In recent times the Internet has been used to enact real world social change and begin revolutions. Social media posts in these cases have been an accurate and palpable representation of group sentiment. The Internet and its social media tools have been proven to be a good place to build momentum, spread awareness, and crystallize the fear, anxiety, anger, and frustration of a group into a cogent argument and movement.

But can social media do the same for sadness? Can it become a space for group mourning as it has become a space for group anger and subsequent political action? To my mind, the answer is a simple “no,” but let’s dissect why.

Mourning is an action both public and private. In cases such as the death of a public figure, mourning becomes very much a public affair. The funereal parade of Abraham Lincoln, which traveled from Washington to Springfield was viewed by thousands, giving citizens one last chance to say farewell. Elvis is still mourned, with tokens laid to rest at Graceland from visitors who have made the pilgrimage. Public mourning has a very specific function of releasing sadness for a figure both personal and untouchable, and attempting to heal that sadness.

Twitter and Facebook, public as they are, however, cannot be considered mourning due to their limitations. Specifically, those of character count and of timing.

Mourning, whether public or private, is very particular with its sense of time loss. As we lose those important to us, time, as a function of mourning, is meant to stop, to give us time outside the normal rush of every day life to experience grief and to begin the healing process. Throughout history and across cultures, mourning etiquette has deemed it important to step outside the normal flow of time to express grief. Victorian widows were expected to wear black mourning clothing for up to two years in order to express their grief. (See author Tracy Chevalier’s website for a quick guide to Victorian mourning garb.) The main thrust of the Jewish tradition of sitting Shiva is to interrupt the normal flow of time. For seven days, the immediate family of the deceased is to confine themselves in their homes and fully experience the pain of their loss. The tradition is meant to put life on hold—full stop—and create an environment wherein processing through grief is the mourner’s only job. (See aish.com for more information.) Almost every religion and culture has a tradition such as that, one intended to disrupt time.

The Internet is impossible to interrupt, to step outside. “R.I.P. Steve Jobs,” says the first tweet. The second says, “I love burritos.” Using social media, we can never step outside the flow of life long enough to “mourn.” Rather we commentate. We remark. We build a flow of conversation around the subject of death. But we do not tackle it head on. For, with the Internet, that is impossible. Death is the end of a time, and the Internet cannot step outside of time.

Revolutions and deaths are different. Revolution is caused when things have reached a boiling point, when a plateau is leapt from, and a new height is reached. Death is the end of something, a sea change that (no matter the circumstance) always comes as a blow, a surprise. Revolutions don’t spring from nowhere, unlike death.

The Internet is a powerful tool and an amazing resource, but it absolutely cannot replicate all human experiences. It cannot stand in for actual mourning, for actual grief. We are baffled from the true visceral pain of sadness by the overflow of information that the Internet subjects us to. There is no space for mourning in the Internet age.

For those of you out there in internet land who have never met my sainted progenitor, you too, will realize today that it is all true.

So, I was at work.  Working.  Like a human, like an adult, like someone with a job.  When midday, I received this email from customer service:

And I squawked.  Like a bird.  In the middle of my very silent office.

My mother – the woman who tried to hook me up at a very underage 17 years old with my doctor – had found a way to interfere with my existence even from the confines of her home.

I know, in actuality, that all of this is my fault.  I suggest that she call customer service with her problem.  I also made the huge mistake of working in a place that has phones.  And men.  A terrible combination whenever my mother is involved.

So. That happened.

I responded.  I am polite.

And that’s that.

Update: My imagining of the conversation between my mother and dearest Scott of customer service – as performed by Albert Einstein and Queen Elizabeth.  On the moon. Of course.

Jerry Gergich and Toby Flenderson

Parks and Recreation popped up last week on Netflix Instant and so, of course, that was the week I started watching.

For those of you who don’t know (and I’m sure, judging by the number of people I know who were encouraging me to watch it, most of you know), Parks and Recreation began airing in 2009 on NBC.  This year, mid-season, it will start its third season on the air.  Helmed by Amy Poehler (playing the naive and manic bureaucrat Leslie Knope), the show deals with the government, and more specifically the Parks and Recreation Department, of fictional Pawnee, Indiana.

The show, created by Greg Daniels (producer of the American Office and one of the major forces in adapting the British series for American ears) and Michael Schur (longtime Office writer and, later producer), hits many of the same beats as its older sister.  The mockumentary style, the importance of the reaction shot, and the unrepentant focus on romantic entanglements all travel from Scranton to Pawnee.  And, indeed, many of the characters seem similar as well.

However, Parks and Recreation has a style all its own.  Without a Michael Scott at center, and with a Leslie Knope, Parks is generally a nicer program.  The Office, in its greatest moments, is biting humor.  At its weakest, it is just plain spite.  Parks never suffers from this – even in its weakest episodes it a genial sitcom, one that I can enjoy.  This stands in sharp contrast to The Office, which when hitting the mean button but without the humor to back it up just makes me uncomfortable and forces me to click over to the other channel.

Anyway, all of this said, a large question remains: Why Jerry Gergich?

Jerry Gergich is the Toby Flenderson of Pawnee (much in the same way that Donna is a toned-down Meredith of sorts).  But, unlike Donna, Jerry doesn’t make sense to me.

Having watched episode upon episode of The Office and never having been completely bothered by the treatment of Toby, I was surprised by my reaction to the same character a few states over.  Why am I bothered by the office treating Jerry Gergich as they do?

Jerry is a skilled artist and piano player.  Apparently, he is also a klutz – falling down, splitting his pants open, etc.  As such, and even when he is not in the process of embarrassing himself, he is routinely mocked and dismissed by his co-workers.

Toby, the human resources director in Scranton, is a quiet sad sack of a man with a divorce under his belt and a young daughter.  He rarely commits any objectionable actions – at worst he is a Debbie Downer – but he is routinely abused by Michael Scott.

The parallels aren’t perfect, but they are there.  So, why do Greg Daniels and Michael Schur add these characters who exist solely to be mocked – for no particular reason – by those that they work with on a daily basis?  And, more importantly, what do these characters add to the programs upon which they appear?  And, on a personal note, why am I not upset over Toby, but I am over Jerry?

Rather than recounting season upon season of The Office and Toby’s changes over that time, I thought I would compare two similar episodes of The Office and Parks.

In “Conflict Resolution” (written by Greg Daniels, it is the 21st episode of the second season), Michael attempts to prove himself better than Toby and resolve office conflicts.  (As Michael asks Toby, “What do you know about conflict resolution? Your response to everything is divorce.”)  Michael immediately begins tackling the conflict between Oscar and Angela – a conflict over an Anne Geddes-style poster. When Michael “resolves” the conflict and sees what other complaints have been lodged with HR and never resolved, Michael demands that Toby hand them all over to him.

This episode, focusing so intensely on the relationship between Michael and Toby, shows why Toby isn’t as sad a situation as Parks‘ Jerry.  Toby, ultimately, is smarter than Michael, the only person with whom he has a  steady conflict.  Michael may hate Toby, but Toby will survive the job at Dunder-Mifflin and move on with his life, unlike Michael (who will forever be a moron).

Additionally, divorced and sad Toby is, in a way, naturally prepared for Michael’s occasionally irrational hatred for him.  In every scene, Toby reveals himself to have always been a less-than-lovable loser and, as a result, he is prepared to be despised.  Additionally, Toby is vindicated at the end of episode (as he often is).  In every conflict that Michael has with someone in the office, Toby proves his worth – both to corporate and to the running of the office in general.  Michael, at the end of “Conflict Resolution,” realizes that he can, in no way, do Toby’s job.  And Toby, once again, is proven to have worth to his workplace.

Toby, although the sad sack of the office, wins in a lot of ways.

Jerry Gergich has a much less satisfying victory, if one at all.

In “Park Safety” (written by Aisha Muharrar, the 19th episode of the second season), Jerry once again loses the “Hummingbird Lottery,” a draw to see who will fill the hummingbird feeders that Leslie set up in the park.  It is a lottery that only Jerry will forever “win” since every person in the office is stuffing the ballot box in his dis-favor.  Jerry is late coming into the office after his scheduled hummingbird feeding and everyone is cracking wise about him – until Ann calls and tells them that Jerry has been mugged.  Jerry has dislocated his shoulder.

Later, during the midst of  the park safety campaign that Leslie has launched, Jerry is forced to admit that he had never been mugged.  He tripped while eating a breakfast burrito  – but he didn’t want to tell anyone, for he knew that they would mock him.  Leslie keeps it a secret, and maintains the mugging story to the public (although it does not stay a secret from the Parks department and all enjoy a hearty laugh at the videotaped recording of his tumble).

Now, Jerry is an embarrassment, but he is not Toby.  Toby is prepared to be mocked. He is and has always been a sad sack, never number one or number two.  He was never noticed, a nobody, nothing.  Jerry, on the other hand, has a multitude of talents. He has proven himself to be skilled artist (judging by his thoughtful entry for the mural competition), an excellent pianist (as proven by his charity drive performance), and, generally, a nice man with a nice wife and a nice life.  But all of this is thrown to the wayside in light of his weight, his clumsiness, and his garbled diction.  This is what allows him to be unmercifully teased by his co-workers.*

Jerry, at the end, offers up what I believe to be a lame excuse for his ability to survive in the office environment in which he works.  He will retire in two years with a full pension, so he doesn’t mind the ridicule.  This just doesn’t fly to me.  A man like Jerry is nice, with a full set of interests, and a seeming passion for life.

Toby doesn’t possess any of the qualities of Jerry.  Jerry is talented and kind, and, most importantly, fully engaged with his existence. Jerry is also mocked by his entire office – not just one man.  He attempts to engage with his coworkers, and he is rebuffed. Toby, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care about anything (except for one, very distinct exception) and, therefore, it doesn’t seem surprising that he would be able to disengage himself so fully from office conflicts.  Toby doesn’t try to connect with those around him, and so it makes sense that the conflict would just wash over him.  Jerry isn’t as naturally prepared for such mockery, and seems to get the short end of the stick – even more so than his Office counterpart.

In the end, I just can’t get behind the inclusion of either of these sad men in the programs they inhabit.   Perhaps, it is because I do not fully understand office politics. (Perhaps there is some great office need for a buffoon, for a hated loser?)  But I think, more likely, it is due to the fact that I can’t usually bring myself to hate these kind of people – these schlemiels and schlimazels.  I reserve my hate for the petty tyrants, the idiots, and the desperate.  And Toby and Jerry may be clumsy and unnaturally unlucky, but, rarely are they desperate.  They take the ridicule of their coworkers and move on, and that, at least, is something I can appreciate.

(*It should also be noted that I think, too late in the game, were Jerry’s faults underlined.  This episode, “Park Safety” is the one that really proves Jerry to be a clumsy joke.  I had built up a reservoir of sympathy for the man when he was doing fantastic art, etc. and everyone derided him.  At that point, he hadn’t proven himself as slapstick fodder and, I think, this late introduction allowed me to feel for Jerry in a way that I never felt for Toby, who was, since the beginning, a sad man.)

But there are lots of things on YouTube.  Here are some of my favorite musical YouTube things.

you + other people = life

And, indeed, like most people, I define portions of my life based on the others in it. (Maybe, not everyone does this – I tend to have a rotation of human beings moving in and out of my life on a pretty regular basis.  Other people are more constant.  But that doesn’t mean, I suppose, that they are not defining their lives by others.  That just means their eras aren’t as short.)

Either way, now is a strange time.  I can only define this period by myself.  I am, in many ways, an island.  And that’s odd.  I don’t consider myself particularly close to many people.  I know a lot of people, but I’m not sure if I’m close to all of them. (What is closeness? It is something with which I’ve always had trouble.)  But, even so, it feels strange to be an island, rather than an isthmus or peninsula, say.

I have friends – this isn’t to say that I spend all my time completely alone.  But all my current friends are couples, which is an odd thing for me as well.  Couples are their own sovereign nations – I lie on the periphery of those small empires, never to be a citizen.  Which makes sense, and I’m not applying to be a resident.  But I used to connect countries of solo individuals.  I used to be an isthmus, and now… I have no idea what I am now, geographically speaking.

I know this: I have gone to dinner – out – alone.  I have gone to the movies – alone.  And tonight I’m going to an improv show – alone.  And, I figure, this is part of being an adult.  This is part of being me.  I am willfully single, for the most part.  I like myself a lot and need time alone – a lot of time alone.  And I don’t want you to depend on me, that’s way too much pressure.  So, at this point, I go to things alone.  So, in that way, I’m acing one of the portions of my “How to Be an Adult” list – an actual list I wrote that I keep in my bedside table for easy reference.

Other portions, I’m not doing so hot.  My roommate and I bought curtains the other day and, after putting them up, we found that they were laughably short.  Really terrible.  It was visual nonsense, a limerick for your eyeballs, in curtain form.

But, tomorrow, I will use some of my ample unemployed time to get down to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and replace them.  And then no one (well, I told you, so you will know, but the point stands) will know our inability to measure before we purchase.  Adulthood mistake: Rectified.

So, all in all, I guess I’m winning this battle with adulthood.  For I figure, it is probably considered harder to go to dinner, and the movies, and an improv show alone, than it is to learn to measure and buy curtains that actually fit your window.

Ed. Note: Perhaps I have, in the span of minutes, totally regressed as I’ve made arrangements to go back to the womb (college).

If the Pottery Barn and United Colors of Bennetton catalogs got drunk together and had a baby with alcohol poisoning, that baby would be Rachel Getting Married.

Rachel Getting Married is the story of a family.  Kym (Anne Hathaway) is a recovering addict released from rehab for a weekend so she can attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt).  And so, drama ensues.  Drama ensues at a quiet, leisurely pace in between wedding rehearsal dinners, speeches, and general wedding prep.  Directed by Jonathan Demme, we peer into the lives of these people as they change over the course of a weekend.

This is very smart movie.  And it has a lot of emotions.  And I found myself distracted during the entire film.  I respect the movie – it is objectively very good – but I was distracted.

I was distracted from the very beginning.  Rachel’s wedding is held in her father’s (Bill Irwin) home in Connecticut.  It is a rambling giant house, with a variety of doors.  It is the kind of home where rich people live, specifically liberal rich people who like to live in liberal forests in an effort to regain the land baron pasts of their predecessors.  Bill Irwin’s character is the kind of father who listens to jazz, reads the New Yorker, composts on weekends, and is scaling back his hours in his private practice, preferring to give his time to charitable contributions and a well-loved vegetable garden.  Kym is a character who, we know, wore a lilac sweater for a shoot for Seventeen, at some point in her young life.  Rachel, her sister, is getting her PhD for psychology.  So it stands to reason that their emotions, no matter how raw, are the quiet, WASP emotions of those who are eternally insulated by money.  In fact, throughout the entirety of the film, I was distracted by the omnipresent, but never mentioned faint sound of the crinkling of dollar bills as the family hashed out all their problems at a lavish multicultural wedding befitting liberal Connecticut people.

These are the kind of people who have decor and staircases, rather than furniture and stairs.  Case in point:

Indeed, the casual wealth, or rather the careful sidestepping of the acknowledgement of casual wealth, distracted me to no ends.  These are the kind of boring people I would not like to hang out with.  And, although I’m sure it was intention, I spent a great deal of movie uncomfortable – not made uncomfortable so much by the fights between the family members (which, as a viewer of a movie, I expect the characters’ intimate moments to be on display for me).  Rather, I found the jokes awkward – or, the non-audience jokes, the jokes that those in the film find funny (“Remember that time…?”), but those outside the film don’t laugh at, for they lack context for us.  We don’t know Rachel.

And, I suppose, that is the intelligence of this film.  We don’t know Rachel or her soon-to-be husband.  We don’t know Rachel’s friends, we barely know Rachel’s family.  And so, from the start, we are uniquely qualified, us viewers of the film, to understand Kym’s plight.

Kym, raw, defensive, and vulnerable on her release from rehab, falls directly in line with the shooting style.  From the way every shot is as if we are peering onto the scene, uninvited:

Every moment is made intimate and one is unable to ignore the idea of “viewing” and “being viewed.”  Indeed, as if to underline the point in bright red, a relative of Rachel’s husband, Sidney, is included, a man with a camera always present in his hand.  We are being shot as they are being shot, we are viewing them as Kym is being viewed.  She feels as if she is trapped in a Panopticon of familial gazes, not all friendly, and we can understand that feeling, being voyeurs ourselves upon the struggles of her life and those of her family.

And the style of film overall, sort of plotless and aimless, allows us to again gain perspective into Kym.  The wedding begins for her, and for us, in media res.  We never quite catch up with all the family interplay, all the intricate backstories on display in these little moments, and it is only fair, as Kym never really catches up either, forever screwing up and bringing her life crashing into theirs.  In fact, for me, part of the message of the film was that life moves on, even if it isn’t moving for you.  Kym comes home to a house that hasn’t crystallized in time, hasn’t stopped simply because she has stopped, trapped in rehab and jail and other such places.  Kym, at this wedding, must be, for moment, buoyed away by time to the present in which her family is living.  But it is a harsh current to swim, as we find.

Although the movie sets us up to sympathize with Kym and to understand her in a way that we will never understand her relatives, I found Rachel to be the most compelling character.  She wants her sister, but she also wants her wedding and she understands that, when Kym is around, nothing will ever be about her.  She is trapped in a way between her old life, wherein she is always playing third fiddle to far more erratic and unstable women, Kym and her mother, to one where she comes first, her new life with her husband, Sidney.  She is anxiously trying to hold on to people who don’t have time for her – her sister Kym, consumed by her disease and guilt, and her mother, whose self-absorption and immaturity make it impossible for her to be a good parental figure.  Her consolation, at the end of the film, for me, was that she had Sidney, not that she still loved her sister.  She always loved her sister, even through their bitter arguments, but her sister can’t love her until she recovers.  So Rachel is left wanting and waiting and I was glad that she had someone to love her and her alone.

The movie is exceedingly smart and, perhaps, expresses best the way in which everyone is sort of alone at a family event.  However, it is was too much like life, more specifically, too much like a casual, wealthy, weekending life that I don’t lead for me to really absorb it and be involved within it.  The direction is astounding and goes beyond naturalistic films I’ve seen before, but, it has perhaps for me, veered too close to reality.  When others are in the movie, shutting ever present doors, behind an argument, I just can’t focus.  It was just too lifelike.  And, at least for me, some of the idea of a movie is escape.  And what is the point of escaping to a Pottery Barn decorated home and a lavish wedding (how long was that wedding, by the way?), if such a place is so filled with quiet sadness and logical heartbreak?

Even now, Sleep is such a tease.  Sleep hangs around in the dead of night and says to me, “C’mon, baby.  Let’s just chill.”  And, the moment I feel seduced and lay down my head, suddenly – wham! – Sleep is gone.  And so continues our complicated mess of a relationship.

I couldn’t be more angry with Sleep at the present moment.  Sleep needs to stop being such a tease or I might just go insane.

And, unfortunately, in a two bedroom apartment, I can’t really run around doing things, in the hopes that I eventually catch up with Sleep and trap it.  That would probably be rude to do, waking my roommate who has a functional relationship with Sleep and actually has things to do beyond engaging in an emotionally abusive relationship with an abstract concept that I’ve personified for my own entertainment.

Some people just don’t have a good relationship with Sleep.

See this list of famous insomniacs, for example.  Maybe, at the end of all of this, I will end up a very tall man with a very tall hat, or I’ll lose an ear.

Either one sounds good.

awkwardfamilyphotos.com

I hate birthdays.  Unequivocally.  Eternally.  I hate birthdays.  I hate my birthday, specifically, but birthdays, in general, have taken on an awkward shade in my life.

I demanded, when I turned thirteen, to end the birthday train.  The phenomenon of having a “sweet sixteen” hadn’t really reached my group of friends or my class year, but, even so, it feels strange to hear my sister describe her friends’ sixteen year celebrations – dance parties thrown in KofC halls.  On my sixteenth birthday, my friend, Kathleen, and I ate Chinese food with my family and then I got a peacoat as a present.  It was a spectacular present and a spectacularly low-key festival for a day I would prefer ignored entirely.

(My mother does not feel similarly.  My father does, however. He called me a year or two ago and said, “Your birthday is in January, right?”  I responded in the affirmative.  ”Near the middle of the month?” Sort of, yes.  ”Oh, okay.  So your mother has the one at the beginning?”  Correct, father.  Correct.)

But, it is not only my birthday that I struggle with, but rather the concept of birthdays in general.  It took me years to remember my own father’s birthday and I still screw up my cousin’s – consistently calling her on the day after her cumpleaños has occurred.  I am always playing birthday tunes in the note of belated.

And, sometimes, oftentimes, not playing them at all.  My best friends have had their birthdays go unnoticed by me year after year.  I send presents, sometimes, as recompense for my complete inability to remember the day when they began to grace this earth – but the presents are always months gone.  They aren’t Monday morning quarterbacking so much as 1912 quarterbacking, if that makes any sense.

And Facebook has just added to my general confusion and malaise.  I hate birthday announcements on Facebook.  I hate when people I haven’t talked to since third grade write on my wall to say, “Happy birthday.”  What am I supposed to say to you?  Facebook birthdays burden me more so than regular birthdays.  It is obligatory to wish someone a happy birthday and Facebook extends that obligation to everyone and suddenly you (if you are like me) feel the need to personally thank every Tom, Dick, Harry, and person you don’t even remember for their gracious acknowledgement of your ejection from your mother’s womb.

I make it a point to not wish people a happy birthday on Facebook if I think, in any way, it will contribute to the stress of their existence.  I really only wish Facebook birthday wishes to people who I feel awkward around in real life, people who I like, but don’t know very well.  I want them to know that I like them and, as a result, I acknowledge their birthday.  It is the most tenuous of tenuous connections.

Facebook birthdays, regular birthdays, and, especially, my birthday stress me out.  No day should be about one person. Ugh.

I will never be able understand the person who puts others “on notice” for their birthday.

My birthday is in 6 days!

My birthday is in 5 days!

… 4 days!

.. 3 days!

Why? Why are you telling me this? Why do I care? Why do you care? I don’t understand.  I can’t stand a party wherein everyone is looking at me just because I happened to pop into the world that day so many years ago.  I also don’t like parties about graduation or any achievement.  But that’s the point, right? Being born isn’t really an achievement – at least, not for you.  You did squat.

On our birthdays, we should spend time celebrating modern medicine or the ability of our mothers to see a nine month project through.  Or something.  Certainly we shouldn’t be celebrating ourselves.  No one will blame a stillborn baby for its own death.  So why congratulate me for being live upon leaving the vaginal canal?  I had absolutely nothing to do with the chain of events that led to me being born.  I should really thank good breeding stock and good prenatal care.

Happy modern science.  Happy mother.   Happy father.  Happy conjoining of genetic matter in a correct way in order to produce a child.

As I get older, birthdays just get more and more dismal.  Not because I’m getting older – I look forward to thirty with an enthusiasm that stops many in their tracks.  I enjoyed birthdays as a child because I got gifts for which I did not consider the financial value.  I got things that seemed oh-so-important at the time – Malibu Barbie.  Now I don’t want Malibu Barbie so much as a rent check.  But I don’t even want that for the guilt it would produce.  I don’t want anything – not even a pitcher of booze in my gullet.

All in all, I am a birthday downer.  A Debbie Downer, specifically attuned to birthdays.

Happy… something, Facebook friends.

I had to stop for a couple of reasons. 1) Everyone is dumb.

And, more importantly, 2) There are no good lady characters.

Scoff all you want at that second requirement, but… I need it.  I am a lady and I would like to see quality TV ladies.  There are ladies in life and so, too, should there be ladies on my TV screen.  Granted, I enjoy shows without ladies, but… what’s up with that? Ladies make up a large portion of the real world population, but, for whatever reason (and by “whatever reason” I mean that I totally know the reason), ladies don’t show up on my TV screen.  And, when they do, they can sometimes be a mess.

To wit, Dexter engaged in a whole host of lady stereotypes.  There was the career woman who couldn’t handle both a job and a personal life and became erratic at work.  There was the careerist bitch who didn’t choose between a job and a personal life – she only went with job, eschewing all personal interactions.  There was a hot, but dimwitted young thing infantilized by all around her, unable to get ahead.  There was wide-eyed, doe-like sweet, scattershot mother in need of rescuing.  At one point a controlling matriarch showed up.  And then… the death knell for this viewer: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Danger Edition.

I know women and those women on Dexter aren’t real women.  They are TV woman stereotypes that screen writers like to plug in and use and then discard.  Done.  Woman box: checked.

So, let’s celebrate the TV ladies who I feel are most like real ladies, the TV ladies I enjoy the best.

So let’s count ‘em up – NBC, ABC, and CBS… I’m looking at you.

Let’s start with CBS and Robin Scherbatsky and Lily Aldrin of How I Met Your Mother.

How I Met Your Mother is the story of a guy named Ted Mosby who is telling his children, in the future, how he met their mother.  But the show is really about his friends – Barney, Robin, and Marshall and Lily – because no one cares about Ted for he is quasi-insufferable.

Lily is a kindergarten teacher and is married to Marshall.  Robin is a single lady living with her ex-boyfriend and good friend, Ted, and anchors an early morning news show on Metro News 1.

They are normal ladies doing regular things.  Sure, Lily is a little manipulative, but the same kind of manipulative I’ve seen in friends (aka lovingly manipulative).  And Robin is a little closed off from her emotions, but she grows.  That’s the point – they grow! And they have issues to which I can relate! They give me hope for TV ladies.

Now, let’s hop over to ABC.  One of my favorite characters on that network is not a woman, but a girl: Sue Heck of The Middle.

The Middle is a Patricia Heaton-helmed rip-off of Malcolm in the Middle set in Indiana.  However, despite that glaring fault, I find it to be a heart-warming and generally genial show.  Nothing super fantastic, but not awful either – regular sitcom fare.  So, I watch it. Plus, I love Sue Heck.

Sue Heck (played by Eden Sher) is a nerd in every sense of the word.  She fails at everything she does and her mother suggests, at one point, that she join the church youth group because “there are no try-outs for Jesus.” She is awkward and gawky and trying desperately to become the cool, sophisticated, fashion-forward lady she feels like she is on the inside.  Eden, who plays her, is 17, but Sue, the character, is 13 and she, more than any character on TV, is a thirteen I could relate to.  I wasn’t so desperately out-of-synch with the world, as Sue is, but I did have that anxious neurosis, not-sure-how-to-be-a-teen thing that Sue embodies. This is probably clearest in the episode “Valentine’s Day” wherein Sue and her friend attend their first boy-girl party, but neither one is quite prepared for it.

I can’t find a clip of that, unfortunately, but here’s another quality Sue Heck moment:

The easy NBC answer would be Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon.  But screw that.  I’m putting my money on Erin Hannon of The Office.

Erin Hannon, introduced in the fifth season, is the office’s new receptionist.  Bright-eyed and earnest, Erin takes her job seriously and enjoys the bizarre and (frankly) annoying office environment in which she works.  She is, in many ways, the female Andy.  Which is a problem, for my list, but it is also a problem with that show in general.  The Office feels a need to duplicate its main characters for whatever reason – Pam and Jim, Dwight and Angela, Michael Scott and Holly.  No one can ever be romantic with someone who isn’t them.  It’s strange.

But as terrible and strange as that is, I really enjoy Erin.  She’s up for anything, she’s earnest, and she’s just living life to the fullest.  She’s sweet, goofy, and nice, but not obnoxiously so.

Here’s Erin and some Subtle Sexuality for you:

So, that’s it for now.  My favorite big three network ladies.  Who are yours? How do you feel about the quality of female characters currently airing on our TV screens? Any TV shows you feel let down by, in terms of female characters? Any by which you are pleasantly surprised?

1. I start almost every entry with “so” – a problem.

2. I made tomato sauce the other day and bread today.  It is as if I am a whole other person.

3. My friend Kendra sent me this really sweet website the other day, Art of the Title.  The whole website is dedicated to title sequences.

It is really nifty, and it got me thinking.

Some title sequences are wonderful and really reflect their program (Veronica Mars, Alias spring to mind) and other TV shows – wonderful, fabulous TV shows have really terrible titles.  Titles they don’t deserve.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Buffy, which ran from 1997 to 2003, is considered one of the best TV shows of all time by a huge chunk of our generation.  It is the kind of show that defines the idea of a “cult classic” (emphasis on the world “cult”).  As such, I think it deserves a much better title sequence.

The show is about a teenage girl trying to survive high school and any oncoming demonic invasions.  The show is an epic, if it were to have a genre.

And the theme? The theme is a hokey montage plod fit for Charmed or some other generic ’90s TV show.  I will admit, Buffy looks pretty badass in that last frame there, but I still think Buffy could have raised the bar a bit with their opening credits.

Friends:

By the time Friends finally succumbed to its slow death, there was nothing I hated more in the world.  But let’s think back to a time when Friends just went on the air, a time when we had a higher tolerance for obnoxious laughtracks.

Remember? Remember then? Friends was a pretty good show, admit it.

But then it became terrible, a parody of itself.  And I think that we can look to the opening credits as a sign of what was to come.  The title sequence is a bizarre mishmash of random shit – Couch! Tiffany-esque lamp! Fountain! Umbrellas! Funny hat!  The song is fine for the most part, representing the breezy, cheesy sweetness that Friends held at its core.  But the whole fountain/umbrella bullshit? Jesus Christ, it is as if the people who made the theme had never watched the show and just went with the buzzword of “zany.”  And, let me tell you, zany is generally a word to avoid.

Weeds:

Weeds and I have a really complicated relationship.  Firstly, I think that it is a terrible program.  But, secondly, I can’t stop watching it.

And, so too, I feel about the theme song.  I like it, but I also hate it.  I listen to it when I watch Weeds – I never skip it – but it kind of makes me want to die.  Just a little.

I’m not sure if Weeds deserves better, so to speak, but I don’t think I’ll be too disappointed if I get further into the seasons and find out that they dumped the ticky-tacky song.

Or maybe I’ll be totally upset.  It is so hard to tell. Oh Weeds, our relationship is so mired in upset and complications.

CSI: Miami:

Let’s bow our heads and take a moment to worship at the altar of the best one-two punch on television.

1. The theme song

2. The quip