A couple of weeks ago I announced I want to be a TV writer, and since them I've been spending the summer dissecting and analyzing various TV shows in hopes of learning episode structure, how much arc is too much arc, and how to come up with truly amazing characters. Then I decided I should actually write some of my reactions and discoveries down so I could prove I did something this summer. And then post them in a blog.
I decided I would follow in the footsteps of various other geeky bloggers and try to come up with my own list of my 25 favorite TV characters in half an hour. But as I started making the list, I noticed there was a disturbing lack of girls.
So I ditched that and tried to come up with a list of my 25 favorite female TV characters. And it was really, really hard. I even had to resort to using a few characters from shows I've barely seen just to fill it out...And I watch a lot of TV shows. It was disturbing.
And I honestly can’t figure out why. Part of it might be it’s harder to think of favorite characters when you’re trying to think of female characters that are also among your favorites. Or maybe it’s because I watch too many male-centric sci-fi shows. But I don’t think so.
I think it’s because even in this day and age, female TV roles aren’t as diverse as the male roles. Most women TV can be categorized as the Hot Girl, the Sassy Girl, the Plucky-Naïve-and-Cute-but-Not-Quite-As-Attractive-As-The-Hot-Girl Girl, Mom, the Mean Boss Lady, Manipulative Girl or the Token Smart Girl.
Unless it’s a female-centric show in which case there’s always a Zany One, a Straight-Laced One, a Tough One, a Superficial One, and a Bad Girl Nemesis.
It’s way too easy to categorize. Plus, even with the most complex and interesting women characters, most of them are played by really pretty actresses. Like it’s not enough to be funny and interesting, they have to be eye candy, too. Of course, all of that applies to guys, too. But it seems like it’s worse with girls. Am I wrong?
Anyway, this is the list I came up with:
25. Allison Carter from Eureka: A girl stuck in a town full of crazy genius scientist people. Totally identify.
24. Phoebe Buffay from Friends: “Smelly cat, oh smelly cat, what are they feeding you?” Easily the funniest character on Friends.
23. Zoe Washburne (Gina Torres) from Firefly: Zoe kicks butt, pure and simple.
22. Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) from Buffy/Angel (especially Angel): Cordy goes from being the selfish and superficial high school queen bitch to being heroic and kind of wise. Character development is awesome. But still, old high school Cordelia had some terrific lines. (“You say that like shame is something to be proud of!”)
21. Dispatch from The Unusuals: We never saw her, but in the show’s short run, she got in more good one liners than most characters do on shows that run for years.
20. The Women of Cicely, Alaska from Northern Exposure: Shelley, Maggie, Ruth Ann, Marilyn, Officer Semanski…All good shows make it tough to choose, but Northern Exposure makes it absolutely freakin’ impossible to choose.
19. Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) from Murphy Brown: Well, she’s a forty-something-year-old TV news reporter (think Diane Sawyer, only angrier) with a chip on her shoulder and a Motown song in her heart. What’s not to love?
18. Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls: What makes Jaye absolutely brilliant as a character is the fact that she doesn’t know who she is. She graduated from Brown, and yet she’s so directionless she works as a retail clerk at a tourist store near Niagra Falls.
17. Fred (Amy Acker) from Angel: She’s so different from every other character on TV. From her nervousness to her accent to her knack for quantum physics, adding Fred to the cast really helped get Angel out of the rut that was Season 2 and into the awesomeness that is Season 3. (I haven’t seen the later seasons yet, so don’t ruin them for me.
16. Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) from Monk: I like Natalie, but I think Mr. Monk’s first assistant was funnier. But that’s probably mostly because of her New Jersey accent.
15. Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Yay, girl power and snappy quips about pop culture!
14. Sharon McClusky from Desperate Housewives: I love McClusky, the old lady who lives across the street from Lynnette and sometimes babysits the kids. Her laidbackness is a perfect counterpoint to the crazy antics of the housewives.
13. Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter) from Designing Women: Her rants are priceless. One of my favorites was from the AIDS episode, where she tells a bigoted homophobic woman, “If God were giving out sexually transmitted diseases as a punishment, you would be the first in line!”
12. Bess Martin (Rebecca Gayheart) from Earth 2: You hardly ever get to see a normal down-to-Earth girl on a scifi show. It was Bess’s common sense and big heart that won me over. I’ll never understand how she wound up married to Morgan, though.
11. Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) from Bones: The quintessential scientist who’s brilliant at solving crimes but totally out of touch with reality.
10. Olive Snook (Kristin Chenowith) from Pushing Daisies: Olive steals almost every scene she’s in, which is really hard when you’re on a show as good as Pushing Daisies was. (Why did ABC have to cancel it?) But the best parts are when Kristin Chenowith gets to sing.
9. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) from Battlestar Galactica: Who doesn’t love Starbuck?
8. Lynnette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) from Desperate Housewives: I think the main reason I love Lynette is Felicity Huffman. She’s really great in this part. By far the most believable housewife, it’s really a lot of fun to watch her hatch all kinds of crazy schemes that usually backfire, but she stays grounded all the time.
7. CJ (Allison Janney) from The West Wing: Yet another one that’s kind of hard to explain. I think it’s Allison Janney. Or maybe as a pseudo-journalist I have a soft spot for the White House Press Secretary. But I think it’s the fact that CJ’s one of the few women on TV who’s not there for her looks. She’s there for her brains and personality.
6. Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts) from Designing Women: Out of all the Designing Women, Mary Jo’s my favorite, because she’s the most true to life, just a normal single mom trying to get through life.
5. Mary Campbell from Soap: Also in the Lynnette-Mary Jo vein, is Mary Campbell. Or I guess I should say Lynnette and Mary Jo are in her vein. It’s nearly impossible to stand out in a cast of characters as whacky and entertaining as the cast of Soap, but Mary stands out because she’s the normal one. She’s the heart, the glue, that keeps the whole crazy family from flying apart, the straight man to everyone else’s goofball. Without her, the show wouldn’t work at all.
4. Kaylee (Jewel Staite) from Firefly: On most shows, the engineer is a gruff, world-weary dude, but Kaylee flies in the face of that. She’s a ball of pure energy, a ray of sunshine and as cliché that sounds, without her, I think Firefly would be a few shades too dark. It really sucks that we never got a true Kaylee-centric episode.
3. Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hanigan) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: How ? One of the best things about Buffy running so long was that we got to see the characters grow up, especially Willow. She started a fairly standard shy, nerdy girl, but she grew more confident in her own skin and her sexuality, discovered powers she didn’t know she had, and then finally learned to reign them in. Brilliant.
2. President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) from Battlestar Galactica: Best President Ever to Appear on Television. Fictional or otherwise. I seriously considered printing up a whole bunch of Roslin-Adama ’09 t-shirts.
1. Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) from Veronica Mars: Veronica is one of the most perfect TV characters ever, and yet she’s so deeply flawed. But that’s precisely what makes her so perfect. And if that actually made sense to you, you must be a writer.
So what do you guys think? Am I right about there not being enough interesting female characters on TV? What do you think of my list? Who would you put on yours? Get commenty!
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