Women in the 2011 TV Premieres: Yay or Nay?

It was during last week's season premiere of Parks & Recreation that I simultaneously thought to myself, "Leslie Knope is officially my favorite female character on television" and "How the heck did this show get on the air?"

Anyone who's a fan of Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope, the politically-driven deputy parks director of Pawnee, Indiana, knows she's not your typical blond TV starlet. She worships Hillary Clinton and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Growing up, she played with a Geraldine Ferraro action figure, which she made by gluing a picture of Ferraro's head to a popsicle stick. And though she recites campaign speeches in her sleep, her ambition comes from a genuine desire to make her little corner of the world a better place. In this season's premiere, which aired on September 22, she's forced to break up with her boyfriend, who also happens to be her boss, in order to avoid a potential scandal before she takes a giant and much-anticipated leap in her career, a run for City Council.

There's no drama, no argument and really, never any question about which path Leslie would choose. This is a woman who wants to make a difference in the world, and in her mind, you don't do that by choosing the guy over career, and you don't do that without personal sacrifice.

Those scenes stuck in my mind particularly because so much has been written about this year's fall TV lineup, which is positively riddled with female leads, something that's been lacking from our TV screens for some time. Zooey Deschanel in New Girl, Amber Heard and a cadre of tail-topped bunny backups in The Playboy Club, Christina Ricci and her fellow stewardesses in Pan Am, Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs in Two Broke Girls, Whitney Cummings in the cleverly-titled Whitney. The femme-heavy premieres are either the Best Thing Ever for women, or more evidence of network TV's inability to write realistic female characters, depending on to whose opinion you ascribe.

Of the episodes I've watched, there's promise--with caveats.

One with the most potential is Pan Am. It opens with Pan Am stewardess Maggie (Christina Ricci) haughtily informing her male Beatnik pal, who clacks away on a typewriter in a dark room as Maggie rushes off to a last-minute flight, "I get to see the world, Sam. When was the last time you left the Village?” It ends with a two male pilots peering at a table of Pan Am stewardesses, all perfectly clad in regulation powder-blue suits and jaunty hats, and observing, "They don't know that they're a new breed of women. They just had to take flight. So don't try and ground them."

In-between, we're told that becoming a stewardess was one of the few available outlets for young women (young being the operative word) in the 1960s who wanted to "do something" with their lives; we see a young girl become a runaway bride when she chooses the adventure of the skies over the bonds of marriage; we learn that a tri-lingual Pan Am stewardess is the perfect candidate for international espionage; we watch stewardesses assist in the evacuation of exiles from Cuba after the Bay of Pigs; and we see one of the stewardess-slash-spies reject a marriage proposal and disappear into the night without so much as a good-bye kiss.

The big question of Pan Am is whether the show can scratch beneath the surface of the stewardess' perfectly pressed skirt suits and spark honest conversations about the realities of these women's lives, in the manner of its most obvious predecessor, Mad Men; or, will it will chose to live in an alternate reality of shiny-happy-nostalgia for a bygone era? The first episode hints at potential discussion points -- stewardesses are forced to resign once they're engaged to be married; the women must submit to a weigh-in and wardrobe check, including a smack on the behind to check for a girdle -- but has yet to fully demonstrate the repercussions of these standards on the characters' lives. Much has been made of Pan Am's copy-catting of Mad Men's decade of choice, but if it can bring female characters like Mad Men's Joan, Peggy and Betty -- who struggle with complicated career choices, relationship dilemmas and child-rearing in ways that are both heartbreakingly honest and cinematically powerful -- to network TV, then I'm on board.

Also still up for debate is the direction of Two Broke Girls. What would appear to be a odd-couple type comedy, with Behrs' spoiled trust fund brat (Caroline) clashing with Denning's foul-mouthed, blue collar waitress (Max), has hinted that it's something more. After realizing the potentially kah-ching combination of Max's baking skills and Caroline's business school background, they hatch a plan to save their tips and open a cupcake business. A show built on a female friendship and women's business ownership? Yes, please. I'm even willing to overlook the horrible laugh track and trying-to-hard-to-be-edgy jokes. And I'm game to bypass the characters played by Matthew Moy and Garret Morris, which have been painted with the broadest strokes of the stereotype brush -- for now -- as long as they're fleshed out into fuller characters as the episodes play out.

Of course, it's not perfect. Deschanel's character in New Girl, Jess, is meant to be lovably quirky, a'la Tina Fey's Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, but what she is is flaky, neurotic and pretty much a stock character when it comes down to it (recovering from the end of a relationship, she maroons herself on the couch to sob and watch Dirty Dancing ad nauseum). The attempted combination of forced quirk and viewer comfort leads to confusing conflicts of character. For example, Jess appears for the first time on the show in an adorable vintage-y dress, but later is incapable of deciphering between an appropriate dinner date outfit and farm girl gear; and though she has a perfectly good female best friend, she requires the assistance of three men whom she just met to comfort/rescue her when she's stood up for a date. Jess is a warmed-over Rachael Leigh Cook in She's All That -- baggy denim overalls hiding a slammin' bod and all -- but without the attitude, verve and alt-artist ambitions.

And I'm not really sure what was happening with Whitney and her slacker husband in Whitney. I only made it through about 3 minutes of the show, which seems to rely heavily on the shocking -- shocking! -- idea that Whitney Cummings can simultaneously be hot and say dirty things. (Why this is still shocking after our exposure to Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman and the rest of the Foul Mouthed Hot Girls Club, is well, shocking.) To be fair, I was annoyed long before I watched the show, after seeing the promo posters of Whitney in a dress and sneakers (imaginary studio exec dialogue: "Do you get it, guys? She's a hot girl, but she's totally still a guy's girl! She's cool! Will you watch us, please?") and the hi-lar-i-ous ad slogan, Women are emotional like ninjas. 'I'm fine' means 'I'm going to stab you in the neck ("Because women are craaaazy, amiright, bro? Oh, come on, please watch us!").

You'd think the comedy well of this "women are-nuts, men are idiots" dynamic would be bone dry by now, but apparently not. Almost as an answer to the parade of female leads in the 2011 premiere season, a new crop of "manly men being manly men" shows has blossed. The team is led Tim Allen, in Last Man Standing, attempting to be a man in a woman's world, where "woman's world" apparently means "home and family," as far as I can decipher from the promos. That's in addition Man Up (where men fight back against the evils of non-dairy hazelnut creamer and pomegranate body wash) and Ashton Kutcher continuing the fine tradition started by Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men. Who knew our definition of "man" was still so depressingly narrow?

These man's man shows are evidence that despite the newbie crop of female-helmed series, it's still slim pickings out there in TV land. And while you can argue that not every woman on television needs to be a role model, the fact is that the majority of female characters on television today are either hot wives married to boorish men, lithe sex kittens climbing into bed with Charlie Sheen/Ashton Kutcher, or hookers getting murdered on a crime drama. The casting of a woman as the leading character on a prime time, network television show is so rare, that of course they're held to higher standards; it's the curse of any under-represented group that the few who do make it to the spotlight are tasked with representing the group as a whole. (And it must be noted that the latest group of female leads is exclusively white, without even a sassy black female friend in sight.) Until the presence of multiple leading woman in TV is so commonplace that it ceases to be noteworthy, this will be the case.

So until these new shows give me reason to doubt, I'll be watching. With my fingers crossed. And if they fail, we'll still have Parks & Recreation.

Unlike counterpart 30 Rock, which pokes fun at its "New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, over-scheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says 'healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for...a week" main character, Liz Lemon, Parks & Recreation is able to show the realities Leslie Knope's life, pro and con, without making the actual character a walking punchline (or punching bag). Not to mention, her male love interest demonstrates his masculinity and self-confidence by being supportive of her decision, not demeaning, manipulative or threatened.

You're told to admire Leslie Knope, Geraldine Ferraro action figures, somewhat socially awkward personality and all. And that makes her, in my book, the best female character on TV right now. Ladies of Pan Am and Two Broke Girls, I hope you give her a run for her money.

Tagged as: women in media, Pan Am, The Playboy Club , Two Broke Girls , 30 Rock , New Girl , Whitney and Parks and Recreation

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Cassandra A. Gaddo is managing editor and electronic media editor of Today's Chicago Woman. She is active in various local and national women’s groups, including Step Up Women's Network, Rape Victim Advocates and the TCW Foundation, and is a member of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Young Professionals. She writes and speaks about local, national and international women's issues, including in her blog, “Twice As Well."