Some meta about hot chicks and handcuffs
Let's talk about the dark-haired girls used to introduce the shadowy world of crime-fighting.
Dark-haired woman, hot, trained in crime-fighting, not sure at first about the world into which she was tossed, and equally befuddled about her mysterious demanding boss and snarky chauvinistic male co-worker. And yet she soon becomes an integral part of the team, as well as the heart of the team (when the boss isn't being an aloof heartless ass for reasons that we, the viewer, initially know naught).
I am, of course, talking about NCIS (Kate) and Torchwood (Gwen), at the same time.
And I think NCIS did it better. Here's why.
See, I just started watching NCIS from the beginning of the series and I'm in love. Love love love. So I write the meta.
Of the two, Kate is the easier of the two for the audience to latch onto:
a) Competence. Kate was demonstrated to be more competent than Gwen in solving problems and dealing with stresses of her job. She exudes a more professional and law-enforcement trained persona than Gwen. It's not really fair to compare Torchwood and NCIS as to professionalism in procedure (as the shows are very different in oh-so many ways) but Kate is dropped into her new job doing an excellent job at meeting Gibbs' demands, and Gwen sort of flubs around in getting things done.
I think, however, that a lot of this can be pegged on the differing starting points of Kate and Gwen. Kate was already a highly trained Secret Service agent who was on the ground protecting the president. Gwen was a police constable who wasn't able to protect her head in a bar fight. However, the audience wants to root for a character who gets stuff right. I think Kate was written in a more sympathetic way here.
b) The affair. We don't have anything to compare it with on Kate, but Gwen cheated on Rhys with Owen (the Tony clone). I know it may make me sound old fashioned, but so be it: but it pisses me off when someone in a committed relationship cheats on their partner. It's a visceral reaction, true, but when I saw Gwen cheat on Rhys (who, at that point, had only been guilty of being slightly daft in amidst all his supportiveness) I lost a lot of my sympathy for her as the protagonist of the tale. Mainly because Gwen knew what she was doing was wrong and hurtful (as evidenced in Greeks Bearing Gifts).
With Kate, she remained firm in her moral standards. I've gone over this in my mind, as to if I'm being too harsh on my own gender, but I don't think so. To me, it boils down to honor, irregardless of gender. A protagonist has to maintain a sense of internal honor to be the hero of the piece. Even in "Dexter", our psychopathic serial killer has an internal code of honor he lives (and kills) by, and is as such a "successful" hero.
But if Gwen is a flawed individual, I think that she's more interesting than Kate in terms of the path she travels in seasons 1 and 2 of Torchwood. Yes, she screws up. Yes, she can be a bit of a hypocrite. But she's doing her best, she recognizes when she's messing up, she knows that Rhys is the best thing in the universe for her, and if Gwen's a little in love with her boss, that's okay too. She's not a comfortable character to like, and I think that's what contributes to some of the Gwen!hate (but that's a whole other meta piece).
Summation: Television is changing for the better when the audience is as willing to accept a woman as the hero of the piece as a man. Back in the day, in cop shows, men used as the protagonist assumed the role of classic chivalric knight: they may have been flawed in their personal lives, but were men of honor. They pursued justice. They stood up for the little guy. Wouldn't mistreat a lady. They were, in short, the men the male audience wanted to be and who the female audience wanted to sleep with.
Times have changed and it's now acceptable (maybe even moreso) to have a woman in that hero role. Buffy Summers jumps to mind as the one of the most extreme characters, literally fighting evil.
But because times never really change, women are still held to a higher moral standard by the audience, and that's why Tony DiNozzo can tomcat around town all he wants and is viewed as a playful scamp. To use a strictly Torchwood example, Owen can sleep around all over Cardiff and that's fine, if smarmy, but when Gwen steps out on Rhys it's a misstep of the higher order.
I'm talking in circles. To sum up: NCIS good! Torchwood good! Kate and Gwen pretty and awesome.
that's about it. Except to say that I haven't seen NCIS beyond season two because there are only so many hours in the day and I'm going as fast as I can.
One last thought on this: The madding crowd might say that it's not fair to compare the characters and shows, and I agree -- the shows are very different beasts, and there are different points being made with the characters. However, the similarities shown in being introduced to the worlds of NCIS and Torchwood through the use of the newbie officer was blatant enough for me to draw comparisons, and while I love both characters (yes, I love Gwen) I believe that Kate fits the traditional protagonist roles better on this one.
In other news
The Tin Man DVD came out recently and you should buy it. I had the idea the other day that having Zooey Deschanel as DG would have been even better if Emily Deschanel (from Bones) had been Azkadelia. Srsly. Actress sisters would be kick-ass character sisters. It would have given away the main plot point in the first part, but who cares. Epic awesome.
Dark-haired woman, hot, trained in crime-fighting, not sure at first about the world into which she was tossed, and equally befuddled about her mysterious demanding boss and snarky chauvinistic male co-worker. And yet she soon becomes an integral part of the team, as well as the heart of the team (when the boss isn't being an aloof heartless ass for reasons that we, the viewer, initially know naught).
I am, of course, talking about NCIS (Kate) and Torchwood (Gwen), at the same time.
And I think NCIS did it better. Here's why.
See, I just started watching NCIS from the beginning of the series and I'm in love. Love love love. So I write the meta.
Of the two, Kate is the easier of the two for the audience to latch onto:
a) Competence. Kate was demonstrated to be more competent than Gwen in solving problems and dealing with stresses of her job. She exudes a more professional and law-enforcement trained persona than Gwen. It's not really fair to compare Torchwood and NCIS as to professionalism in procedure (as the shows are very different in oh-so many ways) but Kate is dropped into her new job doing an excellent job at meeting Gibbs' demands, and Gwen sort of flubs around in getting things done.
I think, however, that a lot of this can be pegged on the differing starting points of Kate and Gwen. Kate was already a highly trained Secret Service agent who was on the ground protecting the president. Gwen was a police constable who wasn't able to protect her head in a bar fight. However, the audience wants to root for a character who gets stuff right. I think Kate was written in a more sympathetic way here.
b) The affair. We don't have anything to compare it with on Kate, but Gwen cheated on Rhys with Owen (the Tony clone). I know it may make me sound old fashioned, but so be it: but it pisses me off when someone in a committed relationship cheats on their partner. It's a visceral reaction, true, but when I saw Gwen cheat on Rhys (who, at that point, had only been guilty of being slightly daft in amidst all his supportiveness) I lost a lot of my sympathy for her as the protagonist of the tale. Mainly because Gwen knew what she was doing was wrong and hurtful (as evidenced in Greeks Bearing Gifts).
With Kate, she remained firm in her moral standards. I've gone over this in my mind, as to if I'm being too harsh on my own gender, but I don't think so. To me, it boils down to honor, irregardless of gender. A protagonist has to maintain a sense of internal honor to be the hero of the piece. Even in "Dexter", our psychopathic serial killer has an internal code of honor he lives (and kills) by, and is as such a "successful" hero.
But if Gwen is a flawed individual, I think that she's more interesting than Kate in terms of the path she travels in seasons 1 and 2 of Torchwood. Yes, she screws up. Yes, she can be a bit of a hypocrite. But she's doing her best, she recognizes when she's messing up, she knows that Rhys is the best thing in the universe for her, and if Gwen's a little in love with her boss, that's okay too. She's not a comfortable character to like, and I think that's what contributes to some of the Gwen!hate (but that's a whole other meta piece).
Summation: Television is changing for the better when the audience is as willing to accept a woman as the hero of the piece as a man. Back in the day, in cop shows, men used as the protagonist assumed the role of classic chivalric knight: they may have been flawed in their personal lives, but were men of honor. They pursued justice. They stood up for the little guy. Wouldn't mistreat a lady. They were, in short, the men the male audience wanted to be and who the female audience wanted to sleep with.
Times have changed and it's now acceptable (maybe even moreso) to have a woman in that hero role. Buffy Summers jumps to mind as the one of the most extreme characters, literally fighting evil.
But because times never really change, women are still held to a higher moral standard by the audience, and that's why Tony DiNozzo can tomcat around town all he wants and is viewed as a playful scamp. To use a strictly Torchwood example, Owen can sleep around all over Cardiff and that's fine, if smarmy, but when Gwen steps out on Rhys it's a misstep of the higher order.
I'm talking in circles. To sum up: NCIS good! Torchwood good! Kate and Gwen pretty and awesome.
that's about it. Except to say that I haven't seen NCIS beyond season two because there are only so many hours in the day and I'm going as fast as I can.
One last thought on this: The madding crowd might say that it's not fair to compare the characters and shows, and I agree -- the shows are very different beasts, and there are different points being made with the characters. However, the similarities shown in being introduced to the worlds of NCIS and Torchwood through the use of the newbie officer was blatant enough for me to draw comparisons, and while I love both characters (yes, I love Gwen) I believe that Kate fits the traditional protagonist roles better on this one.
In other news
The Tin Man DVD came out recently and you should buy it. I had the idea the other day that having Zooey Deschanel as DG would have been even better if Emily Deschanel (from Bones) had been Azkadelia. Srsly. Actress sisters would be kick-ass character sisters. It would have given away the main plot point in the first part, but who cares. Epic awesome.