|
|
Techtite's TV Reviews! |
"Perhaps the most benign piece of retro-sexism I've seen all year, though that doesn't mean it's good." ---from the review
------------------ Sidebar :: ------------- The Feminist Crime Drama With The "Booty Call" Poster. Many promotional "posters" have very little to do (if anything) about the shows they promote What would you expect a full-page ad to show about this feminist series? Why, of course...a booty shot! Yep; series lead Angie Harmon (in the full-size poster, anyway) is looking over her shoulder, wearing the tightest jeans that magazine censors would allow. Hey; anything to promote a new series, eh? |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Women's Murder Club
Sometimes you wonder if someone has been promoting a TV series for so long, they forgot to update the concept, for a new generation. While Women's Murder Club would've been a big hit back in the 1970's, it's a terribly quasi-sexist premise "today." The all-female lead cast seems to be saying, "Wow! Women solving murders!" when by all accounts...duh? Cold Case. Crossing Jordan. Close to Home. Women are solving crimes left and right, dears! Now, would you mind trying to be entertaining while solving some crimes? Yes, this is a review of "That James Patterson Series." Many a promo reminds us that the author of Along Came a Spider (among other great novels) was behind this. That is perhaps the hub of every compliment and complaint you can make for this series. On the one hand you have a show with intriguing crime stories and witty dialog. On the other hand: couldn't a bestselling novelist inspire a crime drama better than this? The easiest summary of this series is that someone saw Charlie's Angels, made the trio more intelligent, dumbed down all the men, and added a perky reporter who tags along with the ladies as a "sidekick." That's pretty much all you need to know about this series. Lindsay the homicide detective (Angie Harmon), Claire the medical examiner (Paula Newsome), and Jill the assistant district attorney (Laura Harris) are best buds, who solve crimes. How original this concept is...or so we're supposed to believe. The problems arise when these ladies enter the real world...or what passes for it, in this series. Every man is a total imbecile. Every woman is a misunderstood genius. The ladies have male superiors who are blandly written to be their intellectual inferiors. Yet every woman who steps into view is a misunderstood genius. Yes: Every....Woman. I think I stopped taking any of this series' stories seriously, around the time a criminal is female, and Lindsay actually tells the murderer, in so many words, that she might compliment her for such a brilliant crime if she didn't have to arrest her. Why's that, dear? Okay; so a James Patterson inspired crime drama doesn't win in the "realism" department. Where does the series "work"? The dialog. In fact, it's in the series' witty repartee that the series shines..albeit just a small glimmer. When Lindsay is grilled into meeting with someone she doesn't like, she wittily responds, "I will pencil you in at ten minutes past 'A Woman Is Dead'...!" When someone tells Lindsay the classic cliché, "You're going to miss me when I stop coming around," Lindsay quips: "Give me a chance to find out!" It isn't Shakespeare, though it does make the constant quasi-sexism more palatable...like, for instance, when Lindsay is performing a criminal investigation, and Tom is so happy about what she's saying, he's doing a little dance. Yes...a dance. Seriously. Will this series succeed? That's hard to say. The crimes are as gritty as a James Patterson novel, the dialog is as witty as a James Patterson novel, and the lead character is female, as in most James Patterson novels. Yet unlike Patterson novels, these characters lack the depth, realism, or for that matter, the emotional resonance of a Patterson novel. Perhaps that won't matter to a woman sitting at home on a Friday night eating a popcorn bag that serves only one, though to the woman with any form of a love life, here's a tip: don't force the man in your life to watch Women's Murder Club. There's any number of crime dramas which offer the "novel" concept of women and men working together...and isn't that what a feminist series should be trying to portray in the first place?
Opinions? Speak your mind in Techtite's Letters Page!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Burnout
Near
Miss
Small
Crater
Large
Crater
Deep
Impact
