Seven Things I’m Bored of Seeing on TV

OK, as you may have noticed from the number of entries that mention the show, I’m trying to get into House M. D. I’ve watched a number of episodes. I like the way the characters interact and the witty dialogue. But every time I feel like I’m about to really enjoy it, something happens that makes me press “stop”. What is that something? A scenario or character trait that I’ve just seen too much on the squawk box.

(Not that I’m saying that House M. D. is always guilty of all these things, or that TV is the only culprit here. I know I haven’t seen enough episodes to judge the former, and I’ve certainly read books/seen movies/played video games that shared these traits. But they were in the episodes of House M. D. I did see, and they jump out at me most in my favourite TV shows. So I decided to blog about them in general.)

Here are the top poisons – can anyone recommend some antidotes to me? I know they must be out there somewhere…

1. The abrasive Man of Reason who can always solve the mystery

Don’t get me wrong, I like characters who are abrasive. It’s totally cool that they’re always right in their own field as long as they’re sometimes wrong in others (usually the entire realm of emotions and relationships). And it’s fun to watch the super-duper-know-it-all guy show up all the people whose skin he gets under by figuring out the murderer’s identity or the correct diagnosis. But why are these characters always men? Why can’t there be a show where the main character is an abrasive, rational woman who’s always right about her specialty?

Sure, there are stories with female protagonists who turn out to be right, but they always seem to be empathetic characters who focus on the emotional and the intuitive. Like in those shows where women solve crimes by talking to ghosts. Or, in detective stories, the archetypal female detective always seems to be a really nice, sociable person whom all good people like, like Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher. Or if they really have to be mean, they’re always either elderly schoolmarms or they get “converted” by the end of the story via the love of a good man. Where are the attractive but nasty Dr. Georgina Houses and dashing but aloof Sherlockette Holmeses?

(Part of the answer is that here in Canada and the US, we still see an assertive man as determined or unconventional, but an assertive woman is just a – well, you know. Dr. Gregory House can get away with things Dr. Georgina House could never dream of simply because people hold women to a higher standard of sociability than men.)

For that matter, why are these characters always white? Apart from the ridiculous fact that characters on television are disproportionately so, that is.

2. Female characters who are competent until it’s time for the hero to take over, whereupon they have an emotional breakdown, usually involving them being in the middle of the task and suddenly wailing, “I can’t do it!”

I understand that people sometimes crack under emotional stress. And it’s a good story indeed that puts characters into such a tense position that they do this. But again, why is it always the women?

It’s not that male characters don’t have crises of conscience or make mistakes due to emotion. But they’re never portrayed as breaking down at the scene and then running off and crying or barricading themselves in the washroom. And I certainly haven’t seen male characters bawling, “I can’t do it!” and a female colleague coldly telling them, “Are you a doctor/policeman/wizard/generally competent person or aren’t you?”

3. “Complex” male characters who watch porn or hire hookers

Again, not that there’s anything wrong with characters who watch porn or hire hookers per se. What I don’t like is when this is used as shorthand for “THIS CHARACTER IS COMPLEX!!!” For real? Guys watch porn, buy sex, and fantasize without being either omg srsly deep or omg srsly angsty.

But the thing that annoys me most of all about this trope is the fact that on the same kind of shows and in the same kinds of books, I have never, ever seen a female character without a boyfriend who hires strippers or buys a vibrator and is supposed to be complex because of it. Instead, she just waits by the phone or moons over the hot-but-troubled guy who’d totally be right for her if he could just connect with her instead of retreating to his porn. Because that’s the problem with all customers of the sex industry, doncha know: self-esteem issues and inability to form relationships.

If we can accept that men need sexual fulfillment even when they’re not in a relationship, why can’t we accept that a woman might need the same? Why do loner sexually unfulfilled women on TV pour themselves into their careers or children or some other platonic pastime instead of visiting a sex toy store? Is there some rule that says that a man who watches porn is an attractive but emotionally damaged maverick but a woman who buys erotica is just a dirty slut?

This was brought home to me by the House M.D. episodes “House’s Head” and “Wilson’s Heart”. It’s silly costume day for House in that two-parter, because he has partial amnesia and keeps having to go into hallucinations and dream states. At least four or five times, the various female characters in his dream states start to give him a lap dance/physically seduce him/practically jump into bed with him. OK, cool, characters can have fantasies. There’s no problem with that in itself. But have you ever seen a version of those scenes with the genders reversed? Can you imagine a female television character having dream sequences about a major plot point where just for kicks the three or four really hot guys on her show all do strip teases or rub up against her or make out with her?

If you can, please let me know which shows you’re watching…

4. Every single female main actress on the show is a gorgeous young thing.

Admittedly, in TV-land, every main character has to be a gorgeous young thing, regardless of gender. (Well, unless you’re targeted at the elderly – then you can be a respectably attractive older person who’s hinted as having been gorgeous in his or her youth. See Murder She Wrote.) But when it comes to secondary characters, you’re way more likely to see disheveled, weird-looking dudes than not-blindingly-hot women. Recurring male nerds can look like the Lone Gunmen; recurring female ones have to be really hot but just wear glasses.

And what’s with all the women looking the same? Maybe this is just a reflection of my own sexual orientation, but it seems like men come in a variety of “looks” (tall and square-chinned; boyish and wide-eyed; round-faced and adorable; bald and ironic) while women all reflect basically the same standards of beauty: thin, angular face; omg freaking enormous eyes; long, sleek, straight or slightly wavy hair; slender; big boobs; air of being delicate and physically weaker than the men. This applies regardless of race or ethnicity, too. Apparently, a hot Indian or African-American or First Nations guy can look different from a hot white guy, but a woman of colour must be beautiful in exactly the same way a white woman is to be pretty.

5. Religious main characters are just a little more spiritual than everyone else.

In TV-land, being “religious” means you wear some sort of insignia so the viewer can tell at a glance what you believe. Don’t worry, it’s not supposed to be an actual holy item – if you’re Catholic, you won’t find yourself carrying a rosary, and Jews don’t wear tsitsis or kippot. A necklace or bracelet with a charm shaped like a cross is fine.

Or, if you’re not some variety of Christian, all you have to do is wait until the Christmas episode, where you will be required to point out that you’re Jewish/Muslim/Buddhist/Sikh/a Scientologist before celebrating Christmas with everyone anyways. If you’re one of the first three, you might also get to make a joke about the most well known trivial part of your religion, like not eating pork, or about some offensive stereotype associated with it, like suicide bombers.

But you won’t be required to make a real choice between the tenets of your faith and your career or relationship or something else important to you, like my very religious friends have in real life. You won’t have to do anything an ordinary Western Christmas-and-Easter Christian wouldn’t do, like take time off your job for the High Holidays or fast over Ramadan. At most, we may cut to a shot of you lingering in a chapel, offering personal prayers, or you might make uplifting comments at an emotionally draining time about everything going according to God’s plan.

So, basically, here’s a quick translation guide to the religions you might be on TV and what that means for your character:
IF YOU ARE…                       IT MEANS IN TV-LAND YOU ARE…

… Christian                         … spiritual and emotional
… Jewish                             … pushy (if female)/neurotic/Woody Allen
… Muslim                           … a magnet for political commentary
… another religion              … “multicultural” and probably a guest star!
… lapsed Christian             … about to have dramatic backstory about losing your faith
… atheist/agnostic/
religion not mentioned
(but you celebrate Christmas)   … normal

6. Saying racist or sexist things is OK as long as someone else points out that they’re racist or sexist.

You know what? I think it is important to have some racist/sexist characters, if only to show people that a) racism and sexism both still exist in the 21st century; and b) being racist/sexist doesn’t mean you can’t change and therefore have a free pass. And it’s just as important to have someone else point out this flaw.

The trouble is, just having someone pointing out that a character’s being racist or sexist isn’t the same as condemning sexist or racist things. It’s like if I kill someone, and you say, “Hey, you just committed a murder”. If that’s all that happens, you haven’t really come out with a moral stance against murder. And if the rest of the show implies that I was kinda sorta right to commit that murder (or that maybe I wasn’t, but it was still totally awesome!!!), then no matter what you say, the wrong thing I did comes off as acceptable.

7. Every independent single woman wants a baby.

Dr. Cuddy and Agent Scully, I’m looking at you.

So you’re a single female character on a popular television show. You are known for being a “strong” woman, although what this seems to mean is that you’re the one who’s able to deal with the jerkface man-child in your workplace because you secretly have feelings for him. You have been portrayed as dedicated to your career and no-nonsense. Obviously, this prevents you from having normal heterosexual relationships (mostly because the writers need you to be as dependent on man-child as he is on you for there to be sexual chemistry that isn’t completely creepy), which just as obviously means that you’re despondent, lonely, and emotionally sick. So what will fix that all?

A baby!

But not just any baby. This child must NOT be the product of you having sex with another person. Because, let’s face it, if a “strong” woman like you had to wait around for some guy to notice her, your biological clock would be long sprung. And what women REALLY need for fulfillment in life is BABIES, not love or companionship or a new hobby or friends or to join a charitable organization.

So instead, you must go through long, convoluted processes like adoption [through the hospital in which you work???] or various in vitro procedures. Make sure you’re patient, though, because these processes will fail several times so that you can collapse into the arms of man-child and he can have a chance to be the grown-up for a change.

First of all, where are the single dudes doing this? Even the most fatherly, child-loving single male character doesn’t think about rassling himself a baby. If Dad ends up a single parent, it’s because of circumstance – he broke up with his significant other or maybe she even died. If he’s in a longterm relationship, he’s allowed to tell his girlfriend he wants kids because that shows what a caring and awesome fellow he is, but that’s about it. No self-respecting single male character would ever want a baby so much that he’d embark on a mission to get one and take care of it.

Second… bwa??? Wha…??? WTF??? Ignoring for a second that shows nearly always jump the shark before or at the point when the actual baby appears onscreen, I know plenty of women, both in and out of relationships, who don’t want babies. I know plenty of men, both in and out of relationships, who do. And I definitely know plenty of women who do want babies but aren’t transformed by their insane urge to knit booties and decorate a nursery into psychotic but emotionally vulnerable weirdos who violate all their previous morals .

You know what, producers? THERE ARE BETTER WAYS TO GET YOUR TWO MAIN CHARACTERS IN BED THAN THIS.