Theresa Basile

[Women’s History Month, Day 10]

I really like Zooey Deschanel and I don’t care who knows it. Haters gonna hate. I do understand why one might find Deschanel unappealing, or why one might have issues with her Manic Pixie Dream Girl-esque career choices and persona, but I like that she’s outspoken about feminism and unapologetic about her love for girly things.

(What’s funny is that my first glimpse of Deschanel was her performance in Elf, where she played the sarcastic and cynical “straight man” to Will Ferrell’s Manic Pixie Dream Guy, and I was honestly surprised to hear that she had a reputation for playing the quirky adorkable roles.)

Anyway, even though I’ve always liked Zooey D, I didn’t watch New Girl when it first aired because it just seemed like too much quirky crammed into one half hour. I liked her and wanted to keep liking her, so I avoided the show for the entire first season. At a friend’s recommendation, I started watching it, and while the first few episodes were much too quirky/adorkable, the writers soon took Jess down a couple of notches (and brought the male characters UP a couple of notches).

The following clip is not of great quality, but it’s an important reflection of why I like Zooey D’s work on New Girl. This speech is full of meta commentary on the show itself, where she addresses Lizzy Caplan (who is also awesome) and defends herself against criticisms that she’s not strong or smart just because she likes girly things. The speech as written is funny while also a little too meta, yet Deschanel saves it. She turns a meta moment into a strong character moment for Jess, making it easy for us to both root for her and understand why Julia might find her annoying. Good on you, Zooey. I knew there was a reason I always defend you.

[Women’s History Month, Day 9]

When people hear “Game of Thrones” and “great acting” in the same sentence, the first name that comes to mind is usually Peter Dinklage, and for good reason. His character is THE fan favorite and gets the best snarky dialogue of everyone. But there’s another performer who doesn’t get the same awards attention as Dinklage, even though she should: Maisie Williams as Arya Stark.

Arya Stark, as written, is another character that’s a dream to play, and harder to pull off than Tyrion Lannister. Most child actors are, by definition, not as seasoned as most adult actors. Arya could be an aggressive tomboy stereotype in the hands of a less capable performer, but Williams never lets us forget that she’s still a little girl forced to grow up too quickly. Arya doesn’t know everything about the world yet, but she knows who she is and has a better sense of self than most characters in the series. Kudos to Maisie Williams for finding the perfect combination of strength and vulnerability in Arya Stark. I hope she goes on to have a long and successful career.

[Women’s History Month, Day 8]

I can’t believe it’s taken me eight days to acknowledge one of the best female villains in television history. She’s a villain of a comic nature, the worst human being on a show filled with terrible human beings, and so fabulous that I kind of want to be her when I grow up, even though she represents so many things that I hate. Let’s give a round of applause for Jessica Walter as Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development.

I don’t really know what to write about her performance. It’s the kind of comic acting that almost defies description. She deserves all the Emmys for everything ever. When I watch Jessica Walter, I can tell she’s just having a blast playing such a fabulously awful person, and I appreciate that, while she occasionally shows a glimpse of humanity in Lucille, those moments are few and far between. The role as written is something that any actress would give her left arm to play, and she’s so good that you forget her dialogue is written by a team of writers at all. That’s one of the highest compliments I can give to an actor, and she deserves it.

[Women’s History Month, Day 7]

The actress I’m honoring today first caught my attention with a single look.

I watched LOST from the very beginning because of one actor (Dominic Monaghan), but was soon swept up in the drama, the mystery, the characters. (I was also soon irritated with the on-the-nose dialogue, but that’s not relevant right now.) I was immediately attached to Charlie because he was played by a hobbit, Claire because she was pretty and Charlie liked her, Damon Boone because he was a little too interested in his sister, Locke because Terry O’Quinn was a master class in acting, and Michael and Walt because of the moving father-son relationship.

But most of those characters grew on me after several episodes. Sun, played by Yunjin Kim, intrigued me from the moment the camera zoomed in on her face, when her husband Gavin Jin was yelling at her in Korean. She looked haunted, remote, scared, and frozen with fear. I immediately cringed in fear for this woman who was a) suffering like all the other stranded passengers, and b) stuck with an abusive husband.

As the season went on, LOST showed us that our first impressions of the characters weren’t necessarily accurate. Her husband Jin was more than an abusive-husband stereotype, and Sun was much more than a battered woman stereotype. She was a woman with secrets, who learned English behind her husband’s back, had an extramarital affair, and sometimes even stood up to her husband, while still loving him and hoping their relationship could improve. On the island, she also proved to be resourceful and brave, and willing to shoot someone who threatened her.

Over six years, Yunjin Kim showed every shade of Sun, every side of this complex woman, and having to speak two languages. It’s a shame she never got an Emmy nomination. Her performance was right up there with O’Quinn’s and Michael Emerson’s as the best the show ever did.

The performance I want to highlight on Day 6 of Women’s History Month is from a writer/actress/producer triple threat: Mindy Kaling from the American version of The Office.

As Kelly Kapoor, Kaling plays a character who is, out of context, pretty much a feminist’s nightmare. Kelly is shallow, self-absorbed, materialistic, gossipy, obsessed with diets, obsessed with romance, and willing to do anything to trap a man (including faking a pregnancy). Most of the characters on The Office are horrible in one way or another, but even people like Dwight and Angela are occasionally portrayed sympathetically, while Kelly is often the punchline of a joke.

At the same time, the punchline is always great, because Kelly consistently has the best line of the episode. Sometimes she only shows up for a few scenes, sometimes just for a talking head, but it’s always funny. Kelly remained funny even as the show went downhill.

The fact that Mindy Kaling wrote for the show makes the Kelly character even more enjoyable. When I watch Kaling as Kelly, I watch a smart, capable woman having the time of her life playing such an annoying, self-absorbed human being.

Mindy Kaling has now gone on to create and star in The Mindy Project, a show I also enjoy, but it’s her performance on The Office that I find most intriguing. If I were ever in a position to write for television, I’d want a job exactly like Kaling’s on that show: producer, writer, and cast member, who never had any major storylines but popped in to deliver the best line of the episode. That’s my personal definition of a dream job.

On Day 5 of Women’s History Month, I would like to honor an actress who had the unique opportunity to play the protagonist and antagonist of an exciting, addictive show: Nina Dobrev on The Vampire Diaries.

As Elena Gilbert, Nina Dobrev plays a young, compassionate woman who has recently lost both of her parents and find herself immersed in a world filled with vampires, witches, and supernatural creatures. She falls in love with one vampire named Stefan while also developing complicated feelings for his brother Damon. Here is Dobrev as Elena:

Dobrev also plays Katherine Pierce (born Katerina Petrova), a 500-year-old vampire who’s opportunistic, manipulative, and only out to save herself. Here is Dobrev as Katherine:

I love the scene with Elena because it proves that she is everything Bella Swan is not. She’s in love with a vampire and still values her humanity and her normal life. She loves Stefan now, but acknowledges that she might not feel that way years from now, that she’s only seventeen and too young to commit to forever. She breaks down when she admits that she doesn’t want to be a vampire, and she has one of the best cry-faces I’ve ever seen.

And I love the scene with Katherine because of that face she makes after witnessing Bonnie’s magic abilities. THAT FACE. It’s hilarious.

Fans of The Vampire Diaries often cite the second season as their favorite because it’s the most Katherine-heavy season of the series. They’ve said, “I wish Katherine would come back, but the actress must have other commitments…wait a minute…” Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Elena and Katherine are played by the same actress, even in scenes where Katherine is impersonating Elena (though we’ve never had the delight of seeing Elena impersonating Katherine). Whether she’s showing us Elena’s compassion and Katherine’s dangerous quality, or the rarely seen moments of Elena’s dark side and Katherine’s vulnerability, she dazzles everyone in Mystic Falls (and everyone in the audience). Some viewers don’t care for the way the show fawns over Elena, but I’ll be honest: if I were in Nina Dobrev’s physical presence, I’d fawn over her, too.

It’s Day 4 of Women’s History Month. Who cares?

Just kidding. I care very much. But Phoebe Buffay does not care. She’s too busy carrying triplets in her uterus and has no time for your Women’s History Month, okay?

Oh, except Women’s History Month is such a beautiful thing, that a part of her wants to cry.

The above three paragraphs describe Phoebe Buffay’s mindset when she was pregnant with her brother’s triplets (and no, that will never stop being funny). Her hormones gave her extreme mood swings, causing her to snap at her friends, get overly excited, and cry all in a moment’s notice.

I’m not usually a fan of “pregnant ladies are crazy” storylines in sitcoms, mostly because I find them reductive, anti-feminist, stereotypical, and boring. But I also don’t like them because Lisa Kudrow’s portrayal of a woman having severe pregnancy-related mood swings was so funny that I didn’t expect any other performance to live up to it.

Kudrow was easily the most talented cast member of Friends, and Phoebe’s pregnancy storyline gave her even more opportunities to shine. In the first three seasons of the show, she elevated a character originally written as a “daffy dumb blonde” stereotype and turned her into someone who was often ditzy, but often acerbic and biting, and often stunning all of her closest friends with her observations and way of looking at the world. Pregnant Phoebe was even more entertaining, because Kudrow committed to that portrayal, committed with a capital T, and a story that could’ve easily been another stereotypical “pregnant ladies be crazy” story turned was elevated to a great comic performance. (Phoebe also gets bonus points for making fun of Ross/Rachel drama.)

It’s Day 3 of Women’s History Month, and this next performance is one I love mostly for bragging rights.

Okay, that’s not entirely true, but I do feel a certain sense of smugness in correctly predicting which cast member of Dawson’s Creek would have the best career. Not that any of them are doing badly. James Van Der Beek is developing a reputation for having a good sense of humor about himself and making money off of it, Joshua Jackson had a critically acclaimed sci-fi series, Katie Holmes is…well, anyway, Michelle Williams is making widely-respected indie movies and has three Oscar nominations by the age of thirty-two. This girl is on fiiiiiiire.

And there’s a reason for that: she’s awesome.

Dawson’s Creek was the very first teen show that caught my interest. I was never a fan of the teen comedy Saved by the Bell or the teen soap Beverly Hills, 90210, but Dawson’s Creek quickly caught my heart and attention with its overwrought dialogue, its soundtrack, and the wounded, sad Jen Lindley. She wasn’t the character I was supposed to latch onto – I was supposed to root for Joey Potter, the brown-haired, smart, angry girl from the wrong side of the creek. Joey was fine, and I definitely rooted for her and Pacey, but Jen was my favorite. I found something irresistible about the girl from New York City who grew up too quickly, was sexualized too young, and desperately wanted a place to call home.

The clip I want to show is from the series finale of Creek, where a dying Jen records a video for her daughter to watch later on. (Don’t get me started on their decision to kill off Jen. Don’t. Get. Me. Started.) This is a perfect example of Michelle Williams’s ability to elevate the sappy, manipulative dialogue into something genuinely moving. No, I’m not crying. YOU’RE crying.

It’s Day 2 of Women’s History Month, and I need to talk about Elaine Benes.

Comedy was (and still is) widely considered a boys’ club, but that never stopped Julia Louis-Dreyfus from making a splash on Seinfeld. The only woman in the highest-rated show on television, she proved over and over again to be as good as, if not better than, her male cast members. With perfect timing, dry wit, and a great sense of physical comedy when needed, she created one of the most iconic female characters in television history (and only won one Emmy? Nonsense!) Elaine is smarter than the rest of the gang and prides herself on it, but just as shallow and just as much of a jerk as her friends. She’s no “token female cast member.” While George Constanza is the Seinfeld character I find myself quoting most often in real life, I always thought Julia Louis-Dreyfus was the most talented performer – and looking at her career post-Seinfeld, I think I can safely say that I’m correct in my judgment.

The clip I wanted to use of Elaine isn’t available for embedding on YouTube, so I’m going to include a few smaller clips instead. There is very little that amuses me more about Elaine than her hatred for The English Patient. Even her dancing and taking down of the Soup Nazi can’t compete with her disdain for this movie.

The Oscars are over, and while much has rightly been said of a certain host making certain crass jokes that alienated the core Oscar audience all for the sake of increasing the appeal to the precious, more-important-than-ANYTHING 18-49 male demographic, I’m going to ignore that for now and focus on the positives: ANG LEE WON BEST DIRECTOR AND DJANGO UNCHAINED WON BEST SCREENPLAY! The second is not much of a surprise, but the first is, and I am so happy. Ang Lee is lovely and he makes movies I love, and Tarantino is creepy but also makes movies I love, so to have them both win in the same year, for movies I adored in completely different ways, makes me bounce in my seat.

Also, can we talk about the fact that I was wrong in 4 of my 8 predictions in the top 8 categories? That’s amusingly pathetic. I’ve gotten 6/8 or even 7/8 in years where I’d seen barely any of the nominees. It just goes to show that seeing all of the movies doesn’t make you a better prognosticator.

Anyway, enough of that, because I won’t be talking about movies for the rest of the month – not on this blog, anyway. March is Women’s History Month, which means it’s time for a return of my Formative Performances series. For the next 31 days, I will be writing about 31 female performances that have moved me, entertained me, and/or changed my way of thinking – only this time, I’m moving away from the glittery world of cinema and slumming in the third world of television.

My first choice as a formative performance shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows me. Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice has been (correctly) described as the ideal Mr. Darcy, but the six-part miniseries wouldn’t be the success it is without Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet. Her default expression – the knowing smile she wears in every scene – is perfect for Austen’s most popular heroine, the smart, spirited Lizzy who’s cleverer and more perceptive than most of the people around her (and knows it, too). I’ve included several clips of Pride and Prejudice in my blog, so today I’m going to highlight the wonderful second proposal scene, where she humbles herself and shows gratitude to Mr. Darcy, only to discover that he’s still in love with her. Watch as Lizzy’s smile of understanding and self-satisfaction broadens into a smile of barely contained joy, as she finally admits to him (and to herself) that she’s fallen in love with him, too.

So of course she can’t help joking with Jane that she’s only marrying him because of his awesome house. Oh, Lizzy. Don’t ever change, and don’t ever take life too seriously.