No, I agree with you. For one thing, it would have been a lot more annoying in their original conception, with it turning out Jess was ~evil~ instead. But yeah, killing one character to give incentive/motivation to another isn't inherently misogynistic OR misandrist (because it's not like stories never kill off a man to motivate his wife or something).
It's...very subjective. There is a recurring trend in fiction of killing off women to motivate men. (See "fridging".) (And yes sometimes men get killed off too but it happens far, far more often with women.)
It's also not equivalent to John's death because he was developed on- and off-screen for a season first. His death was about him dying. The two deaths in the pilot were about a man's girlfriend and a man's wife/boys' mother dying. (Note: this is also why I don't have a huge issue with Abandon All Hope; Ellen and Jo had a lot of agency and got to go out fighting, on their own terms.)
Later in the show, Mary and Jess did get to be developed some more; we can now consider them characters in their own right. It is possible to retcon a fridging into not-a-fridging?
It's the context that makes it. In a culture which didn't have this trend in its media, no one would blink an eye. In a show which went on to have outstanding treatment of gender, no one would blink an eye. But, in this culture, in this show, it can be viewed
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I don't think so. Jessica was part of the "perfect world" package that Sam had to lose, and she didn't need to be a fully fleshed out character. It's because this show has such a bad track record with sexism that I'd be willing to lump that in with the rest when discussing sexist themes, but on its own, it doesn't bother me.
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It's also not equivalent to John's death because he was developed on- and off-screen for a season first. His death was about him dying. The two deaths in the pilot were about a man's girlfriend and a man's wife/boys' mother dying. (Note: this is also why I don't have a huge issue with Abandon All Hope; Ellen and Jo had a lot of agency and got to go out fighting, on their own terms.)
Later in the show, Mary and Jess did get to be developed some more; we can now consider them characters in their own right. It is possible to retcon a fridging into not-a-fridging?
It's the context that makes it. In a culture which didn't have this trend in its media, no one would blink an eye. In a show which went on to have outstanding treatment of gender, no one would blink an eye. But, in this culture, in this show, it can be viewed ( ... )
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