sometimes I talk about television (really!)

[pellucid]

The problem, I think, is that most of the television I've been watching lately isn't worth talking about. For a good part of the last year or so, that's exactly what I've needed--the more brainless, the better! I'm starting to miss good, thinky TV, though, and I suspect that soon enough I'll be tapping my fingers impatiently: where is my shiny, new

Comments

[surreallis]

I agree with you mostly on Rizzoli and Isles. I mean, my co-worker, who is lesbian, watches it religiously as a slashy show (I don't think she knows what slashy is, but she likes the friendship and it's basically as close as she can get to an actual lesbian show without watching LOGO or something.) and I can totally see that there's a NEED for a show centered on LGBT characters that isn't on the movie channels. Obviously. On the other hand, I really love that these two might also be straight and just friends, because we really don't have many shows like that EITHER. Not ones that center on the female characters and their friendship. Usually you get a little with the characters part of an ensemble cast, but that's it.

I also think it'll be a while before we get that LGTB focused show, especially focused on women, because it's hard enough to get a lot of people to watch a show about straight women, never mind any other orientation. FEH.

But for the male nurse thing, although I did wince a bit at that, I also thought it wasn't so much the show making a backwards statement as it was simply a part of Jane's characterization. And I think it was meant to be taken as a little backwards? Maybe, a fault, kind of? That Jane is progressive in so many ways, but still has some antiquated ideas about men and maleness and being tough enough to run 'with the boys'. Which interests me a lot, actually, because I find myself running in between those lines too. A lot. Torn between my feminism and my hardwired attraction to men who are so stereotypically manly that they almost ooze testosterone. (Meloni, gah.) Not to mention that blurry line that is so often crossed in fandom in which women are only thought to be 'strong' when they exhibit male characteristics. Hmm. I'd like to think the show is thinking about that, but yeah... so few do. If any. It was more likely a coincidence with their attempt to be funny.

[pellucid]

I hadn't thought about Jane's reaction that way, but I do like your reading of it. I'm not sure I quite buy that the show meant to do that--ie, that they were asking us, however subtly, to critique Jane's reaction, or at least to recognize it as hers, specifically, and not just a stereotype-based punchline--but it was blurry enough that your reading certainly works. Overall, though, it still strikes me as this thing where I can't quite tell how much the show is really thinking about these things. I have a vague sense--though this is probably unfair, and stereotypical in its own way--that because the showrunner and a lot of the writing staff are female, their instincts about writing about gender are just better than that of so many male-dominated writing rooms, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily thinking it through as critically as they might. But I have no idea.

Mostly, it's my happy, happy, happy place right now, quirks and problems and all!