Notes on Pop Culture: Media Expectations of Women, 'In Treatment' & Deeply Written TV Characters Wreck My Enjoyment of Films

Image credit: CBS

Media Expectations of Women

Did you hear about the recent controversy involving two twentysomething Glee actresses posing provocatively for GQ while wearing their panties and sucking on lollipops? Or about a Marie Claire writer’s hateful attack on CBS’ Mike & Molly in which the writer said she doesn’t want to watch overweight people walk across the room never mind kiss one another on a primetime television sitcom. Or did you happen to read the New York Times’ hard-hitting analysis of female politicians’ choice of attire?

My pop culture and politics column this week took on all three of those issues and concluded that, collectively, they send a pretty lousy message: That young female celebrities have to debase themselves sexually in order to get media attention and then suffer the intense criticism for doing so (no such requirement for young male celebs), that having overweight men in leading roles on TV shows doesn’t prompt ugly attacks though a leading overweight woman does, and that no matter how a female politician dresses she’s going to be attacked by fashion writers as either dressing too “mannishly” or too sexy in “rump-hugging” skirts. It’s a fairly grumpy piece, if I do say so myself.

Season 3 - Week 2 Preview

In Treatment

HBO’s In Treatment . . . we’re now in week two, eight sessions into Paul Weston’s third season. And I’m just as enthralled as I was in the first.

Of the new patients, I’m most intrigued by Frances, played by Debra Winger, and by Paul himself facing off against his new therapist Adele as he’s increasingly fearful that he has Parkinson’s, like his father.

This is becoming my favorite indulgence of the week, watching Paul and his patients. I find that I do absolutely no multi-tasking (no BlackBerry, no laptop, etc.) while this is on because I want to catch every glance and gesture.

Deeply Written TV Characters Wreck My Enjoyment of Films

After reading a Boston Globe article published the weekend Mad Men’s season finale aired, I realized the truth in what the writer, Matthew Gilbert, was saying: All of these complicated, anti-hero characters on cable dramas -- Don Draper from Mad Men, Tommy Gavin from Rescue Me, Paul from In Treatment, Tony Soprano from The Sopranos, Walter White from Breaking Bad, etc. -- have been so nuanced and deep that movie characters, by comparison, seem pretty shallow. I then proceeded to wonder how much better, say, The Town, would’ve been had it been a cable TV drama (instead of a film) on my recent CliqueClack TV post. And I was really entertained by The Town.

Image credit: CBS.

'In Treatment:' Incredibly Insightful, Incredibly Depressing

I dedicated my Pop Culture & Politics column this week to In Treatment and how, at the root of all the HBO show's patients' problems seems to be flawed parenting, which, as the parent of three young kids, is frightening.

But the drama -- which gives you half-hour glimpses into the therapy sessions of five patients (including the therapist, Paul Weston, himself) -- does more than make me hope that my flawed child-rearing idiosyncrasies aren't going to send my kids to a therapists' sofa in a decade or two. It makes you assess and think about your own life and wonder, "Am I doing THAT? Do I respond to situations like this patient?"

There's a college-aged cancer patient who won't take care of herself and won't tell her family because she doesn't want to burden them, a disgraced CEO with panic attacks and childhood guilt, a couple that's divorcing that has a suffering son who thinks he's responsible for the family's break-up and a fortysomething attorney who's angry that she never got married and had children.

Then there's the therapist, played by the immensely talented, Emmy winning Gabriel Byrne, who lives a lonely life in Brooklyn, while his children and his ex-wife live in Maryland. His oftentimes combative sessions with his therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest) are, by far, the ones to which I look forward the most each week.

While HBO may have cornered the market on death with its provocative Six Feet Under, and put its stamp on the life of thirtysomething single gals in NYC with Sex and the City, I think the network can now claim the therapy arena as well. In Treatment makes the therapy sessions on other shows look positively amateurish by comparison.

Image credit: HBO.