING AWESOME -- I mean, they should actually put that on the air! People would totally watch that show. If you somehow missed Eastwick, grab what chances you can now. The pilot is a little clunky, as pilots often are, but it gets consistently better and better, imo.
On a related note, as the year winds down and Best of the Decade stuff starts to pop up, The AV Club just posted its list of the best tv shows of the last 10 years. (I can't say enough nice things about AVClub, which is the smartest, coolest place on the internet to get your non-fannish entertainment news & analysis. Okay, the one bad thing I can say is that it's gotten so popular over the last couple of years that a good article can get well over a thousand comments, which means it's a full-time job to keep up with everything happening on AVC all the time, and if you don't jump on an article within a couple hours of its posting, you're buried on page 3, so there aren't as many conversations happening in the comments as there used to be. But it's still cool.) I think it's a totally reasonable list (particularly in combination with their supplementary lists of one-season wonders and best episodes from shows that didn't make the main list), so bear in mind I'm not picking on AVC's list as such when I note that only four of the 30 shows had a female headliner, and holy shit, that makes me sad.
After being sad about that for a while, though, I noticed one other interesting thing, which is that three of those four shows -- Veronica Mars, Freaks & Geeks, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- were actually centered on teenage girls (or closely post-teenage, in the case of the back half of Buffy, the part that falls in the 2000s). That means that of the list's 30 shows, ONE was anchored by an adult woman -- 30 Rock. I found it not remotely coincidental that the grown woman who stars in that show just happened to get there by starting out as a wildly influential writer-producer, so that basically my take-away from this list that if women want to star on great tv shows, they're apparently going to have to plan on building them by hand.
In fairness, lots of the shows on the list featured amazing actresses in amazing roles. Battlestar Galactica is so female-heavy that Mary agitated with me to include it as the fifth "woman headlined" show on the list, and I almost went for it. Big Love is a similar actress bonanza, and I don't think there are really better acting roles out there than CJ Craig on West Wing, River Tam on Firefly, or Carmela Soprano. I haven't gotten off my ass to watch Six Feet Under or Mad Men (I know, right?!), but I am assured they have all kinds of cool women. Which is all great, but it still makes me sad to realize that on some level, even the best writers in the medium seem to feel that either the stories or the audiences demand that those characters work in the service of the overarching Heroic Narrative of some dude.
Anyway, I still have True Blood in my life, albeit between seasons. While Joss has been crafting his skillful but incredibly grim treatise on the nature of objectification, Alan Ball has been more Joss Whedon than Joss Whedon these last couple of years in his ability to whipsaw between shock-value, hilarity, hotness, and thoughtful meditations on the human condition as viewed through the mirror of the nonhuman. Although I swear to Zod that if he turns Eric into a fucking whiny-ass pansy like Spike, I'm going to hunt him down and skin him.
