Boston Globe: For female stars, roles need more depth

[YoungDemCA]

"In Praise of Difficult Women" by Matthew Gilbert:

The people who make these shows need to take another step forward and recognize that women can be as convoluted and morally challenging as men. Just as there was the recent book “Difficult Men,” about complicated cable protagonists from Tony Soprano to Don Draper, there ought to be enough material for “Difficult Women.” There is no good reason to keep the women on TV shallow, unthreatening, romance-based, or eager to be liked by viewers. And their arcs do not always need to pivot on the timeworn and hackneyed question of whether or not they can have it all: a job, a spouse, and children.

Almost all of the new female-driven shows utterly fail to make their leads interesting and textured, even while these women hold powerful jobs involving the justice system and world affairs. To wit, “Madam Secretary” on CBS, which follows Leoni’s former CIA analyst as she gets pulled into becoming secretary of state by her old friend, the president. That’s a great setup for a show, particularly with the potential for Hillary Clinton compare-and-contrasts. But Leoni’s Elizabeth McCord is just this side of a saint, which makes her hard to bear after a short while. She is always right, she is always compassionate. The show was written for relatively intelligent viewers, but the character seems about three decades out of sync with our culture, which is more open to gray areas than it once was.

Behind the scenes of TV shows, the industry is seriously imbalanced; according to the Center for Women in Television and Film, women created only 20 percent of all shows. Surely that accounts for some of the problem. But “Madam Secretary” was created by Barbara Hall, whose credits include “Joan of Arcadia.” She has given us an empowered woman who stops a few too many feet short of being a real-seeming person.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2014/09/20/praise-difficult-women/55hOjVKPwf3QHwrQvaQf6L/story.html