Ashes to Ashes (again)
I watched the 2nd episode last night. I am really liking this show. American tv doesn't have characters like Alex Drake - a female cop who's going a little crazy, but still having a lot of fun. She's an actual, imperfect, interesting woman.
In this episode she and Gene were trying to prevent a bombing and along the way they run into the 1981 version of Alex's mother (a defense lawyer). Her scenes with her mom were sad because she was trying so hard to impress this woman and failing miserably every time. Eventually her mother viewed grown up Alex as an incompetent idiot who was throwing feminism out the window in an effort to fit in on the police force. I liked the acknowledgment of how transitional the 1980s were for women in the workplace - women were beginning to get footholds as policewomen, lawyers, etc. but it was still pretty hellish for those women on a day to day basis. Her mother is clearly as tough as she is because there's some massive shit to put up with.
I think part of the reason this series gets to me is because, like Alex, I was a little kid in the 80s and I also watched my mother go to work (in clothes VERY similar to Alex's mother) as a stockbroker. And my mom also had a hard time. . And I sort of associate the 80s clothes with the "adult" world because that's what the adults were wearing then. The show is definitely a nostalgia trip.
Also, it has the best 80s cop theme song:
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