Mstresspiece Theater: Judging Amy
So my netbook had a big old hissy fit on Friday afternoon and is off at the Staples Rest Home (where they have not even started running diagnostics?! WHAT EVEN) and I'm on my Dell Latitude which I mercilessly abused throughout college. It's basically a museum piece at this point and keeps me on my toes with wacky tricks like the top row of letter keys telling me to fck ff, or stalling out for a half an hour when I try to open or close a tab. It's working for the moment but if I have been/am missing comments or notifications or something big you've posted, it's not you it's me!
Anyway, since I can't have nice things, I haven't been able to roll around in the comments at dollsome's Awesome Ladies Spontaneous Love-A-Thon. But for some reason, it tripped up my long-latent-but-never-gone appreciation for Judging Amy.
Judging Amy is one of those shows that gets underrated because it has a trivial-sounding (read: includes a lady's name in the) title, because it's earnest, sometimes in a cerebral way and sometimes in a hugely soapy one, and includes but does not focus on romantic relationships, and is about a woman in her late 30's/early 40's and her successful-but-underappreciated career and all of her relationships with the other women in her life, especially her middle-aged mother, Tyne Motherfucking Daly.
"-wait, underrated?" I can hear you cry with bewilderment. "How can this be, when you just listed BASICALLY EVERYTHING AWESOME?"
Don't worry. I kept plenty of awesome in reserve.
The titular Amy Gray is a high-powered corporate attorney in Manhattan with an adorable daughter named Lauren and a newly-minted ex-husband Michael. Amy, through her HLS connections, gets an only-halfheartedly-sought opportunity to become a family law judge in her childhood home of Hartford, Connecticut. She's looking for a change after her divorce (which, being a realistic divorce, was not exactly rainbows and sunbeams, but was not due to any massive cruelty or horrible betrayal) and so the first episode sees Amy and Lauren moving back to the Gray family compound so she can be sworn in.
Her career change is an unusual one, in that she experiences it both as a step up and a step down, both relative to her colleagues in the legal profession and because of some of her own internal expectations and biases. She gets the black robe, obviously a BFD in terms of prestige, but it's not without drawbacks. Aside from the massive pay cut which comes with moving from the private market to the public sector, it's a move from the hyper-competitive and well-regarded (or "public sphere," or "masculine," if you will) world of corporate law into family law, where the profession by and large considers her a low-level Jane-of-all-trades, because hey, it's just kids and divorces, how hard could it be?
Really fucking hard, is how hard.
Amy in-universe, and therefore we as viewers, experience just how much "family law" and "juvenile court" covers a huge and vital cross-section of the American legal system. YMMV on the Very Special Episode factor, but I think it's a great dramatic tool which lets the writing be varied and versatile, and is true to the realities of the family court system. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) demeaning of family law as soft, irrational, or feminine isn't subtextual, with politicians, Amy's ex-colleagues, and the Yale law students she eventually teaches attempting to belittle the importance and difficulty of her field. Fortunately, Amy pwns said haters with the intellect and righteousness of Laura Roslin, the rhetorical flourish of Jed Bartlet, and her own genuine progressive feminism.
Amy comes by her talent and politics honestly. Her mother, Maxine Gray, is a career social worker, who crisply, bluntly, and frequently discusses the way complex social systems and base individual human cruelty interact to cause the cases she takes on. Their relationship is, in a refreshing change of pace from most dramas, by and large healthy and supportive.
They have a fairly big, mostly-but-not-overly functional family which, appropriately enough, is a giant part of their lives. They're co-parenting Lauren, whose father is still in the picture, though removed from the Grays by his being in Manhattan and a second marriage. Amy's brother Peter is a straightlaced salesman, and his wife Jillian could fairly be described as a middle-class Charlotte York. Jillian, I think, is a really important presence in the show because she gives us some internal perspective on a much more traditional, conservative take on femininity, without being used to shame or prop up Amy and Maxine for being career women. Amy's brother Vincent is a novelist, and her cousin Kyle is completing his medical residency after a long struggle with addiction. Their friends and co-workers are also delightful presences.
It's great because of the things that make it so different from my usual fare. Despite the frequently heavy subject matter which could get Law'n'Ordery real quick, the cases of the week are varied and well-handled enough that can be earnest rather than overwrought. The personal drama has a fairly low angst factor generally, and, from what I recall, is completely free of MAN PAIN. The main characters and their lives aren't unrealistically perfect, but they're good; their struggles are handled proportionately and respectfully. Though you'll smile watching it, it's not because it's a comedy, so much as that the Grays are decent, frequently funny people who you'd enjoy being around, and so it's fun to get into their lives.
What I remember and appreciate most about it, though, is that it's a show about, by, and for women, especially feminist women. Specifically, it's intentionally and explicitly a show about how work that's coded as feminine is at least as valuable, challenging, and rewarding as prized, prestigious "male" sub-professions, in which the narrative and characters openly critique the trivialization of "women's work." Who is it that's judging Amy? Well, we're the audience, but ultimately, it's clear that Amy's opinion is the one that matters. And she's doing just fine.
Anyway, since I can't have nice things, I haven't been able to roll around in the comments at dollsome's Awesome Ladies Spontaneous Love-A-Thon. But for some reason, it tripped up my long-latent-but-never-gone appreciation for Judging Amy.
Judging Amy is one of those shows that gets underrated because it has a trivial-sounding (read: includes a lady's name in the) title, because it's earnest, sometimes in a cerebral way and sometimes in a hugely soapy one, and includes but does not focus on romantic relationships, and is about a woman in her late 30's/early 40's and her successful-but-underappreciated career and all of her relationships with the other women in her life, especially her middle-aged mother, Tyne Motherfucking Daly.
"-wait, underrated?" I can hear you cry with bewilderment. "How can this be, when you just listed BASICALLY EVERYTHING AWESOME?"
Don't worry. I kept plenty of awesome in reserve.
The titular Amy Gray is a high-powered corporate attorney in Manhattan with an adorable daughter named Lauren and a newly-minted ex-husband Michael. Amy, through her HLS connections, gets an only-halfheartedly-sought opportunity to become a family law judge in her childhood home of Hartford, Connecticut. She's looking for a change after her divorce (which, being a realistic divorce, was not exactly rainbows and sunbeams, but was not due to any massive cruelty or horrible betrayal) and so the first episode sees Amy and Lauren moving back to the Gray family compound so she can be sworn in.
Her career change is an unusual one, in that she experiences it both as a step up and a step down, both relative to her colleagues in the legal profession and because of some of her own internal expectations and biases. She gets the black robe, obviously a BFD in terms of prestige, but it's not without drawbacks. Aside from the massive pay cut which comes with moving from the private market to the public sector, it's a move from the hyper-competitive and well-regarded (or "public sphere," or "masculine," if you will) world of corporate law into family law, where the profession by and large considers her a low-level Jane-of-all-trades, because hey, it's just kids and divorces, how hard could it be?
Really fucking hard, is how hard.
Amy in-universe, and therefore we as viewers, experience just how much "family law" and "juvenile court" covers a huge and vital cross-section of the American legal system. YMMV on the Very Special Episode factor, but I think it's a great dramatic tool which lets the writing be varied and versatile, and is true to the realities of the family court system. The implicit (and sometimes explicit) demeaning of family law as soft, irrational, or feminine isn't subtextual, with politicians, Amy's ex-colleagues, and the Yale law students she eventually teaches attempting to belittle the importance and difficulty of her field. Fortunately, Amy pwns said haters with the intellect and righteousness of Laura Roslin, the rhetorical flourish of Jed Bartlet, and her own genuine progressive feminism.
Amy comes by her talent and politics honestly. Her mother, Maxine Gray, is a career social worker, who crisply, bluntly, and frequently discusses the way complex social systems and base individual human cruelty interact to cause the cases she takes on. Their relationship is, in a refreshing change of pace from most dramas, by and large healthy and supportive.
They have a fairly big, mostly-but-not-overly functional family which, appropriately enough, is a giant part of their lives. They're co-parenting Lauren, whose father is still in the picture, though removed from the Grays by his being in Manhattan and a second marriage. Amy's brother Peter is a straightlaced salesman, and his wife Jillian could fairly be described as a middle-class Charlotte York. Jillian, I think, is a really important presence in the show because she gives us some internal perspective on a much more traditional, conservative take on femininity, without being used to shame or prop up Amy and Maxine for being career women. Amy's brother Vincent is a novelist, and her cousin Kyle is completing his medical residency after a long struggle with addiction. Their friends and co-workers are also delightful presences.
It's great because of the things that make it so different from my usual fare. Despite the frequently heavy subject matter which could get Law'n'Ordery real quick, the cases of the week are varied and well-handled enough that can be earnest rather than overwrought. The personal drama has a fairly low angst factor generally, and, from what I recall, is completely free of MAN PAIN. The main characters and their lives aren't unrealistically perfect, but they're good; their struggles are handled proportionately and respectfully. Though you'll smile watching it, it's not because it's a comedy, so much as that the Grays are decent, frequently funny people who you'd enjoy being around, and so it's fun to get into their lives.
What I remember and appreciate most about it, though, is that it's a show about, by, and for women, especially feminist women. Specifically, it's intentionally and explicitly a show about how work that's coded as feminine is at least as valuable, challenging, and rewarding as prized, prestigious "male" sub-professions, in which the narrative and characters openly critique the trivialization of "women's work." Who is it that's judging Amy? Well, we're the audience, but ultimately, it's clear that Amy's opinion is the one that matters. And she's doing just fine.