I miss The Golden Girls, man. This were some bitches who knew what was up.
I’ve been watching a lot of contemporary shows like The Flash, Grimm, and Daredevil and as much as I love most of the characters, there is always one lady who:
1. Is completely useless.
2. Is always in danger.
3. Has epic and terrible mood swings, which inevitably lead to massive plot developments.
4. Has no discernible character beyond “loves hero” or, occasionally “randomly hates hero.”
With Juliette in Grimm, she started out completely lame, got a little bit awesome, and has backslid to super psycho dummy bitch in record time. “Oh I suddenly have super powers. What a miserable fate. I know, I’ll blame my boyfriend, who’s done nothing but love and support me, even though I really suck and have no personality.”
I’m not done watching all of Daredevil, but the first three episodes haven’t given me a lot of confidence in Karen as a charter. Also, who in her right mind chooses Charlie Cox over my 4th grade crush Elden Henson?
Seriously, as far as anybody in the real world is concerned, Matt Murdock is a blind jerk with massive daddy issues who goes missing every time something serious is going on. Meanwhile, Foggy Nelson is helping little old ladies keep their houses and being super patient with his blind jerk friend. Plus, his hair looks like it would be nice to touch. Matt Murdock not so much. For a guy who claims to have super-senses, he really lays on the hairspray.
My friend Erin has been talking to be about Daredevil, and for some reason Foggy’s name keeps turning into brain fog so I keep going, “The guy you were talking about…Floofy? Foo-Foo?” Maybe I’ll remember it now that I’ve seen it written down.
My stance on almost all shows is “Yeah, get back to me when you’ve figured out how to write a female character.” I’ve heard The Walking Dead got better about that eventually, but that’s coming from people who liked The Walking Dead in the first place so I don’t know if I trust them.
Yeah, fuck The Walking Dead. Shitty female characters and lack of female characters is why I almost rage-quit Grimm, but then they got Rosalee, and started making Juliette better, as well as fleshing out Adalind’s complete bitch package, and it got good there for awhile. But now they’re back to Adalind being a pouty whore and Juliette being a pouty prude. Such diversity of lady lives! Ugh. At least my girl Rosalee is still holding down the reasonable lady fort.
Juliette is painful to watch. Before that I was hating the hell out of Adalind but I think Juliette has handily dethroned her by being so stupid and inconsistent, at least you always knew the former was a bitch. And it REALLY bothers me that most of the characters I end up hating are women. : / *Sigh*
Me too. I used to think it was just internalized misogyny, but then I realized that the misogyny was all too external. It’s a cheap trick for writers to have the female character go completely bananas in order to advance the plot. They get away with giving female characters crazy mood swings that they could never give to a male character. Because women characters are usually defined by the male main characters, they can be any number of things and nobody bats an eye.
I don’t really think Karen falls into this. She’s not Matt’s love interest; Matt doesn’t even get a romance arc in the show. It’s the villain that gets a romance arc.
I haven’t watched the whole first season yet, but she doesn’t have to be Matt’s love interest. She’s still a close female character who’s irrational lameness can create major plot events. Not saying that’s what happens, just that it seems like they’re gearing up for that outcome.