Briefly: She's tough and cold (and smart at her job). The men are irrational whim-worshipping wimps (and chase along behind her like barking dogs while she solves the crimes).
Prime Suspect was a disappointment to me. I like Bello and was prepared to love seeing her in her own show. But several things precluded that:
The writing suffers from too much naturalism: the 2 writers wanted (as they said in their interviews) to keep things really really *real*. But their idea of reality is to show most NYC cops as sophomoric, drunken, foul-mouthed, narrow-minded, anti-woman buffoons. I can't stand a one of them, and the idea of those morons working to protect citizens' rights... is a bad joke.
Maria Bello's character is a cut above the sub-human males, but at a terrible price: her femininity is somehow missing. She's tougher than the men--and more important, far more intelligent and reasonable in her work. I could get to liking a woman like Jane T., if she were written *as* a woman. In her present form, I don't quite know *what* she is. Seeing her act like that makes me cringe.
In another TV board, they were talking about the "empowered women" trend in new shows, and a fellow reviewer complained about all the emphasis on gender, asking "why can't we just be human beings instead of male and female?" My answer to that is apropos to Prime Suspect: We can't "just be human beings" because our gender is built in, and deeply affects our world view and sense-of-life. That, in a nutshell, is my problem with Prime Suspect, which portrays a woman who's more gruffly manly than any of the men in the show. (In fact, the men are painted as either wimps or frothing idiots -- or both.) Every second we have to spend watching the needless nagging and straining based on anti-women silliness -- is a precious second taken from the advancement of the real plot: solving crimes with tenacity, ingenuity, and guts. That gender-battle stuff bores me to death.
Somewhere buried down amongst the fol-de-rol of this show is a grand potential: to portray a woman who's bold, courageous, independent in her thinking, and a very clever, intuitive cop.
I wish we could have more of that. Prime Suspect could be - and should have been - great TV art. Unfortunately, as it stands now, it ain't.
Prime Suspect was a disappointment to me. I like Bello and was prepared to love seeing her in her own show. But several things precluded that:
The writing suffers from too much naturalism: the 2 writers wanted (as they said in their interviews) to keep things really really *real*. But their idea of reality is to show most NYC cops as sophomoric, drunken, foul-mouthed, narrow-minded, anti-woman buffoons. I can't stand a one of them, and the idea of those morons working to protect citizens' rights... is a bad joke.
Maria Bello's character is a cut above the sub-human males, but at a terrible price: her femininity is somehow missing. She's tougher than the men--and more important, far more intelligent and reasonable in her work. I could get to liking a woman like Jane T., if she were written *as* a woman. In her present form, I don't quite know *what* she is. Seeing her act like that makes me cringe.
In another TV board, they were talking about the "empowered women" trend in new shows, and a fellow reviewer complained about all the emphasis on gender, asking "why can't we just be human beings instead of male and female?" My answer to that is apropos to Prime Suspect: We can't "just be human beings" because our gender is built in, and deeply affects our world view and sense-of-life. That, in a nutshell, is my problem with Prime Suspect, which portrays a woman who's more gruffly manly than any of the men in the show. (In fact, the men are painted as either wimps or frothing idiots -- or both.) Every second we have to spend watching the needless nagging and straining based on anti-women silliness -- is a precious second taken from the advancement of the real plot: solving crimes with tenacity, ingenuity, and guts. That gender-battle stuff bores me to death.
Somewhere buried down amongst the fol-de-rol of this show is a grand potential: to portray a woman who's bold, courageous, independent in her thinking, and a very clever, intuitive cop.
I wish we could have more of that. Prime Suspect could be - and should have been - great TV art. Unfortunately, as it stands now, it ain't.
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