yay, vod! ooh, tyres!
ok, maybe i can get behind this one episode ...
... oh, ffs, daleks. as you were/
***
mr pink is hot
aw, and cute :-)
(clara is of course sultry super-confident vampish type. CHARACTERISATION!)
clara, tell me - am i a good man?
oh, here we go. yet more episodes about how tortured the doctor is/
***
plotty plotty plot. can daleks be good? sass. betrayal. fall into a pit of liquidated people/
***
god it's fucking infuriating the way moffat thinks it's funny to have his protagonists insult the looks of beautiful women to show how not-attracted to them they are. (sherlock pulls this shit with molly all the bloody time and i am sick of it)/
***
oh, clara resorts to physical violence when she's angry with the doctor, because of course she does. LOOK IT'S NOT OK JUST BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN, PHYSICAL VIOLENCE IS NOT OK/
***
so what do we do? something better
god forbid any other characters come up with a workable plan, or even, like, just an idea/
***
is he mad or is he right?
LET ME GUESS THE ANSWER
ohh great, missy. i'm sure she won't turn out to be river song with different coloured hair/
***
i think you're probably nice. underneath it all, i think you're kind and definitely brave. i just wish you hadn't been a soldier
what is with this show's weird attitude to soldiering? clara was condescending to mr pink about it, now the doctor is condescending to vod (oh god i didn't even learn her name). we're approaching endgame now, so maybe there'll be some grand point to make. oh, but first, clara's date. this'll be excruciating/
***
sort of short and roundish but with a good personality which is the main thing
oh god moffat you are a dick/
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 September 2014
Thursday, 28 August 2014
Doctor who: Deep breath
I am so over Doctor Who that I can't even be bothered to do a proper review / deconstruction of Saturday's Season 8 premier, but that's not going to stop me ranting about a few things.
Firstly, how is it that even in the very first episode they failed to create a coherent plot? Perhaps I missed a few salient details when I was rolling my eyes, but if the robots were incapable of functioning at all when the humans weren't breathing, how come nobody said "Hey, guys, we're slightly outnumbered here so if it starts to get overwhelming, just hold your breath for a bit to give yourself a break, maybe back away from the pointy arms a touch"? How come Clara thought it was important to keep moving slowly and awkwardly like a robot while she held her breath, given that the robots were only awoken in the first place by hers and the Doctor's breathing? How come they didn't just - I don't know - hold their breath, leg it to the magic sofa-lift, and get out?
And don't even get me started on the 'kiss' between Madame Vastra and Jenny. It makes me sick to think of Moffat patting himself on the back for his peak time lesbian kiss, easily dismissed in case any dinosaurs start complaining, "what? of course not, they had to put their mouths together to share oxygen! it's perfectly acceptable family viewing!" Their constant harping on about being married does not stack up against that little trick, nor against Vastra's about-face on Clara's "judgement" of the Doctor.
To recap: When Clara is expressing concern about the 'new' Doctor, saying that she doesn't know him anymore, Vastra demands her veil, telling the room that she's among "strangers". Clara goes to speak to her, and Vastra tells her (not unreasonably) that Clara is being unfair, and that she should know that the Doctor is the same person, despite his wrinkly old face. Clara is terribly offended, and rants angrily for a while, finishing with "just because my pretty face has turned your head, so not assume that I am so easily distracted!" Instead of shooting this down as the lazily queerphobic bullshit it is, Vastra removes her veil, telling Clara that she hasn't really removed it, but that Clara has finally stopped seeing it.
This is monumentally insulting. It's predictable that one of Moffat's two queer characters fancies Clara (the only other woman on the show), because Moffat probably can't imagine queer women who have tastes and preferences, and who don't fancy a random woman simply because she's pretty. This, however, is the lesser crime here: worse is that Madame Vastra, who has been written as a straightforward, intelligent and ethical character, apparently has lost perspective because she has a crush. Her removal of her veil is an admittance of her capitulation to Clara's version of events. I was hoping that she would shoot Clara's nasty little jab down, pointing out Clara's arrogance in committing the same logical fallacy that straight men do when they assume that gay men fancy ALL men, purely because they're men, and that would have been a pleasing way of dealing with the situation. But no, of course not, of course the queer woman fancies Clara, because who wouldn't fancy Clara? That's the whole point of Clara.
I had other things to say, but I'm too mad. I'll just mention this, though: apparently, Peter Capaldi's Doctor refused to have a flirtatious relationship with Clara. I read about this before the series started and was quite hopeful, but from the first episode, it looks like since they can't have the Doctor and the Assistant flirting, they will just make everybody talk about flirting all. the. time. And other people flirt with each other. And ramp up some 'sexual tension' between Clara and Vastra, oh, and throw in another mad vampish dominatrix type to be all obsessed with the doctor.
As Twelve says, tediously, during the episode, BORING. Come on Moffat, for goodness sake. Learn some new tricks.
Firstly, how is it that even in the very first episode they failed to create a coherent plot? Perhaps I missed a few salient details when I was rolling my eyes, but if the robots were incapable of functioning at all when the humans weren't breathing, how come nobody said "Hey, guys, we're slightly outnumbered here so if it starts to get overwhelming, just hold your breath for a bit to give yourself a break, maybe back away from the pointy arms a touch"? How come Clara thought it was important to keep moving slowly and awkwardly like a robot while she held her breath, given that the robots were only awoken in the first place by hers and the Doctor's breathing? How come they didn't just - I don't know - hold their breath, leg it to the magic sofa-lift, and get out?
And don't even get me started on the 'kiss' between Madame Vastra and Jenny. It makes me sick to think of Moffat patting himself on the back for his peak time lesbian kiss, easily dismissed in case any dinosaurs start complaining, "what? of course not, they had to put their mouths together to share oxygen! it's perfectly acceptable family viewing!" Their constant harping on about being married does not stack up against that little trick, nor against Vastra's about-face on Clara's "judgement" of the Doctor.
To recap: When Clara is expressing concern about the 'new' Doctor, saying that she doesn't know him anymore, Vastra demands her veil, telling the room that she's among "strangers". Clara goes to speak to her, and Vastra tells her (not unreasonably) that Clara is being unfair, and that she should know that the Doctor is the same person, despite his wrinkly old face. Clara is terribly offended, and rants angrily for a while, finishing with "just because my pretty face has turned your head, so not assume that I am so easily distracted!" Instead of shooting this down as the lazily queerphobic bullshit it is, Vastra removes her veil, telling Clara that she hasn't really removed it, but that Clara has finally stopped seeing it.
This is monumentally insulting. It's predictable that one of Moffat's two queer characters fancies Clara (the only other woman on the show), because Moffat probably can't imagine queer women who have tastes and preferences, and who don't fancy a random woman simply because she's pretty. This, however, is the lesser crime here: worse is that Madame Vastra, who has been written as a straightforward, intelligent and ethical character, apparently has lost perspective because she has a crush. Her removal of her veil is an admittance of her capitulation to Clara's version of events. I was hoping that she would shoot Clara's nasty little jab down, pointing out Clara's arrogance in committing the same logical fallacy that straight men do when they assume that gay men fancy ALL men, purely because they're men, and that would have been a pleasing way of dealing with the situation. But no, of course not, of course the queer woman fancies Clara, because who wouldn't fancy Clara? That's the whole point of Clara.
I had other things to say, but I'm too mad. I'll just mention this, though: apparently, Peter Capaldi's Doctor refused to have a flirtatious relationship with Clara. I read about this before the series started and was quite hopeful, but from the first episode, it looks like since they can't have the Doctor and the Assistant flirting, they will just make everybody talk about flirting all. the. time. And other people flirt with each other. And ramp up some 'sexual tension' between Clara and Vastra, oh, and throw in another mad vampish dominatrix type to be all obsessed with the doctor.
As Twelve says, tediously, during the episode, BORING. Come on Moffat, for goodness sake. Learn some new tricks.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Doctor Who and the Transgender Horse
What else would I do on a Monday morning but write a blog post about a throwaway joke in Saturday's episode of Doctor Who?
Although I barely kept up with the last season of Doctor Who, and didn't really feel its absence, so far this time I am keeping myself interested. It's only 3 episodes in, so not much of an achievement thus far. If I get bored I'll stop watching it - autumn is full of brilliant (awful) TV to keep me entertained.
So Saturday's episode was good, I thought. I expected it to be a bit silly - remember how, last season, we had deep philosophical heart-wrenching episode followed by funny looking aliens / bow tie jokes with nary a character-development in sight? Well, I'm pretentious, and I always liked the first kind of episode better. I find the silliness of Doctor Who tiring at times. I suppose you could tell me to not watch a kids' show, but a lot of TV does the same thing. One of my favourites, New Tricks, is majorly guilty of this. I guess they're filling an odd spot: family friendly often equals lots of issues to play with and lots of masters to please. Doctor Who often chooses not to integrate silliness with seriousness in one episode, but I think perhaps I've noticed more integration in these first episodes of the new series. All three episodes have dealt with big questions, emotional turmoil and ethical dilemmas - and yet there have been plenty of jokes, both aural and visual, and a fair bit of silliness, particularly in episode two (Mitchell and Webb as cranky robot soldiers, anyone?).
But it's one particular tiny, barely noticeable joke that I want to discuss today. Take a guess? It's the transgender horse, of course!
"He's called Joshua. It's from the bible. It means the deliverer."I exchanged a significant look with my viewing partner. Warning: I'm about to overthink this massively, so if that kind of thing makes you roll your eyes, feel free to move on!
"No he isn't."
"What?"
"I speak horse. He's called Susan. And he wants you to respect his life choices. Hup!"
So, is this a transgender horse? When I was looking online for a transcript this morning I came across this opinion that no, Susan is not a transgender horse, because the Doctor still uses male pronouns. Ah, but is he misgendering the horse? Obviously the horse wouldn't have referred to itself using a pronoun, so perhaps it's the Doctor's mistake and he should have referred to the horse as "she" not "he"? The author then acknowledges the absurdity of the question:
and the ridiculousness of that very question is also why I really hate the idea of gender issues being joked about, especially through animals because yeah, even if the horse is cis *snort* it's still being really flippant with name choices that don't necessarily match up to other people's gendered expectations and that's definitely a trans* issue
so even if the joke wasn't directly targeting trans* people, it still perpetuated the idea that asking someone to refer to you by your chosen name (and since it's a name generally associated with "the opposite sex", it hints at pronoun usage as well) is ridiculous, laughable, and a lifestyle choice.So, ok, maybe this conversation is absurd. But that's no reason not to have it. Hell, we're so starved of any trans* visibility on our TV screens, I'll take a horse if it's on offer.
I think I disagree with dearjimmoriarty on this one. Yes, the joke is flippant. But who are we laughing with? We see the owner rolling his eyes as the Doctor gallops away, but it seems to me like we're laughing at the taken-for-granted notion that we slap names (and genders?) on our animals and assume that we've had the last word. Kind of like the mice in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who are running experiments on the Earth, although not as fully explored of course. We laugh at the realisation that animals have 'inner lives': the joke is in the reversal. Having said that, why make the horse trans*? I do think that this is a bit of a fail, since it's clearly a case of "what's funnier than flagging up the notion that animals have their own chosen names rather than our arbitrarily applied ones? I know, it's transgender!" But don't forget that after this little exchange, which is clearly set up to be a joke, the Doctor calls the horse Susan. The joke for the audience may have been the reveal ("haha! transgender horse!") but the Doctor doesn't treat it as a joke. And the Doctor, whilst hardly the moral compass of the programme, does unfailingly sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of what's important. He always hones in on the salient point, whether it's where Oswin gets the milk from, or why there are electric street lamps, or that Amy and Rory need a little push from a social engineer to 'fix' their relationship.
It's also a kinda neat bit of commentary on the issue of names for trans* people. What do we do, but reject the name that has been chosen for us and replace it with our own choice of name? That's our real name, right? The name that we choose, that fits us, that makes us feel known when we hear it. That's more real than Joshua.
And actually, I do think it's a choice. I may not have a choice in how I feel about myself and what my gender is, but I make a choice every day to refer to myself by my chosen name and pronouns. I make a choice to ask others to do the same. Sometimes I make the choice to be strict about it, and sometimes I make the choice to let a slip go and not make a big deal out of it. Sometimes I choose to ask people to respect my pronouns, and sometimes I don't mention pronouns but make sure that they have my name right. No, I didn't say Holly. Trust me, I am making choices all day every day.
Maybe this joke doesn't deserve too many analytical words. But in a way, I think its brevity is its power. Throwaway joke, quick laugh - and then the Doctor calls the horse Susan. As representation, it could be a lot worse.
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Musings on 'Scott and Bailey'
I so enjoyed writing about gender in Dirk Gently that I thought I'd have a go at ITV's Scott and Bailey too. This will be slightly different, since a whole series has already aired, and although I know I had a lot of thoughts about it at the time, I can't remember too many details! I've watched the last three on ITV Player to remind myself, but unfortunately missed the first three, so I missed my most growled-at storyline, in which one of the title characters accidentally gets pregnant, schedules an abortion, can't go through with it, and then conveniently miscarries so that she doesn't have the inconvenience of pregnancy/parenthood, but doesn't have to make any evil baby-killing decisions. I saw it coming, of course, but I still snarled a lot.
There's a whole lot of gender stuff going on in Scott and Bailey. The three main characters are women, almost the entire creative team are women, and the whole idea for the programme was conceived by women. This is obviously good news for us women-friendly folks - we (ok, I) like things that have a lot of women involved in them. On the other hand, it does heighten the stakes for Scott and Bailey to be "feminist". We (ok, I) want to see a woman-heavy show with 'good representations' of women; I want to see lots of women in lots of different roles, with lots of different skills/characteristics/flaws/voices etc. I don't want to see six different stereotypes of women, although that would certainly be an improvement on the two different stereotypes of women that you get in much mainstream media.
Thankfully, Scott and Bailey doesn't fall into this trap (I suspect the woman-heavy creative team may have had something to do with this). The two title characters, Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey, are very different women. Neither are perfect, which is a good start. Janet Scott is 'older', married with kids, a fixture in the MIT in which they both work. She is stolid, calm, dependable and determined. Rachel Bailey is 'younger', a new addition to the team. She is called "Sherlock" by the rest of the team, due to her intuitive style of detective work, and she is often talked up as being brilliant. She is also flighty and impatient, and given to making questionable choices about both her personal and her professional life. The third main character is DCI Gill Murray, a fast-talking, no-nonsense boss who demands the highest level of achievement from her team.
These characters form the backbone of the programme, and they are constantly interacting with each other about their professional and personal lives. Both Murray and Scott act as 'mentors' to Bailey in different ways, with Scott keeping Bailey on the "more traditional" lines of investigation whilst also giving her space to let her personal detecting style blossom, and Murray giving Bailey multiple opportunities to experience different sides of police work within the team, often talking her through new things. This is one facet of the show that I like very much. It's great to see the different levels of knowledge being treated as significant but not laughable - Bailey is not a silly kid, but she has less experience than the other two and they are keen to help her progress as a detective, encouraging her development and being patient with her inexperience. They recognise her potential and want to enhance it, even when her inexperience and impatience leads her down the wrong paths. The three women are supportive of each other both professionally and personally - there is little evidence of the jealousy, competitiveness and cattiness that is the mainstay of many TV relationships between women.
The personal storylines of the women are interesting. Janet's marriage and potential affair form the main drive of her personal plot, whilst for Rachel it is her relationship with a man who, unknown to her, has a wife and children living elsewhere. Gill Murray's storyline is less prominent, but what there is of it is centres around her life as a single mother of a teenage son. Rachel also has that unintended pregnancy to contend with. One part of me is disappointed that these plot-lines are so dependent on the womanhood of the characters. Having female protagonists be driven by their relationship- (and (potential) parenting-) concerns is not exactly ground-breaking. On the other hand, the programme is mainly about their detective work, where they are Scott and Bailey rather than Janet and Rachel after all, so I think I give this a pass. Being concerned about their relationships alongside their jobs is progressive, in comparison with so many portrayals of women on TV, who are only concerned about their relationships, or who exist as extensions of the male protagonists (who are usually concerned about their jobs). On the other hand, perhaps it is telling that so much of this programme, which is titled Scott and Bailey, is devoted to the personal lives of Janet and Rachel. The last episode of the first series, for example, is barely about solving the 'main crime' of the episode at all - their only witness gives it up in his second interview after cursory questioning by Scott. The meat of the episode is concerned with Rachel's entanglement with slimy barrister Nick Savage (about whom more in a moment).
On the other side of binary gender representation, the treatment of recurring male characters on the show is somewhat less progressive. Nick Savage is probably the biggest male role, and he is essentially a villain. After a 2-year relationship with Rachel, it is revealed in the first episode that he is married with children. When she later discovers that he had an affair with a jury member whilst defending a client in court, he threatens her with the retribution of the client that he successfully defended if she gives him away, and in the final episode is charged with Rachel's attempted murder. Nick Savage (whose name is obviously significant) starts off suave and manipulative and ends up vicious and murderous. Not exactly a fully realised character. DC Kevin Lumb (whose name also seems significant) is a bit of a buffoon - he is sexist, arrogant, lazy and seems to exist as an 'intelligence' comparison to Bailey (at one point, Murray says to Bailey "you're not Kevin" (Series 1, episode 4)). DS Andy Roper, who is in love with Scott, is really nothing but a means of character-development for Scott - after their one-night-stand prior to the shows beginning, he tries to persuade her to leave her husband, prompting her to reevaluate her relationship and her priorities. Ade is Janet's patient, loyal husband, and DCS Dave Murray, Gill Murray's ex-husband, had a string of affairs and left her when he "got a 23-year-old uniform pregnant" (Series 1, episode 5). His biggest scene so far is when he suggests to Gill that she shouldn't be "taking up with another man" right in the middle of their son's A-levels (Series 1, episode 6):
Dave: It's Sammy. It's fine, it's his A-levels. I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Don't you think - right in the middle of his exams - is the wrong time for you to be taking up with another man?
Gill: How dare you? After all the turmoil and upheaval and disruption you caused that boy? How dare you.
Dave: He's not happy.
Gill: That's rubbish. This is about you, not him. Despite the fact you walked out on me and him, despite the fact you were at it with all and sundry for God knows how long, you can't stand the idea I could possibly get into bed with someone else, can you? Hypocrite.
Dave: I knew you'd take it the wrong way.
Gill: (walking away) On your bike, mush.
Dave: I've told him if he wants to move in with me and Emma for a little while he's more than welcome. He seemed quite keen.
Gill: How've you managed that then? Promised to buy him a car?
(he makes a face)
Gill: No - Dave - you can't do that, I told him I would buy him a car when he got his A-level results, if they were good enough, so you'd better retract that promise.
Dave: I'm not retracting a thing.
Gill: You fucking arsehole.
(he nods)
Dave: Cheerio.
Dave is clearly the bad guy here - we're not asked to sympathise with his (entirely unreasonable) behaviour, and Gill is set up as the victim. What's interesting to me about this exchange is the way the characters say the things they say. Gill's words are the ones we are to agree with, and Dave's words are not. But Gill raises her voice, she swears at him, she gets passionate. She shows emotion. Dave, on the other hand, speaks quietly and calmly, and doesn't respond to Gill's emotion. When she calls him a "fucking arsehole" he just nods slightly, says "cheerio" and leaves. This is a nice subversion of gender norms: the man is calm and collected while the woman is emotional and 'sensitive', yet we are clearly to side with the woman, despite being conditioned to approve more of the communication style of the man.
Compare that with this scene from earlier in the episode, after Bailey has told Scott that she's seeing Nick again, and Scott has been brutally honest about her concerns:
Rachel: (coming in) Hey. You know I spent ages organising the balloons, the helium, the other - well it's shit - and all anyone else had to do was go pick stuff up, and she talks to me like bollocks and everyone else is fucking wonderful!
Nick: Well - why?
Rachel: (turns tv off) D'you wanna marry me? I'm proposing to you. D'you wanna marry me.
Nick: (amazed) Well - um - I can't - I -
Rachel: After the divorce goes through. (Nick is making faces and laughing in disbelief) I didn't think so. (she walks away)
Nick: Have you -
Rachel: What, been at the bottle? Yeah. You know, she implied - no she didn't, she didn't imply, she said it, she said that the only reason you're going out with me is because you're frightened I'll wreck your life for you, if I don't stay on the right side of you. Are you?
Nick: No.
Rachel: But you don't want to marry me.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't talk to your colleagues -
Rachel: Am I just kidding myself?
Nick: About what?
Rachel: About this, about us.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't drink.
Rachel: Pff, you drink.
Nick: Well, to that extent, before you even get here.
Rachel: Did Caroline [his wife] not like a little drink?
Nick: Can we not talk about Caroline?
Rachel: Or Martina [the juror], what about her? (he rolls his eyes) You know I said to her, I said he's changed. But you know, she's amazing Janet, 'cos she just cuts to the chase, she goes right for the jugular.
Nick: Rachel, I have changed, and I don't give a damn what Janet thinks or says, I just think getting married is ... it's a big step!
Rachel: She's right though, isn't she?
Nick: (exasperated) Well I don't know because you haven't told me what she said yet -
Rachel: You're just protecting your own paltry little carcass.
Nick: That's just rubbish!
Rachel: First thing in the morning I'm gonna go to Godzilla's office, and I'll tell her all about you and your little juror friend or I might just do it right now. (gets out her phone)
Nick: Rachel ...
Rachel: What, don't make calls when you're pissed? Or, only in emergencies - (he tries to snatch the phone from her and she fights him off. There's a pause)
Nick: Alright look, we'll get married.
Rachel: (laughs) What?
Nick: We'll get married, if this is what it takes to prove to you that I love you, we'll get married, I just wish you wouldn't GET like this! (he puts his face in his hands and she looks stricken)
Rachel: I'm sorry.
Nick: It's alright.
Rachel: Is it?
Nick: Yeah.
Rachel: I had a really shit day, after she had a go at me - I've never fallen out with her, not for more than 10 minutes, and then I started to think things, so I - I'm sorry. (they kiss)
Nick: Smoking.
Rachel: Yeah. Sorry. I'll go and brush my teeth. (she walks out and he shakes his head, looking worried)
This is, in some ways, quite similar to the exchange between Gill and Dave. There is some question as to the moral 'truth' of what's going on (is Nick just keeping Rachel sweet? is Dave acting out of concern for his son) and in both cases, I think the audience is intended to side with the women in their interpretation. The difference is in the attitudes of the characters. While Dave stays very calm in contrast to Gill's rising emotion, the emotional temperature of the conversation between Nick and Rachel starts off high and gets higher, with both of them speaking loudly and quickly. We think we know that Rachel is right in her suspicions (we trust the judgement of Scott, for a start, and we already know how manipulative and slippery Nick is) and that allows us to see more clearly the insidious nature of his machinations here. His continual evading of the issue (bringing up her drinking, and her talking to her colleagues) looks more suspicious than it might if we hadn't previously been persuaded that he's manipulating her. As it is, his implication that she's only accusing him of this because she's drunk looks desperate and rather pathetic. It's also very telling that she manages to brush this evasive behaviour off until the end of the conversation, after he has convinced her that she is the one in the wrong by insisting that it's her behaviour that is unreasonable rather than his. When she capitulates and they kiss, that innocuous little exchange about her smoking highlights perfectly the insidious nature of his controlling behaviour. Whereas earlier his comments about her behaviours that he finds unacceptable are brushed off, now she quickly apologises and goes to make herself more acceptable to him.
This scene, for me, is a perfect illustration of a potentially abusive relationship. Nick's focus on Rachel's unacceptable habits, his complaints about her talking to other people about him, his attempt to make her believe that things are different from how she perceives them - this is classic emotional manipulation and it's one of the things that, for me, clearly marks this show out as progressive. We know that Rachel is right (and it is proved later in the episode), we know that Nick is lying and this is therefore a chilling portrayal of a man manipulating a woman in order to control her behaviour for his own benefit. The fact that both Murray and Scott can see this where Bailey can't, and try to make her "open her eyes" is also significant. Bailey is far from perfect - she is impetuous and stubborn and has made any number of foolish decisions, both professional and personal. Her professional misjudgement often stems from her poor personal judgement, as when she uses her role as a DC to find out Nick's home address from his car registration after she discovers that he is married. She also tells Nick confidential information about her job.
Is Rachel sadly un-feminist, for being potentially brilliant professionally but a complete mess personally, and allowing her personal life to cloud her professional judgement? Well, it may not be ideal, but it has enabled some wonderful interaction between three extremely strong women characters. Scott and Murray have Bailey's back throughout, and although they chastise her for her poor judgement, they ultimately support her, whilst making it clear that her behaviour is both stupid and unacceptable. In the next series, presumably the Nick Savage storyline will be finished with, and we'll get to see Bailey in other contexts. Something else to look forward to is a new character to be introduced, described in the blurb as "the formidable DCI Julie Dobson". I am keeping my fingers crossed for another intriguing, imperfect, highly-watchable character.
There's a whole lot of gender stuff going on in Scott and Bailey. The three main characters are women, almost the entire creative team are women, and the whole idea for the programme was conceived by women. This is obviously good news for us women-friendly folks - we (ok, I) like things that have a lot of women involved in them. On the other hand, it does heighten the stakes for Scott and Bailey to be "feminist". We (ok, I) want to see a woman-heavy show with 'good representations' of women; I want to see lots of women in lots of different roles, with lots of different skills/characteristics/flaws/voices etc. I don't want to see six different stereotypes of women, although that would certainly be an improvement on the two different stereotypes of women that you get in much mainstream media.
Thankfully, Scott and Bailey doesn't fall into this trap (I suspect the woman-heavy creative team may have had something to do with this). The two title characters, Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey, are very different women. Neither are perfect, which is a good start. Janet Scott is 'older', married with kids, a fixture in the MIT in which they both work. She is stolid, calm, dependable and determined. Rachel Bailey is 'younger', a new addition to the team. She is called "Sherlock" by the rest of the team, due to her intuitive style of detective work, and she is often talked up as being brilliant. She is also flighty and impatient, and given to making questionable choices about both her personal and her professional life. The third main character is DCI Gill Murray, a fast-talking, no-nonsense boss who demands the highest level of achievement from her team.
These characters form the backbone of the programme, and they are constantly interacting with each other about their professional and personal lives. Both Murray and Scott act as 'mentors' to Bailey in different ways, with Scott keeping Bailey on the "more traditional" lines of investigation whilst also giving her space to let her personal detecting style blossom, and Murray giving Bailey multiple opportunities to experience different sides of police work within the team, often talking her through new things. This is one facet of the show that I like very much. It's great to see the different levels of knowledge being treated as significant but not laughable - Bailey is not a silly kid, but she has less experience than the other two and they are keen to help her progress as a detective, encouraging her development and being patient with her inexperience. They recognise her potential and want to enhance it, even when her inexperience and impatience leads her down the wrong paths. The three women are supportive of each other both professionally and personally - there is little evidence of the jealousy, competitiveness and cattiness that is the mainstay of many TV relationships between women.
The personal storylines of the women are interesting. Janet's marriage and potential affair form the main drive of her personal plot, whilst for Rachel it is her relationship with a man who, unknown to her, has a wife and children living elsewhere. Gill Murray's storyline is less prominent, but what there is of it is centres around her life as a single mother of a teenage son. Rachel also has that unintended pregnancy to contend with. One part of me is disappointed that these plot-lines are so dependent on the womanhood of the characters. Having female protagonists be driven by their relationship- (and (potential) parenting-) concerns is not exactly ground-breaking. On the other hand, the programme is mainly about their detective work, where they are Scott and Bailey rather than Janet and Rachel after all, so I think I give this a pass. Being concerned about their relationships alongside their jobs is progressive, in comparison with so many portrayals of women on TV, who are only concerned about their relationships, or who exist as extensions of the male protagonists (who are usually concerned about their jobs). On the other hand, perhaps it is telling that so much of this programme, which is titled Scott and Bailey, is devoted to the personal lives of Janet and Rachel. The last episode of the first series, for example, is barely about solving the 'main crime' of the episode at all - their only witness gives it up in his second interview after cursory questioning by Scott. The meat of the episode is concerned with Rachel's entanglement with slimy barrister Nick Savage (about whom more in a moment).
On the other side of binary gender representation, the treatment of recurring male characters on the show is somewhat less progressive. Nick Savage is probably the biggest male role, and he is essentially a villain. After a 2-year relationship with Rachel, it is revealed in the first episode that he is married with children. When she later discovers that he had an affair with a jury member whilst defending a client in court, he threatens her with the retribution of the client that he successfully defended if she gives him away, and in the final episode is charged with Rachel's attempted murder. Nick Savage (whose name is obviously significant) starts off suave and manipulative and ends up vicious and murderous. Not exactly a fully realised character. DC Kevin Lumb (whose name also seems significant) is a bit of a buffoon - he is sexist, arrogant, lazy and seems to exist as an 'intelligence' comparison to Bailey (at one point, Murray says to Bailey "you're not Kevin" (Series 1, episode 4)). DS Andy Roper, who is in love with Scott, is really nothing but a means of character-development for Scott - after their one-night-stand prior to the shows beginning, he tries to persuade her to leave her husband, prompting her to reevaluate her relationship and her priorities. Ade is Janet's patient, loyal husband, and DCS Dave Murray, Gill Murray's ex-husband, had a string of affairs and left her when he "got a 23-year-old uniform pregnant" (Series 1, episode 5). His biggest scene so far is when he suggests to Gill that she shouldn't be "taking up with another man" right in the middle of their son's A-levels (Series 1, episode 6):
Dave: It's Sammy. It's fine, it's his A-levels. I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Don't you think - right in the middle of his exams - is the wrong time for you to be taking up with another man?
Gill: How dare you? After all the turmoil and upheaval and disruption you caused that boy? How dare you.
Dave: He's not happy.
Gill: That's rubbish. This is about you, not him. Despite the fact you walked out on me and him, despite the fact you were at it with all and sundry for God knows how long, you can't stand the idea I could possibly get into bed with someone else, can you? Hypocrite.
Dave: I knew you'd take it the wrong way.
Gill: (walking away) On your bike, mush.
Dave: I've told him if he wants to move in with me and Emma for a little while he's more than welcome. He seemed quite keen.
Gill: How've you managed that then? Promised to buy him a car?
(he makes a face)
Gill: No - Dave - you can't do that, I told him I would buy him a car when he got his A-level results, if they were good enough, so you'd better retract that promise.
Dave: I'm not retracting a thing.
Gill: You fucking arsehole.
(he nods)
Dave: Cheerio.
Dave is clearly the bad guy here - we're not asked to sympathise with his (entirely unreasonable) behaviour, and Gill is set up as the victim. What's interesting to me about this exchange is the way the characters say the things they say. Gill's words are the ones we are to agree with, and Dave's words are not. But Gill raises her voice, she swears at him, she gets passionate. She shows emotion. Dave, on the other hand, speaks quietly and calmly, and doesn't respond to Gill's emotion. When she calls him a "fucking arsehole" he just nods slightly, says "cheerio" and leaves. This is a nice subversion of gender norms: the man is calm and collected while the woman is emotional and 'sensitive', yet we are clearly to side with the woman, despite being conditioned to approve more of the communication style of the man.
Compare that with this scene from earlier in the episode, after Bailey has told Scott that she's seeing Nick again, and Scott has been brutally honest about her concerns:
Rachel: (coming in) Hey. You know I spent ages organising the balloons, the helium, the other - well it's shit - and all anyone else had to do was go pick stuff up, and she talks to me like bollocks and everyone else is fucking wonderful!
Nick: Well - why?
Rachel: (turns tv off) D'you wanna marry me? I'm proposing to you. D'you wanna marry me.
Nick: (amazed) Well - um - I can't - I -
Rachel: After the divorce goes through. (Nick is making faces and laughing in disbelief) I didn't think so. (she walks away)
Nick: Have you -
Rachel: What, been at the bottle? Yeah. You know, she implied - no she didn't, she didn't imply, she said it, she said that the only reason you're going out with me is because you're frightened I'll wreck your life for you, if I don't stay on the right side of you. Are you?
Nick: No.
Rachel: But you don't want to marry me.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't talk to your colleagues -
Rachel: Am I just kidding myself?
Nick: About what?
Rachel: About this, about us.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't drink.
Rachel: Pff, you drink.
Nick: Well, to that extent, before you even get here.
Rachel: Did Caroline [his wife] not like a little drink?
Nick: Can we not talk about Caroline?
Rachel: Or Martina [the juror], what about her? (he rolls his eyes) You know I said to her, I said he's changed. But you know, she's amazing Janet, 'cos she just cuts to the chase, she goes right for the jugular.
Nick: Rachel, I have changed, and I don't give a damn what Janet thinks or says, I just think getting married is ... it's a big step!
Rachel: She's right though, isn't she?
Nick: (exasperated) Well I don't know because you haven't told me what she said yet -
Rachel: You're just protecting your own paltry little carcass.
Nick: That's just rubbish!
Rachel: First thing in the morning I'm gonna go to Godzilla's office, and I'll tell her all about you and your little juror friend or I might just do it right now. (gets out her phone)
Nick: Rachel ...
Rachel: What, don't make calls when you're pissed? Or, only in emergencies - (he tries to snatch the phone from her and she fights him off. There's a pause)
Nick: Alright look, we'll get married.
Rachel: (laughs) What?
Nick: We'll get married, if this is what it takes to prove to you that I love you, we'll get married, I just wish you wouldn't GET like this! (he puts his face in his hands and she looks stricken)
Rachel: I'm sorry.
Nick: It's alright.
Rachel: Is it?
Nick: Yeah.
Rachel: I had a really shit day, after she had a go at me - I've never fallen out with her, not for more than 10 minutes, and then I started to think things, so I - I'm sorry. (they kiss)
Nick: Smoking.
Rachel: Yeah. Sorry. I'll go and brush my teeth. (she walks out and he shakes his head, looking worried)
This is, in some ways, quite similar to the exchange between Gill and Dave. There is some question as to the moral 'truth' of what's going on (is Nick just keeping Rachel sweet? is Dave acting out of concern for his son) and in both cases, I think the audience is intended to side with the women in their interpretation. The difference is in the attitudes of the characters. While Dave stays very calm in contrast to Gill's rising emotion, the emotional temperature of the conversation between Nick and Rachel starts off high and gets higher, with both of them speaking loudly and quickly. We think we know that Rachel is right in her suspicions (we trust the judgement of Scott, for a start, and we already know how manipulative and slippery Nick is) and that allows us to see more clearly the insidious nature of his machinations here. His continual evading of the issue (bringing up her drinking, and her talking to her colleagues) looks more suspicious than it might if we hadn't previously been persuaded that he's manipulating her. As it is, his implication that she's only accusing him of this because she's drunk looks desperate and rather pathetic. It's also very telling that she manages to brush this evasive behaviour off until the end of the conversation, after he has convinced her that she is the one in the wrong by insisting that it's her behaviour that is unreasonable rather than his. When she capitulates and they kiss, that innocuous little exchange about her smoking highlights perfectly the insidious nature of his controlling behaviour. Whereas earlier his comments about her behaviours that he finds unacceptable are brushed off, now she quickly apologises and goes to make herself more acceptable to him.
This scene, for me, is a perfect illustration of a potentially abusive relationship. Nick's focus on Rachel's unacceptable habits, his complaints about her talking to other people about him, his attempt to make her believe that things are different from how she perceives them - this is classic emotional manipulation and it's one of the things that, for me, clearly marks this show out as progressive. We know that Rachel is right (and it is proved later in the episode), we know that Nick is lying and this is therefore a chilling portrayal of a man manipulating a woman in order to control her behaviour for his own benefit. The fact that both Murray and Scott can see this where Bailey can't, and try to make her "open her eyes" is also significant. Bailey is far from perfect - she is impetuous and stubborn and has made any number of foolish decisions, both professional and personal. Her professional misjudgement often stems from her poor personal judgement, as when she uses her role as a DC to find out Nick's home address from his car registration after she discovers that he is married. She also tells Nick confidential information about her job.
Is Rachel sadly un-feminist, for being potentially brilliant professionally but a complete mess personally, and allowing her personal life to cloud her professional judgement? Well, it may not be ideal, but it has enabled some wonderful interaction between three extremely strong women characters. Scott and Murray have Bailey's back throughout, and although they chastise her for her poor judgement, they ultimately support her, whilst making it clear that her behaviour is both stupid and unacceptable. In the next series, presumably the Nick Savage storyline will be finished with, and we'll get to see Bailey in other contexts. Something else to look forward to is a new character to be introduced, described in the blurb as "the formidable DCI Julie Dobson". I am keeping my fingers crossed for another intriguing, imperfect, highly-watchable character.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Musings on 'Dirk Gently' and 'Sherlock'
I've just watched the second episode of Dirk Gently on BBC iPlayer. The pilot was great, as I remember it (it was screened in December 2010), and the first episode was fun, if silly. But with the second episode came the introduction of Dirk's partner's girlfriend, played by Helen Baxendale, and that's where the problems begin.
Susan's main function in this episode, unsurprisingly, is to throw the relationship between Dirk and Macduff into relief. She gets to be present because the pair are working on a case in Cambridge, and Susan happens to be applying for a job in Cambridge. Here's their conversation before her interview.
Susan: I really need to get ready for my interview - are you sure you're alright?
(they are interrupted by plot stuff, which concludes with an automated voice reading out Macduff's emails)
Computer: Hello Richard. Only Mum. Just a short note to remind you about lunch on Sunday. Do bring Susan if you feel you must.
Susan: I'll see you later.
Macduff: No - Susan - !
(she walks away but he is detained by Dirk and catches her up a bit later)
Macduff: Susan! Hey. I'm sorry. Don't - you know my mum, she doesn't mean that.
Susan: It's a relief to be honest. Now I don't have to feel guilty about not liking her.
Macduff: You don't like my mum?
Susan: Oh Richard, nobody likes your mother.
Macduff: I suppose she is uniquely unlikeable.
Susan: Are you going to wish me luck for my interview then?
Macduff: Yes. Good luck for your interview.
Susan: You don't mean that, do you.
Macduff: I don't want to move to Cambridge Susan, I don't, I really don't. I'm sorry. Dirk, and the Agency, you know I can't, I can't just walk away. I'm - look, ignore me, forget it, don't think about that now. Listen, hey! You might not even get the job!
Susan: Thanks.
Macduff: Good luck. (kisses her)
Susan is offered the job. When she presses Macduff, this is how he responds:
Susan: Richard, wait! They need an answer about the job by the end of the day. That's if we haven't both been arrested by then.
Macduff: I don't want to move to Cambridge.
(break of a few scenes)
Macduff: I want to be Dirk's partner - I want to make the agency work.
Susan: Richard, he will never treat you as his partner.
Macduff: It's just how he is. Despite everything he does and as difficult as it is to believe, I think he might be brilliant. (pause) Don't ever let him know I said that. And I think that, deep down I think he needs me even though he'd rather die than admit it. (pause) Please don't make me choose.
So there's plenty of good stuff to choose from here. Firstly, the cliched dislike between a man's girlfriend and his mother, which inevitably pits them against one another as competitors for the man's affection and respect. It is played for laughs here, as it almost always is (those silly women and their jealousy!), and here we also have the knowledge, suggested by Susan and confirmed by Macduff, that Macduff's mother is "uniquely unlikeable" (as indeed we can see for ourselves, thanks to her unpleasant email to her son). She's a mother-in-law joke waiting to happen.
But my main issue with their relationship, as portrayed by these few short scenes, is what is revealed by Macduff's attitude to Susan's potential job. We aren't shown much more than this, so we can't know if they have already discussed it and come to the conclusion that if Susan gets the job, they both must move to Cambridge. But I'm going to assume it, based on the fact that neither of them brings up the possibility of him staying in London without her, or them staying in London together and her commuting to Cambridge (an unlikely solution, granted). We can assume that this is the only possible option if Susan takes the job - and, indeed, this is necessarily the case if the point of this whole story-line is to endanger the working relationship of Macduff and Dirk, which is how I see it. Susan's sole purpose in this episode is to bring to a head the tension between Dirk and Macduff, who Dirk treats pretty badly, insisting on calling him his "assistant", giving him the most mundane / unpleasant / dangerous tasks and generally taking him for granted. Macduff needs another character to express this to, and who better than a pseudo-girlfriend who can act as a catalyst for their troubled working relationship?
Throughout the rest of the episode Dirk apparently assumes that Macduff will be leaving him, and at the end, back in their London offices, he seems surprised when he sees Susan and Macduff, saying "shouldn't you two be halfway up the M11 en route to your new life in Cambridge?" Susan tells him that she didn't get the job - "they had a last minute change of heart". I knew straight away what this change of heart would entail, and sure enough, it is soon revealed that Dirk has called the company and given Susan a damaging character reference, including details of "her history of sexually harassing patients". Susan hears this on an answering machine message and rounds on Dirk, saying "You conniving little - !" and the bouncy theme music plays as the credits roll.
Now, I don't think the programme is exactly excusing Dirk's behaviour. The 'joke' is set up at the end with Susan trying to pay Dirk a compliment and apologise for thinking he is a self-serving bastard. They are interrupted by the phone message which reveals his duplicity. He is clearly shown to be a self-serving bastard, as Susan says. But this plays out in the same way that Sherlock Holmes' selfishness does in the BBC's Sherlock (as indeed it does in many recent adaptions of the Holmes/Watson stories. Holmes is a clever, unpleasant man. His sidekick Watson is exasperated but loyal, and his romantic relationships with women are continually undermined by the behaviour of Holmes, who acts out of a selfish desire to keep Watson to himself). In Dirk Gently, Dirk is less of an analytical machine than Holmes - his is more of a bumbling, random-chance, instinct-led type of detection which is none-the-less successful - yet his treatment of his sidekick is strikingly similar. Macduff is the down-to-earth voice of reason who acts as a foil to Dirk's quirky 'holistic' detective work, and he is also the long-suffering dogsbody, constantly making tea, being refused a chair or desk in the office and trying ineffectually to keep Dirk on the right side of the law. His relationship with Susan is brought up for the first time in this episode, and its inclusion is for the sole purpose of highlighting this unequal relationship with Dirk. Through Susan, the cipher-girlfriend, we learn that Dirk is brilliant, even if he is a bastard. We learn that Macduff is deeply invested in both Dirk and his detective agency. We learn that Dirk "needs" Macduff, but that Dirk must never know that Macduff knows this. We learn that this relationship, which looks so flawed, works for both parties, and we know that we don't need to question it because Susan has done it for us.
Susan gets no characteristics, no personality of her own, beyond that which is necessary to throw those of Dirk and Macduff into relief. Her professional ambition is acceptable only in that it throws a spanner into the relationship between the two men, and it can be killed off neatly at the end once we have learnt that their working relationship is perfectly fine, thank you very much. Dirk's behaviour is not excused - he is definitely a self-serving bastard - but I think it is exonerated by its positioning at the end of the episode, by the way in which Susan's obvious and entirely justified outrage is cut off by the chirpy theme music. That's just the way he is! He's a bastard, and people will suffer because of him, but that's ok because he's on the side of the righteous. He and Macduff can detect in peace, now that Macduff's inconveniently independent girlfriend has been put back in her place.
And don't even get me started on the gay nerds. There are three non-straight men in this episode, all of whom met on an online gaming site. Two of them are shown in bed together wearing pointy elf ears, and the third (Asian-British) is highly feminized, squealing shrilly and comically when Dirk breaks his nose. So that's sexism, racism, homophobia, geek-shaming, mother-in-law jokes and playing the ruining of someone's career for laughs. Nice work, BBC!
This detective-sidekick pairing follows very similar lines to the Holmes/Watson pairing in Sherlock. There hasn't as yet been any evidence of the homoerotic subtext that is so common in the Sherlock Holmes canon, but the triangular relationship between detective-sidekick-sidekick's partner is incredibly similar. The two men have a working relationship which is also ambiguously personal, and the partner of the sidekick threatens this relationship in some way. (Although the gay subtext isn't there between Dirk and Macduff, it is interesting that Macduff is continually insisting that he is Dirk's "partner", something that Dirk refuses to admit although it is technically true.) The detective is jealous of the sidekick's partner for taking the attention of the sidekick, and the sidekick's partner is eye-rollingly tolerant of the businesslike-but-oddly-personal relationship between her partner and the detective. The situation continues tolerably until some incident in the romantic relationship (marriage, a job in another city) threatens the stability of the relationship between detective and sidekick, and that's when the detective starts behaving badly in order to scupper the relationship between the sidekick and his partner (embarrassing them at a fancy dinner in the 2009 Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes, sabotaging the career of the partner in Dirk Gently. Interestingly this aspect hasn't been depicted in Sherlock - perhaps we need to wait for the third series. Watson's relationships so far - all minor - have been scuppered by his obsession with Holmes - he can barely remember his girlfriends' names and keeps abandoning them to work on cases with Holmes. This is more to do with Watson's inadequacy than Holmes' selfishness).
There are multiple layers to the tension between the two pairings. The detective sees the romantic relationship as a hindrance to the important business of detecting, and the sidekick's partner sees the detecting as a childish distraction from 'real life' (this seems to involve marriage / settling down / making sacrifices for one's partner like moving to Cambridge). The woman is at once portrayed as the grown-up, responsible outsider who tolerates the childish games of the boys, and as the nagging adult bore who wants to spoil their fun / doesn't understand the importance of the job.
The programmes themselves seem ambivalent on the proper response to this. Are these romantic partners silly, frivolous nags who represent a feminine threat to the relaxed, manly pursuits of detection? Or are they mature, responsible adults trying desperately to persuade their immature man-children to grow up and engage in a real relationship / proper job / normal life? I don't think the programmes come down firmly on one side or the other. Both interpretations are implied, and both represent a zero-sum understanding of the options involved. Either the homosocial pairing is adventurous, clever, successful and fun, whilst the heterosexual pairing is boring and restrictive, or the homosocial pairing is childish and comically inept whilst the heterosexual pairing is mature, responsible and fulfilling. What is clear is that men and women are irreconcilably different, and that the sidekick - poor everyman Watson - cannot have both. He must choose: fun times and boyish adventures with his infuriating but brilliant pal? - or a nice, normal, heterosexual relationship? At no point in any of these adaptations is it suggested that the two can coexist. Either the working relationship is damaging the romantic relationship by taking all the time and attention of the sidekick, or the romantic relationship is damaging the working relationship by giving the sidekick non-work-related responsibilities (such as the honeymoon in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows).
What this means for gender portrayals in Dirk Gently, then, is that Susan - the only woman on the detecting 'side' - is inevitably invisible as a real character. Her whole purpose is to create drama and highlight the issues between Dirk and Macduff. I'm not arguing that the programme is sexist, or that men are portrayed more flatteringly than the women - Dirk's is not exactly a positive portrayal of manhood - but poor Susan is given no life at all. She is definitively absent from the real meat of the episode, on which she can only provide a commentary and, by her mere existence, shore up the emotional interplay between the two 'real' characters. Nobody wins the gender wars here: presenting conflicting relationships as a zero-sum game in which one wins and the other loses inevitably denies the humanity of all concerned, and ultimately keeps men and women safely distanced from one another, with little hope of a nuanced portrayal.
Susan's main function in this episode, unsurprisingly, is to throw the relationship between Dirk and Macduff into relief. She gets to be present because the pair are working on a case in Cambridge, and Susan happens to be applying for a job in Cambridge. Here's their conversation before her interview.
Susan: I really need to get ready for my interview - are you sure you're alright?
(they are interrupted by plot stuff, which concludes with an automated voice reading out Macduff's emails)
Computer: Hello Richard. Only Mum. Just a short note to remind you about lunch on Sunday. Do bring Susan if you feel you must.
Susan: I'll see you later.
Macduff: No - Susan - !
(she walks away but he is detained by Dirk and catches her up a bit later)
Macduff: Susan! Hey. I'm sorry. Don't - you know my mum, she doesn't mean that.
Susan: It's a relief to be honest. Now I don't have to feel guilty about not liking her.
Macduff: You don't like my mum?
Susan: Oh Richard, nobody likes your mother.
Macduff: I suppose she is uniquely unlikeable.
Susan: Are you going to wish me luck for my interview then?
Macduff: Yes. Good luck for your interview.
Susan: You don't mean that, do you.
Macduff: I don't want to move to Cambridge Susan, I don't, I really don't. I'm sorry. Dirk, and the Agency, you know I can't, I can't just walk away. I'm - look, ignore me, forget it, don't think about that now. Listen, hey! You might not even get the job!
Susan: Thanks.
Macduff: Good luck. (kisses her)
Susan is offered the job. When she presses Macduff, this is how he responds:
Susan: Richard, wait! They need an answer about the job by the end of the day. That's if we haven't both been arrested by then.
Macduff: I don't want to move to Cambridge.
(break of a few scenes)
Macduff: I want to be Dirk's partner - I want to make the agency work.
Susan: Richard, he will never treat you as his partner.
Macduff: It's just how he is. Despite everything he does and as difficult as it is to believe, I think he might be brilliant. (pause) Don't ever let him know I said that. And I think that, deep down I think he needs me even though he'd rather die than admit it. (pause) Please don't make me choose.
So there's plenty of good stuff to choose from here. Firstly, the cliched dislike between a man's girlfriend and his mother, which inevitably pits them against one another as competitors for the man's affection and respect. It is played for laughs here, as it almost always is (those silly women and their jealousy!), and here we also have the knowledge, suggested by Susan and confirmed by Macduff, that Macduff's mother is "uniquely unlikeable" (as indeed we can see for ourselves, thanks to her unpleasant email to her son). She's a mother-in-law joke waiting to happen.
But my main issue with their relationship, as portrayed by these few short scenes, is what is revealed by Macduff's attitude to Susan's potential job. We aren't shown much more than this, so we can't know if they have already discussed it and come to the conclusion that if Susan gets the job, they both must move to Cambridge. But I'm going to assume it, based on the fact that neither of them brings up the possibility of him staying in London without her, or them staying in London together and her commuting to Cambridge (an unlikely solution, granted). We can assume that this is the only possible option if Susan takes the job - and, indeed, this is necessarily the case if the point of this whole story-line is to endanger the working relationship of Macduff and Dirk, which is how I see it. Susan's sole purpose in this episode is to bring to a head the tension between Dirk and Macduff, who Dirk treats pretty badly, insisting on calling him his "assistant", giving him the most mundane / unpleasant / dangerous tasks and generally taking him for granted. Macduff needs another character to express this to, and who better than a pseudo-girlfriend who can act as a catalyst for their troubled working relationship?
Throughout the rest of the episode Dirk apparently assumes that Macduff will be leaving him, and at the end, back in their London offices, he seems surprised when he sees Susan and Macduff, saying "shouldn't you two be halfway up the M11 en route to your new life in Cambridge?" Susan tells him that she didn't get the job - "they had a last minute change of heart". I knew straight away what this change of heart would entail, and sure enough, it is soon revealed that Dirk has called the company and given Susan a damaging character reference, including details of "her history of sexually harassing patients". Susan hears this on an answering machine message and rounds on Dirk, saying "You conniving little - !" and the bouncy theme music plays as the credits roll.
Now, I don't think the programme is exactly excusing Dirk's behaviour. The 'joke' is set up at the end with Susan trying to pay Dirk a compliment and apologise for thinking he is a self-serving bastard. They are interrupted by the phone message which reveals his duplicity. He is clearly shown to be a self-serving bastard, as Susan says. But this plays out in the same way that Sherlock Holmes' selfishness does in the BBC's Sherlock (as indeed it does in many recent adaptions of the Holmes/Watson stories. Holmes is a clever, unpleasant man. His sidekick Watson is exasperated but loyal, and his romantic relationships with women are continually undermined by the behaviour of Holmes, who acts out of a selfish desire to keep Watson to himself). In Dirk Gently, Dirk is less of an analytical machine than Holmes - his is more of a bumbling, random-chance, instinct-led type of detection which is none-the-less successful - yet his treatment of his sidekick is strikingly similar. Macduff is the down-to-earth voice of reason who acts as a foil to Dirk's quirky 'holistic' detective work, and he is also the long-suffering dogsbody, constantly making tea, being refused a chair or desk in the office and trying ineffectually to keep Dirk on the right side of the law. His relationship with Susan is brought up for the first time in this episode, and its inclusion is for the sole purpose of highlighting this unequal relationship with Dirk. Through Susan, the cipher-girlfriend, we learn that Dirk is brilliant, even if he is a bastard. We learn that Macduff is deeply invested in both Dirk and his detective agency. We learn that Dirk "needs" Macduff, but that Dirk must never know that Macduff knows this. We learn that this relationship, which looks so flawed, works for both parties, and we know that we don't need to question it because Susan has done it for us.
Susan gets no characteristics, no personality of her own, beyond that which is necessary to throw those of Dirk and Macduff into relief. Her professional ambition is acceptable only in that it throws a spanner into the relationship between the two men, and it can be killed off neatly at the end once we have learnt that their working relationship is perfectly fine, thank you very much. Dirk's behaviour is not excused - he is definitely a self-serving bastard - but I think it is exonerated by its positioning at the end of the episode, by the way in which Susan's obvious and entirely justified outrage is cut off by the chirpy theme music. That's just the way he is! He's a bastard, and people will suffer because of him, but that's ok because he's on the side of the righteous. He and Macduff can detect in peace, now that Macduff's inconveniently independent girlfriend has been put back in her place.
And don't even get me started on the gay nerds. There are three non-straight men in this episode, all of whom met on an online gaming site. Two of them are shown in bed together wearing pointy elf ears, and the third (Asian-British) is highly feminized, squealing shrilly and comically when Dirk breaks his nose. So that's sexism, racism, homophobia, geek-shaming, mother-in-law jokes and playing the ruining of someone's career for laughs. Nice work, BBC!
This detective-sidekick pairing follows very similar lines to the Holmes/Watson pairing in Sherlock. There hasn't as yet been any evidence of the homoerotic subtext that is so common in the Sherlock Holmes canon, but the triangular relationship between detective-sidekick-sidekick's partner is incredibly similar. The two men have a working relationship which is also ambiguously personal, and the partner of the sidekick threatens this relationship in some way. (Although the gay subtext isn't there between Dirk and Macduff, it is interesting that Macduff is continually insisting that he is Dirk's "partner", something that Dirk refuses to admit although it is technically true.) The detective is jealous of the sidekick's partner for taking the attention of the sidekick, and the sidekick's partner is eye-rollingly tolerant of the businesslike-but-oddly-personal relationship between her partner and the detective. The situation continues tolerably until some incident in the romantic relationship (marriage, a job in another city) threatens the stability of the relationship between detective and sidekick, and that's when the detective starts behaving badly in order to scupper the relationship between the sidekick and his partner (embarrassing them at a fancy dinner in the 2009 Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes, sabotaging the career of the partner in Dirk Gently. Interestingly this aspect hasn't been depicted in Sherlock - perhaps we need to wait for the third series. Watson's relationships so far - all minor - have been scuppered by his obsession with Holmes - he can barely remember his girlfriends' names and keeps abandoning them to work on cases with Holmes. This is more to do with Watson's inadequacy than Holmes' selfishness).
There are multiple layers to the tension between the two pairings. The detective sees the romantic relationship as a hindrance to the important business of detecting, and the sidekick's partner sees the detecting as a childish distraction from 'real life' (this seems to involve marriage / settling down / making sacrifices for one's partner like moving to Cambridge). The woman is at once portrayed as the grown-up, responsible outsider who tolerates the childish games of the boys, and as the nagging adult bore who wants to spoil their fun / doesn't understand the importance of the job.
The programmes themselves seem ambivalent on the proper response to this. Are these romantic partners silly, frivolous nags who represent a feminine threat to the relaxed, manly pursuits of detection? Or are they mature, responsible adults trying desperately to persuade their immature man-children to grow up and engage in a real relationship / proper job / normal life? I don't think the programmes come down firmly on one side or the other. Both interpretations are implied, and both represent a zero-sum understanding of the options involved. Either the homosocial pairing is adventurous, clever, successful and fun, whilst the heterosexual pairing is boring and restrictive, or the homosocial pairing is childish and comically inept whilst the heterosexual pairing is mature, responsible and fulfilling. What is clear is that men and women are irreconcilably different, and that the sidekick - poor everyman Watson - cannot have both. He must choose: fun times and boyish adventures with his infuriating but brilliant pal? - or a nice, normal, heterosexual relationship? At no point in any of these adaptations is it suggested that the two can coexist. Either the working relationship is damaging the romantic relationship by taking all the time and attention of the sidekick, or the romantic relationship is damaging the working relationship by giving the sidekick non-work-related responsibilities (such as the honeymoon in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows).
What this means for gender portrayals in Dirk Gently, then, is that Susan - the only woman on the detecting 'side' - is inevitably invisible as a real character. Her whole purpose is to create drama and highlight the issues between Dirk and Macduff. I'm not arguing that the programme is sexist, or that men are portrayed more flatteringly than the women - Dirk's is not exactly a positive portrayal of manhood - but poor Susan is given no life at all. She is definitively absent from the real meat of the episode, on which she can only provide a commentary and, by her mere existence, shore up the emotional interplay between the two 'real' characters. Nobody wins the gender wars here: presenting conflicting relationships as a zero-sum game in which one wins and the other loses inevitably denies the humanity of all concerned, and ultimately keeps men and women safely distanced from one another, with little hope of a nuanced portrayal.
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