I’ve mentioned recently that I have been collaborating on a web series with my friend from work and his best friend. The series premiere is Sunday, October 6th and we will show one episode a week!
But I know many of you might be asking, “Theresa, you’re a feminist – is the show you’re working on a woman-friendly webseries?”
Well, it depends on who you ask. As you can see from the teaser trailer below, Matt thinks The Dan and Matt Show is a very woman-friendly show. I’m not sure I agree.
So I just devoured Breaking Bad in the last few weeks, and while I wait for my brain to piece itself back together after the events of the latest episode “Ozymandias” (OMG, LMNOP, WTF, !!!!!), I’m going to talk aboutthe women on the show.
Breaking Bad has often been compared to a modern-day Macbeth, a story that expertly depicts the devolution of a bitter, resentful, but mostly okay (or at least not terrible) person into a complete monster of a human being. It has two of the most complex characters (Walter White and Jesse Pinkman) in television history. The focus of Breaking Bad is mostly masculine – aside from Walt and Jesse, we also have fascinating characters like Hank Schrader, Gus Fring, Mike Ehrmantraut, and my beloved sleazeball Saul Goodman – but the show also has a handful of interesting female characters who are, in their own ways, unlike most female characters I’ve seen on television: Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, Skyler White, and Marie Schrader.
I’ll start with Lydia, the only female villain on the show. Lydia is a meth supplier who comes into her own shortly after Gus Fring is murdered and makes business deals with Walter White and white supremacists. She is not a good person.
Lydia: not very nice.
Why I find Lydia refreshing:I feel that, too often, female villains in fiction are portrayed as examples one of two archetypes. Either the villain is a temptress who uses her sexuality to get what she wants, or she’s a ballbuster who acts so tough and masculine that she might as well be a man.
Lydia is neither of those things. Lydia is a snappy dresser and loves her Christian Louboutin shoes, even as she’s gingerly stepping around a sea of dead bodies in a desert, but she’s not a sexpot. She doesn’t leap at the opportunity to be a seductive when she senses that the white supremacists are ogling her body; their attention makes her uncomfortable (as well it should. *shudder*) At the same time, she’s not a ballbuster who thrives on emasculation, a “tough-guy” character who was originally written as a man until the producers realized they needed more women on the show and did a last minute, gender-swapped casting.
Lydia is interesting to me because she’s ruthless and evil with no moral compass, but she’s also jittery, nervous, and neurotic. She has absolutely no issue with having a group of neo-Nazis kill a large amount of people, but the idea of looking at all of those dead bodies makes her physically queasy.
Lydia is pretty terrible. She loves her daughter, but that doesn’t make her a good person any more than Walt’s initial motivation to protect his family makes him a good person. I appreciate seeing a female villain who looks like she might actually exist in the real world, rather than a male fantasy of a “hot” bad girl or a male nightmare of an emasculating witch.
Now I have to talk about Skyler White.
Skyler White, morally compromised
Skyler White is one of the more hated female characters in recent history. (Just do a Google image search of Skyler White and see what pops up, if you want to feel really depressed.) She’s probably hated even more than Catelyn Stark on Game of Thrones. She is known as the nagging bitch wife who cheated on her husband after finding out that he was a meth dealer.
(Remember, folks: if you’re a man who cooks meth and kills people, you’re just complicated and deep, but if you’re anything short of a perfect woman or wife, you’re nothing more than a bitch.)
Fortunately, Vince Gilligan doesn’t share this misogynistic viewpoint of Skyler White. Neither do I. In fact, I’m damn glad she’s on the show.
Why I find Skyler interesting: My reactions to Skyler have been all over the place since I first started watching Breaking Bad. I found her annoying and cringeworthy when she gave her husband a half-hearted handjob for his birthday. I felt sorry for her but also wanted her to stop being so pushy when she held an intervention for Walt with that “feelings pillow” (thoughts pillow? It’s been ages since I’ve seen that episode). I felt really sorry for her after Walt forced his way back into the house and played on their son’s favoritism. I cheered her on when she told Walt, “I fucked Ted.” I was impressed with her when she came up with the gambling lie on the spot, frustrated when she took Walt back entirely, fearful for her when she felt stuck in the house after Walt became EXTRA scary, and immensely disappointed in her when she sold Hank and Marie up the river to protect her awful husband.
Skyler has sometimes been described as Walt’s victim in an abusive relationship, and also his willing partner who is culpable for her own share of their problems. But this isn’t a case of either/or. She is both of these things, and that’s what makes her fascinating to me. I never know whether Skyler is going to do something smart and shrewd or stupid and short-sighted, or if she’s going to disappoint me or impress me. She’s unpredictable yet consistent, and all of her actions make sense based on what we know about her.
Is she likable? Not really. But no one cares about the likability of male characters, so why should we care whether or not Skyler is likable? She’s complex, and that’s what’s important.
Finally, I have to talk about Marie Schrader.
I like Marie almost as much as Marie likes purple.
Marie Schrader is Skyler’s sister and Hank’s wife, and she’s just great. I love her.
Why I love Marie: To be honest, I didn’t expect to love Marie when I first started watching Breaking Bad. She was a little grating and she never stopped talking, and I didn’t understand why we were wasting time with her shoplifting problem when there were bigger crises going on. (Now I see that Marie’s kleptomania was a bit of irony – her family is disgusted with her for her crimes, and meanwhile, Walt is cooking meth and killing people all over Albequerque.)
But then came the intervention scene in season one, the intervention that Skyler carefully arranges so that her family can convince Walt to stay alive – and instead of toeing the party line, Marie announces that she thinks Walt should be able to die in dignity if that’s what he wants.
That was the scene that made me wake up and pay attention to Marie, because she was so much more than the overly chatty “annoying sister” archetype that I expected.
Sure, she talks too much. Sure, she nags. But she’s also fiercely loyal to her husband and wants what’s best for her family. Not loyal to her family in the same way that Walt is loyal, in that he uses his family as props to convince himself he’s a good person, but actually loyal, always looking out for the best interests of her nephew and niece.
Which means she’ll still look Walt in the eye and calmly, yet tearfully, advise him to kill himself before he ruins his family, in an incredible moment that twisted my stomach because I was so shocked to hear it.
Marie is a better person than most people on Breaking Bad, actually wanting to help others in her own imperfect way (imagine, a character wanting to helpothers existing on this show!) But she’ll still indulge in thoughts of poisoning Walt during her therapy session, admitting that while she’d never hurt anyone, “it just feels good to think about it.”
Lydia, Skyler, and Marie are three female characters who cannot be described in any one way, who break from the archetypes prescribed to them when they’re first introduced. I hope TV writers take note of them and rethink the way they write women in drama.
There are few art forms that are as risky and brave as the one-person show. Dacyl Acevedo’s Will Work For, a soloNOVA ARTS production, is brave not only for its format, but for its subject matter. Written and performed by Acevedo, Will Work For tackles a subject that few people want to think about, a fear that lurks in everyone’s heart: the fear of unemployment.
Will Work For is a one-woman show that is both universal and deeply personal, depicting one person’s journey through the soul-crushing cycle of job hunting and unemployment during a period of time where everyone was talking about solving the job crisis. (“Talking” being the key word in that sentence.) Acevedo plays herself and an assortment of other characters – fellow job-hunters, workers, recruiters, and employers – all of whom are, in one way or another, sucked into the depressing and dehumanizing experience known as “looking for a job.”
A play from the terraNOVA Collective, Will Work For is billed as a “farcical and satirical journey into the new world of work and tells of how one person is surviving.” The description is accurate, but one should be advised that “farcical” and “satirical” don’t always mean “funny.” There are several humorous moments in the show, but this play is no parodical romp through the job application process. The humor that does exist is rooted in discomfort, provoking uneasy laughter from the audience as we watch Acevedo portray a series of discouraged job hunters, sarcastic workers at the unemployment office, and clueless bosses who discard temp employees like used tissues.
Acevedo’s collection of characters are ones we all recognize. The eager beaver interviewees whose desperation comes through in every forced smile and handshake. The slouching job seekers hunched over in chairs waiting to speak to a recruitment officer, beaten down too many times by the system to sit up straight and pretend to be hopeful. The tired, world-weary people at the unemployment office whose jobs entail talking to people desperate for work.
Acevedo plays each one of these characters as easily identifiable individuals who are all caught in the same depressing world. When playing herself, she touches on experiences and people from her past that inform her character today – in particular, the death of her father and the tireless work ethic of her mother. The autobiographical aspect of the show reminds us that each member of the group referred to as “the unemployed” all have stories and all have names. Her moving and fearless performance is a wake-up call, a demand for us to acknowledge the humanity of “the unemployed.”
The format of Will Work For includes a series of monologues, scenes in which Acevedo plays more than one character, and Charlie Chaplin-esque routines. When she leaves the stage for a costume change, videos of political speeches are projected on the back of the theater. We see footage of Newt Gingrich dismissing the unemployed as lazy moochers, and footage of President Obama promising in five State of the Union addresses to fix the job crisis as an audience of politicians leap to their feet in applause. The speeches, played without comment, serve as a searing condemnation on our leaders for their callousness and ineffectiveness in helping the people they represent.
Will Work For is a show that many will not want to see because it portrays an experience and a cycle of emotions that might hit too close to home. And that is exactly the reason why everyone should see it.
Will Work Foris playing at the IRT Theater on 154 Christopher Street (Suite 3B) on September 12-15, September 19-21, and September 26-28. Showtimes are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. There are several different theaters in the building; get there early so you can find the right one.
[This article was originally posted at Bitch Flicks.]
A free-spirited massage therapist develops a powerful aversion to touch, alienating herself from her clients, her boyfriend, and even her own body. Meanwhile, her straitlaced, reserved brother develops an almost miraculous ability to heal jaw pain in the patients of his dental practice.
This is the premise of Touchy Feely, a new film by writer-director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister). Rosemarie DeWitt plays Abby and Josh Pais plays Scott in a story where sister and brother find themselves abruptly switching roles. Abby becomes isolated from the people around her, and Scott connects with his patients for the first time and finds a new source of energy and inspiration in his life.
Shelton uses extreme close-ups of the human body to show the source of Abby’s fear of contact, focusing on thin, fine hairs and cracks in the skin. Her approach to depicting Scott’s sudden gift for healing is a little different, giving us a montage of grateful patients hugging the awkward dentist after he cures their problems.
As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Abby and Scott, though sharing relatively little screentime together, are two sides of the same coin. Their emotional health and sense of well-being are directly linked to their comfort with physical contact. Abby is emotionally connected to others and at peace with herself when she can make physical connections with people, and cut off and withdrawn when physical contact sends her running into the bathroom.
Sometimes, actual touch isn’t necessary to feel a connection. Inspired by his recent successes at work, Scott meets with Abby’s friend Bronwyn (Allison Janney) to learn about the Japanese art of reiki, where little hand-on-skin contact takes place. Abby, meanwhile, experiments with ecstasy, and while it doesn’t immediately cure her aversion to touch, she experiences the world in a different way, with her senses of sight and smell heightened. Jenny (Ellen Page), Scott’s daughter, is one of the only characters who can put her desire for human contact into words, saying, “Do you ever want to kiss someone so badly that it hurts your skin?”
Shelton’s direction is careful, patient, and intimate, lingering on her actors’ faces and bodies, letting their physicality do the talking rather than overwhelming the viewer with dialogue. It’s a wise choice in a film that’s so focused on the relationships the characters have with their bodies and their comfort with physical contact.
What’s missing from Touchy Feely is motivation and follow-through. We know Abby’s developed an aversion to physical contact, but we never learn why. A subplot about Jenny applying to college is dropped halfway through the movie, and a character from Abby’s past emerges almost at random to provide some resolution to her inner conflict, a resolution that doesn’t feel earned. There’s so much focus on physicality and long, lingering moments of characters staring into space that we understand little about them other than some surface personality traits. The result is a film that has some interesting and moving moments, but wants to be deeper than it really is.
Remember that time I didn’t write a post about Fifty Shades of Grey, and that other time I didn’t write a post about Kristen Stewart? Well, now I’m not writing a post about Miley Cyrus.
Last weekend at the MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus appeared in a performance where she danced with Robin Thicke and smacked the butts of black female backup dancers, and the Internet promptly exploded.
Are you shocked?
I was, too. I didn’t know the MTV Video Music Awards were still culturally relevant, either.
But apparently, they are culturally relevant enough to prompt a week and a half of articles criticizing Miley for showing too much of her skin and being too overtly sexual, articles defending Miley because her body is her own and she should be able to do whatever she wants with it, articles criticizing Miley for appropriating black culture and using black women as props, and articles asking why we are even talking about Miley when there are more important things happening in Benghazi Syria.
Some of these points were good points, especially the points about the way the performance objectified women of color, a subject that white feminists are often much too quick to ignore.
But then a week passed, and people were still talking about Miley Cyrus and the VMAs.
And then Miley said something stupid and thoughtless about the performance, the blogs erupted again, and the phrase “circle-twerk” was invented. (By me. I’m taking credit for that one, unless someone beat me to the punch and I was unaware of it.)
And I couldn’t help but wonder what people hoped to accomplish in continuing to dissect a performance by a person who clearly reveled in any and all attention, positive or negative.
And while cultural appropriation, racism, objectification, and sexism are all very important topics that require ongoing conversations, I also couldn’t help but think that discussion of this particular instance of cultural appropriation and racism and objectification had been exhausted after the third or fourth article on the subject, and if by continuing to discuss it almost two weeks after it happened, we were in danger of beating a dead horse with Miley’s skinny, not-really-twerking white girl butt.
And that’s why I’m not writing a post on Miley Cyrus.
And I hope I don’t have to hear her name again for quite some time, unless it’s in the context of Vanessa Bayer’s excellent impersonation on Saturday Night Live.
I’ve been a feminist for as long as I can remember, even before I knew what the word meant. My personal brand of feminism has developed and changed over time, and it hasn’t been easy to go on this journey, especially when the world bombards us with negative stereotypes about feminists and feminism – the most pervasive stereotypes being that a) feminists aren’t funny, and b) feminists hate men.
I feel like the “fact” that feminists aren’t funny and hate men would be news to the men I’ve worked with.
Over the last couple of years, I have collaborated creatively with several different people to write short plays/pageants and short films for a volunteer organization I am affiliated with. These plays and pageants are comedic in nature, and often silly.
Extremely silly. As in, a parody of The Avengers where the villain is Snooki instead of Loki. As in, a story that is both a parody of Argo and Les Miserables (with a little bit of Twilight thrown in). As in, a version of It’s a Wonderful Life where Jesus wonders if the world would have been better off if he’d never been born. Just to name a few.
None of these are available to the public because putting them on YouTube would violate privacy issues, but you get the idea. Silliness and parody abound in these short projects.
In almost all of these collaborations, my creative partner was a man.
Now I’m writing for a comedy web series that will premiere in a month, and I’m working with – you guessed it – a group of dudes.
Working on these projects requires a big chunk of time, commitment, and energy. Writing scripts means sacrificing chunks of time to brainstorm and work on dialogue. Editing the footage of these short films means sitting in front of a computer with a creative partner until 5 AM.
Filming episodes means setting aside almost half of a weekend to make sure lighting and shots are perfect, to re-do shots when they’re not perfect, and sometimes filming a mere two minutes of material can take an hour and a half.
Spending that much time with people to make the comedy work means we have to get along, but it’s about more than just being polite to each other. We have to enjoy each other’s company so that when we look at five different takes of the same scene, or film the scene ten or twenty different times, we keep the creative juices flowing.
That’s why these partnerships work. Sometimes the creative juices flow when we’re at our most energetic, and sometimes we get those bursts of creative, insane genius that only come when we’re completely exhausted and running on empty.
And almost all of these partnerships have been with men. I have yet to collaborate with another woman on a comedic short film or web series.
I know plenty of funny women. I know female comedians, actors, and playwrights/performers who have made my sides ache with laughter. But even though I find these women very funny, I haven’t found one whose comic tastes coincide with mine. I’ve admired these women from afar, had conversations with them about comedy, made them laugh as they’ve made me laugh, but I haven’t had that magic conversation that happens when I realize I’ve met a comic kindred spirit where we can bounce ideas off of each other for hours.
I have had those magic conversations with several different men.
But as we know, feminists don’t like men.
So, how do I break it to the guys that I’m not actually funny and P.S., I secretly hate them?
I’ll have to figure out the best way to tell them. But in the meantime, I’ll put in a plug for The Dan and Matt Show, an upcoming sketch comedy web series starring my friend from work and his best friend. Here is the first teaser trailer:
I’m a writer for this show and it premieres on October 6th. Expect more silly things like staring contests with Grover.
Pamela Karp as the Wicked Witch (Photo by Katie Grammes)
Once upon a time, a little over a year ago, an independent theatre company by the name of Haberdasher put on a production of The Wizard of Oz that captured the spirit of the original story while sneaking in plenty of humor for the adults in the audience.
After a successful run, the team at Haberdasher decided to remount their production of Oz with an updated script by Hollie Klem and Jeannette Jaquish, a different cast, and a new vision for the story.
The result is in the form of The Wonderful Remix of Oz, a production that is less reminiscent of the classic film and closer to the tone of L. Frank Baum’s original novel, where oddity reigns and even friendly faces and good guys come with haunted, sometimes tragic backstories.
The Wonderful Remix of Oz shows the journey of Dorothy Gale (Jen Michaels) as she is swept away from her home state of Kansas and dropped onto the Wicked Witch of the East Side. She is guided by Glinda the Good Witch (Amy Lee Sanchez, in a bright pink dress with an elaborate design that would make Lady Gaga envious) to seek the Wizard of Oz, who will help her go home. As Dorothy travels through the land of Oz, she’s threatened by the cackling, evil presence of the Wicked Witch of the West Side (Pamela Karp, in a performance that she’s clearly relishing every minute of). Her only hope is to rely on the friendships she develops along the way, with the Scarecrow (Jeff Foley), Tin Man (Alex Calheo), and Cowardly Lion (Lindsay Arber), all of whom yearn for something missing in their lives.
But these aren’t the same Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Lion who inhabit the film version of The Wizard of Oz, or even Haberdasher’s original production of the show. All three characters are haunted, even damaged by the Wicked Witch’s evil spells. The Scarecrow’s desire for a brain is now an artist’s yearning for inspiration. The Tin Man’s need for a heart comes from a broken man still aching for his lost love, and the Lion’s cowardice is based in a fear of judgment of rejection. Their childlike quirks now represent something deeper and universal about the human experience, and they’re portrayed in beautiful, wordless dance sequences (choreographed by Joseph Harris) that give us a glimpse into these characters’ minds.
The production values of this version of Oz, in addition to the updated script and strong performances, add to the more adult feel of the show. The bright colors of the set pieces combined with the eerie lighting made me feel like I was watching a live version of a Tim Burton movie back when he was still at his a-game. The costume design by Katie Grammes is some of the most impressive I’ve ever seen onstage; much like Rumplestiltskin spins gold out of straw, Grammes creates mobile works of art with a bizarre assortment of materials, making a dress out of garbage bags (among other things) seem threatening and glamorous at the same time.
Like Haberdasher’s first version of Oz, the remix includes some suggestive humor and absurd silliness, especially in the form of Taylor Zito’s materialistic, put-upon Gatekeeper and Matt Giroveanu’s petulant, tantrum-throwing Wizard. There are plenty of laughs to be had when Glinda enters to rock music, the Wizard fumbles with his technical equipment, or the Flying Monkeys (Zito, Chenana Manno, and Jacob Corbett) plan a night out at the club. In that respect, the remix isn’t too different from the original version.
But the emotional stakes are higher in this production. We no longer root for the Scarecrow to get his brain, the Tin Man to find a heart, the Lion to discover courage, and for Dorothy to find her way home just because that’s the story we know and it makes for a cute ending. We root for them because their search for meaning represents our own. We root for them because we want to be inspired, to be loved, and to be brave.
And when our heroes discover that they’ve always had the qualities they’ve been searching for all along, it feels like a triumph over the very real – and very human – tendency to underestimate ourselves.
Haberdasher Theatre’s “The Wonderful Remix of Oz” is running from August 15-August 31 at the 13th St Repertory Theatre at 7 PM. The theatre is located between 5th and 6th Avenues. Full disclosure: I have friends who work for Haberdasher.
I’m taking a few weeks off from updating my website. And by “a few weeks,” I really mean “about a month.” Expect new content by Tuesday, September 3.
Over the next few weeks, I’m on vacation, volunteering, and moving – in that order, not all at once (thank God). I won’t have much time to update until after Labor Day. I might be able to post a theater review before September 3, but not much else until then.
Thanks for reading and thanks for commenting. I’ll see you all soon.
[This article was originally posted at Bitch Flicks.]
There’s a certain risk involved in being excited for a film. High expectations often lead to disappointment, especially when anticipating the film for two years.
Such was the case with me and Girl Most Likely. When I first heard about this film, it was called Imogene and still in pre-production. The premise intrigued me immediately: a female playwright fakes a suicide attempt and is forced into the custody of her overbearing mother.
I wasn’t just eager for this film. I was pumped, and not just because of DARREN CRISS OMG. The premise had “dark comedy” written all over it. I expected Imogene to be the next Young Adult and give us the next great comic antiheroine. With the combined talents of Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon, and Darren Criss, Imogene was going to be a brilliant dark comedy that would immediately make its way onto my DVD shelf, be completely ignored by the Academy Awards, and prompt another scathing blog post from me criticizing the Oscars for disrespecting comedy and not recognizing great female characters.
Instead, Imogene was a movie called Girl Most Likely, a quirky film about a woman in New York City whose life falls apart, and she has to return home to her family in New Jersey. At first, she resents having to go back to a life that she didn’t care for, and doesn’t like living with her quirky and strange family, but eventually, she Learns to Appreciate the Important Things in Life and reject all those New York snobs who didn’t really care about her as a person.
So, kind of like Sweet Home Alabama, except in New Jersey. Not exactly the great dark comedy I was looking for.
Now, I still enjoyed a lot of things about the movie. The script is often unfocused, but contains a lot of sharp writing and clever dialogue. Imogene’s family is delightful, and I was immediately charmed by her younger brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald), a mollusk aficionado. I loved the relationship between Zelda (Bening) and “George Bush” (Matt Dillon), two weird, offbeat people who adored each other. (I also love that Zelda being older than “George” was not mentioned at all – extremely rare in depictions of relationships between older women and younger men.) Bening, Fitzgerald, and Dillon are consistently funny, and Darren Criss is charming and sexy as a singer/performer in a Backstreet Boys cover band.
Because there was a lot to enjoy about Girl Most Likely, I tried not to be overly critical just because it wasn’t the movie I expected. In the wise words of Marlo Stanfield from The Wire, “You want it to be one way. But it’s the other way.” It’s not the film’s fault that I expected something different after reading the premise. I tried to judge the movie for what it was, not for what I wanted it to be.
But even after putting my expectations aside, I couldn’t help but notice two glaring flaws in the film: 1) Imogene isn’t likable, and 2) the story trivializes suicide.
Regarding flaw #1 – I recognize that female characters are often held to a higher “likability standard” than male characters. (Theater critic and my good friend Carey Purcell has a great article about likability on her website.) I don’t need all, or even most, of my female characters to be likable. But I got a very strong sense from the script that Imogene was supposed to be likable – and she’s not.
And whether the character is male, female, or genderqueer, if the writer wants us to like the character and we don’t…well, that’s A Problem.
There are very few times in the film where I genuinely like Imogene, and all of those scenes involve her interactions with Ralph. She’s affectionate to Ralph and supportive of him, and as a big sister of brothers, I have a soft spot for sister characters who are nice to their brothers.
But when Imogene interacts with any other character in the film, I have to wonder, “Why are these people wasting their time with this woman?”
When Imogene talks to her mother, I want Zelda to stop being so nice and yell at her daughter for being an ungrateful brat. When Imogene hangs out with Lee, I can’t help wondering what he sees in her. When Imogene finally confronts her absent father (Bob Balaban), the father character is written as such an over-the-top intellectual snob stereotype that I can’t take Imogene’s pain seriously.
But the main reason I find Imogene unlikable ties directly into Glaring Flaw #2 – the movie trivializes suicide.
Remember, Imogene fakes a suicide attempt to get her ex-boyfriend back. She fakes a suicide attempt to get her ex-boyfriend back.
In the real world, threatening to kill oneself to get a partner or ex-partner to stay with you is an act of emotional abuse. But for Imogene, it’s just a sign that she really needs help, poor thing.
And when Imogene confronts her ex-boyfriend and snobby fake friend at a book launch party, we’re supposed to recognize that these people are jerks and cheer her on. Because gasp – her ex-boyfriend didn’t even check in on her after she tried to kill herself! And he was totally cheating on her before he dumped her!
And we’re supposed to be outraged about this – except, considering that the suicide attempt was fake, I don’t think Imogene has any leg to stand on.
And if a screenwriter wants us to sympathize with the main character, I shouldn’t watch the big confrontational scene between the main character and her snobby fake friends and think, “Uh, the snobs kind of have a point here.”
More problematic, though, is the way a faked suicide is portrayed as another quirky character flaw in a film filled with quirky people. It’s just like Ralph’s fondness for mollusks, or Zelda’s penchant for gambling, or Lee’s Backstreet Boys cover band, or “George Bush” having been struck by lightning three times.
I don’t think I need to explain why portraying a faked suicide as a mere sitcommy quirk is a problem, do I? Good.
And this goes right back to my initial point about my expectations for Imogene and the movie that Girl Most Likely turned out to be.
It’s not a bad thing that Girl Most Likely wasn’t the movie that I expected. It’s not the screenwriter’s job to write a dark comedy about an antiheroine just because that’s a movie I want to see.
But while a faked suicide attempt is a great inciting incident for a dark comedy about an antiheroine, it doesn’t work as well for a quirky comedy about a woman who needs to pull herself up and learn to appreciate her family.
And if Girl Most Likely would rather be a quirky comedy than a dark comedy, that’s fine. But I can think of about ten different inciting incidents to bring Imogene back to New Jersey that don’t involve trivializing suicide or pretending that emotional abuse is just a quirk. Would it have been so hard to have Imogene reluctantly go back home because of Ralph’s birthday, a dead grandparent, or just because she left the first draft of the play she was most proud of in her mother’s basement?
Last week, Shakesville reposted an article that Ana Mardoll wrote back in September called “Why I Dislike Ross Geller.” The article is my second-favorite thing that Ana Mardoll has written (my favorite is his analysis of The Little Mermaid, which IS SO a mostly-feminist movie, nyah!) In a couple of thousand words, Ana brilliantly deconstructs why Ross Geller is an entitled, emotionally abusive Nice Guy who has no business being the romantic hero of a sitcom.
Whenever I rewatch Friends, I’m struck anew by how much of a jerk Ross is to Rachel, and how he’s often condescending and nasty to his sister and his so-called closest friends.
But even though I agree that Ross Geller is an emotionally abusive Nice Guy, I was still a little sad to read Ana’s article. Because in a different universe, Ross Geller is my favorite character on Friends.
Sure, Chandler Bing was the wittiest of the group, and one of my first-ever fictional character crushes. Sure, Phoebe Buffay had the most interesting backstory, and Lisa Kudrow was the most talented cast member on the show. Sure, Rachel Green had the best character development and was the only one of the six who wasn’t Flanderized by the end of the show’s run.
But Ross Geller was a nerd, reaching heights of Nerddom that no other character reached, and there are moments scattered throughout Friends that make me really love him. I love that he’s in the world of academia. I love that he loves dinosaurs. I love his nerdy references, one-liners, and dumb jokes. (“If I were a salmon shirt, where would I be? Upstream.”) (“I’ll prove it! I’ll prove it like a theorem!”) I love his freakouts and his dumb dancing with Monica to The Routine:
So how did the Friends writers drop the ball with Ross Geller? How did they turn what could have been a delightfully dorky character into an emotionally abusive jerkass?
The answer, I believe, lies in the third season. The season with all the jealousy.
In season three, Ross and Rachel are in a happy, committed relationship. But Rachel is unsatisfied in her work life. She’s not content with being a coffee shop waitress, and she wants to enter the fashion world. She gets her dream job thanks to a connection with a new male friend named Mark, who works at Bloomingdale’s.
Ross is not happy about this. He’s threatened by Mark’s presence in Rachel’s life, and he’s threatened by her job taking up too much of her schedule. He constantly demands proof from Rachel that she’s not interested in Mark, and shows up to her office with a picnic basket even after she’s told him multiple times that she’s too busy to see him that night.
(Yes, that night was their anniversary. Yes, it’s upsetting not to be able to spend time with your significant other on your anniversary. But I guess Ross forgot what he was doing the night of their second date the previous year – working. And I guess he also forgot that Rachel was disappointed but handled it like a grownup.)
Anyway, I don’t need to list all of the details about Ross’s possessiveness and jealousy, because Ana Mardoll did that already. Instead, I’m going to talk about the episode that shows the root of Ross’s jealousy issues – “The One with the Flashback.”
In “The One with the Flashback,” Ross is still married to Carol, and it’s evident that their relationship has been rocky for awhile. Ross mentions that Carol was feeling isolated because she didn’t have her own group of friends, and was starting to be happier now that she’s become friends with a woman named Susan.
Ross then becomes very encouraging of Carol’s new friendship. He tells her on the phone to enjoy her girls’ night out with Susan, and he seems genuinely supportive of his wife. He seems to recognize that Carol making new friends and expanding her horizons is good for her and good for their relationship.
A few days later, Carol tells Ross that she’s a lesbian. His heart is broken and his world is shattered.
Four years later, Ross sees Rachel making friends with a man who appears to be interested in her, and he sees it happening all over again. He doesn’t want to lose Rachel and he doesn’t want to be blindsided for the second time, so he becomes incredibly jealous, possessive, and controlling.
It also doesn’t help that he gets some bad advice from Chandler and Joey:
To be fair, Chandler and Joey are partially right – they almost perfectly describe predatory Nice Guy behavior (and Joey’s bit at the end, including his impersonation of Ross, is hilarious). But telling Ross to show up at Rachel’s workplace is a terrible idea. If Rachel doesn’t like Ross’s possessiveness, his being more possessive will only hurt their relationship.
Monica is the one who gives Ross the better advice, reminding him that any designs Mark may or may not have on Rachel are irrelevant. Mark wanting to sleep with Rachel doesn’t mean a thing if Rachel doesn’t return his feelings.
But Ross doesn’t listen to Monica. Being the supportive and non-jealous husband didn’t work out for him the first time, so why should it work out for him the second time?
That, I think, is the key to Ross’s jealousy and possessiveness. From all accounts, he seemed to be a pretty good husband to Carol, and it’s not until we see him with Rachel that he allows his jealousy to overwhelm his good sense and his better qualities.
His jealousy issues are not Rachel’s fault. They’re not even Carol’s fault (lest anyone think I’m arguing that Ross was a perfectly good guy until that lesbian ruined him!) But it’s important to recognize that a lot of the negative qualities he displays in his relationship with Rachel are a result of a painful experience in his life.
And that season of Friends would have been a great time for Ross to get to the root of his jealousy issues. He could have eventually realized at a) Rachel and Carol are not the same people, b) Rachel loved him and wasn’t going to leave him, c) Carol still would have left him if he had been just as controlling with her because she’s gay and it had nothing to do with him, and d) being possessive and controlling is a great way to make the person you love resent you.
Instead, we got “we were on a break!”
And then Ross and Rachel’s relationship issues stopped being about possessiveness and jealousy, and became about whether or not he cheated on her.
And Ross’s jealousy issues were never fully addressed, and at the end of the show’s run, after years of Ross being jealous whenever Rachel so much as spoke to a man, he and Rachel still ended up together, with her giving up a great job to be with him.
Season three of Friends was a great opportunity for Ross to examine the root of his jealousy in a funny way, but it never happened, and he and Rachel got back together because rom-com rules dictated that they were supposed to do that.
I wouldn’t trade Ross and Rachel’s second breakup for anything (“Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E means You are, Y-O-U-R MEANS YOUR!”/”And hey, just so you know, it’s NOT that common, it DOESN’T happen to every guy, and it IS A BIG DEAL!”), but if the writers had allowed Ross to go through some character development and recognize how unfair he had been to Rachel, their reunion in the series finale would’ve felt earned instead of tacked on.
And it wouldn’t have left us with the vague, unsettling feeling that maybe the writers always thought that Rachel’s job was less important than the relationship with the guy who was threatened by, and dismissive of, her career.
Greetings. I am Lady T: writer, feminist, smartass, former public school teacher, daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin, co-legal guardian. My hobbies include reading, writing, watching television, eating, volunteering to work with people with disabilities, planning to exercise and not doing it, arguing, and insomnia. Read more.
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