A couple years ago (oh, the time flies!), I cringed and whinged about several new female characters on NCIS. While one of them toned down and grew on me (Ziva), the other’s bar was set so low one would have thought it impossible for her to get worse. Yet she did. I’m talking about NCIS Director Jenny Shepard. Spoilers for the S5 finale will be [...]
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tv:Action
One thing I don’t like about Alias is that it asks us to assume when all else fails – or even before – Sydney can always use her sex appeal to flirt her way out of a situation. The only exception is when she’s dealing with men who know who she is and are tasked with stopping her. In the planning missions where Sydney is [...]
I’ve been re-watching Alias lately, and I’ll probably do a more comprehensive series review later, but for now one thing is jumping out at me: The men go by their last names. The women go by first names. WTF? At first, I tried to cut them slack because Sydney’s father is also “Agent Bristow” (and he’s often called “Jack” for that very reason). But Vaughn, [...]
The most interesting couple I ever saw in media – film, television, music, books, whatever – were a middle-aged couple who spent more time trying to one-up the other than they did having wild, passionate sex. They were Jack Bristow and Irena DiRevco from Alias. Seriously, they were awesome. At least, for season two they were. They spent all their screen time, as equals – [...]
ETA: SERIES TWO SPOILERS IN COMMENTS. This review covers Series 1 only. Series 2 has not yet aired in the US at the time of this writing. I’ve been meaning to write about the dynamic between Marian and Guy of Gisborne on BBC’s Robin Hood series for a while now. Watching an episode commentary in which one of the producers debates it with Lucy Griffiths [...]
The Sandbaggers was a brilliant 1970′s British TV series that chronicled the inner workings of a fictitious government intelligence unit within the SIS. These spies spent more time doing paperwork and squabbling with politicians for the resources to do the job with which they were tasked than they spent in action. But when action happened, it was never glamorous. When people come to after being [...]
“Wonder Woman was stupid because she was always so dreamy-eyed about that guy, and he was Lyle Waggoner, the ‘stupid guy’ who didn’t get the jokes on The Carol Burnett Show. Which is really saying something!” My mom, ladies and gentlemen, on how she had better TV role models in the 50s with Annie Oakley and Maid Marian than I had in the 70′s with [...]
