Women on Television – Bitch Flicks

Bad Mothers Are the Law of Shondaland

It’s fascinating that all four of Shonda Rhimes’ protagonists have strained relationships with their mothers… Shondaland’s shows work to combat the stereotype that if you don’t have a functional family unit, replete with a doting, competent mother, you’re alone in the world.

This guest post by Scarlett Harris is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

If ever there were a TV universe replete with bad mothers, it’s Shondaland.

Of course, not all Shondaland shows exist in the same fictional world, which allows bad mothers such as Ellis Grey on Grey’s Anatomy to be reincarnated as a reprehensible Vice President of the United States on Scandal. (But don’t let the different fictional worlds fool you: Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Private Practice consistently used actors from the former to play different characters in the latter.)

It’s fascinating that all four of Shonda Rhimes’ protagonists have strained relationships with their mothers when Rhimes herself (from what we commoners can see) couldn’t be any further from that trope, having adopted three daughters as a single (and seemingly awesome) mum.

The first, and most obvious, of these Mommy Dearest connections is Meredith Grey and her aforementioned mother, Ellis. Throughout 11 seasons of Grey’s, we see Meredith’s internal struggle with the distant mother she simultaneously strives to live up to while resenting her for putting her career above her daughter and her early onset of Alzheimer’s which resulted in her death in season three. Ellis continued to haunt Meredith from beyond the grave when it was revealed that Meredith had yet another sister, Maggie, who Ellis put up for adoption when Meredith was a child.

With the sustained appearance of Meredith’s copious family members and the adoption (shout out to Shonda!)/birth of her own three children, the struggle to be a good mother and, thus, a good person is at the forefront of Grey’s Anatomy, whether it’s always palpable or not.

The somewhat forgotten Shondaland creation, Private Practice, also featured a strained mother-daughter relationship between Addison Montgomery and her mother, Bizzy, who committed suicide when her partner died. Of course Rhimes painted a more nuanced picture than this, but I imagine it’s pretty hard to forgive your mother for committing suicide and leaving you to fend for yourself, no matter your age. (Ellis also tried to kill herself when Meredith was a girl, right around the time she found out she was pregnant to Richard Webber with Maggie.)

Scandal, perhaps the crown jewel in the Shondaland empire, has a truly evil mother (and father!) in Maya Lewis/Marie Wallace, an alleged terrorist and murderer. Proving some people are never meant to be parents, last week’s season four finale showed Olivia continuing to be used as a pawn in her parent’s power games, with Maya/Marie choosing freedom over helping her daughter and Rowan/Eli thwarting Olivia’s attempts at revenge at every bloody turn.

Mellie is another Capitol Hill resident that struggles in her motherhood. Sometimes portrayed as ruthless and vindictive, it is Mellie who expresses sensitivity when daughter Karen has a compromising video taken of her and who wallows in grief after son Jerry is murdered. Mellie is perhaps a less rigid characterisation of motherhood than Maya/Marie as she is permitted to express a range of emotions that I imagine one would experience as a mother.

Finally, we see the mother of Annalise Keating rear her head towards the end of this year’s first season of How to Get Away with Murder. In what I think is arguably the most fascinating dynamic since Meredith and Ellis, Annalise’s mother Ophelia (played by Cicely Tyson) first comes across as rigid, unfeeling and old school, guilting her daughter (formerly Anna Mae) into remembering her humble beginnings and the sacrifices Ophelia made for her. Annalise resents Ophelia (someone write a thinkpiece unpacking that naming choice!) for not protecting her from being molested by her uncle and, while Ophelia is combing her daughter’s hair, she reveals that she did indeed seek revenge by burning their house down with Annalise’s uncle inside. Talk about protecting your children!

Like her fondness for mistresses, you have to wonder whether Rhimes is dealing with some mommy issues of her own when she writes bad mothers so often. (Even her debut screenwriting gig featured a bad mother.) What Rhimes really excels at, though, is writing real, nuanced people who happen to be mothers. On the season 11 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, Maggie finds out her adoptive parents are divorcing while Amelia, the black sheep of her family, is still struggling with the death of her brother. Meredith, already a mother to three, takes Maggie and Amelia by the hands in a rare demonstration of something other than contempt, with the final scene being the sisters three dancing at Richard and Catherine’s wedding.

While we all have mothers in some incarnation, Shondaland’s shows work to combat the stereotype that if you don’t have a functional family unit, replete with a doting, competent mother, you’re alone in the world.

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based writer, broadcaster and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter here.

‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Is a Feminist and Comedic Triumph

White men are background players in the world of ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ (and, of those who do appear, there’s scarcely a one who isn’t either comically inept or flat-out evil). As the lyrics of the theme song state, “White dudes hold the record for creepy crimes, but females are strong as hell, unbreakable. They alive, dammit!” The show is fundamentally about the collective trauma of growing up female in a woman-hating world.

Written by Max Thornton.

Like sitcom enthusiasts all across America, I spent my weekend mainlining my latest obsession, Tina Fey’s new show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. NBC’s critical darlings – The Office, 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Recreation – have all trickled off our screens over the past few years, and Kimmy was to have filled the void; but NBC can’t let itself have anything nice without self-sabotaging, and passed the show on to Netflix. Someone in the network’s upper echelons has presumably spent the whole weekend in bitter self-recrimination for throwing away what would have been NBC’s best new show since 2009.

This poster promises to upend How I Met Your Mother's yellow umbrella and its white, heteropatriarchal norms. — This poster promises an inversion of *How I Met Your Mother*‘s yellow umbrella and the white, heteropatriarchal sitcom norms it represents.

A cynic might suggest that NBC’s cold feet had less to do with the show’s premise (a young woman adjusting to life outside the underground bunker in which she has spent the last 15 years as the captive of an apocalyptic cult) than with its profound lack of interest in the white men who so dominate the television landscape. The opening credits make this abundantly clear: only one white man’s name appears, that of co-creator Robert Carlock. White men are background players in the world of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (and, of those who do appear, there’s scarcely a one who isn’t either comically inept or flat-out evil). As the lyrics of the theme song state, “White dudes hold the record for creepy crimes, but females are strong as hell, unbreakable. They alive, dammit!”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYNbp0u8WjA”]

All of the reviews I’ve seen have lauded the show for handling its dark premise so pitch-perfectly, attributing the comedic transmutation to the showrunners’ biting 30 Rock-honed wit or to Ellie Kemper’s wonderful performance as Kimmy. The real reason it works so well, though, is because the show is fundamentally about womanhood in general. Kimmy’s specific trauma is a reflection of, and metaphor for, the collective trauma of growing up female in a woman-hating world.

The underground bunker, into which Kimmy is forced as a newly pubescent 14-year-old, represents the constraints of heteropatriarchal gender norms, which are most fully embodied in Jon Hamm’s creepy cult leader. He emotionally abuses and manipulates the women he has imprisoned, gets inside their heads, interprets the Bible in a way that supports his lies, and – once he’s on trial – charms and dazzles everyone around him into accepting his nonsense. The bunker-as-patriarchy metaphor is made explicit more than once: in the pilot episode, when Matt Lauer observes, “I’m always amazed at what women will do because they’re afraid of being rude”; when Kimmy realizes her wealthy employer’s loveless marriage is a bunker in its own way; when a certain upscale fitness trend is revealed to be yet another way to keep women in a dark room doing what a man tells them to.

This robot is much more sympathetic than most white men on TV (and off it).

The women of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, who have all been victimized by heteropatriarchy, use an assortment of coping mechanisms. Cyndee exploits her victim status to get free stuff from all the people who feel sorry for her. Donna Maria keeps her skills close to her chest and doesn’t let on that she’s savvier than the rest put together. Gretchen goes deep into denial. Kimmy tries to put her past behind her and get on with life. These different coping mechanisms sometimes bring them into conflict with one another; however, it’s only by working together that they can confront and defang their aggressor. This idea, of people who aren’t white men banding together to pull back the curtain and reveal the patriarchal Wonderful Wizard as a sham, is a major theme of the show. It’s as though Tina Fey took on board certain feminist criticisms of 30 Rock‘s tendency to be male-dominated and decided to do something very different.

The show addresses manhood, too, in a wonderful plot where Kimmy’s magnificently queeny roommate Titus takes classes on how to pass as a straight man. Hilariously, his mentor is Hank from Breaking Bad, a show which was also about the destructiveness of white male patriarchy, but which – because it chose to portray this from the perspective of the said white male patriarch – was dangerously susceptible to misreadings from misogynistic fanboys who found Walter White’s badassery admirable. No such danger with Kimmy, in which the reveal that Entourage 2 will not be happening causes a bar full of strangers to break out into cheering and applause. What Titus learns about heterosexual masculinity is that he possesses the ability to fake it, but it’s aggro, destructive, and (contra the sexist mythos of heteropatriarchy) more artificial than the fabulous femmeyness that comes so naturally to him.

It’s worth mentioning that this show can be read as a metaphor for trans womanhood specifically, an idea suggested by the last line of the theme song: “That’s gonna be, you know, a fascinating transition.” Consider: after many years of being lied to about the world and her place in it, Kimmy moves to the big city, changes her name, and conceals her past for her own safety and peace of mind. She is an adult who is still to some extent an emotional adolescent, temporally out of sync with the world around her, which is not wholly unlike the experience of beginning transition as an adult. Again, it’s not a huge leap to read this as a deliberate correction of some of 30 Rock‘s missteps.

There are also ongoing threads skewering wealth and class, the immigration system, and white supremacy – Titus realizing he is treated far better on the streets of New York as a werewolf than a Black man is on the nose, but it’s timely and it’s very funny. I realize I haven’t said much about the actual comedy aspect of the show, but rest assured that it is absolutely hilarious. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt succeeds as a work of intersectional feminism, and it also succeeds as a comedy. It’s everything I want in my entertainment, and I can’t wait for season two.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. A Buzzfeed quiz pegged him as Kimmy, but he feels like more of a Titus.

Is ‘Better Call Saul’ the Next ‘Breaking Bad’?

So what about ‘Better Call Saul’? Will Gilligan and Gould offer us more female characters (to either love or hate)? So far I see only one major female role being advertised, that of Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), a tough lawyer foil for Saul. At this stage, it just feels thin, and we all know that Gilligan and Gould can absolutely produce some interesting female characters to add to their Alberquerque setting; the question is, will they?

Written by Rachel Redfern.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q4qzYrHVmI”]

It’s a well-known fact that the second a studio or network creates something successful, they sit there like greedy yuppies, desperately trying to milk the last ounce of financial profit they can. Will the AMC Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul be the same? A tired reiteration of characters we’ve already left behind? A collection of cameos and winks to the audience about Walt and Jesse? Lots of shots in a Los Pollos Hermanos?

Or will it bring us all back to New Mexico and settle us deep into another round of rich character storytelling? Since the premiere for Better Call Saul is on Feb. 8, only a few short weeks away, we won’t have to wait long to find out. I think it’s fair to say that with the amount of popularity and cultural significance assigned to its predecessor that critics and fans alike will fall upon it the minute it airs, condemning or rejoicing.

Bob Odenkirk as the great Saul in AMC's 'Better Call Saul' — Bob Odenkirk as the great Saul in AMC’s *Better Call Saul*

So far, the critical response has been cautious but favorable. The New York Times did an amazing write-up a few days ago and in the end, it appears that Better Call Saul isn’t aiming to be the next Breaking Bad, dark and anxious with a few big gulps of humor to break up the destruction of our hero; rather Better Call Saul looks to be a slower, more “writerly” exploration of characters we’ve already met. (Also, did everyone already know that this website existed?) And considering the way that Albuquerque (originally mostly chosen for its significant tax breaks to films) became such an ingrained, central part of the Breaking Bad narrative, I hope that Albuquerque becomes even more of a shining star.

A nuanced, often comedic character exploration thoroughly grounded in the stark, mythical landscape of New Mexico is promising, and hopefully takes this “prequel” out of an ill-fated spin-off and into some strong, revolutionary territory of its own. In this way, hopefully Better Call Saul can evolve into its own kind of show, maybe even manage to distance itself from the big brother shadows of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.

However, Breaking Bad was an action-driven biopic that featured only three prominent women: Skyler (Anna Gunn), Marie (Betsy Brandt) and Lydia (Laura Fraser). And while everyone desperately, twistedly, wanted Walt to become “the one who knocks,” wanted to see him plot, manipulate, and ultimately win, Skyler was his nagging wife, hated by millions of fans for her disruption of Walt’s illegal activities (things got so bad, she actually wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about it).

Naturally, looking back it’s easy to see the important role that Skyler especially facilitated in the series, as well as Marie and Lydia, all of them with their moments of contradictions and complexity. However, the three female characters seem sparse when compared to the robust male cast.

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler in AMC's 'Better Call Saul' — Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler in AMC’s *Better Call Saul*

So what about Better Call Saul? Will Gilligan and Gould offer us more female characters (to either love or hate)? So far I see only one major female role being advertised, that of Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), a tough lawyer foil for Saul. At this stage, it just feels thin, and we all know that Gilligan and Gould can absolutely produce some interesting female characters to add to their Alberquerque setting; the question is, will they?

We won’t find out for at least two weeks, but in the meantime, let’s dream of exciting new shows featuring amazing and interesting female characters. What have you got?

Folk Mariology in ‘Jane the Virgin’

‘Jane the Virgin’ isn’t about the fetus, and it certainly isn’t about being a passive receptacle. The show’s real coup is its emphasis on the agency of a woman who is a victim of reproductive coercion. Jane is thrown into a reproductive situation which she wouldn’t have chosen, and the show takes her quandary seriously: how does she feel? What does she do next? How does this affect her career plans, her relationships with those around her, her self-conception?

Written by Max Thornton.

The Virgin Mary is a complicated figure in the feminist imagination. The classic feminist critique is that, as virgin and mother, she simultaneously embodies the two contradictory patriarchal idealizations of women. As the most prominent female figure in the mainstream Catholic tradition, Mary becomes the standard against which all women are measured; but, being unable to be simultaneously virgins and mothers, women are doomed to failure from the get-go.

There’s something to this critique, especially if you only consider the top-down decrees of an all-male church hierarchy, but it’s absolutely not the whole story. From early Christian converts, who were able to impute to Mary some of the characteristics of goddesses they had previously revered, to the transgressive folk Mariology of twentieth-century Latin America described by queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, Christian history is rife with Marys who are considerably more nuanced and complex than a mere idealized virgin mother.

Remember the controversy around this New Zealand church billboard?

The CW’s new show Jane the Virgin is a folk Mariology for the twenty-first century, and in a lot of ways it’s a pretty great one. Perhaps the show was initially been pitched and greenlit on the basis of its absurd and contrived premise – a pregnant virgin! who is artificially inseminated by mistake! – but, just like with the Virgin Mary of Christian myth, you’d be missing out on a lot of fascinating nuance if you disdain it purely because it’s fantastical.

Like the Mary of Christian tradition, Jane is an idealized woman on paper: chaste, engaged to a good man, committed to her faith, and determined to live an upright life. At the urging of her devout abuela, Jane takes a childhood vow of chastity until marriage, but a mix-up at the gynecologist’s results in a virginal pregnancy. Jane may be a pregnant virgin who tries to adhere to traditional morality, but she is definitely not the Virgin Mary reborn. She has no intention of remaining a virgin in perpetuity like the sainted Mary of Catholicism, and she plans to relinquish the baby to its intended parents; her own conception to an unwed teen mother was far from immaculate; so far from sticking heroically by her, her fiancé proves to be kind of a douche. Sharp writing and superb acting from the delightful Gina Rodriguez combine to portray Jane much more sympathetically and realistically than some of the hyper-idealized images of a perfect, sinless Mary.

jane-the-virgin-poster-the-cw — In reality, Jesus’ mom definitely had darker skin, hair, and eyes than the whitebread lady up top.

In its haste to focus on the baby Jesus, Christianity has too often reduced Mary to a passive receptacle, an incubator who performs her reproductive function with the minimum of fuss, a reactive figure whose greatest display of agency is to accept the reproductive coercion of the supernatural. Jane the Virgin isn’t about the fetus, and it certainly isn’t about being a passive receptacle. The show’s real coup is its emphasis on the agency of a woman who is a victim of reproductive coercion. In a political climate of dramatic assaults on reproductive freedom, it’s not hard to see Jane’s accidental insemination as a general-audience-friendly version of the reproductive coercion that people with uteri face from a whole array of actants, including the anti-choice lobby, intimate partner violence, and economic instability. Jane is thrown into a reproductive situation which she wouldn’t have chosen, and the show takes her quandary seriously: how does she feel? What does she do next? How does this affect her career plans, her relationships with those around her, her self-conception?

I’d like to see Jane the Virgin take its interrogation of hierarchical Mariology further. I want to see a deconstruction of the whole meaningless concept of virginity (and perhaps the show is headed that way, with Jane gradually coming to acknowledge that her worth as a human being is not tied to her sexual activity or lack thereof). And I want to see a critical engagement with Abuela’s Catholicism, which, despite being both profoundly resonant theme and plot driver, remains fairly one-dimensional, being characterized primarily by exhortations to sexual purity and a vapid insistence that “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Jane with her mom and abuela, a "strong Latina matriarchy." — Jane with her mom and abuela, a “strong Latina matriarchy.”

There are plenty of other reasons to love Jane the Virgin. Nearly every character is Latin@ and there are a lot of well-rounded female characters (including queer Latina women). Arguably the central relationship is that of Jane and her mother Xiomara, which is complicated and wonderful. The show has a jocular self-awareness of its frequent silliness without being mean-spirited about the telenovelas from which it derives, especially in the glorious character of fictitious telenovela superstar Rogelio de la Vega. It also has the best use of a TV voiceover since Arrested Development.

Only seven episodes have aired so far, with the eighth due to air next Monday. In those seven hours, Jane the Virgin has proved itself to be one of the best new shows on TV. Long may it continue.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. He’s never happier than when he can combine talking about pop culture, theology, and feminism.

The Joyful Feminist Killjoy

I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Being an angry feminist is hard sometimes.

I mean, I had some breakthrough spotting on Monday, and I think it’s because my uterus was protesting the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision.

The life of a Feminist Killjoy is an intense one.

One of the most difficult arenas to navigate while feminist is comedy. Misogynist, male-centric comedies are a dime a dozen. I think back to the comedies of my youth–Dumb and Dumber, American Pie, anything with Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey–and while some of those films may have seemed funny at the time, revisiting them through a feminist lens is pretty horrifying.

I hadn’t seen There’s Something About Mary for well over a decade, and I stumbled across it last weekend. Holy shit. When Woogie–who stalked Mary in college so severely that she had to change her name and move–spits out at her at the end, “Shut up, cocktease,” it was all I could do to keep my head from spinning and short-circuiting while screaming “RAPE CULTURE,” “MISOGYNY,” “PATRIARCHY,” “MALE GAZE,” “LAURA MULVEY SAVE ME.”

Watching while feminist is exhausting. The Onion points this out in their satirical “Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist To Enjoy TV Show,” and I’m sure most of us can relate.

I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.

So I’ve been writhing around in feminist television and film lately, and damn, does it feel good. These are popular and critically acclaimed comedies and they are feminist as fuck. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. As we watch, I frequently look at my significant other with a shit-eating grin on my face as if to say, “Can you even believe that this exists?”

Broad City–starring Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer–debuted on Comedy Central in January and was quickly picked up for a second season. The pair started Broad City as a web series, and Amy Poehler took them under her (feminist superstar) wing and produced the TV show.

As many feminist commentators have already pointed out, this show is great. The writing, the acting, the story lines… I simply can’t get enough (really–I’ve seen all of the episodes multiple times). Abbi and Illana love sex, weed, and more than anything, one another. They also love themselves. It’s incredibly refreshing to see young women on screen who are so comfortable, even in their most uncomfortable moments.

Abbi and Ilana identify as feminists, and care deeply about diversity in media (which the show reflects in an organic way). In her Bitch article about Broad City, Andi Zeisler says,

“…Broad City‘s feminism isn’t so much sneak-attack as baked-in, with an emphasis on the ‘baked’: Ilana and Abbi are as aimless, goofy, boring, and entitled as any guy of their generation. And they’re striking a blow for equality just by subverting the image of the striving young woman who, well, sees her every move as a blow for equality. “

It’s hilarious, it’s relatable, and it’s inspirational–I’m inspired to be more confident by watching them, and I was inspired by their interior design to finally buy that Urban Outfitters quilt that I’d been lusting after (I understand this is a Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™ company, but I really wanted that quilt).

Sometimes watching young 20-somethings in the city (when I’m a 30-something in the country) can make me feel wistful, or bitter, or jealous, or judgmental, or any other cocktail of quarter-life psychoses. Broad City doesn’t evoke any emotion but joy. And maybe it’s because I can relate to a few of the story lines, but more likely it’s because it’s a universally great show.

Broad City–somewhat shockingly–isn’t the lone feminist wolf on Comedy Central (a station not known for progressive, feminist comedy).

We don’t have network or cable TV, so I sometimes have no idea what’s going on on stations I don’t frequent. Algorithms on Netflix and Amazon Prime probably have me pegged as a clear Feminist Killjoy, and avoid recommending comedies to me (“Feminist Killjoy logging in. Suggest ‘Obscure Dark Foreign Female-Centric Dramas'”).

After falling in love with Broad City, I thought we should try that Amy Schumer show I’d vaguely heard about, Inside Amy Schumer. It didn’t look like something I’d like, and if I’ve learned anything in my almost 32 years, it’s to always judge a book by its cover.

However, what I got was an onslaught of hilarious, biting feminist commentary.

When I was waxing poetic about it to a friend, she admitted that she was a fan but didn’t think that I would like it at all, seeing signs of it being, perhaps, Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™. I explained that I loved it, and what makes satire work for me is self-awareness. I can understand why it might be confusing that I hate on-screen gender essentialism, but cannot stop watching and quoting the parody commercial for SandraGel.

As Willa Paskin writes at Slate,

“In its second season, Inside Amy Schumer has become the most consistently feminist show on television, a sketch comedy series in which nearly every bit is devoted in some capacity to gender politics. But Schumer channels her perspective through an onscreen persona that is insecure, self-proclaimedly slutty, crass, selfish, glossy—onscreen, Amy Schumer thinks feminism is the ultimate F word… This pairing is extremely canny. Schumer hides her intellect in artifice and lip gloss—that’s how she performs femininity. By wrapping her ideas in a ditzy, sexy, slutty, self-hating shtick, her message goes down easy—and only then, like the alien, sticks its opinionated teeth in you.”

In “I’m So Bad” and “Compliments,” Schumer parodies stereotypical female behavior (connecting morality to food and being self-deprecating, respectively). The message, however, isn’t “Aren’t these bitches crazy?” Schumer’s comedy sketches show the insidious social construction of these ultimately ridiculous and self-destructive behaviors.

Certainly one could watch these sketches through a different lens, and think instead about the possible audience perception. If a Tosh.0 fan tunes in to Inside Amy Schumer, I’m not confident that he/she will understand the commentary in the comedy.

But I do. And I love it. Being able to laugh at ourselves and the ridiculous behaviors and norms that we are socialized to embody is powerful.

And in the Upper Northwest, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen parody feminism in their “Feminist Bookstore” sketches on Portlandia. Portlandia turns a hilarious mirror on a certain segment of American society in front of the backdrop and personality of Portland, Oregon. In the bookstore sketches, Toni (Brownstein) and Candace (Armisen) run Women and Women First (which is based off Portland’s In Other Words, a feminist community center).

They are absolute caricatures of radical feminists, and it’s glorious. They are not mean-spirited in their depictions (in fact, they have a working relationship with In Other Words, which manned–I mean womanned–Portlandia‘s Twitter feed to live-tweet the Oscars and the Super Bowl).

Watching Portlandia gives me ample opportunity to laugh at myself. When we were contemplating putting an NPR sticker on our new used Subaru, I realized that my life is pretty much filled with Portlandia sketches that would be too boring to air. I recognize many of Toni and Candace’s scenes as extreme versions of my own thoughts and conversations. The blurring of lines between fiction and reality was clear when Toni and Candace met with gender studies professors to “debate” feminism; they brought irreverence and comedy to an otherwise serious, analytical conversation.

Contemplating blatantly satirizing women and feminism is enough to make most of us prickle a bit, and be validly concerned about further marginalization of issues that affect our lives. Laughing about the effects of estrogen on our emotions might feel dangerous when we have Supreme Court justices who don’t understand how contraception works. Hearing women repeatedly align feminism with man-hating might make chuckling at Toni and Candace feel depressing.

However, it feels empowering to laugh in the face of adversity, and put ourselves–as women and as feminists–on the line for good comedy. There’s a clear difference between comedy aimed at feminists and comedy created by feminists, and I’m so thankful that I can bask in the latter. These shows are aimed at wide audiences full of men and women, and they lift women up and laugh at them without tearing them down.

Pure joy.

I’ve been rolling around in a lot of other TV and film that’s getting me all stunk up with feminism: Obvious Child shows how incredibly moving and entertaining women’s lives are; Orange is the New Black overwhelms me with so many women’s stories, such diversity, such power; House of Cards shows that feminist media isn’t always what we think it is; and Parks and Recreation is a consistent delight.

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the terrible, misogynist bullshit that infiltrates our screens and sound waves. Seeing just the trailer for Seth McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West almost unwound the hours and hours of feminist film and television that I’d stocked up as a defense. The Feminist Killjoy rises again and again–and she’s an important voice–but damn if sometimes it doesn’t feel good to just revel in the excellence of feminist comedy.

___________________________

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘Super Fun Night’ Postmortem

ABC announced late last week that ‘Super Fun Night,’ Rebel Wilson’s half-hour comedy about being supremely uncool, was getting the axe. After 17 very strange episodes, it’s time to look back and figure out what went wrong (and right) with this offbeat series.

Written by Katherine Murray.

ABC announced late last week that Super Fun Night, Rebel Wilson’s half-hour comedy about being supremely uncool, was getting the axe. After 17 very strange episodes, it’s time to look back and figure out what went wrong (and right) with this offbeat series.

Super Fun Night is/was a sitcom produced by Conan O’Brien, starring the hilarious Rebel Wilson as Kimmie, an awkward, uncool lawyer who lives with her awkward, uncool friends, while pining after her handsome, unattainable co-worker, Richard. It’s significant that Kimmie lives with her high school friends, since the defining question of the series is whether or not being cool is the prerequisite to having a satisfying life.

Kimmie, who would like to think of herself as being a little bit cool, drags her friends into misadventure by taking them out of the apartment and into the city on various outings they call “super fun night.” Also, she works in an office and stuff.

The show includes a strange mishmash of singing, and jokes, and serious after-school-special moments about accepting yourself. At times, it tantalizes you with the idea that it might actually be good, only to let you down in the following episode. There were lots of things to like and dislike about it, but I enjoy finding fault with other people’s work, so let’s start with the stuff that went wrong.

The Stuff that was Wrong

● The American Accent
Rebel Wilson is Australian; her character is not. That is a mistake of huge proportions, mainly for the reason that a lot of Wilson’s comedy comes less from what she’s saying, and more from the specific way she says it. For some unknown reason, Kimmie is American, and you can hear Wilson struggling with the accent during the first few episodes. It flattens her delivery and makes it hard for her to use the right inflection to carry off a joke.

Wilson has explained that the decision sprang partly from the fact that Kimmie is supposed to have gone to school in America, but, if the character had moved from Australia as a teen, I doubt anyone would have cried foul.

● The Law Firm
Kimmie is a lawyer in the way that children imagine people are lawyers – she’s vaguely in an office setting, wearing a suit, doing legal-sounding things. Her job bears absolutely no importance to the story, and yet the show insists on following her to work, where her career and her coworkers are drawn in very broad strokes, and not nearly as entertaining as the rest of the show.

It seems from the title, and the pilot (which aired as the eighth episode), that the real meat of the story is Kimmie’s interaction with her friends, Helen-Alice and Marika, who are also the funniest and most specific characters. It would have been easy to structure the show so that each episode was focussed on whatever Kimmie and her friends achieved on “super fun night,” and it’s surprising that so much screen time is instead given to Kimmie moving papers around at an imaginary job.

The only interesting fact about the law firm is that, between two Australian actors and one Englishman, nobody who works there is American. I’m pretty sure Matt Lucas even showed up in the elevator. As a citizen of the Commonwealth, I’m pleased that our invasion is proceeding according to plan.

● The Woman With No Personality
It’s clear that the series did not know what to do with Kimmie’s arch nemesis, Kendall. She’s the shallowest character, and the role was changed and re-cast after the pilot (some of the official websites still show a photo of the original actress, because that’s the level of support this show got on the ground).

The problem with Kendall is that she isn’t a person. She’s the most archetypical character on the show – a projection of what we imagine pretty, successful career women must be like (confident, lovelorn, a little bit mean), lacking in the little quirks and details that make the other characters seem human. Even after the writers flip the script and try to make Kendall into Kimmie’s friend, we never get a sense of who she is, beyond how she makes Kimmie feel awkward and slovenly by comparison. It drags down the law firm scenes even more.

● The Tinkley Piano Music
This is not actually a complaint about the music (though the music numbers were weird). It’s a complaint about the Very Special Moments the series had where the characters Learned A Lesson or otherwise expressed their innermost emotions in an entirely serious way. Kimmie is a virgin! Marika is a lesbian! Both of them were really unpopular in school!

Super Fun Night tries really hard to be sensitive to all of these things (and more – so many more) by not laughing at the characters, or shaming them for their experiences. That’s awesome, but, given that this is a comedy, it would also have been nice if the writers had found a way of laughing with the characters instead, so that at least there could be laughter.

In spite of these issues, though, I confess that part of me was pulling for this series to succeed. And that’s because of the stuff that went right.

The Stuff that was Right

● Kimmie’s Relationship with James
After Kendall and Richard start dating, they set Kimmie up with one of Richard’s friends. Kimmie spends the week fantasizing about what kind of suave, handsome, Richard-like man they’ve selected, only to find out it’s James, a goofy fat guy, who seems kind of loud.

Kimmie’s first reaction is to feel insulted that this is who Richard and Kendall imagine her with, but, once she gets to know James, it turns out she likes him a lot. She realizes, in a fairly understated way, that even though she’s used to being dismissed because of the way she looks and the awkward first impression she makes, she made the same mistake with James. It’s a nice, self-aware moment in which the audience takes the same journey as Kimmie – James is presented in such a way that we’re encouraged to find him disappointing (and to think that the joke is going to be “look what an awful blind date this is”) before the situation reverses, and we realize that he’s really an OK guy.

The series also ends on a really strong note, in terms of the Richard-Kimmie-James love triangle. Richard and Kimmie have always been friends – they share some of the same interests, and dork-out to the same kinds of things – but, once Kimmie starts dating James, Richard suddenly decides that he’s in love with her. He makes his feelings known during the final episodes of the series, right before he gets on a plane to leave the country and start a new job. Now that Kimmie finally has the chance to be with the man she’s been dreaming about, she frantically runs to the airport to tell him… that she thinks he’ll do really well at his new job and she wishes him the best.

Kimmie makes the mature choice of staying with James, the guy she’s actually built a relationship with, rather than chasing after Richard and the idealized romance she had with him in her mind. In real life, this may be what most sensible people would do, but, in TV land, this is the sitcom equivalent of “Ned Stark dies.” It completely reverses our expectations about how the story is going to play out, and shows that the writers are doing something insightful and intelligent with the genre. If I was going to identify a single reason why Super Fun Night deserved to exist, it would be that scene at the airport.

● Actual Lesbians (Not Just Lesbian Jokes)
One of the running jokes in the series is that everyone except Marika thinks that Marika is gay. The reasons for this mostly rely on stereotypes like the way she dresses, her love of sports, and the coffee table she built out of salvaged railway ties, but Marika also shows an obvious interest in other women, and an obviously fake-sounding interest in dudes, making her denial seem absurd.

Even if it’s a little heavy-handed (or a lot heavy-handed) it’s nice that Marika’s story line actually finishes out with her finding an awesome new girlfriend and accepting herself as she is (which means that the “LOL @ your lesbian coffee table” jokes also end). If you’re going to joke about your characters being gay, you earn it a little bit more if you’re willing to follow through by actually making your characters gay.

● It’s Totally Fine to Act Like a Dork
The thing that really set the series apart and made it seem special was this: the main characters, who are supposed to be kind of uncool, are actually kind of uncool. This isn’t a thing where they’re just wearing glasses (though one of them is wearing glasses). It’s a thing where their ideal Friday night involves cookies and DVD sets, and they keep fantasy figurines on their desks, and they have anxiety attacks about riding the subway, and they congratulate themselves for daringly eating papaya.

Most of the funniest jokes on the show are about this – which is why most of the funniest parts of the show involve Kimmie’s friends rather than her coworkers – but there’s no suggestion that the characters need to fundamentally change who they are in order to be cooler people. At the end of the pilot episode, they manage to agree that they will “sometimes” leave the apartment to venture outside, and that’s about as far as the concessions go.

It isn’t a novel idea that being a geek, nerd, or dork can be fine, but most of the celebrated characters within that niche are men. Comparatively, it’s much more rare to see a story about female geeks, nerds, and dorks, where they aren’t asked to change in some way, or to start dressing better, in order to prove they have worth. It’s rare to see a geek girl who isn’t also (secretly) a hot girl, and, as annoying as the Tinkley Piano Music moments are, it’s nice to see the characters confess insecurities that many women have without being punished for it.

There were a lot of problems with Super Fun Night – including the fact that it wasn’t consistently funny – but the core idea behind it was something important. It introduced geeky, nerdy, dorky female characters that women could relate to, and it inverted the legacy of 80s and 90s movies (which taught us that only cool people can date and have fun, therefore we should learn to be cool), by telling us that uncool people can still lead full lives and have self-esteem.

I’m not surprised that the series was cancelled, but I think it brought something of value, and, even after all the singing and the touching introspection at the law firm, I’m not really sorry I watched it. I would like a magic do-over where someone strengthened the content a little bit more before this went to air, but the feeling behind it was noble.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Reproductive Rights in ‘Orphan Black’ Season 2

What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in ‘Orphan Black’ season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies.

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I continue to be a fan of Orphan Black into its second season. My review of season one—Orphan Black: It’s All About the Ladies–focuses on the strength and wide range of female characters that the show revolves around (not to mention Tatiana Maslany‘s formidable acting talents as she portrays all of the clones). In season two, the compelling female relationships continue to be integral to the heart of Orphan Black‘s plotlines. In particular, we see a deepening of Cosima’s connection to and lingering distrust of her monitor, Delphine.

Can Cosima trust her lover and monitor Delphine?

We also delve into the dark past of Sarah’s foster mother Mrs. S, full of secrets, violence, and questionable intentions.

Is Mrs. S helping or hurting Sarah and Kira?

We also meet a new and powerful clone, Rachel, who works for the dubious cloning research corporation, Dyad, and who doesn’t seem to feel a kinship with her fellow clones.

Sarah and Rachel get off on the wrong foot — Clone-Off: Sarah and Rachel

We also see more of Sarah coming into her own as a responsible, present parent for her medical miracle daughter, Kira. Though Felix is not a woman, his close relationship with foster sister Sarah and his queerness seem to get him into the inner circle of Clone Club, and it’s always a pleasure to watch scenes where he calls Sarah on her shit, is nurturing to Kira, is hilarious, and remains fabulous the whole time.

What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in Orphan Black season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies. Yes, a pitched battle between science and religion is mounting over the reproductivity of female bodies. Sound familiar? Art imitating life perhaps…

The Prometheans, a religious cult, attempt to bind Helena to their cause

Both the Prometheans (religious nutjobs) and the Dyads (cold, calculating scientists) are deceptive, selfish, and don’t see the clones as autonomous human beings. Our heroines must navigate these treacherous forces that seek to exploit them. Even more remarkable is the way in which the clones fight back by using these forces for their own gains by gathering, stealing, and manipulating resources and information in order to better understand themselves: their origin, DNA, and purpose. From within a system that attempts to abuse and dehumanize them, these woman are making their own way, living by their own rules, and relying on their collective strength to survive. Now that, my friends, is a feminism.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

‘Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted’: Examining Feminism in ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’

When the show started, things were very different than they were even a few years later — it was a time of very fast change in gender politics. When they were pitching the show, the one female executive who championed it was such an anomaly that they had no executive restroom for women.

This is a guest post by Holly Rosen Fink.

One of the greatest shots ever in the opening of a show has to be of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat into the air with the theme song “You’re Gonna Make it After All” in the background. The visual and audio combination is very telling of a time when women were breaking out of their shells in the 1970s. The show was ground-breakingly feminist in many ways – the two male producers hired a group of mainly female writers and took the show’s plot in daring directions every chance they got. I sat down with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, the author of Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic to find out how they did it.

How did The Mary Tyler Moore Show‘s producers get the scripts so right during a time of upheaval for women in American history?

JKA: They hired women, for starters. It’s a real testament to gender diversity, because they ended up being able to get the input of the female writers they hired, even as they hired plenty of experienced men who could write a killer script. This also allowed fairly inexperienced women who hadn’t gotten a shot before to get the skills and resume lines they needed to move up in the business. It made a huge ripple-effect difference in the industry in ways we probably can’t even begin to measure. That said, feminists at the time didn’t love the show — as with many groundbreaking shows, it was under tons of scrutiny as the only show of its kind. They hated Mary’s weaker moments and her propensity to call her boss “Mr. Grant” while others called him “Lou.” In the end, I think these chinks in Mary’s feminism made her a stronger character and a better ambassador. But it took the perspective of history to see her that way.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show show went on in 1970. All these years later, it’s still inspiring and influencing writers and characters on TV. Why is that?

JKA: I think it’s a writers’ show, to a large extent. It’s so character-driven, rather than just joke-driven. Writers respond to that and want to make their own shows that way whenever they can.

Originally, Mary Tyler Moore was meant to be divorced but the network refused. She still ended up single and working, which was a revolutionary story line in the 1970s. What was it like talking to the show’s creators about this period of the show’s history? Were they open about their experiences?

JKA: I am such a sucker for those stories of disgusting, blatant early sexism, and the Mad Men-type stuff! When the show started, things were very different than they were even a few years later — it was a time of very fast change in gender politics. When they were pitching the show, the one female executive who championed it was such an anomaly that they had no executive restroom for women. When she was on that floor, she just left her shoes outside the bathroom to let them know she was in there. And yes, the network folks had no interest in Mary being divorced. As one of the executives, Mike Dann, told me, he thought a divorcee would be “kind of a loose woman.” The fact that a few seasons in they could have references to Mary taking birth control and staying out all night on a date is a sign of quite rapid progress.

But they took risks when they could, writing divorce in later for Lou and a gay brother for Phyllis and Rhoda as a New York City Jew. Eventually, Mary was staying out all night and going on the Pill. How did the writers push these modern ideas through?

JKA: They were partially sneaky and partially lucky. A few years in, divorce seemed more palatable, and giving it to Lou instead of Mary certainly made a difference. It didn’t sully their sweet heroine. That said, All in the Family had since come on the air, which blew open a lot of previously closed doors in terms of subject matter. With both All in the Family and Mary doing well, the network was much less likely to mess with them. Network executives are only skittish when something isn’t raking in tons of cash. The gay brother storyline wasn’t originally part of the script; it was added when the actor playing him happened to be gay. But it was still possibly the most blatantly edgy the show ever got. The all-nighter and the Pill were couched in very subtle references that certainly a younger viewer would miss completely. Mary simply mentions offhand that she won’t forget to take her pill, which could, after all, be any kind of pill. And we know she stayed out all night only because we see her leave her apartment at night in an evening gown and return the next morning in the same dress. We never find out what really happened during those hours.

Most of the writers were women. Were they active in the feminist movement?

JKA: They were. I don’t remember any saying they weren’t, and for most of them, it was just an obvious and standard part of life at the time. They went to regular meetings and some of them engaged in at least small forms of activism. I don’t think they had time to be major players in the movement because they were too busy working!

Why did you spend so much time focusing on their lives (which I loved, by the way)?

JKA: It seems like the only interesting way to tell the story, to me. For my tastes, I prefer stories about people rather than just a bunch of geeky trivia about a show. I wanted to write something that goes beyond a fan encyclopedia. There’s a place for that kind of book, for sure — and I used them in my research! I wanted the book to reflect the show, and I think if the writers of The Mary Tyler Moore Show had to write the story of their show, this is the way they’d do it — by focusing on the characters.

Ethel Winant was the only female executive at the show’s start. There were so many men that she didn’t have her own toilet. How did she know the show would be such a huge success?

JKA: She certainly had well-honed instincts, and the show is evidence of her impeccable casting skill. But I think she also responded to the material itself. It makes sense that she would see the value in a show about a career woman, given that she was such a pioneer, and my interviews with her son backed that up.

How did Mary Tyler Moore change the face of TV and women’s roles in the TV industry?

JKA: Like any success, it spawned many attempts at re-creation, which meant lots more shows about women. Some of them stuck, like Maude and even Mary’s spinoff, Rhoda. It also produced several female writers who could go onto other things, kind-of spreading the show’s influence that way. They went on to write for many shows, create some shows, produce, and work as TV executives. They also inspired that entire generation of women who’s currently kicking things up a level, producing in and starring in their own shows.

Was the network supportive of their efforts?

JKA: At first, the network was skeptical. But success is the best way to get the network off your back, and by the end of the first season, the show could mostly do whatever it wanted.

At the time Mary Tyler Moore was on, All in the Family and Maude were developed. Did they compete with these shows?

JKA: They didn’t really. They were all on the same network — CBS was it at the time. So they were able to enjoy each other as colleagues quite a bit and just admire each other’s work. The Mary Tyler Moore guys — Jim Brooks and Ed. Weinberger and Dave Davis — would actually watch All in the Family together and marvel at its greatness. They certainly wanted to keep up their own standards to stay in step with Norman Lear’s shows, but they couldn’t ever compete directly with them.

Did the actresses realize they were feminists at the time? Did any of them stay involved with the movement post 1970s?

Val Harper identified as a feminist, and continues to, while the others didn’t as much. Val was even interviewed by Gloria Steinem for a Ms. cover story during her Rhoda days!

Were the actors jealous of all the attention the actresses got? They seemed like wonderful friends in the end.

JKA: They were, a little bit. They all mentioned it, in fact, but mostly in a good-natured way. They loved the women, but they felt like they were getting more attention, particularly from Jay Sandrich, the director, which is what really got to them. I told Jay that, and he said he never even realized it, but even now, his answer was a playful, “Tough luck.” Honestly, I was struck by how much the entire cast seemed to still love each other.

Is it true that Lou Grant became a feminist himself?

JKA: He did! He’s quite cantankerous and hard to pin down on this stuff, so even when I tried to ask him about it now, he was a little squirmy. But the fact is that feminism is among the many political causes Ed Asner has championed. He was involved with NOW and gave a radio address for them about men in feminism. He also made sure there were women working on Lou Grant and getting paid fairly.

Who are some feminist characters on TV today?

JKA: The feminist-or-not question is always such a hot one these days, but I adore The Mindy Project, which addresses issues like body image and women’s professional success without being too “issuey” about it. Same goes for Girls, where Lena Dunham’s constant nakedness alone is a huge statement.

Holly Rosen Fink is a writer and marketer living in Larchmont, NY. You can follow her on Twitter @hollychronicles.

‘Orphan Black’: It’s All About the Ladies

‘Orphan Black’ is gritty sci-fi with layered mysteries, mistaken (and impersonated) identity, and lots of complicated female characters. The most intriguing part of the show is that many of those multifaceted female characters are played by the same woman, Tatiana Maslany. She portrays all the clones involved in a seemingly nefarious scientific experiment.

Spoiler Alert

Canada’s compelling show Orphan Black will be airing its second season on BBC America this spring, and though Ms Misanthropia reviewed it on Bitch Flicks, I had to weigh in now that I’ve finally had a chance to finish watching the series! Orphan Black is gritty sci-fi with layered mysteries, mistaken (and impersonated) identity, and lots of complicated female characters. The most intriguing part of the show is that many of those multifaceted female characters are played by the same woman, Tatiana Maslany. She portrays all the clones involved in a seemingly nefarious scientific experiment.

At first, I was skeptical of Maslany’s acting abilities because there’s a lot of subtlety and nuance required to play at least nine characters with different upbringings, nationalities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and habits. Not only that, but the clones do a lot of impersonating each other. I was sold when I could tell one clone was impersonating another before the narrative announced it. Each clone’s mannerisms, body language, and even facial expressions are different. Damn. My hat’s off to Maslany who can make her smile different enough that I can tell which character she is without context.

Bravo, Tatyana Manslany. Bravo. — Bravo, Tatiana Maslany. Bravo.

In Orphan Black, the clones are often wildly different from one another, really hammering home the nature over nurture angle, which is an important representation of how women (and other marginalized groups) are affected by their environment. Orphan Black shows us women who thrive due to their environment (Cosima with her scientific brilliance), struggle because of it (grifter Sarah Manning), or become deviant and destructive as a result of it (religious serial killer Helena). There are tweaks made to each of their genetic code that explain away Katya’s respiratory disease, Cosima’s need for glasses as well as her gayness, and perhaps other anomalies among the clones yet to be introduced, but the message is clear that the DNA of these women is virtually identical making the entirety of their development environmentally-based.

The show even tries to give social reasons for the expression or dormancy of homosexuality. — The show gives social reasons for the expression or dormancy of homosexuality.

I also want to take a second to talk about big brained science nerd Cosima, my favorite clone.

Maybe it’s because I, too, am a queer nerd girl, but Cosima’s aptitude for science and her lesbian sexuality are awesome. Where Sarah must use her body to get what she needs (like seducing Paul to distract him from realizing she’s not Beth Childs), Cosima uses her intellect. Cosima is the glue. Without her, the clones wouldn’t be able to do DNA testing or crawl down the rabbit hole of the scientific experimentation that created them. Not only that, but she is the one who discerns that each known clone has a “monitor” to observe and report back on clone activities. This means that Cosima is also capable of understanding and anticipating the psychological factors involved in genetic testing and cloning. It’s great to get to see the nerd girl shine and not be deemed sexless because of her brain power, as her affair with her monitor Delphine is the most engaging of the romances played out in the show.

Delphine & Cosima bond over science geekoutery

Orphan Black showcases great female characters who are strong or interesting or smart or even infuriating, but they’re all unique and full of depth. The series also shows that the path of each clone’s development is dependent upon her environment, which is a huge statement about how oppression and opportunity are what shape us. In order for women to succeed, we must cultivate an environment that encourages achievement, and that means we’ve got to bust up gender norms.

Aggressive & unpredictable serial killer clone Helena — Aggressive and unpredictable serial killer clone Helena

Orphan Black exists on the strength of one actress’s ability to play multiple characters convincingly. Most importantly, it’s a show about a group of women: their lives, their families, their loves, their history, their interaction with each other, their deaths, and, most poignantly, their quest to solve the mystery of their existence. Good stuff, no? It’s getting harder and harder for the media to claim that people won’t watch stories about women, especially in the face of Orphan Black‘s gripping action, great story telling, and superb acting.

——————
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.