THe power and dreams of ladies on telly

[sqbr]

I've been watching Flashforward and quite enjoying it, the slow reveal of plot, timey-wimey stuff(*), and the charcater's reactions to both are pretty good so far. The female characters are pretty well drawn too, even if there's a bit of Bechdel fail.

But it just struck me: afaict every single significant adult female character's vision is about (heterosexual) love/sex, or children. As I recall the only female characters of any significance whose visions were not of this type are deux ex machina one-offs whose vision is vital to a male character's arc.

Since I only just noticed this in episode 3 I may have missed some in the first two episodes.

Also: having just seen the most recent episode of Dollhouse, as much as the show may be dodgy it does occasionally shine with effective gender commentary. It's a heady mix of awesome, fail, and generic B-grade crap.

(*)Everyone in the world blacked out and had a 2 minute vision of six months in the future. So now not only does everyone have to deal with the damage and death from the blackout, but whatever mundane or inspiring or disturbing vision they saw. And things are coming together to make those visions come true, which is not always a good thing...

Comments

[sanguinity]

Flashforward: I've been thinking I should have a look at it, as I've read enough Sawyer to be curious. Also: John Cho. However, your observation made me grimace.

Dollhouse, and the "heady mix of awesome, fail, and generic B-grade crap": EXCELLENT descriptor. I wish I was not as suspceptible to random reward schedules as rats. But unfortunately, I am.

[sqbr]

Hmm. Maybe it's worth waiting to see if the overall arc is awesome enough to justify overcoming your misgivings, since like Heroes or Lost it's one of those shows where it's hard to judge how good it really is until you can see how well all the threads hold together. (So far I'd say it's doing not quite as well as Heroes S1 but is in that general ballpark, and is much less deliberately confusing than Lost)

Yeah, I'm susceptible to the random reward schedule too. I managed to let go of Heroes but Dollhouse still has me. Knowing that it's likely to be cancelled so I won't have to suffer too much longer helps.

[onceamy]

Regarding Dollhouse, the dodginess is the rape and sexual abuse coverage, no?

I've always been too terrified of being squicked by something and its faily coverage to watch it.

[sqbr]

It's also really dodgy when it comes to female agency/autonomy and gender/sexuality etc in general. It asks a lot of interesting questions, but the answers are often..not so good.

But if those subjects squick you? Stay Away OMG.