![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
re: the women
It being Eastwick night, I thought I'd take the time to note that Eastwick's being canceled -- or, that is, they're finishing their thirteen-episode run, but they haven't been bought up for a whole twenty-two episode season, nor are they being renewed. On the one hand, this news didn't bother me at first: assuming that they originally had a thirteen-episode arc planned, I was actually slightly anxious about how exactly they could draw the plot out. If the Mystery of Darryl is solved -- and, one assumes, if he is defeated/Jamie is taken care of/the women get some kind of emotional resolution with each other -- then it might actually be a perfect little encapsulation of a story (On the other hand, I have heard although not verified that they were not given enough notice and will be in the middle of plotlines when the show ends, which, um, really sucks. I was hoping for something a little more Wonderfalls, a little less Firefly.) I also have the I-am-not-sure-how-rational reaction of "Oh, thank god, Paul can go back to Canada now." It's not like Hollywood would have destroyed him or anything, so I'm just being silly.
But despite my initial reaction of slight relief -- given the assumption that we're talking Wonderfalls-style cancelation rather than Firefly-style -- I've found myself getting more and more annoyed. I wasn't sure why at first, until I figured out that the other show I've been watching as it airs, Flash Forward, has been slowly destroying my soul. Flash Forward has pretty much the coolest concept ever, but in execution it's all over the place, giving me massive headaches with its various fails, and failing to keep me engaged even though I am so hugely in favor of Domenic Monaghan and Jack Davenport and John Cho and the requisite five minutes of evil Callum. And then it occurred to me: yeah, but I can't stand any of the women. (Elaboration is spoilery, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nekare summed it up pretty damn well here.)
And this is what is ticking me off: Eastwick may be fairly cheesy, it might be inconsistently written and occasionally have godawful dialogue, it may make me cower behind my hands at 90% of the stuff Joanna does, but by god, anything that gives me huge crushes on Rebecca Romijn and Jaime Ray Newman, that makes me remember Paul Fucking Gross as an afterthought, that gives me ... at least five femslash ships and, ehh, one or two het ships -- that is a damn miracle and I will own this show because I am invested in the women. (Hell, in Doctor Who I often love the female companions but they're always in relation to the Doctor, and in Battlestar Galactica most of my favourite characters are women but every single one of my ships is het.) I am not surprised that Eastwick was canceled, because the only thing that makes it significantly better than anything else on TV right now is that it's about the women, and that's ... not exactly a selling point, y'know?
Anyway, this is all by way of long-windedly saying that I am annoyed, and of late I channel my annoyance via being fannish specifically about due South. (I know, this is shocking.) One thing this means is that if I ever end up writing that dS/Eastwick crossover I keep mulling over, it'll still have Fraser and Darryl quoting Paradise Lost at each other or something hilarious and awesome like that, but it'll probably end up being about, say, Stella & Frannie & Meg.
The other thing this means is that I spend a hell of a lot of time going on about how much I love Fraser and Rays, and having this niggling feeling that the women on due South are problematic for reasons that are tangled and messy and thus keep on not being explored at this juncture. Maybe some day I will, but in the meantime I don't actually want to deconstruct, because I don't think that will help the annoyance; instead, I want to take a short break from Fraser and Rays, and talk about how even if the women on due South are problematic, they are also often awesome.
We'll do this chronologically; I am skipping or including characters arbitrarily as I see fit, and I confess that if someone's chief goal in life is to give Fraser a good grope, she's probably not going to be here.
On the other hand, our first woman is Francesca Vecchio, who is the exception to the rule. Probably every rule.
I love Frannie because, having put up with the Vecchio clan and all that entails for thirty years and counting, she's still one of the most optimistic and persevering and sweet people on the planet. She might not always get things right, but her malapropisms are hilarious and also genuinely useful, see: her interrogation scene in Mountie on the Bounty. She's constantly improving herself, whether or not Ray (pick a Ray, any Ray!) thinks there is improvement: she wants respect rather than kisses from the butcher, she studies psychology, she takes art classes, she brings cappuccinos and joy to the whole precinct, she -- in one of my favourite scenes with her -- isn't afraid to dream, something of which she accuses her brother. She even comes to terms with Fraser at the end of the series, and though depending on the quality of writing in any particular episode her interactions with him are more or less cringeworthy, she has a few moments of genuine camaraderie with him (over such matters as proper skincare and how they both feel uncomfortable about nudes in art, for instance). Despite Ray Kowalski's seemingly well-founded doubts, she becomes a very good and capable Civilian Aide.
In my personal canon, Francesca goes to the Police Academy and becomes one awesome cop. Her actual canon ending would annoy me more if the entire fandom didn't take it as written that the epilogue is optional; as is, my personal canon is a fairly widely accepted one.
Meanwhile Elaine Besbriss actually canonically becomes a cop, which is only one of the many reasons I love her.
Elaine is wonderful. She successfully never crosses the line from crushing on Fraser to actively distressing him: she is refreshingly sane about it. She eats ice cream to console herself once, sure, but she also uses Diefenbaker as a therapist, which gives her +100 awesome points for having conversations with the wolf. She goes on dates with people not Fraser, too, and appears to have a life outside her Civilian Aid job, whatever Ray Vecchio may have to say on the subject. Like Francesca, she's perfectly willing to speak her mind, although her approach is generally one of wry calm. She stands up well under interrogation; she's the world's most useful Civilian Aide and has probably saved Ray Vecchio's ass a couple of times; she makes her first arrest before she even graduates from the Police Academy. I'm sad that s1&2 didn't have the same kind of ensemble mentality that s3/4 did -- I would have loved to see more Elaine.
Chronologically, our next woman is Mackenzie King. I confess I am not super fond of the first Mackenzie King, but the second one more than makes up for her.
Mackenzie King makes it into this picspam, though, because hey now, badass investigative journalist! I'm actually a bit disappointed they didn't use her more; her reams of cynicism are a great foil for Fraser. She's smart, she's competent, she keeps goddamn pepper spray in her purse, and she appears to be the terror of cops and editors alike, the city over.
Also, I love her glasses, but that's probably irrelevant.
After this comes Stephanie Cabot of They Eat Horses, Don't They?
Stephanie is awesome because she turns up to be competent and try to fight for the rights of horses that are being slaughtered, whether or not Fraser helps her. She doesn't read to me as a love interest, either (which is something all the women who are on this list share; they sure as hell must have some agenda beyond getting Fraser into bed). She even helps Mrs. Gamez clean her apartment while they discuss Mrs. Gamez's children and her future, so for the single glorious moment before they inevitably talk about Fraser, this show even passes the Bechdel test. But only for a moment.
Next we have Suzanne Chapin of You Must Remember This; as the only woman in the entire episode, it's kind of the opposite of passing that test, but oddly enough that may in fact be the point.
By this I mean, Suzanne Chapin is not in this episode a great deal. Ray Vecchio spends a good 90% of the episode talking about her, but he gets it all wrong: he thinks that she's a criminal, that it's love at first sight, and that she needs to be saved. She's actually an FBI agent, and though she's attracted to him, she's a professional and her job is much more important than her thing for a Chicago cop. She exists entirely outside of Ray's definition for her, and I love that.
Speaking of men getting their love interests wrong, hoo boy, next we have Victoria Metcalf.
Okay. I can't even. These two episodes are quite possibly among my top five of any TV show I have seen ever. Clicking quickly through them in order to get the relevant screencaps had me breathing shakily, especially to get the last one on the train. Because here's the thing: Fraser is heartbreaking, but Victoria is heartbreaking too. I read her as incredibly in love with Fraser, and incredibly torn up by it; they have stunningly similar feelings, but while Fraser reacts with a willingness to do anything at all for her, she reacts by trying to destroy him in much the same way she feels destroyed. I find her endlessly fascinating and incredibly tragic, and I absolutely adore her.
When I'm thinking of the women in due South, she's always, always the first one I think of.
Continuing our tragic love interest trend, next is Irene Zuko.
Irene is mostly here because I like her, because, let's face it: Irene, meet refrigerator. (In a huge way, because the emotional fallout is basically zero and Ray learns lessons he should have learned by just listening to Fraser in the first place.) On the other hand, despite being a one-episode love interest who was promptly fridged, Irene made an impression on me. She's smart, she's perceptive, she's damn good for Ray and deserves someone a lot better than him or her brother, and I love all her depth and history. She does the best she can with the hand she was dealt, and although this plays out thematically over and over in the show, I particularly like Irene's take.
Kind of continuing our love interest trend, except really not, next we have Meg Thatcher.
MEG. <3 She's a consummate professional. She seems comfortable of her sexuality, happily flirting with museum curators and foreign diplomats, able to put aside her feelings for Fraser and make sure that she isn't overstepping any bounds with him the way her own superior officer has. She desperately wants Fraser's approval but she also wants to not want it. She's horribly awkward and inarticulate about her feelings a lot of the time. She's absolutely firm in her convictions. She's actually able to put up with the RCMP's least wanted, ie Fraser and Turnbull. She's competent in the field, dryly sarcastic, and throws a mean egg. She's a complete person and everything from hypothetical epilogue superspy to hypothetical mother.
I pretty much adore Meg Thatcher, actually.
Here's someone else I adore:
I'm mostly not even joking about Ms. Fraser. I love this episode because Fraser doesn't do anything beyond putting on a wig and a dress and falsies and softening his voice, and in all other ways continues to act in exactly the same way, because he has no assumptions about women. I also love this episode because none of the humor comes from Fraser in drag himself, rather from the reactions of those around him.
And Fraser-as-a-woman passes the Bechdel test very well, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Back in the realm of biological women, we come to Stella Kowalski.
I confess I'm actually not much good at liking Stella. I respect her, and I think I understand her, but I don't like her. Up until doing these screencaps, actually, I suspected that I was incapable of liking her because, while in her place I probably would have divorced Ray too, I'm not in her place and I love Ray quite a lot. What I've just discovered, though, is the real problem: Stella doesn't smile. Stella is unhappy. Stella is probably unhappy in much the same way that Ray is, except she doesn't have a Fraser-as-friend equivalent of her own.
Now that I've worked this out, I still mostly don't like her, but Stella absolutely belongs on the awesome women list. She knows her own mind; she's protective of her friends; she's obviously a great professional, of a better caliber than anyone who works at the 27; she's incredibly smart; she's strong enough to say no to Ray, which I personally find amazing and really healthy; and she occasionally says sarcastic things about being able to shoot moonbeams out her ass, which does crack me up every time.
In any case, to prove that really I am much easier for the tricksy characters than the standup ones, next is Denny Scarpa, or Lady Shoes.
Okay, full disclosure: I am madly in love with Lilah Morgan from Angel, and this may deeply color my perception of Denny Scarpa. Nevertheless, Denny is awesome in her own right. She plots a revenge poker game, and almost certainly would have gotten away with it if Fraser hadn't interfered; in fact, even with Fraser interfering she came very close. I don't know how much we the audience actually know about her, because she bluffs everything and is willing to use anyone -- I think I like her in much the same way that I like Victoria, only this time through there are no staggering amounts of emotion and emotional backstory to turn her episode into a tragedy.
And last but certainly not least is Maggie Mackenzie.
For a one-episode character, Maggie is absolutely memorable and also a woman after my own heart. I am sure this has a lot to do with the fact that she is so much like Fraser, but I love that despite this she is also absolutely her own person. I love how smart she is, how absolutely unbroken by her husband's death, how determined; I love her empty gun and total badassery; I love that she makes Fraser turn around, and kisses Ray, and makes Fraser turn around again.
Her huge beaming grin may also be a factor. :D
In conclusion, YAY LADIES.
But despite my initial reaction of slight relief -- given the assumption that we're talking Wonderfalls-style cancelation rather than Firefly-style -- I've found myself getting more and more annoyed. I wasn't sure why at first, until I figured out that the other show I've been watching as it airs, Flash Forward, has been slowly destroying my soul. Flash Forward has pretty much the coolest concept ever, but in execution it's all over the place, giving me massive headaches with its various fails, and failing to keep me engaged even though I am so hugely in favor of Domenic Monaghan and Jack Davenport and John Cho and the requisite five minutes of evil Callum. And then it occurred to me: yeah, but I can't stand any of the women. (Elaboration is spoilery, but
nekare summed it up pretty damn well here.) And this is what is ticking me off: Eastwick may be fairly cheesy, it might be inconsistently written and occasionally have godawful dialogue, it may make me cower behind my hands at 90% of the stuff Joanna does, but by god, anything that gives me huge crushes on Rebecca Romijn and Jaime Ray Newman, that makes me remember Paul Fucking Gross as an afterthought, that gives me ... at least five femslash ships and, ehh, one or two het ships -- that is a damn miracle and I will own this show because I am invested in the women. (Hell, in Doctor Who I often love the female companions but they're always in relation to the Doctor, and in Battlestar Galactica most of my favourite characters are women but every single one of my ships is het.) I am not surprised that Eastwick was canceled, because the only thing that makes it significantly better than anything else on TV right now is that it's about the women, and that's ... not exactly a selling point, y'know?
Anyway, this is all by way of long-windedly saying that I am annoyed, and of late I channel my annoyance via being fannish specifically about due South. (I know, this is shocking.) One thing this means is that if I ever end up writing that dS/Eastwick crossover I keep mulling over, it'll still have Fraser and Darryl quoting Paradise Lost at each other or something hilarious and awesome like that, but it'll probably end up being about, say, Stella & Frannie & Meg.
The other thing this means is that I spend a hell of a lot of time going on about how much I love Fraser and Rays, and having this niggling feeling that the women on due South are problematic for reasons that are tangled and messy and thus keep on not being explored at this juncture. Maybe some day I will, but in the meantime I don't actually want to deconstruct, because I don't think that will help the annoyance; instead, I want to take a short break from Fraser and Rays, and talk about how even if the women on due South are problematic, they are also often awesome.
We'll do this chronologically; I am skipping or including characters arbitrarily as I see fit, and I confess that if someone's chief goal in life is to give Fraser a good grope, she's probably not going to be here.
On the other hand, our first woman is Francesca Vecchio, who is the exception to the rule. Probably every rule.
I love Frannie because, having put up with the Vecchio clan and all that entails for thirty years and counting, she's still one of the most optimistic and persevering and sweet people on the planet. She might not always get things right, but her malapropisms are hilarious and also genuinely useful, see: her interrogation scene in Mountie on the Bounty. She's constantly improving herself, whether or not Ray (pick a Ray, any Ray!) thinks there is improvement: she wants respect rather than kisses from the butcher, she studies psychology, she takes art classes, she brings cappuccinos and joy to the whole precinct, she -- in one of my favourite scenes with her -- isn't afraid to dream, something of which she accuses her brother. She even comes to terms with Fraser at the end of the series, and though depending on the quality of writing in any particular episode her interactions with him are more or less cringeworthy, she has a few moments of genuine camaraderie with him (over such matters as proper skincare and how they both feel uncomfortable about nudes in art, for instance). Despite Ray Kowalski's seemingly well-founded doubts, she becomes a very good and capable Civilian Aide.
In my personal canon, Francesca goes to the Police Academy and becomes one awesome cop. Her actual canon ending would annoy me more if the entire fandom didn't take it as written that the epilogue is optional; as is, my personal canon is a fairly widely accepted one.
Meanwhile Elaine Besbriss actually canonically becomes a cop, which is only one of the many reasons I love her.
Elaine is wonderful. She successfully never crosses the line from crushing on Fraser to actively distressing him: she is refreshingly sane about it. She eats ice cream to console herself once, sure, but she also uses Diefenbaker as a therapist, which gives her +100 awesome points for having conversations with the wolf. She goes on dates with people not Fraser, too, and appears to have a life outside her Civilian Aid job, whatever Ray Vecchio may have to say on the subject. Like Francesca, she's perfectly willing to speak her mind, although her approach is generally one of wry calm. She stands up well under interrogation; she's the world's most useful Civilian Aide and has probably saved Ray Vecchio's ass a couple of times; she makes her first arrest before she even graduates from the Police Academy. I'm sad that s1&2 didn't have the same kind of ensemble mentality that s3/4 did -- I would have loved to see more Elaine.
Chronologically, our next woman is Mackenzie King. I confess I am not super fond of the first Mackenzie King, but the second one more than makes up for her.
Mackenzie King makes it into this picspam, though, because hey now, badass investigative journalist! I'm actually a bit disappointed they didn't use her more; her reams of cynicism are a great foil for Fraser. She's smart, she's competent, she keeps goddamn pepper spray in her purse, and she appears to be the terror of cops and editors alike, the city over.
Also, I love her glasses, but that's probably irrelevant.
After this comes Stephanie Cabot of They Eat Horses, Don't They?
Stephanie is awesome because she turns up to be competent and try to fight for the rights of horses that are being slaughtered, whether or not Fraser helps her. She doesn't read to me as a love interest, either (which is something all the women who are on this list share; they sure as hell must have some agenda beyond getting Fraser into bed). She even helps Mrs. Gamez clean her apartment while they discuss Mrs. Gamez's children and her future, so for the single glorious moment before they inevitably talk about Fraser, this show even passes the Bechdel test. But only for a moment.
Next we have Suzanne Chapin of You Must Remember This; as the only woman in the entire episode, it's kind of the opposite of passing that test, but oddly enough that may in fact be the point.
By this I mean, Suzanne Chapin is not in this episode a great deal. Ray Vecchio spends a good 90% of the episode talking about her, but he gets it all wrong: he thinks that she's a criminal, that it's love at first sight, and that she needs to be saved. She's actually an FBI agent, and though she's attracted to him, she's a professional and her job is much more important than her thing for a Chicago cop. She exists entirely outside of Ray's definition for her, and I love that.
Speaking of men getting their love interests wrong, hoo boy, next we have Victoria Metcalf.
Okay. I can't even. These two episodes are quite possibly among my top five of any TV show I have seen ever. Clicking quickly through them in order to get the relevant screencaps had me breathing shakily, especially to get the last one on the train. Because here's the thing: Fraser is heartbreaking, but Victoria is heartbreaking too. I read her as incredibly in love with Fraser, and incredibly torn up by it; they have stunningly similar feelings, but while Fraser reacts with a willingness to do anything at all for her, she reacts by trying to destroy him in much the same way she feels destroyed. I find her endlessly fascinating and incredibly tragic, and I absolutely adore her.
When I'm thinking of the women in due South, she's always, always the first one I think of.
Continuing our tragic love interest trend, next is Irene Zuko.
Irene is mostly here because I like her, because, let's face it: Irene, meet refrigerator. (In a huge way, because the emotional fallout is basically zero and Ray learns lessons he should have learned by just listening to Fraser in the first place.) On the other hand, despite being a one-episode love interest who was promptly fridged, Irene made an impression on me. She's smart, she's perceptive, she's damn good for Ray and deserves someone a lot better than him or her brother, and I love all her depth and history. She does the best she can with the hand she was dealt, and although this plays out thematically over and over in the show, I particularly like Irene's take.
Kind of continuing our love interest trend, except really not, next we have Meg Thatcher.
MEG. <3 She's a consummate professional. She seems comfortable of her sexuality, happily flirting with museum curators and foreign diplomats, able to put aside her feelings for Fraser and make sure that she isn't overstepping any bounds with him the way her own superior officer has. She desperately wants Fraser's approval but she also wants to not want it. She's horribly awkward and inarticulate about her feelings a lot of the time. She's absolutely firm in her convictions. She's actually able to put up with the RCMP's least wanted, ie Fraser and Turnbull. She's competent in the field, dryly sarcastic, and throws a mean egg. She's a complete person and everything from hypothetical epilogue superspy to hypothetical mother.
I pretty much adore Meg Thatcher, actually.
Here's someone else I adore:
I'm mostly not even joking about Ms. Fraser. I love this episode because Fraser doesn't do anything beyond putting on a wig and a dress and falsies and softening his voice, and in all other ways continues to act in exactly the same way, because he has no assumptions about women. I also love this episode because none of the humor comes from Fraser in drag himself, rather from the reactions of those around him.
And Fraser-as-a-woman passes the Bechdel test very well, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Back in the realm of biological women, we come to Stella Kowalski.
I confess I'm actually not much good at liking Stella. I respect her, and I think I understand her, but I don't like her. Up until doing these screencaps, actually, I suspected that I was incapable of liking her because, while in her place I probably would have divorced Ray too, I'm not in her place and I love Ray quite a lot. What I've just discovered, though, is the real problem: Stella doesn't smile. Stella is unhappy. Stella is probably unhappy in much the same way that Ray is, except she doesn't have a Fraser-as-friend equivalent of her own.
Now that I've worked this out, I still mostly don't like her, but Stella absolutely belongs on the awesome women list. She knows her own mind; she's protective of her friends; she's obviously a great professional, of a better caliber than anyone who works at the 27; she's incredibly smart; she's strong enough to say no to Ray, which I personally find amazing and really healthy; and she occasionally says sarcastic things about being able to shoot moonbeams out her ass, which does crack me up every time.
In any case, to prove that really I am much easier for the tricksy characters than the standup ones, next is Denny Scarpa, or Lady Shoes.
Okay, full disclosure: I am madly in love with Lilah Morgan from Angel, and this may deeply color my perception of Denny Scarpa. Nevertheless, Denny is awesome in her own right. She plots a revenge poker game, and almost certainly would have gotten away with it if Fraser hadn't interfered; in fact, even with Fraser interfering she came very close. I don't know how much we the audience actually know about her, because she bluffs everything and is willing to use anyone -- I think I like her in much the same way that I like Victoria, only this time through there are no staggering amounts of emotion and emotional backstory to turn her episode into a tragedy.
And last but certainly not least is Maggie Mackenzie.
For a one-episode character, Maggie is absolutely memorable and also a woman after my own heart. I am sure this has a lot to do with the fact that she is so much like Fraser, but I love that despite this she is also absolutely her own person. I love how smart she is, how absolutely unbroken by her husband's death, how determined; I love her empty gun and total badassery; I love that she makes Fraser turn around, and kisses Ray, and makes Fraser turn around again.
Her huge beaming grin may also be a factor. :D
In conclusion, YAY LADIES.