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

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[gabolange]

I am feeling thoughtful as a result of this comment: she's a straight, happily single woman, who is strongly committed to her career, and whose closest relationship is with her best friend, who is also a single, straight woman. In a few fundamental ways, Jane, in particular, is the closest I've yet found to "character like me on TV."

I obviously relate to the first part of that a great deal, because, well, yes. Welcome to my life! But I also appreciate so, so much that Jane has a fairly normal, relatively intact family with parents who bicker but love each other anyway, the worshipful younger brother . . . Jane, more than any other character I know on television, seems annoyingly normal to me. And that is surely because in many ways--especially in relation to her friendship with Maura--she is like me

[pellucid]

There are obviously a number of things about Jane's character that I don't particularly relate to, so I'm not sure why she pings so hard for me. It's not like my particular demographic--white, single, straight, professional women--is underrepresented on television. In fact, although we could always use more women of all sorts on TV, I suspect that there are more women who would check off the same identity politics-type boxes as I would than there are pretty much any other group of women (I mean, the white and straight is obvious, but there are also far more single and career-oriented women on TV than not--much easier to find a good portrayal of that kind of woman than of, say, a white, straight, married, stay at home mom, and that's still staying in the white and straight category). But there's something about the way Jane's choices have been portrayed: that she has chosen the things she's chosen on purpose, that these choices are celebrated by the show rather than belittled (the "too busy working to have a relationship" trope is

[gabolange]

Oh, yes, I absolutely adore that Jane is normal. It's wonderful to see someone who has a stable relationship with their parents and siblings (is there a single character on Bones or in the entire Star Trek canon for whom this is true?). It's wonderful to see someone who has made choices so much like mine.

Though I'm rather glad I don't have any serial killer baggage. I'm not sure it would match the decor . . . ;)

[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

[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!

[emmiere]

I desperately need to catch up both Rizzoli and Isles and Leverage, but I feel very much the same right now about Leverage's overall season 3 arc being at least mildly disappointing. One of the reasons it's taking me so long to catch up is just not being aable to work up enough interest to watch Sophie stuck on the same thing repeatedly and no one else with much character motion either. Which is a shame, since they started out fabulously.

[pellucid]

I've still been enjoying the hell out of it, so my interest has been maintained. (It probably also helps that I've only gotten into the show this summer and have watched all three seasons in the past three months or so--I only caught up to real time viewing for the most recent 3-4 eps.) But I definitely think they're being lazier about it than they could be: it's like the writers have found a pattern that works, and they're afraid to deviate from it, even though when forced to deviate (because of Gina Bellman's pregnancy in s2) they rose to the task really admirably.

This season they seem to have substituted "episode that focuses on character X and in which we learn more stuff about him/her" for any actual development. How is Nate feeling about his control issues and his criminal activities these days? How is Sophie feeling about her identity issues? What are Elliot and Hardison's issues? They've done better with Parker, I think--the backstory we got for her actually told us something meaningful about her, and, well, I'm not sure