It was probably the best night ever.

However, we understood that this activity was pretty embarrassing so we decided not to let other people know what we had spent the better part of 5 hours doing. Until one day, we did let it slip, and the person we told exclaimed that they wanted in next time. The more people the told, the more people wanted to partake. It looked like we were on to something.

As of today, sadly, Allie lives in Calgary and I live in Vancouver. But upon reminiscing about that night via text message today, we decided to redo our celebrity bracket this evening over Facebook. So if you’re wondering what I have spent the last 2.5 hours doing, that is the answer.

We weren’t amateurs this time, though. Last time we accidentally weeded out some of our favourites in the first round by putting them up against some heavy competition. Not this year. No way. This year we compiled a list of 146 celebrities, and then we seeded them into 5 categories. The way we described each ranking wasn’t really PG, so imagine it on a spectrum of 5 (HELL YES) to 1 (FUCK NO). Then, as one does in tournaments, we put the top-seeded celebrities against the lowest-seeded celebrities.

Our first round was, needless to say, pretty easy. Since we both have jobs and we need to sleep for those jobs, we decided to put off the second round until later. But I thought other people should got involved in this process, so I am also making this a public event. July Madness. Or, Almost August Madness. Or “Superficial Summer Madness.”

I don’t want to crowd up this website with every single round (that would be insane, since there were 73 pairings in the first round alone). I have created a Tumblr account for this very purpose:

Have fun.

There’s an article floating around, called “101 Books to Read This Summer Instead of 50 Shades of Grey”, which is unfortunate. How about we read Shades, and then get to some of the other ones, hmm? This book is not the scourge of the earth, and shouldn’t be avoided as a waste of time. It is not in the same class as Twilight and The Da Vinci Code, though it is as poorly written, with an admittedly weaker plot. But that’s not why people read it. It’s popular because there’s a lot of sex. Not only sex, but sex that is bizarrely well written. As much as I may enjoy Les Miserables, I’m certain I’ll enjoy a book with naked people every ten pages or so. So let’s not kid ourselves. Go read the book and enjoy getting turned on.

Writing sex scenes is (ahem) hard. If you can tell me a word in the English language that has to do with sexual anatomy, and is neither crude nor overly scientific, I will award you ten points. Penis. Cock. Vagina. Pussy. Breast. Boob. Bum. Ass. Posterior. Giggle.

(As a side note, the one exception is the word thigh. This is the sexiest word in our language. Not only because it conjures up a wonderfully delectable image of flesh, but because the very word trails off like a finger grazing over skin.)

It’s a bold thing, reading Fifty Shades in public, because there is about a 30% chance that whomever is reading it is turned on (sex is like clockword in that thing, and it goes on for several pages at a time). The characters are two-dimensional, the plot is clearly a rouse to keep the reader interested while Anastasia and Christian physically recover from whatever they’d just done, and the writing is otherwise unimaginative and repetitive. The story is not why the person next to you on the plane is reading it. The prose is not why your mom is reading it on her kindle.

E.L. James deserves credit for this. She avoids the trappings of typical writers dealing with sex scenes. Considering the dozens of times they go at it, I have no clear image of how well endowed Christian and Anastasia are. The use of euphemisms is thankfully avoided. There is no billowing of curtains in the wind. The concentration remains on the truly interesting part of sexual encounters: foreplay. The build-ups are varied and exciting, and they’re the reason that readers keep turning the page. They’re what makes the book worth reading. It’s definitely not because of Anastasia’s extraordinarily typical friendship with Jose, the ridiculous trajectory of her career, or the offensively poor attempts at conflict.

If every couple communicated as often and as thoroughly as them, well, every couple would be having better sex, regardless of their kink.Beyond the actual physical descriptions, James deserves a tip of the hat for how she deals with the Dominant-submissive relationship. There is a legitimate concern in glorifying overbearing, jealous males, like Twilight’s Edward. In that sense, Fifty Shades deserves scrutiny. But unlike Twilight, I would argue that the relationship between Christian and Anastasia is surprisingly healthy. Any intimate relationship is essentially an agreed upon contract about what is and is not acceptable, and what is expected from one another. This is manifest when Christian literally offers her a contract, one with great flexibility in the wording and an immediate “out” clause if she is ever uncomfortable. The entire trilogy is about Anastasia trying to understand Christian’s contract, while exploring her own emotions and sexuality. They are constantly renegotiating terms. Theirs is a healthy process. If every couple communicated as often and as thoroughly as them, well, every couple would be having better sex, regardless of their kink. Where Twilight is a story about a teenager’s unhealthy attempts to fuck a vampire (it has to wait until marriage, and then of course she gets pregnant), Fifty Shades gets it over with in a hurry, and spends of the rest of the trilogy exploring where a couple can sexually meet in the middle. All this despite the shitty writing.

This is not a book that would have been popular five years ago. I read Fifty Shades in the comfort and secrecy of my kindle, and I suspect most people have as well. This is a book that is popular because there is something in the Dominant-submissive relationship that turns people on, and if that’s make people have better sex, then right on. It is not a must-read, and it won’t be added to the cannon any time soon, but let’s lay off the snooty judgments and pretend like it’s detrimental to even read the thing. Either read a sexy book or don’t. Your call.

Episode two… made me want to throw things. Break things. All the things. In case you had forgotten that Sorkin is an ass when it comes to women, he spent a solid hour reminding you, making us watch as a woman who has over twenty years of journalistic experience and has spent the last three years BEING SHOT AT, completely lose her shit over an email mishap. I will concede that yes, those kind of office mistakes happen. However, as a journalist, as someone who lives and dies by devices like cell phones and technology like email, and seeing as they had just discussed the whole “emailing to the whole staff, vs. not the whole staff” thing… it was clear and obvious what was going to happen and I expected better. And okay, sure, she makes the mistake. But then she goes batshit crazy and starts breaking people’s phones. Right. Totally the qualities a war correspondent would have, let alone a sane person of high professional standing (or any respectable standing, really) working any decent-paying job.

Snap to the other female lead: Maggie hates condescension, unless it’s coming from Jim. Then it’s charming. And she fucks up at work, and it has to be, obviously, because she cannot for the life of her keep her personal affairs separated from her professional business.

He excels at writing careers that you want to have and creating characters who are sometimes pricks, and sometimes wrong, but whose professional flaws are really only that they care too much and work too hard.Which brings us to my issues with The Newsroom in general, and episode four in particular. It is all about the relationships. Relationships, which by the way, I don’t really buy. Sorkin is really great at making work seem awesome; he excels at writing careers that you want to have and creating characters who are sometimes pricks, and sometimes wrong, but whose professional flaws are really only that they care too much and work too hard. I don’t know if it’s unfair to compare everything he does to The West Wing, but I’m going to. The relationships were second and the job came first. Always. Leo ended his marriage for this very reason.

That doesn’t exist here. He keeps trying to impress on us how important it is to do good news, how seriously these people take their jobs and how much they care… and yet, his message always falls flat as they are so clearly willing to jeopardize their hard-earned careers in favor of making sure their unattainable other knows that they are still alive and would they please just notice them, please, please, please. 50 minutes of episode four was dedicated to Will’s dating life and Maggie and Jim’s will-they-won’t-they admit their feelings, which really did nothing but make me like Don more. The final ten minutes came alive and covered the shooting of Gabriel Giffords. So let’s take this one at a time, leaving the best for last.

First off, Will’s dating. The whole, Will-parading-women-in-front-of-Mackenzie thing has been building for two episodes now, and in this episode we are shown there is not a single woman outside of the ACN newsroom who is intelligent, and not one of them can measure up to Mackenzie. Will’s an ass, but we’ve come to expect that, it’s who he is, and that’s fine. But despite the fact that I agreed with a lot of the Real Housewives commentary, it was still annoying, preachy, and sanctimonious… and played out like it came directly from Sorkin’s mouth, not Will’s. I get that buddy wants some, and wants some to flaunt in Mackenzie’s face, but I find it a little difficult to swallow that someone as smart, as accomplished, and as condescending as Will would deign to spend this much time with women he clearly feels are inferior to himself, even if he is on a “civilizing” mission (which, barf). We are told Will is a prick; we are shown Will is a prick – done.

So what of Mackenzie then? From the pilot, the show set her up as a super star. She’s smart, she’s moral, and she wants to “speak truth to stupid”. The only problem with that is, as far as I can tell, Mackenzie is one of the stupidest characters on the show so far. I can’t stand her. Every episode she is more emotional, more incompetent, and just more all over the place than the last. We know she cheated on Will, so she was in the wrong in that relationship, but why, why, why, must she always be in the wrong at work? Episode two was a disaster. Mackenzie was intolerable. And since then she has come off as a flighty wreck, who can’t run her own meetings with authority and who nearly cries in her control room a large percentage of the time.

The big payoff at the end of episode four, which I’ll discuss in a bit, was tainted by the fact that Mackenzie can’t ride the news high that everyone else is on as they do the right thing and score, instead she gets weepy. No one in Will’s romantic life is suitable, because apparently, according to Sorkin, women are morons, turned on by guns pointed at their heads (which ugh, we won’t even discuss). Mackenzie is the one he can’t get over, but I can’t see WHY. She is just as infuriating as the “parade of Netflix with digitally-altered breasts” that Will brings around – even more so, because she’s supposed to be the smart one.

Maggie is Maggie. Nervous, emotional wreck Maggie, who can only be comforted by Jim, with his newsroom wisdom. Jim, who she will scream at in episode four because she cannot keep her feelings in check, not even long enough to notice that she shouldn’t be screaming at Jim, she should be screaming at her roommate. Maggie is annoying, her office romance is just as ridiculous as the others, but she at least gets some professional wins now and then.

But the big winner this episode was Don. He played everybody and got to deliver the gem of the show: “she’s a person. A doctor declares her dead, not a network.” And here’s where it gets good again, and why I’m still watching, despite the long-ass rant I just went on about everything that is wrong with this show. Because when they do the news, they DO the news, just like they said they were going to. They do actually kick ass at it a lot of the time. Watching Will wipe the floor with the Tea Party was fun. Watching them do the right thing by Gabrielle Giffords was touching, and brought back everything you felt when that event actually went down.

I was really worried about Sorkin taking on real-life news stories. And I still am. And sometimes I wonder if it isn’t kind of a big middle finger to everyone who works in the industry who covered the stories in real time. But damn, when they get it right, they get it right. I don’t want to watch Maggie turn herself inside out and speak in high-pitch sentences because she is in denial about her love for Jim. I don’t want to see Mackenzie show her boyfriend off to Will, and for some inconceivable reason apologize for it later, when he’s been showing off his bevy of girls for weeks. I want to see leads get chased down and the tough calls get made at the right time. I want to see Don be a newsman and earn an apology from Will. That’s what I want. Why can’t I get it all the time?

Is it too soon for a reboot? Of course. And that’s what accounts for the flaws of The Amazing Spider-Man: at several points, the plot felt too familiar. By all other accounts, I argue that it is a better film: better performances, a better script, better direction. I only wish that it had come first. There were things about the original trilogy that I didn’t even realize were poorly done until I saw what it looked like to actually get them right.

Andrew’s performance throughout the film is the perfect combination of snarky and funny and sometimes, heartbreakingly sad.Andrew Garfield gets it all right. He’s incredible as Peter Parker. In the interviews leading up to this film, he has said countless times that he worshipped and identified with Spider-Man from a young age, and in seeing this film, I believe him. He fully gets it. The best parts of the film are watching Peter get used to his new powers. Unlike the Sam Raimi films, this process is demonstrated to be as awkward as it should be – this is a teenaged kid who has no idea what to do with these sudden changes, and it takes time to navigate them. Andrew’s performance throughout the film is the perfect combination of snarky and funny and sometimes, heartbreakingly sad. The scenes that lead up to and follow the death of his Uncle Ben are poignant and moving and yes, I choked up several times in the theatre.

What really makes The Amazing Spider-Man work is his chemistry with every character in the film. The obvious example is Emma Stone – they’re so cute and charming on screen I want to punch myself in the face. I love that through all the awkwardness of, you know, getting bitten by a radioactive spider and developing strange spider superpowers, Peter still deals with the awkwardness of liking a girl, asking her out, and meeting her parents. Beyond Emma, though, he has an incredible rapport with Martin Sheen, Sally Fields, and Rhys Ifans. Particularly Martin Sheen. His performance as Uncle Ben is sadly short-lived, but it’s so damn good that you dread his death from the moment he delivers his first line.

The first half of the movie – much of which covered familiar territory – was the strongest, and somehow felt like fresh material. Watching Peter Parker slowly become Spider-Man is what makes this film worth watching. There is a scene, right after Peter has successfully asked Gwen out for the first time, where he goes to a skateboarding park and just has a blast with his new powers. Coldplay’s “Til Kingdom Come” is playing in the background, and it is perfection. Marc Webb somehow managed to make this movie a balance between an epic superhero flick, and a little indie film about a hipster’s high school experiences. As Webb said in an interview, Spider-Man is arguable one of the most cinematic superheroes: his wall-climbing and web-slinging are pretty much made for the big screen. The camera-work on those scenes is impressive and exciting, and absolutely worth seeing in 3D.

It’s in the last act that the film becomes stale. As much as I love Rhys Ifans, the Lizard as a villain does not really do it for me. To be honest, none of the Spider-Man villains ever seem to do it for me. To bring this franchise up to par with the other superhero movies out there, they are going to need to find more interesting antagonists. It’s difficult to compete with the Batman villains, which are always incredible, and more recent performances like Tom Hiddleston’s Loki in The Avengers. That being said, I do appreciate that The Amazing Spider-Man makes its villains sympathetic, including both Dr. Connors and Flash. I don’t think audiences are willing to settle for one-dimensional evil anymore.

There are some incredibly cheesy and unnecessary moments that had me rolling my eyes in the film. The first includes an awkward and horribly placed line in which Spider-Man says something like “Someone’s been a bad lizard” that made people laugh out loud in the theatre. The second is a dramatic and lengthy scene involving cranes and some brave construction workers that really didn’t need to be in the film at all. I understand that cheesiness has to be built in to a movie about a guy who swings around in blue and red spandex, but there is a time and place for it.

The film has, thank goodness, had a successful opening weekend. I hope it’s seen as enough of a success that they continue this retelling. The world needs to see more of Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker.

At 10:25 we show up – and yes, I’m aware it’s too late to show up to a popular movie – and we see the tail end of a pre-show lineup filing through the ticket-ripping station. Apparently Magic Mike is worthy of the same treatment as this summer’s superhero flicks. By the time we get in, we are forced to sit quite literally in the first row. In any other situation I would find this highly stressful, but for a movie about male strippers I figure up-close and personal is where the audience belongs. Earlier this week, Lainey Gossip described the audience as “ripe”. It was a horrifying and disgusting term, and she used it twice. Now I understand.

I began to wonder if this is how I would die – trampled by a mob of angry, “ripe” women. It was Lord of the Flies in there.Within two minutes of the opening credits, Channing Tatum shows his ass and the theatre explodes with estrogen. I’m pretty sure that if he had shown his peen, someone would have set the place on fire. About twenty minutes into the movie we realize there is a group of drunk and obnoxious girls making loud commentary. An even more obnoxious (middle-aged?) couple start yelling profanities at them in the middle of the movie, thus making themselves the most irritating people in the room. By the last five minutes, a full-out brawl almost broke out in the theatre. I began to wonder if this is how I would die – trampled by a mob of angry, “ripe” women. It was Lord of the Flies in there.

These live-action incidents were a little distracting so at times it was difficult to concentrate on the movie. It was a pretty good flick, but – and this is going to sound absurd – I feel like there may have been a little too much stripping. Like I’m not sure we needed 5 or 6 scenes devoted specifically to the strip shows, and I’m not sure that each of these scenes needed to be five to six minutes long. That being said, all of the strippers are tremendously attractive, so there is no shortage of eye-candy. They even throw in a lot of good-looking topless women, maybe throwing a bone to the few straight men in the audience who were dragged to the movie by their girlfriends. Matthew McConaughey has never loved a role more in his entire life. He gets to be charming and snide in all of scenes, all while shirtless and wearing a cowboy hat. I’m pretty sure that was at the very top of his bucket list. Alex Pettyfer is surprisingly good and seriously unlikeable. Considering how good-looking he is in real life, the extent to which he is a fucking brat in this film makes him pretty unattractive.

The love interest, and Pettyfer’s sister, is played by Cody Horn. Who is this girl? Does anyone know? I just Wikipedia-d her and it really did not give me a better idea. I don’t think I like her, but I can’t tell. I can’t tell if she was scripted to be irritating, or directed to be irritating, or if she really just couldn’t help it. She reminded me a bit of Kristen Stewart in her awkwardness but without the lip-biting charm. She felt entirely unremarkable to me, and yet she seemed to be the driving point for Magic Mike to explore his dreams outside of stripping.

Channing, as always, is a gem as Mike. What is it about this man’s career? The thing is, guys – I think I love him. Not in the pervy way I love the men on my elevator list, but in a deep and meaningful way. I really just want what’s best for him, you know? And what is best for him is undeniably films like Magic Mike. My favourite thing about Channing is that he knows this; he knows his niche, and rather than trying to expand his range of roles, he makes smart decisions about the projects he does choose. 21 Jump Street has been hands down one of my favourite films of this year. I cried in the theatre. It was heralded as a new classic. Magic Mike, as many know, is based on his own experiences as a stripper. He co-produced the project with Steven Soderbergh, the film’s director, who you might know from HIS ACADEMY AWARD. Channing’s running with a pretty good crew at the moment.

Yeah, I would recommend the film, even for Channing’s charm and swagger alone. The stripping scenes are fun, but when they’re not playing it’s a relatively serious movie (as serious as a movie called “Magic Mike” can be) that gives a pretty good glimpse into some elements of the stripper lifestyle. It made me want to read a Channing Tatum biography. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was next on his badass to-do list.

Needless to say, when I found out Sorkin was writing a show about the workings of a newsroom, I literally fist-pumped. It’s his niche, a combination of what he knows best: live television broadcasts and politics. I quickly found the leaked pilot script and read through it, twice. When the first trailer was released, it was sent to me by six or seven friends within an hour. And for the past week, my phone has been inundated with text messages about my thoughts on the scathing reviews.

When I first heard that it was being torn apart by critics, my reaction was terror. Was this going to be another Studio 60 incident? Would it be worse? Studio 60 started off strong, with arguably one of the most seamless pilot episodes I’ve seen for any television show. I had read the pilot script for The Newsroom. It was good. It was great. It was Sorkin. Upon further investigation, it looked like the main criticisms of the show were two-fold: the show was idealistic, and the show was condescending. I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps none of these critics had seen The West Wing. Idealistic and condescending is where Sorkin thrives. I refer you to the final scene of The West Wing’s pilot. It’s so patronizing I want to punch myself in the face.

God, I love it so much.

So I dove into last night’s episode with high expectations. The opening scene is good. The “am-I-hallucinating-my-ex-girlfriend-in-the-crowd” was a little eye-rolly for me, but I could handle it. And when Jeff Daniels rips into the “sorority girl,” it was every bit as epic and condescending as it should have been. Sorkin was born for HBO – his writing style is designed for profanity. But then the show takes its first wrong turn. See, the problem with Sorkin is that sometimes he just forgets to leave the party while it’s still fun. Will McEvoy is a dick and he loses his shit. Awesome. For a couple of minutes he is on an intensely angry tirade, and I genuinely believe that he has no idea what the fuck he is doing. Then suddenly he backtracks and starts talking about America’s potential for greatness. The speech – and therefore Sorkin’s opening scene – went from being pretty damn ballsy to unimpressive incredibly quickly. The opening credits that followed were backed by a score better suited for an after-school special. My confidence wavered.

After the credits, I found comfort in Sorkin’s overwhelming predictability. Here is Will McEvoy, the naturally born (male) leader who can’t remember anyone’s name. No time is wasted before the first walk-and-talk, and the characterization of everyone is amazing right off the bat. He has a talent for distinguishing between personalities without creating caricatures. The cast is perfect. I have been a longtime fan of Jeff Daniels and damn, is it good to see him back in the spotlight. John Gallagher, Jr. is wonderful as Jim Harper, despite the fact that the character is pretty much a clone of Jim Halpert. Dev Patel is wonderful and impossibly good-looking as Neal Sampat, and is supposed to (thankfully) have a larger role in upcoming episodes. And finally, Emily Mortimer and Alison Pill are lovely and talented and charming as the show’s (assumedly) female leads.

That being said, much of the criticism of the show – and of Sorkin’s shows in general – is regarding the depiction of women. Many find it infuriating, and I don’t blame them. The first conversation between two female characters does not pass the Bechdel Test by a landslide. Are we expected to believe that Mackenzie, who is supposed to be a powerful and intelligent executive producer, spends her first minutes at her new workplace asking another female coworker personal questions? Never mind that her second act on the job is an attempt to set up said female coworker with her assistant producer. I’m not sure The Newsroom would have female characters at all, if Sorkin didn’t need them for the inevitable complicated love triangles to come.Herein lies the danger of Aaron Sorkin. In the original pilot script, Mackenzie is described as “a woman in a man’s world [who] makes no attempt to affect toughness—she’s just too confident for that.” At first glance it is a refreshing initial description of a female character on a high-profile TV show. His female characters often come so close to being the strong female leads television needs, and yet at the end of the day, they are still depicted as the focus of, and focused on, men. I’m not sure The Newsroom would have female characters at all, if Sorkin didn’t need them for the inevitable complicated love triangles to come. The Globe & Mail’s recent article about Sorkin sheds light on his “masculinist” approach to writing. When he addresses the journalist as “Internet Girl” in the end, and tells her to read a newspaper sometime, it is a moment that is uncomfortably similar to Will McEvoy’s unwarranted attack on the “sorority girl” at the beginning of the episode.

Yes, sometimes it makes my blood boil. Yes, for this he should be torn apart by critics and journalists. The Globe & Mail is a particularly good read for those of us who need to remove Sorkin from his pedestal. Maybe the widespread attack on his condescending and paternalistic comments to an intelligent journalist will embarrass him and he’ll come down off his high horse.

But I doubt it.

Still, even the negative reviews are written with a strange kind of reverence. Whether or not people enjoyed the episode, they were enthralled by it. That’s what television is supposed to do, isn’t it? I read the pilot script over a year ago, so I knew what the first episode would be about – and yet when the date “April 20, 2010” came on to the screen, I got goosebumps. While the first half of the episode is comparatively weak (though still strong by almost all television standards), the second act is Sorkin at his best. I loved the episode. I will love the next episode. I am excited to be excited about television again.

Okay, here’s the deal. Girls isn’t exactly the kind of show I generally gravitate towards. First off, the title does nothing for me. Secondly, the whole look and feel of the show isn’t particularly appealing in any special way. Images that I have seen suggest nothing special, or anything that the WB wouldn’t run after The Vampire Diaries. But none of these things are breaking points in the grand scheme of things.

Girls is drawing a lot of attention right now, good and bad. For the most part, it’s been critically lauded, but some have been quick to point out the growing pains of the first season – chief among them, pretentious loser, holier (and artier)-than-thou James Franco, spouting off in the Huffington Post. But since I’ve long discounted James Franco’s opinion, and since he began his article criticizing a T.V. show with “I don’t watch much T.V.,” that’s not really an issue for me either.

So here’s the deal with Girls. The show is supposed to fill a void in female-centric programming: a gaping hole has been left by Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, etc., which is basically yawning open with boredom at the unrealistic representation of women and girls on television. Girls is supposed to be realistic, it’s supposed to be raw, and it’s supposed to be young 20-somethings struggling to make in New York City – the city of choice for growing pains.

While the selection in geography might be a little clichéd, it doesn’t make it any less true or relevant. The show is intended to reflect writer/creator/actor (whew) Lena Dunham’s own experiences in N.Y.C. as a young writer. Basically the girls on this show haven’t “made it,” they aren’t running around in Manolos (which there is no way in hell their writer’s pittance at a daily could pay for), they are not trust-find kids whose life problems would be considered “first-world” by every conceivable definition, and they aren’t ridiculously and unbelievably good looking. The girls on Girls are supposed to be just that: regular girls.

And here’s where I’m intrigued. Because I want this show to be good based on that premise alone, and also because I’m curious as to how they are trying to get it there. One thing that might help is the fact the Dunham herself is only 26-years-old. The other thing that I’m curious about is how people react to the show. Right now, there seems to be an overwhelming feeling that everything’s fine, women are equal, there’s no need to wage any sort of battle of the sexes anymore. But really, the only reason that statements like that are true is because the winners have been the same winners all along.

Now I’m not about to whip my bra off and torch it or am I going to start spelling woman with a “y.” But between Twilight and now Fifty Shades of Grey, between Real Housewives of wherever and the Jersey Shore… women in popular media are exhausting in every way possible. I’m not saying there have never been intelligent, complex, and interesting women on T.V. (C.J. Cregg!), but they are few and far between.

Compared to the kind of roles women played in the 40s, 50s, 60s, we’re actually experiencing a regression.
This trend hasn’t gone totally unnoticed. There are rallying cries; one smart documentary – Miss Representation – specifically discusses the lack of positive role models for young women in the media, all while citing disturbing facts about negative self-image (such as: 65 per cent of women in the U.S. have an eating disorder), and showing clips of women in degrading movie roles. Pointing out that even the empowered ones are what the film categorizes as “the fighting fuck-toy” – think Tomb Raider, Colombiana, etc. – it asks us to consider what exactly women have achieved in the past 50 years for our image. Compared to the kind of roles women played in the 40s, 50s, 60s, we’re actually experiencing a regression – my mind always goes to Scarlet O’ Hara, and whether her character would sell with studios today.

What’s most painful about the state of women on T.V. and in movies is not the way they exist, but that they exist because they are what attract people in droves. Shows like Friday Night Lights, which did a fantastic job of portraying girls and women in a realistic way, had to fight tooth-and-nail through low ratings to stay on, despite being critically acclaimed. Compare that with the sky-high ratings of god-awful shows like Real Housewives and the Bachelorette, which showcase the worst-of-the-worst. They present women in the most stereotypically negative ways, competing for affection and bitch-slapping each other in the process.

Aside from presenting an alternative to catfights, another curious thing about Girls is that Judd Apatow is an executive producer. Now I’m not sure how I feel about this point, but without having actually watched the show, it’s difficult to judge. Apatow’s shows are typically boys clubs though, and the women in his shows need to be either tough, or sassy, or a tough-sassy-sexy combination to work it. But despite the fact that Apatow’s women are usually accessories to his main characters, he was also a producer for Bridesmaids, which showed girls can be just as funny and crude as guys, and carry their own comedy all the way to the bank. And now he’s got this show focused around young women, attempting to show them in a real, funny, and raw way.

So there are high hopes and big stakes for Girls. I feel like there’s a bit of a spotlight focused on the show right now, and it’s carrying a lot of expectations. Which is why, without having even seen the show, I’m rooting for it, and I’m prematurely inclined to be forgiving if it trips a little under the weight. And not to get all highbrow, but if it fails to do everything it tries to, it will at the very least have started, or added to I guess, an ongoing discussion about female representation in the media.

So whether you decide that Girls is worth your time and prime space on your PVR is up to you. But bearing in mind what’s on T.V. for female-focused programming right now, and what has been on in the past, I think that at the very least it’s worth your consideration. Whether you’re male or female, if you’re at all invested in the direction that T.V. is heading, Girls is a show on the edge, on the brink, and whether it’s good or bad, which way it tips will matter.