For what I suspect is the first time in television history, every night of the week is now dominated by strong women. This is an incredible feat, and one that is worth noting. I will break it down for you by day:
SUNDAYS
This night has been dominated by women for a long time, to be sure, including such shows as Desperate Housewives, Once Upon a Time, and Revenge, just to name a few. All of these shows have seriously strong women and they also have their problems, including being labeled primetime soap operas and a certain disdain by many men toward the melodramatic plots. That's certainly fair. After all, women-centered shows certainly are popular on Sunday nights simply because they are the best bets to garner ratings against Sunday Night Football. There's really no use in putting man-centered shows on against such a top male contender as that. Interestingly, as almost a balancing act, some of the best, strongest female characters found on Sunday nights, such as Sydney Bristow from Alias and Detective Lily Rush from Cold Case aired on the same channel as Sunday Night Football, CBS, which was always certainly a little frustrating due to the way shows are often pushed back by the game, but still pretty remarkable considering the audience they were aiming for.
Now, Sunday night is just as important for showcasing strong women, if not more so. For years now, Alicia Florick has dominated the night with The Good Wife, a show whose plot felt dangerously soap operatic in the initial advertising for the show. I still tuned in that first night, though, and was very pleasantly surprised to see how incredibly well-written and well-performed the show is. People are still discovering the show in its seventh season, and that's partly because it has defied all odds in the sense that the seventh season, indeed every season, is just as good as the first. Sometimes better. This is a show that continues to recreate itself and continues to tell unique and entertaining stories and shows no signs of jumping the shark anytime soon. It is a marvel to watch, really. Madam Secretary and CSI:Cyber are also a big draws on Sunday nights. All of these shows, of course, are on CBS and The Good Wife began while Sunday Night Football was still on CBS.
This season also began the new massive hit, Quantico, which is doing incredibly well, especially for freshman drama. It may tilt toward the soap operatic, at times, I suppose, but it also seems to be pulling in a mixed viewing population and also airs on Sunday Night Football's most recent home, NBC.
MONDAY
This night now belongs to the CW, at least as far as most critics are concerned. And this is one of my favorite nights of television because of the CW's two biggest critical successes - Jane the Virgin, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Jane is in its second season and, while certainly soap operatic, is deliberately, even meta, so. It is a play on telanovelas and thus has a lot of great telanovela twists that it then comments on as too much like a telanovela. It may certainly be problematic that Jane has to be a virgin and that she is in a love triangle between two sexy and stereotypically opposite men. However, the beauty of Jane is that the character is not overly concerned with any of these issues. She's a woman in love with two men, but her priorities are her child and her education, way before either of those men come into the picture. And the real and true love story is one of family, specifically between grandmother, mother, daughter and, this season, son (the new baby, Mateo). These are all single mothers from very different family dynamics. The grandmother was very happily married and we don't know where her husband is (and the show suggests that she doesn't either). The mother told the father that she had an abortion and raised Jane as a deliberately single mother. And Jane, well, Jane's a friggin' virgin! Though her grandmother really wants her to be married, she refuses to marry any man simply because she's a mother.
The newest addition to Monday night, and one of the BEST additions to television in years, is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Yes, I know. Awful title. Or is it? And its about a lawyer who is about to get promoted to partner and in a panic attack runs into her junior high camp boyfriend and finds out he's moving to West Covina, CA so she quits her job and moves there too to be close to him. Yes, I know, horrid concept. Or is it? This show is so delightfully aware of its ick-factor and the titular protagonist, Rebecca (played by series creator Rachel Bloom) even sings about the ickiness of this. It's funny. It's sweet. It's thoughtful. And, again, the true relationship of the film has little, if anything to do with the "ex-boyfriend" or even the coffee shop/bar love interest she meets the first episode, but is all about her friendship with another woman, Paula, a paralegal in her new law office, who is older, married, has kids, and sees in Rebecca all of the regrets of her own life choices.
And, of course, there's Supergirl. Need I say more? OK. So Supergirl rocks. As we learned this week, though she's just a simple young woman, she is capable of beating someone her cousin Superman has never defeated. She is a superhero, through and through, and America seems to be completely infatuated with a female superhero.
Blindspot also centers around a physically strong, but emotionally vulnerable young woman, but this is such an ensemble cast, focusing pretty equally on the men and women, that I don't feel it needs to be addressed, here.
TUESDAY
This day is heaven for me because of one show: iZombie. This is a personal favorite mostly because I'm head over heels in love with Rob Thomas thanks to Veronica Mars, possibly the best strong woman ever on television. And Liv, the titular zombie, is just as much fun. I don't even want to write anymore about this show for fear of showing off my true range of geekdom.
Tuesday also boasts another ensemble cast of strong women in Scream Queens. How could any feminist not love Jamie Lee Curtis in anything? But seriously, this show is about many different type of women, some stereotypical, and yet not, and some with a great deal of range. None of these women are role models, by any stretch of the imagination, but their relationships, and their mere complete representation on the show, make it worthy of this discussion. It is, of course, quite problematic, as many shows are, but not overwhelmingly so.
WEDNESDAY
NBC would really like this day to be devoted solely to them, given their lineup of The Mysteries of Laura, Law & Order: SVU, and Chicago P.D., but I don't really feel the need to address these, since of all female-centered shows, these are probably the most problematic in their representations (Laura, apparently, is an airhead, SVU is all about the rape, and P.D. apparently has no redeemable characters). All of these shows appear to be popular, but not critically so.
No, Wednesday night is not the best night for the strong woman, but there are two major glowing embers in the evening - Nashville and Empire. Of course, these are also the soapiest shows on television, right now, but a little soap never hurt anyone. And these are both shows centered around strong women who are in a male-dominated entertainment business, country music and hip-hop, respectively, and never let the men interfere with their control, their process, or their music.
THURSDAY
The shows that dominate on this night of the week barely need to be discussed. That's because the night belongs to ABC and Shondaland. This is the night of Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, three shows that are not only focused on very strong women, but also on many other elements of diversity, and America loves to eat them up. It's worth noting, too, that Bones is still on the air on Thursday nights, as is The Blacklist. They're less impressive, but have their admirers, to be sure.
FRIDAY
OK, So, when I said that women dominate every night of the week, I was misleading you just a little bit. No, Friday night television is a vast wasteland of bad comedies. If you look at the ratings, you'll see that reruns of Friends and SVU are probably the most watched shows that you might recognize, other than sports. But Friday is when I catch up on all the shows I didn't have time to watch all week and/or flip on over to Hulu to watch The Mindy Project or, if Netflix has just come out with a new season of anything. Or Amazon Prime.
SATURDAY
For a very limited time, Saturday belongs to Doctor Who, and while we're still long overdue for a female doctor, and the fact that the main female character is always relegated to "companion" in the series deserves ridicule, recent seasons have brought us a female timelord/human hybrid, a traditionally male timelord who was reincarnated female (leading us to hope for that amazing female incarnation of the doctor, himself) and many other strong women in the Whoverse, including the warrior - Madame Vastra, the head of UNIT - Kate Stewart, and keepers of the peace - Osgood.
All in all, I'd say this is an excellent time to be a woman who loves to watch narratives about strong and powerful women. I'm in television heaven.
SUNDAYS
This night has been dominated by women for a long time, to be sure, including such shows as Desperate Housewives, Once Upon a Time, and Revenge, just to name a few. All of these shows have seriously strong women and they also have their problems, including being labeled primetime soap operas and a certain disdain by many men toward the melodramatic plots. That's certainly fair. After all, women-centered shows certainly are popular on Sunday nights simply because they are the best bets to garner ratings against Sunday Night Football. There's really no use in putting man-centered shows on against such a top male contender as that. Interestingly, as almost a balancing act, some of the best, strongest female characters found on Sunday nights, such as Sydney Bristow from Alias and Detective Lily Rush from Cold Case aired on the same channel as Sunday Night Football, CBS, which was always certainly a little frustrating due to the way shows are often pushed back by the game, but still pretty remarkable considering the audience they were aiming for.
Now, Sunday night is just as important for showcasing strong women, if not more so. For years now, Alicia Florick has dominated the night with The Good Wife, a show whose plot felt dangerously soap operatic in the initial advertising for the show. I still tuned in that first night, though, and was very pleasantly surprised to see how incredibly well-written and well-performed the show is. People are still discovering the show in its seventh season, and that's partly because it has defied all odds in the sense that the seventh season, indeed every season, is just as good as the first. Sometimes better. This is a show that continues to recreate itself and continues to tell unique and entertaining stories and shows no signs of jumping the shark anytime soon. It is a marvel to watch, really. Madam Secretary and CSI:Cyber are also a big draws on Sunday nights. All of these shows, of course, are on CBS and The Good Wife began while Sunday Night Football was still on CBS.
This season also began the new massive hit, Quantico, which is doing incredibly well, especially for freshman drama. It may tilt toward the soap operatic, at times, I suppose, but it also seems to be pulling in a mixed viewing population and also airs on Sunday Night Football's most recent home, NBC.
MONDAY
This night now belongs to the CW, at least as far as most critics are concerned. And this is one of my favorite nights of television because of the CW's two biggest critical successes - Jane the Virgin, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Jane is in its second season and, while certainly soap operatic, is deliberately, even meta, so. It is a play on telanovelas and thus has a lot of great telanovela twists that it then comments on as too much like a telanovela. It may certainly be problematic that Jane has to be a virgin and that she is in a love triangle between two sexy and stereotypically opposite men. However, the beauty of Jane is that the character is not overly concerned with any of these issues. She's a woman in love with two men, but her priorities are her child and her education, way before either of those men come into the picture. And the real and true love story is one of family, specifically between grandmother, mother, daughter and, this season, son (the new baby, Mateo). These are all single mothers from very different family dynamics. The grandmother was very happily married and we don't know where her husband is (and the show suggests that she doesn't either). The mother told the father that she had an abortion and raised Jane as a deliberately single mother. And Jane, well, Jane's a friggin' virgin! Though her grandmother really wants her to be married, she refuses to marry any man simply because she's a mother.
The newest addition to Monday night, and one of the BEST additions to television in years, is Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Yes, I know. Awful title. Or is it? And its about a lawyer who is about to get promoted to partner and in a panic attack runs into her junior high camp boyfriend and finds out he's moving to West Covina, CA so she quits her job and moves there too to be close to him. Yes, I know, horrid concept. Or is it? This show is so delightfully aware of its ick-factor and the titular protagonist, Rebecca (played by series creator Rachel Bloom) even sings about the ickiness of this. It's funny. It's sweet. It's thoughtful. And, again, the true relationship of the film has little, if anything to do with the "ex-boyfriend" or even the coffee shop/bar love interest she meets the first episode, but is all about her friendship with another woman, Paula, a paralegal in her new law office, who is older, married, has kids, and sees in Rebecca all of the regrets of her own life choices.
And, of course, there's Supergirl. Need I say more? OK. So Supergirl rocks. As we learned this week, though she's just a simple young woman, she is capable of beating someone her cousin Superman has never defeated. She is a superhero, through and through, and America seems to be completely infatuated with a female superhero.
Blindspot also centers around a physically strong, but emotionally vulnerable young woman, but this is such an ensemble cast, focusing pretty equally on the men and women, that I don't feel it needs to be addressed, here.
TUESDAY
This day is heaven for me because of one show: iZombie. This is a personal favorite mostly because I'm head over heels in love with Rob Thomas thanks to Veronica Mars, possibly the best strong woman ever on television. And Liv, the titular zombie, is just as much fun. I don't even want to write anymore about this show for fear of showing off my true range of geekdom.
Tuesday also boasts another ensemble cast of strong women in Scream Queens. How could any feminist not love Jamie Lee Curtis in anything? But seriously, this show is about many different type of women, some stereotypical, and yet not, and some with a great deal of range. None of these women are role models, by any stretch of the imagination, but their relationships, and their mere complete representation on the show, make it worthy of this discussion. It is, of course, quite problematic, as many shows are, but not overwhelmingly so.
WEDNESDAY
NBC would really like this day to be devoted solely to them, given their lineup of The Mysteries of Laura, Law & Order: SVU, and Chicago P.D., but I don't really feel the need to address these, since of all female-centered shows, these are probably the most problematic in their representations (Laura, apparently, is an airhead, SVU is all about the rape, and P.D. apparently has no redeemable characters). All of these shows appear to be popular, but not critically so.
No, Wednesday night is not the best night for the strong woman, but there are two major glowing embers in the evening - Nashville and Empire. Of course, these are also the soapiest shows on television, right now, but a little soap never hurt anyone. And these are both shows centered around strong women who are in a male-dominated entertainment business, country music and hip-hop, respectively, and never let the men interfere with their control, their process, or their music.
THURSDAY
The shows that dominate on this night of the week barely need to be discussed. That's because the night belongs to ABC and Shondaland. This is the night of Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, three shows that are not only focused on very strong women, but also on many other elements of diversity, and America loves to eat them up. It's worth noting, too, that Bones is still on the air on Thursday nights, as is The Blacklist. They're less impressive, but have their admirers, to be sure.
FRIDAY
OK, So, when I said that women dominate every night of the week, I was misleading you just a little bit. No, Friday night television is a vast wasteland of bad comedies. If you look at the ratings, you'll see that reruns of Friends and SVU are probably the most watched shows that you might recognize, other than sports. But Friday is when I catch up on all the shows I didn't have time to watch all week and/or flip on over to Hulu to watch The Mindy Project or, if Netflix has just come out with a new season of anything. Or Amazon Prime.
SATURDAY
For a very limited time, Saturday belongs to Doctor Who, and while we're still long overdue for a female doctor, and the fact that the main female character is always relegated to "companion" in the series deserves ridicule, recent seasons have brought us a female timelord/human hybrid, a traditionally male timelord who was reincarnated female (leading us to hope for that amazing female incarnation of the doctor, himself) and many other strong women in the Whoverse, including the warrior - Madame Vastra, the head of UNIT - Kate Stewart, and keepers of the peace - Osgood.
All in all, I'd say this is an excellent time to be a woman who loves to watch narratives about strong and powerful women. I'm in television heaven.
