Small Strokes Big Oaks

This is a guest post by Julia Harpin for TV.com

New fall shows this season seem to have way more female leads than usual. On its own, that’s awesome, and there are certainly some great female characters on TV right now. Unfortunately when you look at some the shows and what they’re saying about their characters, it’s not always a pretty picture.

The Good:

Up All Night

This show has a great take on the increasing trend of working moms and stay-at-home dads. Reagan, a television producers, works while Chris, a former athlete, stays home with the new baby. They don’t fight over their responsibilities, Chris isn’t bitter, and even though Reagan has moments of missing her daughter while at work, she is happy and passionate about her job. No one around them has a problem with their situation, or even seems to view it as unusual. I love it when TV shows treat unusual lifestyles this way (well, unusual for TV, couples where the mother works and father stays home are hardly rare any more), because it sends the message that this is so normal and acceptable, that there’s no reason for anyone to even make a fuss about it.

2 Broke Girls

It’s so refreshing to have a comedy with female main characters where their goals have nothing to do with men or marriage. Waitresses Max and Caroline are trying to raise enough money to open a bakery, but neither of them have any money or any conceivable means to earn the $250,000 they need. So the main tensions of the show come from the two women finding ways to raise capitol for their business, as well as learning to work together despite their polar opposite personalities and upbringings. Some of the side characters are a little stereotypical, but so far Max and Caroline come off as confident women who know who they are and what they want.

The Bad:

New Girl

I had high hopes for this show from the commercials (which were impossible to get away from all summer), but the pilot does not live up to the hype. The main character, Jess, searches for love with the help of her three male roommates. That’s about all the conflict this show seems to have. Jess, while quirky, comes off way too pathetic. She wallows on the couch, she has no idea how to talk to people, she almost breaks down crying in a restaurant. But the guys are there to help her, to protect her. I get the idea that the show creators thought this would come off as endearing, but instead it’s implying that women can’t take care of themselves.

Pan Am

You’ve got to give Pan Am a little bit of slack, because from the starting line it’s giving itself a setting full of bigotry and prejudice. Stewardesses in the early 1960s had to deal with levels of discrimination we can’t even imagine in 2011. So for Pan Am to not come off as sexist, it would really have to go the extra mile. Unfortunately, the writers don’t even seem to be trying. It’s not so much that they go out of their way to portray women poorly. It’s just that they glamorize a time and place that viewed women as sex objects, with no apparent consideration for the message they’re sending about how women ought to act and ought to be treated.

Whitney

You can tell it’s trying. It wants so badly to be a feminist show but, poor thing, it’s still so far away. Maybe if the central conflict of it’s pilot wasn’t Whitney worrying that her boyfriend will get sick of her, or maybe if her best friends weren’t such ridiculous stereotypes (an angry, alcoholic divorcee and a bubbly airhead), or maybe if Whitney didn’t spend about half the episode in a slutty nurse costume, then it would be different. As it is, Whitney just reinforces gender roles and fails to have anything positive to say about women. Which is weird, because series creator Whitney Cummings also co-produced 2 Broke Girls, which has far stronger female characters.