The Sexism of "Laura"

[StealthySkeptic]

Oh, wait, it's supposed to be called The Mysteries of Laura. Except it's the worst pilot of the fall season so far. The only saving grace is that I watched it on Hulu where there were less commercials so. I could give an in depth takedown of every single frame that's wrong with the 43 minutes of molasses that wastes Debra Messing and can't decide whether it wants to be a tired comedy about terrible parenting, a cloyingly sentimental drama about terrible parenting, or a paint by numbers police procedural with sloppy detective work and a "twist" that was neither clever nor original, and was also spoiled by the trailers.

But the New York Observer's review has all that in spades.

And the poor guy at IGN who had to watch this- twice- screamed in his review.

(Spoilers abound below. Not that you give a shit.)

No, I'm here today to tell you about two major problems with the world of entertainment. One, that The Mysteries of Laura is a shining example of how the majority of network sitcoms and dramas (with a few rare gems such as The Blacklist, which I will binge on Netflix soon) are tired, safe, overly conservative, bland, repetitive, unoriginal, and poorly written so as to appeal to audiences they think are simpletons trapped in a poor imitation of the 90s, and so are getting trounced by Netflix, something that even a few years ago seemed



Remember when NBC had good comedies like Friends and Seinfeld, and when Law and Order was at its prime? Me neither. Now, there are even YouTube shows with female leads produced on shoestring budgets that are much more progressive and of far higher writing caliber than even the best of the network shows (yes, even Big Bang Theory and Modern Family, which are good but really starting to get long in the tooth because they're cash cows being milked for all they're worth.)

The second and most important problem is that some talentless hacks in the NBC writer's room not only thought it was a good idea to make a show about the same old tired themes of shrewy mothers dealing with work-life balance (and doing so in HIGH-larious ways) but didn't even do it well. When, oh when will we get non-cable television that actually takes risks with its female characters?

For instance, the show tries to poke fun at the idea that Laura's wedding ring won't get off because of her stress eating of desk food. Yet they also decided to titillate by having her in a swimsuit to blend in at a pool party so as to not cause a scene, when it contradicted what they said earlier since she looked like she had no issues with weight at all (and even so that would have been unfunny), and made no logical sense since not only did they explicitly tell the people at the front door that they were cops and so the ruse is unnecessary, but then end up causing a scene anyway.

The kids are psychotic monsters who of course she can't control (she acknowledges that they can't read at five years old, and even ODs them with cough medicine to make them quiet which makes them throw up), which of course ties into the whole idea that it's not only impossible, but absurd for a WOMAN to manage a career and kids.

There are about a billion wink wink nudge nudges to Target when she lives in Manhattan and would have to go well out of the way to find one, especially when she's supposed to be stressed out with work-life balance.

The husband (you probably guessed it) cheated on her, claims to be a changed man, refuses to sign the divorce papers, kisses her without asking when she doesn't love him any more, lets her take the fall as the dictator mom so he can be the fun dad, then of course saves the day when the demon spawn get kicked out of daycare by calling in a favor and becomes her boss at the precinct. WA WA FUCKING WA.

And lastly, her investigative prowess seems to rely mostly on women's intuition- flirting with a valet to illegally open her suspect's car so that she could get information that would be thrown out in court in seconds, noticing the mascara on a woman's face, remembering wedding rings- and all the men do the logical grunt work like tracking paper trails and license plates. Because that's so hard if you have a vagina, somehow.

And in all of this, not only did the writers literally just scroll through the 1960s section of TV Tropes and stitched together a script from there, the tone of the show seems to indicate to me that ALL of the mistakes Laura makes are somehow Laura's fault, that her neuroses and workaholism are the entire reason why her husband left, why her kids are uncontrollable, and why her desk is a mess despite her also being OCD.



Basically, Lucy from I Love Lucy had more depth in one episode than this show will probably find in its entire (hopefully mercifully canceled) season. And, I think that future television writers should be shown this pilot so that they know exactly what not to do when writing female characters.

And this from the network that canceled Awake, one of the best network shows I've ever seen.