5. Julia Sagorsky (Wrenn Schmidt, Boardwalk Empire)
Julia and Richard (Jack Huston) are/were the shining light of a lot of this last season of Boardwalk Empire. There was darkness and drama all around, but once these two got past the various obstacles in their way (and if you as a viewer could pretend that their happiness didn’t probably spell their eventual doom, as with Margaret and Owen) they were oddly endearing. But the unfortunate thing about this showis that it takes a really long time for supporting characters’ personalities to really build, so though we know details about Julia’s past and background, we don’t really know her yet. Which makes me sad. Ergo: I would like an alt-canon that involves getting to know her better not in the context of Richard, her father, or her dead brother, that involves her and Richard hanging out and being sweet and getting to know each other better without ominous looming doom, and that does not involve “surprise! Have a small child because he needs to be safe but I have to go see you later!”
4. Kate Cameron (Kelli Garner, Pan Am)
I’ve mentioned this in passing before, right? “How this show was just a parade of missed opportunities and how I love Kelli Garner for reasons I don’t understand but this was a waste of her” being it, naturally. In the first few episodes, I was really excited. Flight attendant who’s a secret government agent person? Hell yeah. Sassy redheaded flight attendant who for a while was defined by her relationships with her sisters, friends and coworkers, but that was it? Hell, yeah. Then that premise just combusted. It was too much for me to hope to have a show about women that didn’t have every single one of them involved in romantic upheaval, wasn’t it? She got increasingly snivelly over the show’s short run, too. I humbly suggest taking the cool, unattached secret government agent person and letting her have vintage secret agent adventures, but not with a plot getting increasingly tied up in annoying interpersonal knots. Kind of like a vintage female James Bond without romantic subplots or something.
3, 2. Bernadette Rostenkowski and Amy Farrah Fowler (Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory)
Normally, I’d put different paragraphs for each even if they were from the same canon, but my problem here applies to both of them, so. One of my people likes The Big Bang Theory, and is often the quickest to dibs the remote control, so it’s often on in our house. (Despite the fact that the episodes that repeat are so frequently the same that it would be laughable if it wasn’t mind-numbing.) At first, I tolerated it pretty well, but the more I watched, the yickier I felt. There are many problems with broad laugh-track comedies, there are many problems with this show as a whole, but the one I feel most licensed to go on about is the lady problem. During an episode the other day, I commented that I’d love for there to be a show that was just Bernadette and Amy, both of whom I like the essences of but not the handling of, hanging out being female friends doing science, a show where they were not the punchlines. “That’s how comedy works,” the above-mentioned person declared. But… not exactly? You can have a show where people do things, like actually make jokes or actually behave in a ridiculous fashion, that are punchlines without their character being the punchline. As geeks and as women, Bernadette and Amy both are victims of this on the show: oh, isn’t it funny, they’re talking about science. Oh, isn’t it funny, they’re talking about sex. Oh, isn’t it funny, Amy is literal-minded and Bernadette is kind of cutesy but actually really smart. Those things aren’t jokes, though. It’s laughing literally at them just for being who they are. And as someone who both appreciates literal-mindedness and cute things (like Bernadette’s cardigan collection), as someone who is a girl and who may not be a scientist but likes other people talking about science, I can’t really laugh along with the track. Also, both characters exist solely in relation to their male counterpart, Amy in relation to Sheldon and Bernadette in relation to Howard, and that’s stupid and limiting. Hence why I want them to exist in a world that’s better-written so they aren’t just walking jokes, relationship commodities, and targets of male characters’ subtle or not-subtle misogyny where they just hang out and do science and get to be proper friends and not just friends-for-comedy’s-sake.
1. Mary Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)
I’ve definitely talked about this before. And I do like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ Mary. She was pretty okay. It just astounds me that nobody has latched onto the blatant opportunity that is before them. You could write Pride and Prejudice from Mary’s perspective, you could write a completely separate story about Mary. As I’m thinking about it now, it’s actually kind of the same problem as with Bernadette and Amy. In most versions of Pride and Prejudice, Mary is really nothing more than a punchline. An occasionally absurdist one, but nonetheless. And Mary is my darling. She deserves a fully realized story without people thinking she’s ridiculous for being serious, single-minded, and antisocial.
–your fangirl heroine.
partlydrawn 