sitcoms – Bitch Flicks

Invisible Fat Women on ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’

Several sitcoms, however, rely not on the on-screen presence of a so-called “unruly body,” but rather on the imagined image on an off-screen one.

The casts of CBS’s How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory — The casts of CBS’s *How I Met Your Mother* and *The Big Bang Theory*

This guest post by Stephanie Brown appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Trevor Noah, heir to The Daily Show throne, recently came under fire for some fat jokes, (among others) that he made on Twitter, demonstrating once again that fat jokes, especially about women, have long been a staple of the comedy writer’s toolbox. Critics of Noah seem to forget that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been making jokes about Chris Christie’s weight for years, a disturbing trend that NPR’s Linda Holmes beautifully addressed in an essay last year. You would think Christie’s policies and actions as governor would provide more than enough material for satire, but comics have found that using fatness as a punch line is a reliable way to get cheap laughs.

Sitcoms, too, have frequently been guilty of using “fat” as a punch line. From Monica’s fat-suit flashbacks on Friends, to Mike and Molly’s poking fun at its main characters, to the Seavers’ constant ribbing of Carol about her weight on Growing Pains (made more disturbing by the fact that Tracy Gold suffered from a serious eating disorder), sitcoms have long made fun of characters for taking up too much space on screen. Often characterized as a moral failing, fatness is policed through ridicule. Such jokes tend to rely on the mere presence of an overweight character to generate laughs.

Several sitcoms, however, rely not on the on-screen presence of a so-called “unruly body,” but rather on the imagined image on an off-screen one. For instance, on NBC’s Will and Grace, Grace’s sidekick Karen consistently rattles off one-liners about her obese husband Stan. CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (2007-) continues in this tradition with its recurring jokes and storylines about Howard Wolowitz’s mother.

Howard is an engineer turned astronaut who lives for a majority of the series with his overbearing mother. The difference between Stan and Mrs. Wolowitz is, of course, that we hear Howard’s mother, played by the recently deceased actress Carol Ann Susi. Howard obviously loves his mother, despite their constant bickering, and the show deals with the death of both the actress and the character very poignantly. Regardless of any underlying affection toward Mrs. Wolowitz, though, the show generally mines humor from descriptions of her unseen obesity.

Throughout the course of the The Big Bang Theory, Mrs. Wolowitz’s weight provides an easy punch line for Howard and his friends. In “The Hawking Excitation” (5.21), Sheldon apparently sprains his wrist helping Howard’s mom into a dress when he takes her clothes shopping. Earlier in the series in “The Engagement Reaction”(4.23), Penny reacts with disbelief to Howard’s story of lifting his mother in order to take her to the hospital, joking that Mrs. Wolowitz’s own legs could barely lift her up. Not only is Mrs. Wolowitz characterized by her weight, she is also described as an overbearing, gluttonous nag. In her character we see the ways in which obesity is tied to morality and humanity, or rather, a lack thereof. And, because she never appears on screen, the audience is free to imagine an even more extreme version of this stereotypical character.

Notably, Mrs. Wolowitz appears briefly on screen during “The Spoiler Alert Segmentation” (6.15), walking back and forth through a doorway behind Raj while he sits in the dining room. Her appearance is meant to work as a sight gag not only because the audience has never seen her, but also because the mere presence of an overweight body is reason enough to laugh.

A faceless Mrs. Wolowitz appears behind Raj as he eats dinner.

While CBS’s How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) doesn’t have a defined invisible fat character to use as a punching bag, the show is similarly permeated by fatphobia. The series, centering on a group of five friends in New York City navigating their late 20s and early 30s, is told from the perspective of the show’s main character, Ted Mosby. For a show that was often wonderfully smart, funny, and sweet, the writers’ strange obsession with making fun of fat women was often infuriating and frequently baffling, as others have noticed and written at length about.

While most of the show’s characters get in a “fat chick” joke at some point during the show’s run, most of the fat panic stems from Barney, the show’s resident bro-y bachelor. While the audience was likely originally meant to read Barney as an entitled, misogynist jerk, because he’s played by likeable human Neil Patrick Harris, the argument that we’re meant to be disgusted by Barney’s behavior rings hollow. Indeed, this site has previously written about the show’s unsettling misogynistic streak.

Barney demonstrates his notoriously icky “Crazy/Hot” Scale.

Like his misogyny, Barney’s fat jokes span the entirely of the series. He feels the need to constantly assert that he doesn’t have sex with fat women, in one instance making his friends swear a “broath” not to interfere with his life unless “unless it is a matter of health, national security or I’m about to get up on a fattie” (“The Broath,” 7.19). He also feels the need to warn his friends not to have sex with fat women. In the season three episode “Third Wheel” (3.3), he makes sure the combined weight of the ladies Ted is about to have a threesome with is “under 400 pounds.” If that weren’t enough, he frequently makes proclamations that no one should have sex with fat women:

Minister: If you want to get married in my church, you’ll stop breaking the ninth commandment.

Barney: Uh, no fat chicks?

Minister: Thou shalt not lie!

Barney: With fat chicks?

(“Knight Vision, “ 9.06)

Rather than punish him for his sociopathic, misogynistic conduct, the show rewards Barney with clever one-liners and fancy suits.

Just one of Barney’s many proclamations of his own awesomeness.

His friends make half-hearted attempts at condemning his behavior, but even they join in on the show’s the panoply of fatphobia, like when Marshall tells Barney that he “sounds like a fat girl on Valentine’s Day” (“Not Father’s Day,” 4.7). Even Lily and Robin often join in gleefully mocking other women. This includes, of course, making fun of the mere idea of fat women. Robin joins in with Marshall and Barney in this lovely exchange after Ted tells them about a wealthy architecture client:

Marshall: He’s rich? Please tell me he wrote you a big, fat check. A check so fat, it doesn’t its shirt off when it goes swimming.

Barney: That is a big, fat check. A check so fat, after you have sex with it, you don’t tell your buddies about it.

Robin: A check so fat, when it sits next to you on an airplane, you ask yourself if it should have bought two seats.

(“Fast As She Can,” 4.23).

Like the characters in The Big Bang Theory, Barney and his friends don’t direct their cruelty at a visible person. They don’t direct their jokes at any specific person at all, but rather at all fat women. Their jokes construct fat women not as people with feelings let alone family, friends, or lovers. They’re either a joke or a disembodied threat to the main characters’ sexual pride. Nameless, faceless, and bodiless, these imagined, invisible women are, like Mrs. Wolowitz, treated as less than human.

An addendum to this point is the way the show treats one of the only fat characters, Robin’s co-worker Patrice. Patrice’s main function on the show was to be yelled at by Robin for no reason and, eventually, to act as Barney’s fake girlfriend so he can convince Robin that he has changed his philandering ways and is now marriage material.

Barney talks to Patrice as Robin, Ted, and Lily try to discern the true nature of their relationship.

This particular storyline shows us, once again, that a fat character’s only function is to act as comic relief and to help the traditionally attractive main characters find love. She may be visible, but her visibility is conditional on performing the one-dimensional supportive friend that so many underdeveloped, potentially interesting fat characters have before been relegated. As Michael Arbieter of Hollywood.com noted about the storyline:

“We can’t be left to forgive Barney and How I Met Your Mother, to subjugate and marginalize Patrice. The fact that we’re asked to do this so cavalierly is frightening.”

Indeed, the casualness and frequency with which the characters make fat jokes on The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, two series that frequently deal with themes of friendship and belonging, imbues them both with an unnecessary cruelty. While fat jokes are often wielded as a way police on-screen bodies, the ridiculing of absent bodies even further objectifies fat people. By not even giving the audience a chance to identify with the character or characters being ridiculed, all subjectivity is, in essence, taken away. Such erasure tells the audience, yet again, that thinness is the price of admission to our television sets. Not only are these characters deserving of ridicule based on their appearance, their appearance is so distasteful as to be banished from the screen.

As we’re reminded by anonymous online harassment or something as simple as talking badly about an absent friend, distance and invisibility often enable cruelty.

While film and television have historically mistreated and relegated fat characters to supporting status, How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory push their fat characters completely off screen. Such distancing brings the process of dehumanization to its natural conclusion, allowing fat-phobia to rage unchallenged.

As Lily once tells Ted, “If there’s one thing you never do, it’s call a woman fat right to her face!” (“The Mermaid Theory,” 6.11). Otherwise, you might actually have to take responsibility for those words.

Stephanie Brown is a television, comedy, and podcast enthusiaist working on her doctorate in media studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

How I Met Your Misogyny

Tonight, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ will end its nine-year run with a one-hour season finale. A show that spawned countless catchphrases and running gags, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ will be remembered for its nonlinear storytelling and its portrayals of romance and friendship.

It will also be remembered as one of the most misogynistic sitcoms on TV.

Written by Lady T

The cast of How I Met Your Mother — The cast of *How I Met Your Mother*

Tonight, How I Met Your Mother will end its nine-year run with a one-hour season finale. A show that spawned countless catchphrases and running gags, How I Met Your Mother will be remembered for its nonlinear storytelling and its portrayals of romance and friendship.

It will also be remembered as one of the most misogynistic sitcoms on TV.

Okay, I admit it – I’m exaggerating a little to make a point. I haven’t seen enough shows to determine whether or not it’s one of the most misogynistic sitcoms. But over the years, How I Met Your Mother has devolved into a show rife with anti-woman nastiness, making me grateful that the program is finally coming to an end.

I’m also saddened by the devolution in the show over the years, because once upon a time, I would have considered How I Met Your Mother a more progressive sitcom than most.

Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted (Josh Radnor) on their first date

In the first few seasons of the show, I was impressed with the show’s different take on stereotypical gender roles. I liked that Ted was the hopeless romantic who wanted nothing more than to settle down, get married, and have children, while Robin was the more pragmatic, career-minded person who wanted a more casual relationship. I liked that, even in the context of Marshall and Lily’s super-sweet relationship, Marshall was still the more sentimental of the two. I was moved by Lily’s “career vs. romance” subplot in the end of the first season because the show recognized the emotional weight of what she was feeling. I liked that Lily and Marshall’s wedding followed a typical “bride freaks out on a wedding day” plot with an unexpected and very funny “groom freaks out EVEN MORE on wedding day” plot with Marshall shaving part of his head.

Robin (Cobie Smulders), journalist and career woman — Robin Scherbatsky, journalist and career woman

Even Barney, the most problematic character on the show through a feminist perspective, wasn’t so terrible in the first two seasons. Back then, Barney’s womanizing wasn’t the only aspect of his character. Barney was just a person who wanted to make every night legendary no matter what, whether it involved creating elaborate stories to get women to sleep with him, licking the Liberty Bell, paying Robin to say ridiculous things on camera, inventing a drink called the “Thankstini,” setting Ted’s jacket on fire to stop him from drunk-dialing. His treatment of women wasn’t okay, but it didn’t come from a place of showing complete contempt for anyone around him.

Somewhere along the line, all that changed.

Barney became a person whose primary goal was to trick as many women as possible into sleeping with him, and his behavior toward them became increasingly nasty and downright criminal. In season three’s “The Bracket,” he admits to having sold a woman, and in season eight’s “The Fortress,” he shows the feature of a “Ho-Be-Gone” system which wheels one-night stands into a wall. And we’re supposed to be happy that Robin married this man.

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and his bracket

Unfortunately, the misogyny that has pervaded How I Met Your Mother isn’t just limited to Barney. Here’s a list of just some of the most memorable misogynistic moments from the show’s history:

– Season five’s “Of Course”: Jennifer Lopez appears as a character whose sole purpose is to peddle the “Power of No.” Because we need more characters who affirm the stereotype that women like “playing hard to get.”

– Season five’s “Say Cheese”: Lily, angry that Ted has brought yet another date no one knows to her birthday party, shows him a photo of a previous year’s celebration and asks him to “name that bitch.” Not wanting strangers to attend your birthday party: fine. But what did these women do to Lily to warrant being called “bitches?”

– Season five’s “The Playbook”: All of it. But I’ll get to that later. (/SagetTed)

Barney and his "scuba diver" scam — Barney and his “scuba diver” scam

– Season six’s “Baby Talk”: Marshall worries about having a daughter because he remembers the way he and his high school classmates used to be sexist towards the female students. (Sexual harassment is bad when it’s happening to women you care about, boys, but random bitches are free game and THEN cat-calling is hilarious!)

– Season six’s “Canning Randy”: the men leer at the day-after-Halloween parade of women walking down the street in costumes, guessing at their one-night stands. Could have been a funny gag if it had been the entire gang watching a parade of men and women returning from one-night stands, but as it was, it was just a bunch of guys snarkily judging women.

Ted, Barney, and Marshall (Jason Segel) leer at women

– Season seven’s “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns”: Lily has pregnancy brain and Marshall and Robin treat her like she has the intelligence of a two-year-old, and they prove to be right when Lily gives a stapler to a kid on Halloween.

– Season seven’s “Now We’re Even”: Barney delivers what’s supposed to be a moving monologue about the difficulties of dating a stripper and how it makes him feel to know that Quinn is dancing naked for other men, and we’re actually supposed to feel sorry for him after years of him treating women like dirt.

– Season eight’s “Lobster Crawl”: Robin acts like a simpering idiot when she’s desperate to win Barney back. She continues to be mean to poor Patrice for no reason and it’s supposed to be funny (probably because Patrice is fat).

– Season eight’s “The Final Page”: Barney proposes to Robin after a long con of making her believe that he didn’t want her, and it’s one of the most glaring examples of emotional abuse disguised as romance in recent memory.

Robin reacts to Barney's manipulative proposal — Robin reacts to Barney’s manipulative proposal

– Season eight’s “The Fortress”: Like I said – Ho-Be-Gone.

– Season nine’s “The Broken Code”: Robin realizes she has no female friends and acts astonishingly rude to the women around her, finally confirming that she and Barney really are meant for each other, since she hates women just as much as he does.

And those are just a few.

But the biggest examples of misogyny are, of course, Barney’s two books: The Bro Code and The Playbook. Two books that are actual books that people can now buy.

And The Playbook? Is a pick-up artist’s wet dream.

Before anyone argues that it’s “just a joke,” keep in mind that there are actual websites out there dedicated to coaching men on tricking women into sleeping with them – and some of these sites actually use the character of Barney Stinson as a role model.

How I Met Your Mother isn’t entirely hopeless even at this late stage. The writers handled Robin’s infertility with respect. Season eight’s “The Time Travelers” was one of its best episodes, truly romantic and poignant. Marshall and Lily’s renewed vows were moving. I love everything about the Mother herself and Ted’s relationship with her, proving that this show still has a soul. But the stink of misogyny has tainted what was once one of my favorite sitcoms.

And if, at the end of tomorrow’s finale, it turns out that I dealt with all that anti-woman crap on a weekly basis only to find out that the Mother is dead in the future…if that is the direction the writers have decided to take…then burn it, burn it to the ground.

Ted and the Mother (Cristin Milioti), who had better NOT be dead

Lady T is a feminist blogger, sketch comedy writer/performer, and author of Fanged, a young adult novel available for purchase today.

Don’t Ignore ‘Trophy Wife’

Written by Robin Hitchcock

I probably could have gone an entire season, or, network willing, three or four, without really paying any attention to the existence of upcoming ABC sitcom Trophy Wife. To begin with, it is an ABC sitcom not called Happy Endings (RIP). And my cynical side assumes it got an instant greenlight for its passing resemblance to Modern Family:

The cast of Mo~~dern Family~~ Trophy Wife

And it is called Trophy Wife. But do not ignore Trophy Wife!

1. It is co-created by Sarah Haskins.

Of Target Women fame. I know you’ve missed her. You’ve probably cried while staring out a rainy window, silently begging for her to come back to us. And now she has. Haskins has an uncanny ability to hilariously dissect tropes, and family sitcoms are begging for the Target Women treatment. (She already got a head start with her Doofy Husbands segment, above.)

2. It is loosely based on her own life.

Bradley Whitford and Malin Akerman in Trophy Wife

Haskins married an older man who has three ex-wives, which is even one more ex than Trophy Wife‘s heroine Kate finds herself dealing with. But the important takeaway from this real-life inspiration is that Kate is loosely based on Sarah. Seeing Malin Akerman in the pilot was like watching Sarah Haskins wearing a very convincing Swedish supermodel mask. Akerman clearly sees what makes Haskins so charming and has adeptly built her character on those quirks. And the script sings with Haskins’s awkwardly funny voice.

3. The rest of the cast is also awesome! (And full of women!)

Supporting cast of Trophy Wife

The ex-wives are Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden and Michaela Watkins, who, incidentally, was in the same lass of short-tenured and utterly wasted SNL featured players as Casey Wilson. Right now their characters are broad stereotypes (Stern Doctor First Wife and Hippy Dippy Second Wife), but this is only the pilot, and the actresses have enough talent to develop these characters as the writing finds its footing. And it’s clear from the pilot that they aren’t just going to be antagonists to Kate, but co-parents and maybe unlikely friends.

Natalie Morales (the Middleman one, not the Today Show one) plays Meg, Kate’s best friend, still in carefree youth mode when Kate suddenly becomes a frazzled stepmother. It’s sort of the reverse of the dynamic that between Mindy and Anna Camp’s character on The Mindy Project. While that subplot never found traction, I hope we see a lot more of the changing relationship between Meg and Kate.

And the trophy husband, so to speak, is Bradley Whitford, if you’re into that sort of thing.

4. We are all getting older and maybe need to surrender to family sitcoms instead of “friendcore” (TM Emily Nussbaum) shows.

Ugh, and like, buy life insurance and wash our sheets more than once a month and stop eating Doritos for breakfast. NEVERMIND I hate this argument.

4, Take 2. It’s really funny.

You can watch the pilot now on ABC’s website.

How ‘New Girl’s Jess and Nick Avoided Common Rom-Com Pitfalls

Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Nick (Jake Johnson) have their first kiss

Written by Lady T.

This year’s season of New Girl introduced a sitcom plot that fans and audience members anticipate and dread in equal measure: the BIG KISS between two lead characters, and the will-they-won’t-they dynamic that followed.

Hooking up the two lead characters of any show is always a risky move for writers to take. No matter how much chemistry exists between the two actors, viewers and critics often fear–with good reason–that once the unresolved sexual tension is resolved, the relationship will become an endless cycle of breakups, reunions, and miscommunication, and no longer be entertaining to watch (ahem).

As a fan of New Girl, I was apprehensive about the idea of Jess and Nick getting together, because I’ve watched TV before and I’ve seen how even great sitcoms can be dragged down by tiresome will-they-won’t-they plots (such as Community’s Jeff/Britta dance of sexual tension before the writers wisely changed course with that storyline). Now that the season has come to an end, I can safely say that Jess and Nick’s kiss did not drag down the show, but elevated a good season into a great one. In fact, Jess and Nick have become one of the more delightful TV romances I’ve ever seen.

How did the writers pull this off?

1. They kept up the pacing and moved the story forward.

On another show, Jess and Nick might have only reached their first kiss by the end of season two, if that. Nick would have realized his feelings for Jess at the end of season one, right after she started dating someone else, and the reverse would happen at the end of season two. On New Girl, Jess and Nick kissed mid-season, had a few awkward conversations about it, kissed again, eventually slept together, and are now in a state where they are pursuing…something, fumbling as they do it. Their relationship is progressing at the pace of actual humans, not characters who know they’re on a television show.

Jess and Nick, before almost kissing.

2. They didn’t forget that the show is a comedy.

So far, there have been no huge declarations of love between Jess and Nick. The closest that came to a declaration was Jess admitting that she didn’t want to call off whatever they had in the season finale, followed by Nick kissing her passionately. Other than that, the writers have emphasized the “comedy” part of romantic comedy, and the results have been great. Whether it’s Nick panic-moonwalking away from Jess on the morning after their first kiss, or Jess finding herself turned on when Nick acts remotely like a responsible grownup (learning how to do laundry!), the characters are still being funny even as they try to navigate their feelings for each other.

3. The barriers to a Jess/Nick relationship are organic to their characters.

The writers on New Girl have not wasted their time with many romantic false leads or contrived subplots designed to keep Jess and Nick apart. They haven’t had to, because there’s enough standing in their way of having a functional relationship without the typical sitcom contrivances.

Nick carries Jess over the threshold.

On the plus side, Jess and Nick are friends and roommates who get along, care about each other, offer each other emotional support, and have plenty of sexual chemistry–all ingredients to a successful relationship. On the other hand, Jess’s sunny disposition, determination, and optimism clash horribly with Nick’s eternal grumpiness and lack of direction. The girl who makes up her own theme songs and the guy who gets so irrationally angry that he yells at doors can’t possibly have a relationship without some serious bumps in the road.

That’s why Jess and Nick’s conflicts have been so refreshing to watch. She’s unsure about his directionless nature and the fact that he has a credit score of a homeless ghost, and he knows that she’s unsure about him because of that reason, which leads to him feeling even more insecure. The fact that they’re friends who live together also complicates matters. If whatever they have becomes more serious, there will be many entertaining bumps in the road along the way.

4. The endgame is a question mark.

Jess dresses as Elvis for Nick’s father’s funeral (it makes sense if you watch the episode)

The relationship between Jess and Nick has been developing for a while, with mutual attraction acknowledged long before they actually kissed, but there’s no sense that Jess/Nick is an “endgame” couple. Considering their differences in personality, there’s a big chance that a relationship between them won’t work at all. They also might stay together for a long time. When they drive off together at the end of Cece’s wedding that wasn’t, there’s a sense that anything can happen between them.

From the perspective of someone who’s watched countless romantic comedies and rom-com pairings on television, I’m relieved to see a different take on a pairing of potentially mismatched friends. As a feminist, I’m happy that there’s no sense of an “endgame” with Jess and Nick, that Jess’s story isn’t all about whether or not she ends up with a guy (even if said guy is my current favorite character on television and Jake Johnson needs to win ALL the Emmys). Whatever she has with Nick is a big part of Jessica Day’s life, but it doesn’t define her, and she’s treated as a human being trying to figure out her life.

Would that all writers of romantic comedy treated their characters the way Elizabeth Meriweather and the staff of New Girl treat Jess and Nick–as people, not props in a foretold rom-com ending.

Nick and Jess, shortly before calling off their relationship (and then un-calling it later)

Lady T is an a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

How The Office’s Jim & Pam Negotiated their Conflicting Dreams

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Jim and Pam of The Office

The US iteration of The Office concluded its nine-year run last week with a somewhat mawkish but nevertheless emotionally satisfying finale. We left these characters in a place of personal fulfillment—Dwight and Angela marry, Dwight is regional manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, Andy has turned his embarrassing experiences into something positive and returned to the site of his glory days, Kelly and Ryan foolishly and selfishly run off into the sunset, Erin meets her birth parents. And Jim and Pam, the emotional core of the series, leave Scranton together for Austin so Jim may rejoin the sports marketing startup he and Darryl began working for earlier this season.

In case you haven’t been watching The Office in its autumn years, Jim and Pam’s relationship has followed the push and pull of the conflict between their commitment to each other and their own personal dreams. In season 5, aspiring artist Pam moved to New York for a graphic design program. The series mined the pressures of long-distance relationships for both comedy and drama, but Jim and Pam’s partnership stayed strong and they got engaged at the gas station midpoint between Scranton and New York. Shortly thereafter, Pam left New York “the wrong way” because she failed a class and doesn’t want to remain in the city for another three months to retake it. She insists it is not because of Jim, but because she doesn’t actually like graphic design, but the viewer knows it is a complex combination of those two forces.

Pam and Jim after the birth of their first child.

This dynamic is flipped in the final season when Jim joins a friend in Athlead, a new venture connecting famous athletes to sponsorship opportunities. With Athlead, Jim is finally able to work a job he feels passionate about, in stark contrast to his years as a paper salesman. But Jim’s new job puts an immense strain on his marriage with Pam—with whom he now has two children—as he divides his time between Philadelphia and Scranton and has less attention to give to his family.

Pam is driven to tears by the growing conflict between her and Jim

This is exacerbated by a lack of communication as Jim inexplicably keeps his initial involvement with Athlead from Pam, and increases his commitment to this new job without consulting her several times over. Jim and Pam’s relationship reaches the breaking point, and Jim finally decides to leave Athlead and return to Scranton full-time to save his marriage.

Pam is wracked with guilt and fears that she is “not enough” to justify Jim abandoning his new career direction. Notably, we saw nothing of this type of guilt in Jim when Pam left art school. With the help of the documentary crew that is finally explicitly woven into the story in this finale season, Jim presents Pam a video montage of their relationship and tells her “not enough for me? You are everything.”

The series finale is set some time in the future, after the documentary has aired on PBS and Jim and Pam’s relationship is as important to in-universe fans as it is to those of us watching The Office in the real world. During the public Q&A at a reunion panel, several women criticize Pam for stifling Jim’s career. Jim does a satisfactory job of dissuading these questions, but they clearly affect Pam. She’s also moved by seeing the success and happiness Darryl, who has followed Athlead (now Athleap) to Austin. So she secretly sells her and Jim’s house (secrecy is a recurring and frustrating undercurrent in their relationship; this is the same house Jim bought without consulting Pam first) and tells Jim it’s time for them to move on from Dunder Mifflin and relocate to Austin.

Pam and Jim decide to move on from Scranton

From a Doylist perspective, this gives the audience closure; without Jim and Pam present, the story of The Office feels complete. But on the Watsonian side of things, it means Jim’s career path decidedly beats out Pam’s after many years of back and forth, which puts a damper on my personal satisfaction as a viewer.

My personal life is clearly influencing my reaction to this storyline: I moved 8,000 miles away from home so my partner could accept his dream job. Obviously, every couple needs to resolve these issues on their own, and it is dated and heteronormative to think this is always going to be a gendered struggle. But for many mixed-gender couples, gendered expectations of whose career matters more and the importance of career vs. family often play a part. And it’s a bit of a let down to see one of the iconic on-screen couples of the last ten years fall into the traditional resolution of the man’s career coming first.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who works out her personal issues by writing about sitcoms.

Here’s a Fun and Depressing Graphic About Television, Ratings, and Dudes Who Create Shows

Canceled: Single Season TV Shows – An infographic by the team at CableTV.com

Do you have any graphics you’d like to share with Bitch Flicks readers? Share them in the comments or email them to btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com!

The Religious ‘Community’

Written by Max Thornton. Originally posted at Gay Christian Geek in March 2012; reposted here in honor of Community‘s return.

Anyone who is even casually acquainted with me in meat-life will be aware of two facts: (1) Community returned this week, and (2) I was very, very, very, very happy about this.

Community is straight-up my favorite show on TV. Its midseason disappearance from NBC’s schedule was devastating to me, and the announcement of its return had me capslock keymashing all over the internet. I celebrated Thursday’s episode with friends and champagne: it was glorious and beautiful, and it’s not really an exaggeration to say that this show is a religious experience for me. Here’s why.

I just love them all *so much*

1. The community of television

I tend to be fairly generous with my definition of “the religious”. Like Tillich, I think religion is an orientation toward ultimate concern; like Barthes, I believe we are surrounded by images that signify ideologies – and if popular culture reveals and reflects a society’s most deeply held values, then it’s not a huge leap to argue that pop culture can be a locus of religious experience. (Tom Beaudoin’s Virtual Faith makes this argument very nicely.)

Although TV ownership in the US is apparently declining, television is still the most ubiquitous form of mass media in this country (of that 3.3% of TV-less households, it’s a fairly solid bet that many of them still watch shows online). As such, it is the most unifying artifact of American popular culture, and thus television as a whole could be considered a site of religious meaning. Even for a small cult show like Community,several million viewers participate in the weekly ritual of watching it – a shared experience that nonetheless resonates on a personal level for each individual, much like a religious service.

2. The community of the individual

Some people have accused the Community ensemble of being uniformly terrible human beings who evince no character growth and are unlikeable and completely unrelatable. I will not link to the people saying these things, because they are erroneous, incorrect, inaccurate, misguided, mistaken wrong-mongers who are very very wrong.

I see myself in Jeff: his walls of sarcasm and cynicism that try but fail to hide the true depths of his emotional responses.

I see myself in Britta: her enthusiasm for political causes and her morality that stems from a heart in the right place but is often ill-thought-out or hypocritical in practice.

I see myself in Abed: his profound love of pop culture, his social discomfort, his use of pop culture to understand those around him.

I see myself in Shirley: her deep Christian faith and her struggle to overcome her personal failings to live a really loving Christian life.

I see myself in Annie: her neurotic perfectionism and intense fear of failure.

I see myself in Troy: his goofy sense of humor, his deep bromance with his BFF, his quest for a place and purpose in the world.

I see myself in Pierce: his desperate desire for acceptance and inclusion, insecurities often masked by acting like an almighty asshole.

I really, really love these characters. Each one of them speaks to a different part of my own personality, often in ways that illuminate my flaws and weaknesses. They are complicated, imperfect human beings, but they love each other and I love them. They embody the complex, messy reality of being human – of being simultaneously wonderful and terrible, capable of beautiful things and horrific things, worthy of love and of hate.

Remember this?

3. The community of friends

It’s called Community because that’s what it’s ultimately about. This is a show about a group of people who are thrown together in a situation that’s for none of them ideal, and who learn to make the best of it. The interpersonal dynamics at play in this show are special because they are bold and because they speak a truth that is rarely spoken in television.

Compare the show Friends. That was also a show about a group of friends, and it was often a sweet show with a good heart, but all the friends came from the same social location: straight, white, young, of a certain socioeconomic bracket. Community dares to portray a very diverse group of people who find common ground without erasing their differences. The relationship between the Self and the Other must involve both the unity of commonality and the space of respecting difference. Friendship is the experience of navigating this Scylla-and-Charybdis – learning to find common ground in your shared humanity while celebrating and benefiting from each other’s difference – and Community portrays this wonderful, difficult process better than any other show I’ve ever seen.

Remember this??

4. The heart of Community

Community is a dizzyingly inventive show, playing with pop-culture history in endlessly fun and creative ways, but it is still a television show, and as such it follows a certain formula. The characters love each other; they learn lessons about the value of friendship; they make missteps and hurt each other, but they ultimately make the right choices and warm our hearts. Like religious truth, Community‘s heart is both inexhaustibly profound and completely obvious.

So very many religious and philosophical traditions hinge on the Golden Rule. Jesus himself said that everything else was pretty much window-dressing. Love your neighbor as yourself: it really couldn’t be simpler. And yet we have to be taught it, over and over again, in different ways and by different people, and we still don’t do it. It’s childishly simple, but it’s also really difficult.

In the same way, Community is a television show. More specifically than that, it’s a half-hour network sitcom. It plays by established rules and conveys a simple, feel-good message. At the same time, though, it takes such delight in exploring the limits of those established rules and finding new and awesome ways to express that simple message.

Community is a show about love, it’s a show written from a place of love, and I believe it’s a manifestation of God’s love in the world. I leave you with the moment I first knew this show was something really special and a nugget of pure wisdom: cabeza es nieve, cerveza es bueno.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

2013 Golden Globes Week: Big Bang Bust

This is a guest post by Melissa McEwan and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Shakesville.

I have never been a great lover of sitcoms. Despite their ubiquity in American primetime television, especially when I was growing up, there just weren’t a lot of them for me to love. So much of the com always relied on sits that mocked or belittled or straight-up hated the characters in the show with which we were meant to identify. I have only ever been able to love sitcoms that loved their characters.

The earliest sitcom I remember loving—I mean really loving—was Good Times, a show about a black family who lived in the Chicago projects, the central feature of which was their struggle to navigate life in poverty. It was an imperfect show: There was a strong message of bootstraps, which simultaneously challenged narratives about the Welfare Queens to whom Ronald Reagan had not yet given a name, and indirectly entrenched judgment of anyone who would accept “a hand-out.” But it was an important and challenging show, which did not shy away from discussions of racial and feminist justice. And it loved its characters deeply.

The next sitcom I remember really loving was The Golden Girls, for so many reasons, but chief among them that the show loved its characters. There were jokes at the women’s expense, but they were delivered by one another (usually Sophia), and thus was it ever unmistakable these were in-jokes of a loving group. We weren’t invited to laugh at them, but with them.

There have been other shows I’ve loved along the way, some very much. But something about these not quite as lovable shows held me (or obliged me to hold myself) at a distance. I deeply dug The Cosby Show as a child, but there was always a thread of one-upping—between Cliff and Claire, between Cliff and the kids—that put me at unease. Someone was always getting the better of someone else, which never sat precisely right with me. I loved Family Ties, but there was always a weird hostility toward Mallory’s girlyness that alienated me.

It is a subtle difference, but I have always been most strongly drawn to the shows that invite me to love their characters because of their flaws, rather than in spite of them.

For all the times Parks and Rec has made my teeth grind with its Jerry bullying, I have known, always, that the show loves Jerry, and wants us to love him—and when the other characters are thoughtless or cruel to him, it is they who are wrong. It is their flaw, their envy, their self-involvement—not anything wrong with the inimitably lovable Jerry.

It is so rare that I love, really love, a sitcom that I feel overwhelmed with a bounty of riches that there are two shows currently airing that I adore: Parks and Rec and New Girl, about which I have written before that “the thing I like most is that it loves its characters. It asks me to root for them, and I do!”

All of which is prelude to this: The Big Bang Theory doesn’t like its female characters anymore, and so I don’t really like The Big Bang Theory anymore.

I didn’t like TBBT the first time I watched it, which was just some random episode in the middle of the series. But then I watched it from the beginning, when it went into syndication, and I liked it a lot. It’s never been a show I’ve loved like the aforementioned shows, but it was a show I enjoyed quite a bit, anyway—and I thought it did a pretty swell job of exposing Nice Guyism for the garbage that it is.

Mostly, I liked Penny.

I really liked this female character, despite her tokenism, who was routinely drawn as a complex human being despite the guys’ objectification of her. I liked that she was allowed to be funny, and clever, and have sexual agency, and teach the guys by example how to stand up to bullies.

The show, I thought, liked Penny, too.

And I really liked the additional female leads that were added in time. I liked Bernadette—even though she has a terrible case of Bailey Quarters which compels us to pretend that she’s not beautiful because she wears glasses and someone else is supposed to be the sexpot on the show—and I loved Amy Farrah Fowler. (I really like Leslie Winkle whenever she shows up, too.) I liked most of the scenes between the girls, and I was glad Penny wasn’t isolated in a tower of Exceptional Womanhood anymore.

But then something changed. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but the show lost its respect for Amy Farrah Fowler. Once a formidable complement to Sheldon Cooper, she has been reduced to an unwanted trophy—he gets a girl (that he doesn’t even seem to want) and she has to settle for a shitty relationship because, hey, she’s a nerd; it’s not like she could do (or deserves?) any better.

And, this season, the show seems to have lost every trace of the love it once had for Penny.

Penny isn’t allowed to be good at anything anymore. She can’t accomplish this, she can’t understand that, she’s not even smart enough to take science classes at community college. This is the same character who used to (literally) kick ass on earlier seasons, and now her entire oeuvre consists of drinking wine and making sure Leonard still thinks she’s sexy.

There was an episode earlier this season, in which Penny was taking a history course, and couldn’t even write a decent paper on her own. Leonard was being a complete asshole about it, and, watching the show, Iain and I were bitterly complaining that the show had rendered Penny incapable of writing a 101-level essay. When at last Penny presented Leonard with a B+ paper, we were so happy—only to be immediately crushed by the reveal that Bernadette and Amy had helped her, and only helped her enough to get a B+, because they wanted it to be “realistic.”

Every time Penny trudges by in her waitress uniform, I now cringe. Because it’s just a reminder about how the show won’t let her succeed. At anything.

Which certainly doesn’t make for a better show. I would have found an episode about Penny and Leonard trying to navigate their relationship while she’s taken away by a movie role (professional success! yay for Penny!) exponentially more interesting than the last episode, where I instead watched Penny put on sexy glasses to give Leonard a boner to assuage her insecurity after another woman flirted with him.

The fact is, TBBT has officially fallen out of love with Penny. And that makes TBBT pretty damn unwatchable for me.

Take note, sitcom writers: I can’t love your characters more than you do.

———-

Melissa McEwan is the founder and manager of the award-winning political and cultural group blog Shakesville, which she launched as Shakespeare’s Sister in October 2004 because George Bush was pissing her off. In addition to running Shakesville, she also contributes to The Guardian‘s Comment is Free America and AlterNet. Liss graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology, with an emphasis on the political marginalization of gender-based groups. An active feminist and LGBTQI advocate, she has worked as a concept development and brand consultant and now writes full-time.

She lives just outside Chicago with three cats, two dogs, and a Scotsman, with whom she shares a love of all things geekdom, from Lord of the Rings to Alcatraz. When she’s not blogging, she can usually be found watching garbage television or trying to coax her lazyass greyhound off the couch for a walk.

"Pregnancy Brain" in Sitcoms

Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin in “How I Met Your Mother”

Pregnancy brain. Momnesia. Preggo ladies be cray-cray. Call it what you want, but the idea that pregnant women lose their minds while their hormones go whack is a popular stereotype based on questionable evidence. Some mothers recall feeling forgetful during their pregnancy, while others don’t. (Wow, you’d think different women have different experiences with pregnancy, or something.)

Regardless of how true pregnancy brain is or isn’t, or how different women react to the changes in their bodies, sitcom writers have taken this idea and run with it. Last year, Lily Aldrin experienced an episode’s worth of pregnancy brain on How I Met Your Mother, and this year, Gloria Delgado-Pritchett struggled with her own pregnancy brain problems on Modern Family. The setups were similar: the women had short-term memory problems as a result of their pregnancy hormones. The results, however, were a little different.

On How I Met Your Mother, the characters first notice something different about Lily when she agreed to move to the suburbs, after years of insisting that she would never move to the suburbs and wanted to stay in New York. Marshall, suburban-born and raised, is thrilled that Lily has changed her mind, but Robin warns him that Lily only wants to move because of pregnancy brain. Marshall doubts that pregnancy brain is even a “thing,” and Robin insists that it is: “Her brain is marinating in a cocktail of hormones, mood swings, and jacked-up nesting instincts.” Then Marshall and Robin recall a few incidents of Lily acting strangely: putting her keys and wallet in the freezer and ice cubes in her purse, texting Robin to ask for directions back from the bathroom, and saying “fungus” instead of “fetus” and “metal factory” instead of “mental faculty.” Robin cautions Marshall against letting Lily make any major life choices while pregnant.

This is all just in the first five minutes of the episode, by the way. The point is clear: Lily, while pregnant, is completely incapable of making any decisions for herself and has a more impaired short-term memory than Dory from Finding Nemo. Robin doesn’t think “that moron” can do anything. (Sidebar: why is Robin “I never want kids and have no interest in ever being pregnant” Scherbatsky suddenly an expert in pregnancy brain, anyway?)

Fortunately, Lily has a man by her side! (Hannigan and Jason Segel)

A year later on Modern Family, Gloria experiences similar symptoms of pregnesia, at a much later stage at her pregnancy than Lily’s. She puts soap in the fridge and butter in the shower. Jay calls his daughter Claire to “babysit the stupid pregnant lady” (Gloria’s words), but he claims that Gloria called Claire and forgot, and she initially believes him. She drives with Claire to Costco and laments over her pregnesia: “I have two brains in my body and I’ve never been so dumb.” Claire tells her not to be too hard on herself: “You have another human being growing inside of you competing for resources.” Claire herself struggled with forgetfulness when pregnant with her daughter Alex (but not so much with her daughter Haley or son Luke). The women exchange a nice moment until Gloria tries to get out of a moving car.

The setup here is slightly different: Gloria is forgetful and scattered, but self-aware enough to know when people are pandering to her. Still, she’s not at her best.

Back on How I Met Your Mother, the plot continues with Lily acting even more ridiculous. She tries to make waffles using a laptop, and Marshall takes advantage of her lapse in judgment by convincing her to buy things for the apartment that she doesn’t really want. Soon, though, she turns the tables on him. She tricks him into thinking that she called a broker to sell her grandparents’ house in the suburbs. Instead, she’s led him to the suburbs on Halloween so they can hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. She’s trying to manipulate him with cute children to convince him to move to the suburbs. It looks like the silly pregnant lady has more “metal factories” than meets the eye.

Meanwhile, on Modern Family, Claire and Gloria go shopping at Costco. Claire has to run to a different part of the store to find a sweater to wear, because Gloria’s been standing in the frozen food aisle for half an hour and can’t remember what she wanted to buy. When the two women finally go to the parking lot after their shop, Gloria accidentally almost closes the door of the minivan on Claire’s head – after all that time, she forgot the eggs. Claire lectures Gloria: “You are purposely turning your brain off!” Then Claire is interrupted by a store’s security guard: she forgot to return the sweater she wore while Gloria stood in the frozen food aisle, and accidentally stole the sweater. Claire tries to plead her case, but the security guard takes her back inside the building.

Sofia Vergara as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on “Modern Family”

In the third act of the Marshall/Lily plot on HIMYM, Lily has convinced Marshall to move to the suburbs. Then a few trick-or-treaters come to her door, and she hands them a stapler, scissors, and a bottle of pinot noir. She doesn’t realize what she’s done until Marshall points it out to her, and then she cries because she’s going to miss the stapler. Lily admits that she can’t make any big decisions right now, at least not until she’s done being affected by hormones.

On Modern Family, Claire argues with an overly vigilant store detective. Gloria stands, panicked, and announces that her water broke. Claire and the store detective rush her to the car. As Claire drives, Gloria reveals that she dumped a water bottle on the floor and pretended to go into labor in order to help Claire: “I couldn’t sit there and watch you suffer just because you turned your brain off.” Claire apologizes for pandering to Gloria and doubting her abilities.

Two sitcom episodes, less than a year apart from each other, both dealing with forgetful pregnant women who don’t know how to manage their lives without help, but the message of each episode is very different. The How I Met Your Mother episode is sexist and cliched, while the Modern Family episode attempts to treat the pregnant character with humanity, and mostly succeeds.

Look at the way the other characters talk about Lily and Gloria. Lily is “marinating in a cocktail of hormones,” a “moron,” and acting like the “drunk girl at the bar” – descriptors that would be perfect for a pregnant character on a darker or more satirical comedy, but seem out of place and mean-spirited on a feel-good show like How I Met Your Mother. Claire, on the other hand, initially sympathizes with Gloria, pointing out that pregnancy is draining and of course her memory would be on the fritz.

Lily is also treated like an infant during this pregnancy. She’s not just forgetful – she can’t make any major decisions while these hormones are affecting her brain. SHE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED. Gloria, meanwhile, is forgetful and scattered, but she hasn’t completely lost her mind, and cleverly saves Claire from the repercussions of her own brain fart.

More similar than you might think (Vergara and Julie Bowen)

But I think the biggest reason that the Modern Family storyline mostly succeeds and the How I Met Your Mother episode doesn’t is because the first show remembers to show the female perspective on a woman’s issue (imagine that). The episode of How I Met Your Mother isn’t about how Lily deals with pregnancy brain; it’s about how Marshall deals with Lily’s pregnancy brain. Let’s empathize with the poor, long-suffering husband while he deals with the changes in his wife’s body (yawn). Modern Family at least shows us pregnancy-related forgetfulness from the perspective of the female characters. I liked seeing two women bond over their different pregnancies, and I especially liked that Claire didn’t have the exact same experience with every pregnancy.

I don’t know if pregnancy brain is a real thing or not. I’m skeptical, but I’ve had at least two currently pregnant or formerly pregnant friends tell me that they were constantly forgetful during their pregnancies. My impression is that it’s true for some women and not true for others. Both shows exaggerate the concept for for comic effect, but How I Met Your Mother reduces the pregnant woman to an infant and Modern Family remembers that Gloria is still an adult. I know which episode I prefer.

Final thought: if walking into a room with a specific purpose, and then immediately forgetting said purpose for being in that room, is a sign of pregnancy brain, I have been pregnant for the last twenty-eight years. I do this at least twice a day. Maybe pregnant women and scatterbrained artist-writer types are cut from the same cloth.

Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

"Pregnancy Brain" in Sitcoms

Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin in “How I Met Your Mother”

Fortunately, Lily has a man by her side! (Hannigan and Jason Segel)

The setup here is slightly different: Gloria is forgetful and scattered, but self-aware enough to know when people are pandering to her. Still, she’s not at her best.

Sofia Vergara as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett on “Modern Family”

More similar than you might think (Vergara and Julie Bowen)

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

A Feminist Look at The Women of ‘Arrested Development’

Written by Lady T.

The fourth season of Arrested Development is in production, and fans are blueing themselves in delight. Every time I turn around, entertainment news is buzzing with more information about the show’s upcoming revival. Right after we fans calm down over our initial excitement at seeing Jason Bateman’s tweet of the first set photos, we hear more good news from David Cross as he hints at a longer season than originally planned.

It’s a good time to be an Arrested Development fan. I pulled out my season 1 DVDs the other day and watched the first two discs, and suddenly felt inspired to write about a topic that I’ve put on the back burner for too long: the women of the Bluth-Funke clan.

Arrested Development has three main female characters, outnumbered 2 to 1 by the main male characters, but they each lend their unique comic touch to the show and help make the Bluth family the wonderfully dysfunctional family they are.

The first main female character is the matriarch of the Bluth family, Lucille Bluth, who is probably the worst human being on the program.


Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter) and the wink that makes her son uncomfortable

Of all the dysfunctional, vain, shallow, spoiled members of the Bluth family, Lucille is the closest to being pure evil. Despite showing a glimpse of humanity here and there, she is ruthless, cruel, and enjoys playing favorites with her children. She constantly relies on Michael to get her out of any scrape the family gets into, mocks GOB and Lindsay and purposely reinforces their biggest insecurities, and clings to Buster to his own detriment. She’s a proud alcoholic and a racist – in fact, the only time she ever shows affection for her son GOB is when he makes a crack about “horny immigrants.” She’s mean and proud of it.

Classic line: “If that’s a veiled criticism of me, I won’t hear it, and I won’t respond to it.”

The feminist case for Lucille: I’ve seen too many family sitcoms where the mother and wife is portrayed as the most logical, sensitive, caring person, the glue holding the group together – endlessly patient except for the rare times when she’s not, the person who takes responsibility while the irresponsible man-children get to run around and have all the fun. Seeing Lucille reject that responsibility and use her influence for evil is so refreshing, and watching Jessica Walter tear into that role is a real treat. I rarely see an actress given the opportunity to enjoy playing an evil character to the extent that Walter does.

Lucille’s bad influence can be seen in her children, including her only daughter, Lindsay Funke.

Lindsay Funke (Portia de Rossi) in her infamous Slut shirt

Of the Bluth children, Lindsay is the clear third favorite of her mother’s, slightly preferable to GOB, but below Michael and far below Buster. Lucille’s constant negative comments about Lindsay’s weight and appearance have left her insecure and determined to be a better person than her mother, but she doesn’t always succeed. Even though Lindsay is more conscious about social issues than her parents are, she’s also the biggest hypocrite in the family next to Michael. She fights for causes that she doesn’t quite understand, protesting against leather while still eating meat, fighting against circumcision and annoying the Jewish Defense League, and refusing to be objectified for her looks while feeling insulted that prison inmates don’t sexually harass her.

Classic line: “You know, we’re not the only ones destroying trees. What about beavers? You call yourself an environmentalist, why don’t you go club a few beavers?”

The feminist case for Lindsay: Lindsay is probably the only character on the show that would think to call herself a feminist, though she’d probably get the definition wrong and contradict herself several times while standing up for feminist beliefs. When there are very few feminist characters on television to begin with, Lindsay’s clueless activism could be interpreted as problematic, but the show is clear that Lindsay’s hypocrisy and shallowness are the problem, not the feminist/environmentalist ideals themselves. The joke is on her, not on her beliefs. Lindsay is also frequently put in the role of criticizing Michael’s hypocrisy, showing that she has some intelligence even underneath the shallowness, making her a more well-rounded character.

Like her mother, Lindsay is often neglectful of her own daughter, Maeby Funke.

Maeby is confused, and not impressed.

Maeby has a complicated relationship with her mother. While Lindsay often seeks Lucille’s approval only to get smacked down and criticized, Maeby tries to get any kind of attention (mostly negative) from her mother only to be ignored. In fact, Maeby is often overlooked and ignored by most of the members of the Bluth-Funke family – except for her cousin George Michael, who’s in love with her. This neglect leaves Maeby free to do whatever she wants, whether it’s skipping school, breaking into offices to steal evidence for her grandfather, or bluffing her way into the position of movie executive while she’s still in high school.

Classic line: “Marry me!”

The feminist case for Maeby: She might be the most underappreciated character on the show (or she was, until all of the “Call Me Maeby” song parodies came out), but I’ve always enjoyed the way Maeby combines cleverness and ignorance. She has almost no math skills or understanding of numbers, thinking that six twenty-dollar bills add up to $200, but she’s a master at manipulation. For two seasons, she manages to convince an entire movie studio that she’s an adult, and when her real age is eventually exposed, she still manages to work that to her advantage, making a made-for-TV movie about her life and tricking her family members into signing release agreements. When watching her effortlessly trick the people around her, the audience gets the impression that the Bluth family would have solved their problems long ago if anyone had bothered to consult their youngest member.

The Bluth-Funke women make up some of the most entertaining, well-rounded characters on television. They provide just as much laughs as the male characters on Arrested Development and help to dispel the ridiculous claims that “women aren’t funny.” I can’t wait to see what’s next for Lucille, Lindsay, and Maeby in season four. I’m blueing myself in anticipation.