Jen Frankel Blog - The Closer
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Got Season One out on DVD and found out what those watching this Kyra Sedgwick-helmed TNT drama have been saying since its debut. This is good television!
Best moment? An over-eager colleague launches into a CSI-style monologue to explain (to the audience) the details of the procedures he's going to have run on a sample, and Sedgwick's Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson shuts him down with a curt acknowledgement that she knows that.
Made me cheer.
So I get excited, right? Here's a drama (which, incidentally, is the highest-rated ad-paid cable show ever) featuring a person in the lead role who just happens to be a woman.
Yeah, she takes flack for being female in the male-dominated squad room, but she takes more for being a Southerner and for jumping the promotional queue by entering LAPD at an advanced rank.
Her personal issues with men? A subplot, and one that actually makes you see the vulnerability of the hard-as-nails Brenda instead of the standard Ally McBeal hyperactive insecurity.
She even has her own catch phrase, not something squealed at a husband or child, but her delicious, syrupy "THANK you," which carries the underlying meaning, Okay, now fuck off and do your job so I can do mine.
Imitation is the sincerest easiest way out
So I think, good! Thank God, an intelligent show that actually includes a three dimensional female character. Two episodes in and I was in love with Brenda – best female character ever in a drama, I figured, especially because you don't just get tantalizing glimpses of her. You see her, warts and all, in every possible situation.
She has those emotional beats apparently otherwise reserved for men who, despite society's insistence that males are less emotional and less communicative, get all the long, soulful looks and camera-hungry emotional reactions both in film and TV.
The ratings prove we're just as hungry for this kind of and depth of drama, and that, contrary to Hollywood's long-standing mantra, we will watch a woman in a leading role. . . even if she's not Ally McBeal. Maybe especially.
But does television learn from The Closer? No, they copy it.
Now TNT has a second hour of cop drama ready to follow Kyra, Saving Grace. It features a female cop (like Sedgwick) who's tough-as-nails (like Sedgwick) who solves crimes (like Sedgwick) in a male-dominated world (like Sedgwick) and features experienced film actress Holly Hunter who, like Sedgwick, is making the transition to the small screen.
I know it also features Hunter's guardian angel, but why take a concept and put a twist on it when you could take an underlying and far more basic point (that people will in fact buy a three dimensional female character as the lead in a series) and reinvent the wheel, instead of just manufacturing one in a different colour?
Note to TNT – Break new ground
I want more reasonable female characters on TV. I don't want them NOT to do a Holly Hunter series. But for God's sake, you can only break the same ground once. Use the same shovel on a different patch of ground, and maybe we'll end up cultivating soil for new ideas to grow, instead of digging a frickin' big hole.
We should have come a long way from the woman-as-sidekick, woman-as-helpmeet, woman-as-manproxy days. Not that I would wish away Gillian Anderson's wonderful Dana Scully or the testosterone-boosted Tia Carrere on Relic Hunter.
But I think we, as an audience, have grown up since then. It's in the ratings.
I'm ready for some women on TV! How about you?
And – big P.S. - watch The Closer.
THANK you.
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