The new
class of TV heroines experiencing "comebacks" provide dueling, but
unrealistic fantasies, about what it means to be a woman of a certain age.

 

For years
now, women at the top of the thespian game who have reached a certain
age–maybe 40–have been landing plum roles on TV dramas as cops, judges,
crime-solvers and matriarchs of troubled families, or as guest stars providing
dramatic edge or comic relief. It’s fascinating to see the way TV as a medium
has embraced some of the women that Hollywood has abandoned to the "mom
role" track.

This
season, instead of "Desperate Housewives," TV has brought us a slew
of desperate single or career women having mid-life crises. Last
week, Elisabeth Garber-Paul addressed the problems with "Accidentally on Purpose,"
the new show about the single woman who decides to have a baby with her younger
one-night-stand, afraid that it’s her last chance.

But that
show’s rather desperate heroine is in good company. First, and most
reprehensible of her cohorts is Jules of "Cougar Town," played by
"Friends" alumna Courtney Cox. Jules is a middle-aged mom
post-divorce trying to relive the 20s she never had because she was too busy
raising her son and being married to his slacker dad. The show puts Jules in a
variety of frenetic, humiliating situations as she tries to reclaim her youth.
Each episode, Jules is torn between her best friend who, presumably, is
"normal" for her age, and wants to do things like stay home and eat,
and her 20-something colleague who enjoys doing multiple shots and picking up
guys. Clearly, the stereotypes extend far beyond the show’s irritating title.
But what’s most upsetting about "Cougar Town" is that it appears to
posit itself as empowering and/or sympathetic to its character’s plight. This
is demonstrated by the writers giving Cox, so far, exactly one speechy moment
per episode where she rails about the double standard: "older" men on
the prowl are attractive, their female counterparts are desperate, older men
are catches, while women over 40 are punchlines.

The
problem, of course, is that Cox’s character herself is a punchline–she pulls a
muscle demonstrating a sex position! She can’t handle her liquor! She causes
her poor son endless humiliation. We are meant to both feel sorry for Jules for
being treated like a desperate wacko, and then laugh at her acting like one.

And
unfortunately the best comedic moments on the show (although they’re far from
brilliant) come from her slacker ex-husband who drives a golf cart around town
and drops in to see his ex-wife because he’s too lazy to make his own coffee.
It goes back to the slacker-striver dynamic that marks so many
romantic comedies today. She makes us laugh at her because she’s so tightly
wound, we laugh with him because he’s hanging so incredibly loose.

Watching
"Cougar Town" made me think about how much more comedic potential
there would be in a middle-aged female protagonist who entered a slacker phase,
rather than trying to run around trying, and failing, to exert sexual power. As
Judith Warner put it in her excellent column for the New York Times, the
cougar myth is not a female fantasy, but a male one. The reason mostly-male
execs are falling for the Cougar archetype: 

Maybe
that’s because she’s such a twit: so narcissistic, so superficial, so stunted
emotionally, so dependent upon deriving her value from her desirability — her
currency — in men’s eyes. Maybe it’s because, despite her ostensible sexual
power (derived, you’ll recall, uniquely from a young man’s acceptance of her),
she’s really so very unthreatening. So very pitiful.

In other
words, this "empowered" woman on the prowl with teeth
bared is, in fact, another stereotype wrapped in a very thin film of
pseudo-feminist garb, a Pussycat Doll for the post-40 set.

On the less
depressing end of the spectrum is ‘"The Good Wife," another show with a
woman trying to make a new start, mid-mom years. This show, a vehicle for
talented vet Julianna Marguiles, isn’t even close to explicitly feminist, nor
does it reflect women’s everyday lives, but by spinning a different sort of
comeback tale–that of a woman coming back into the workforce– it’s less
egregiously offensive, and it may even end up being fun.

"The
Good Wife" has an unbeatable and intriguing premise: what happens to the
philandering politician’s "stand by your man" wife after the scandal
has died down? In this case the husband, a former Attorney General is in prison
awaiting corruption charges, and his wife Alicia has to get herself together,
support the family and jump-start a career she stalled in order to support that
scumbag of a hubby. She’s Silda Spitzer in the Midwest.

Other than
the fact that the law firm dynamics, the court cases, the political realities,
and almost every other detail on the show are laughably unrealistic and even silly–read Dana
Goldstein’s review here— the show takes an interesting psychological
angle on women and work. The lurid headlines aside, Alicia is good at what she
does, a smart, capable lawyer and person, who clearly gets satisfaction from
being in the office. She never advanced far previously because of the pressure
to support her husband and raise her kids, but now she has the chance to work
for herself, and she appears to have a nose for solving cases and at the same
time, a sense of empathy and her own moral values (at the same time, the show
is honest about the difficulties she faces with kids at home and the way the
burden of the family rests on her).

It’s clear
why her slimy but clearly charismatic husband (played by Chris Noth, of
course!) picked her. It’s the Hillary Clinton/ Silda Spitzer/Elizabeth Edwards
and Jenny Sanford paradigm to a tee–a strong woman, a capable partner at home
who is publicly humiliated by her cheating husband after suborning her own
professional advancement for his. This dynamic, at least, the show nails.
Eventually, the plot seems to suggest that Alicia is going to have to make a
choice between continuing to stand by her man and striking out on her own, and
one can hope, having her own romantic adventures. But this "I’m
back!" declaration has a much more satisfying feel to it than the laughable
"I’m back!" of "Cougar Town." As Dana writes:

The Good Wife is really a sort
of revenge fantasy: Alicia Florrick not only slaps her husband across the face
and proves to him that she can hack it as the family breadwinner, she also
one-ups those other women at work,
the ones who look down on her for opting-out in the first place. In the real
world, though, women like Alicia’s judgmental boss might be onto something:
Women rarely win, in their personal or professional lives, by giving up
everything to focus on hubby.

Yes,
Alicia’s story could never happen in the real world–this is a prime-time
network drama, after all, rarely a fertile place for groundbreaking art. But
still, I’d argue that this fantasy described by Dana is a woman’s fantasy–as
opposed to the shallow male fantasy of "Cougar Town." It’s about a
woman beaten down by a man’s world who gets hers, a woman who can compete in
patriarchy and win, while helping her fellow Wronged Women on the way up the
ladder. That’s a fantasy I can get behind.  (Of course, it’s important to
notice that both of these shows exist in extremely tony, privileged, and
largely white enclaves of society, making their heroine’s experiences even
further out of the real mainstream. Both shows lack the diversity that has
become a hallmark of ensemble shows these days–one step forward, one step
back?).

But
entertainment is a funny thing. When looking for a heroine to entertain them,
will American women want to triumph with Alicia, or will her story pale in
comparison to laughing as Jules falls on her butt? Or will they embrace both?
Either way, it’s doubtful that an escape-loving TV audience will reject either
show for its lack of honesty about women’s lives.