24.4.11

Dana Delaney Gives Feminists a Bad Name

So I'm watching Body of Proof, the new, almost shockingly mundanely-titled medical mystery show featuring Dana Delaney as America's latest archetypical 'Unpleasant Person Who Solves Crimes”. While I'm tired of this type of character in general, I found Dana to be especially contemptible because of a single speech she gives in the episode's first half:


Okay, first off, here's a fun exercise: Be a father who works at a job for 18 hours a day, then get a divorce. When making custody arrangements, tell the judge you want full custody, and that you don't intend on working any fewer hours once you've gotten it. Done? Good - now how long did the judge laugh before having you thrown out of court?

This scene bothered me not only because it brought up accusations of sexism in a situation that profoundly didn't call for them, but also because doing so makes the main character seem like an especially smug, whiny, jerk. This isn't a character who suffers because of her gender. Every other character on the show - to one degree or another - bows and scrapes before her brilliance, asking her not only to solve her cases, but theirs as well - and her being a woman never comes up.

Oh, and for the record, for all of her supposed brilliant observations, the crime is solved when a simple blood test on their victim demonstrates that she was poisoned, and since only one person was in a position to administer that poison...

So yeah, not watching any more of this one.

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