Ugh I wrote a novel on television, good.

[annakovsky]

OKAY SO I'M GOING TO ACTUALLY POST ONCE IN AWHILE YOU GUYS. Let's talk about teevee.

So, 30 Rock. The episode last week annoyed me a lot, for the following reasons:

1) It seemed like it was clearly responding to some sort of internet criticism of the show and/or events regarding women and comedy, but I do not know what criticism exactly (something about Jezebel? something about some girl on SNL? or so I understand from vague posts on the internet about it that I did not care about enough to follow up on), which made me feel like I didn't have the context to understand the episode. It was basically exactly like when someone on your flist posts about wank in a fandom that you're not in, where you're like, wow, something is going on, but I have no idea what it is! Which, to be honest, I actually love when it happens on my flist, because if I'm super bored then I get to go read up on some delightful wank that's not upsetting because I'm completely uninvolved, and if I'm not super bored, at least gives me the warm and fuzzy feeling that someone is upset about something on the internet and the fandom world turns on as it always has and ever shall. HOWEVER, I DO NOT WANT THIS FEELING WHEN I AM WATCHING TELEVISION, I just want to laugh at some jokes, whereas this made me feel like the jokes were uncomfortably pointed at someone, but I didn't know who and I didn't know if they deserved it and then I just felt weird.

2) Responding to criticism on the internet with an episode of your NETWORK TELEVISION SHOW is so unclassy and so Aaron Sorkin. (Hey, remember that time Sorkin was an asshole and got banned from TWoP and then he wrote an episode about Josh Lyman being persecuted by bitches on the internet and it was the biggest eyeroll ever? YEAH THAT WAS DUMB. However, remember that other time that The Good Wife wrote an episode where a person who was clearly a thinly veiled Sorkin was questioned by, hilariously, Josh Charles of all people, about how he wrote The Social Network to get back at bitches on the internet who were mean about his drug addiction and it was THE MOST DELIGHTFUL KARMA EVER? Good times, TV, good times. Haha, however that is a whole other ball of wax.) Also the difference in audience and influence between, say, Jezebel and 30 Rock is such that it's like Tina Fey got punched lightly on the arm and she thought an appropriate counterstrike was machine gun fire. THIS IS NOT A PROPORTIONATE RESPONSE, even if you do sort of end up coming down on the side of the criticism, I guess, ish.

3) Responding to meta with fiction is just completely ridiculous anyway. If someone on the internet says your show is bad about women (which, to be frank, it is), the appropriate reaction is to consider this, and if they are wrong, to forget it, and if they are right, to take steps to make your show less bad about women. If you want to discuss it, write an article for the New Yorker or something. However, the appropriate reaction is NOT to write a fictional episode about how people say you're not feminist, that's so mean, except they're sort of right, ahhh! And then continue to have your show the same as it has always been. META =/= SMART. META =/= INTERESTING. (Uh, yeah, whatever Dan Harmon, I AM also looking in your direction. Stop it. I like that fourth wall where it is, thank you.) FICTION IS NOT A GOOD PLACE TO HAVE A DEBATE ABOUT THIS, especially when again, you're the one with all the power and audience.

4) This is especially the case because the thing that bothers me the most about 30 Rock and women is 1) how Liz Lemon has zero female friends, 2) how the show is constantly bagging on Liz Lemon. I feel like in the first couple seasons, the show was great because it had this character I could identify with in certain ways, and then it's spent the time after that being all, GOD, LIZ IS A FAILURE WITH MEN AND THEREFORE IN LIFE, WHAT A SPITEFUL BITTER OLD SPINSTER WHO WILL NEVER GET MARRIED OR HAVE BABIES WHICH MEANS HER LIFE HAS NO PURPOSE OR VALUE. So then to have an episode that basically rags on Liz Lemon for not being very feminist doesn't make me feel like the show has seen the error of its ways, it feels like, oh good, now they've found YET ANOTHER WAY to judge Liz Lemon, while not fixing the things that make me hate the way the show treats women.

Ugh, anyway obvs YMMV and also tl;dr, but I haaaaated that whole plotline so much. And re: 30 Rock and feminism, I really like this article about Liz Lemon vs. Leslie Knope, which basically sums up my feelings about the two of them and 30 Rock's problematic elements. And also how awesome Leslie Knope is, which segues nicely into...

Parks and Rec

THIS SHOW IS MADE OF MAGIC. I LEGIT DO NOT KNOW HOW I AM GOING TO GET THROUGH THE NEXT TWO WEEKS WITHOUT IT TO LOOK FORWARD TO. (Thank God it is Fandom March Madness these two weeks, maybe that is how.) I don't have anything too intelligent to say except that I am shipping Leslie/Ben so goddamn hard (and how much do I love that Leslie's romantic interests always like her BECAUSE of her awesomeness and competence and assertiveness instead of in spite of it? And how the show admires her for all those things?), and I am also shipping Leslie/Ron still sometimes (how married were they on their road trip?) and obvs April/Ron (HE CAN'T LOSE APRIL. HE CAN'T LOSE APRIL.) and I'm glad April/Andy was back to being the cutest this week and it was back to April having feelings against her will and trying to hide it adorably, because that's what I like about that ship and I was completely uninterested when it was just Andy trying to win her back, because of course Andy has feelings, WHO CARES. Also thank God Ann and Leslie actually interacted again. That's my one complaint, that in 21 minutes a week they can't have everyone interact that I want to, LET'S MAKE THIS SHOW AN HOUR OKAY GUYS. OKAY.

Okay, enough of that. Oh, except to say that I've had an exciting exploration of Adam Scott's back catalogue due to this show, and Seven and a Match was shockingly enjoyable, and in it he makes out with Webster from Band of Brothers, SO CHECK THAT OUT, while The Killer Next Door (aka Ronnie) was so gross and disturbing it made me actively feel disgusting for days and after I watched it I wanted to go bury the DVD in the backyard so it wouldn't be in my house anymore because PUTTING IT IN THE FREEZER WAS NOT EVEN SUFFICIENT. Ugh.

Also I can tell you everything about every guest spot Nick Offerman has ever had.

Also Poehler's back catalogue has made me start shipping her/Seth Meyers pretty hard, so if anybody knows anything about fic for THAT, send it my way.

Oh, speaking of which, you guys, nbc_rpf!! If you build it, they will come, right? I WANT FIC FOR EVERYTHING, someone start writing some, please and thank you. Please write fic where every Weekend Update pairing ever does it, and where Aubrey Plaza, Mindy Kaling, and Ellie Kemper are all in a girl band. That's all I want. It's all I've ever wanted.

Fringe

So I just started marathoning this show on a whim because throughadoor told me it'd make me nostalgic for Vancouver-era X-Files, WHICH IT TOTALLY DOES. Haha, I'm watching it like a freak, though, because I watched the first four eps of season 1, then jumped to, like, episode 14 or 16 of that season because someone on the internet said that's where it gets good, and then have watched through 3x07 or so. I totally love all the parallel universe stuff LIKE CRAZY, though I have heard from multiple people on my flist that it abruptly gets terrible pretty soon so I'm not giving it my heart or anything. Also I tend to watch it while I'm doing other things so I haven't been giving it my whole attention, so I may have missed stuff, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

Anyway, but here is my question re: Fringe -- maybe it's just me, but I kind of can't get past the whole thing where Walter EXPERIMENTED ON CHILDREN AND DOES NOT SEEM VERY REMORSEFUL? I feel like the show thinks it's not that big a deal, so I'm supposed to find him charming when he wants to make salt water taffy or whatever, but... I am really not cool with it. The funny thing is that the show makes SUCH A BIG DEAL over him kidnapping Peter and how regretful he is and how Peter can't forgive him, etc, etc, but I feel like that is not NEARLY as bad as the experiments he did on Olivia so wtf. Like, at least he had a motivation for the kidnapping and he didn't know that it was going to ruin the other universe, unlike the experimenting on children thing for which his only motivation was ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS, LET'S SACRIFICE THESE KIDS TO SCIENCE. Anyway, in season 3 Walter seems much more to regret his mad scientist past than he did in the first couple seasons, so it doesn't bother me as much, but sometimes I feel like a crazy person for feeling like that is KIND OF AN ISSUE. Uh, is anyone else with me, I guess is what I'm asking?

MOVING ON. Nation, the greatest time of year is upon us: FANDOM MARCH MADNESS. GO VOTE. The exciting thing for me this year is that fandom is VOTING FOR LADIES without us even campaigning for year of the woman like last year! HAS FANDOM BEEN REFORMED? DO WE REGRET OUR MISOGYNIST PAST OF DEAN WINCHESTER, GREGORY HOUSE, SPIKE, AND BARNEY STINSON? I mean, whatever, Barney and Sheldon are still winning, which is a bummer, but Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope and Olivia Dunham and tons of other ladies are winning in landslides! Well done, people! Also I feel like this year is better about characters of color than usual, though that's a general impression since I didn't go through and actually look at stats on that.

HOWEVER, you should totally go vote for Robin Scherbatsky and Penny to try to take down Barney and Sheldon. (WHY DO THOSE WRETCHES HAVE TO WIN EVERY SINGLE YEAR??) ALSO, Kelly Kapoor is making a shocking run to win The Office over wretched Halpert!! PLEASE GO VOTE FOR KELLY YOU GUYS. IF KELLY KAPOOR WINS AS OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE IT WILL MAKE MY LIFE.

Also people are starting to say Leslie Knope for the whole thing, which I don't have high hopes of but would be my ULTIMATE FANTASY so if you feel like chipping in on that, pleaaaaaase do.

Comments

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

The episode was SERIOUSLY ALL OVER THE PLACE, I barely know what was going on and I watched it and also became angry enough at it to write this giant entry, haha.

Yeah, I feel like comedians getting butthurt about people saying their shows are kind of offensive in whatever way is just like, dude. Calm yourselves. I think the issue here is that Tina Fey probably views herself as doing feminist comedy, so when people point out that her feminism is not without issues she gets upset? But, uh, then deal with yourself, because you're super successful and so your butthurt is not compelling to me? GO CRY YOURSELF TO SLEEP ON YOUR BIG BED OF MONEY.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

I actually think that this episode was not supposed to be getting back or getting upset but actually more like "I don't know what to do," and also, "this is complicated and I won't make a definitive statement because it is too complicated and also if 30 Rock were to preach it would be gross," but some people I think still took it as preaching, or just didn't get anything whatever from it.

Which is funny, because most of active-30 Rock-fandom kind of shrugged and went, whatever, except for a few people on TWOP who thought it was incoherent and/or finding new ways to bag on Liz Lemon. While I actually kind of liked it -- and apparently most of the feminist blogs did, too, which is interesting. It managed to be non-controversial in the places it might have ended up being controversial, I guess!

But I've also followed the "Tina Fey Backlash" (which is basically a handful of blog posts that got a lot of traffic for criticizing the way Liz is a loser now (which I really agree with) and the way that 30 Rock doesn't have many other women on the show, let alone 'good' women (which I basically excuse on the basis that her original idea was to focus on a woman trying to work with male stars and male corporate dudes, although I hate the way that Jenna has stopped being her actual friend, and I definitely think the show could benefit from more sane, female characters). But like, aside from that, I don't think the episode was really a personal response from Tina about Tina/30 Rock, and it was more a basic piece on women in comedy. I read other places that the hooker-baby was kind of a mashup of people like Olivia Munn, Sarah Silverman, etc -- or not "them," but their comedy personae and how they use them. And I think the episode tried to show that Liz was unfair in being really harshly judgmental about them as women -- because the playing field isn't fair from the start, and they did what they thought they wanted to -- but that it's still unacceptable for men to dictate which women succeed in comedy based on their sexiness. (I don't think it was supposed to call out specific women comedians and just mock them. Apparently Tina and Robert Carlock recommended Olivia Munn for Perfect Couples, after she read for Avery, a while back. I'm not sure if recommending someone for Perfect Couples is a sign that you like them, cough, but whatever.)

Ultimately I think it's supposed to wrap up by being bad for hooker-baby (uh, what was her name?), bad for Liz, and bad for comedy. And I think that's just because Tina has a pretty cynical comic voice. Mean Girls was fun and spot-on, but it didn't make me feel exactly great about girls. And I think Tina is aware of how she's succeeded in part by appealing to certain (male) demographics, and by using geek-sexiness or her glasses or her (supposed) bitch fight with Sarah Palin, and she feels embarrassed or at least ambivalent about it, so that was supposed to be coming through, too. I've always felt like she has pretty low expectations for people (at least in comedy) and that makes her better at pointing stuff out than at elevating the medium.

I do really wish Liz would go back to how she was in season 1 and 2, but I do think a lot of the tone has changed because of Tina's awareness of her new celebrity persona and her place in the industry. All of a sudden Liz is never, you know, showing cleavage or wearing stylish clothes like she used to -- and she's not getting to "have it all" because I think they want to keep it from being some kind of wish-fulfillment story. There are single women on the writing staff, so it's not like Tina is just telling the sob story of her alternate life where she didn't marry her husband... and I'm not sure at this point they could inject the sensibility of Parks & Rec (which I actually don't care for that much BECAUSE it is so upbeat) and keep it existing in the same universe.

Did you read Tina's recent thing in the New Yorker? Which is from her new book, I guess. It kind of helped me get a glimpse of her perspective of a lot of this. She definitely sees it as a duty of hers to work in TV to keep more kinds of women (aka, the not sexpot ones) getting hired.

And uh, Aaron Sorkin is gonna have a guest spot on 30 Rock, sometime coming up soon. Gag. Also Susan Sarandon?

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

Actually, yeah, I retract what I said in that comment you replied to, thinking more clearly the episode didn't actually read to me as Tina being exactly defensive of herself, since like you said, the episode came down on an "It's complicated" viewpoint in the end. And I saw that a lot of the feminist blogs liked it, which... well, I disagree, I guess! I kind of feel like they were psyched to get their points addressed, which I understand, but I still feel like the fictional show is not a good place to have a meta discussion about that stuff.

And as a casual viewer it really did feel like catching the tail end of a discussion you didn't understand and being asked to jump on Tina's side about whatever it was -- I mean, it's good it wasn't pointed at specific comedians, because... well, it felt like it was, haha. And as it turns out I've actually read all the things people are saying it was responding to, so it's extra weird that I felt so out of touch on it! I don't even know. It just felt way all over the place and kind of icky to me.

Mean Girls was fun and spot-on, but it didn't make me feel exactly great about girls.

Yeah, it's interesting you bring this up, because I feel like I have the same issues with Mean Girls as with 30 Rock re: women -- I mean, it's a really funny movie and I super enjoy it, but on the other hand, I really dislike how it takes the whole cultural meme of GIRLS: WHAT A BUNCH OF MELODRAMATIC HATERS WHO ARE ALWAYS MEAN TO EACH OTHER, and propogates it, which I am not a super fan of.

I guess basically both this episode and maybe just Tina's comic voice in general seem like they COULD be trying to say that it's the system that makes women this way or whatever, but ends up feeling way harder on women than on the system? That's my perception, anyway.

Anyway, I can totally see how it depends on your sensibility overall how it strikes you, though, and that's fine.

I haven't actually read her thing in the New Yorker -- I wanted to, but I didn't see it online for free! If you have a link, I would be on board, haha.

Oh GOD, Aaron Sorkin is going to be on it? NOOOOOOOO. And Susan Sarandon is just weird. Haha, oh 30 Rock.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I'm conflicted about 30 Rock, because it started as just my happy place, and then I got big people-crushes on Tina and Alec, and after that point, I'll just keep watching and watching no matter how less satisfying it gets or how much theoretically I might disagree with them. And my FIRST reaction was totally, "Uhhhh, were they just dissing on some particular actress I just don't know about?" If there WERE some bad blood somewhere in there, I would definitely feel ickier about it. And I agree with what someone said somewhere below - if your meta-issues-commentary is just really confusing out of context, it probably didn't work great.

Re: Mean Girls - you know, I have the same problem, which is why Tina's Comedy At Large has never been the thing I'm all obsessed with. I really like the way Tina is (reportedly) in person, and when she speaks as herself, but I feel like her comedy is a little one-sided to me, at many points. But I also feel like I identify with her sensibility because I think she is (or was) pretty critical of women acting in ways she wouldn't *descend to*, and I often have that attitude, too. Most of my actual friendships with other girls are neeeeever portrayed on TV, including Mean Girls or 30 Rock (though I can identify a bit with the Liz-Jenna dynamic), and that's not ideal for me, but then again, I don't really actively look to TV for that. But if Tina wanted to do something awesome, she could, like, hire a girl writer other than Girl Writer/Sue, who Liz could get along with. They'd have to be careful not to make her a Liz-clone, but Tina has a ton of female friends in the business, both behind and in front of the camera, surely she can come up with another character who isn't just like Liz. (At this point it would feel kind of tacked-on, though.)

I'll find that Tina article in a second... Tumblr is down... here it is!

I know, whatttt! I always felt a secret glee that 30 Rock was the underdog who beat down that crappy Sorkin version of SNL - Studio 60, right? LAME. LAME. EVERYBODY HATED IT. HAHA AARON.

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Alec and Tina personally both seem wonderful! (Haha, well, Alec always makes me sad when I read an interview with him, WHY IS HE THE SADDEST PERSON EVER, though I love him, but Tina I always find a delight when she's just giving an interview or whatever)

It's totally weird, though, because I think I'm the same exact way, where I pretty much love Tina as a person, but yeah, her Comedy at Large is a little... something. And actually I have totally been critical in the past of women behaving in ways I wouldn't *descend to* too, but I feel like I was much more like that in high school/college -- as an adult woman, most adult women are all fine and pretty wonderful in their different ways, and it bums me out that in the media there are generally so few ways of being a woman that are acceptable and it seems like somehow Tina's part of that? Even though she totally has lots of female friends, it seems like, so I don't quite get it. It's so weird to me that she DIDN'T have another female writer from the beginning on that show who wasn't terrible -- because haha, yeah, it seems like it's a little late to go about introducing anybody, but it's a bummer they didn't start out with that.

Thanks for that article, I am very excited to read it!

HEEE, OH MAN, I had totally forgotten how gleeful I was over 30 Rock doing so much better than Studio 60, Worst Show Ever Made -- GOOD TIMES. Haha, I can't believe he's actually going on 30 Rock now that you mention that, I feel like he was super bitter about it at the time. CLASSY DUDE THAT HE IS.