Olivia Dunham: Man of the House
Okay, so, I have the unfortunate sinking feeling that despite best efforts I am now a Proper Mildly Obsessed fan of this show rather than a casual viewer who likes it a lot. How can I tell, you ask? Because I'm now totally paranoid that somehow they will screw up the season finale next week and I'll have to hate it or something. I don't have any evidence, you understand, to suggest this is the case. I'm just...smart like that. I guess the real issue is partly gunshy feelings from getting burned from the last show I loved and trusted, but more than that, a slightly more objective genuine inability to tell if all the awesome stuff about the show is intentional or a little more accidental. I want to write reams of meta about how Olivia and Walter are incredible, but for some reason, perhaps because the show just hasn't been quite good enough, I have this niggling feeling that the house of cards holding up everything I like about this show will collapse any episode now.
I wish I knew why. Possibly some of my fears would be allayed if they went back to treating Peter like the plot-point/damsel-in-distress he used to be. I think he did better in that role - they keep trying to make him relevant, but it's not really working for me. I just miss Olivia.
SPEAKING OF. I will permit myself a brief bit of meta:
Olivia Dunham: TOTALLY THE MAN OF THE HOUSE.
One of the things I like about this show is how physically confident they allow Olivia to be. She really owns the space she moves in. One of the things that originally made me sit up and pay attention to the show's treatment of Olivia in terms of her gender was when they had her grab a bad guy by the lapels in a classic Cop Move, but it's just something so male that it was really startling to see a woman do it, succeed at it, and have it pass without comment. Similarly, I love in the Noir musical episode, they had her as a Private Eye, so what did they do? They had her move like one. They had her play it like Humphrey Bogart, not like Lauren Bacall. There's a wonderful, physical matter-of-factness to Olivia's character.
I enjoy that a lot of what they've done with Olivia's character on a day-to-day basis, is just...write her exactly as they would write a man in her position. There's rarely any effort to feminise her, to make this argument that she's a competent female cop as opposed to a competent cop. Now, that attitude would not be helpful in all situations because one could rightly argue that in this situation "cop" is very "male" and all I'm doing by enjoying Olivia's ability to assume male traits is reinforcing that Cop=Male. But, without getting into schools of feminism, which always confuses me, in this specific instance, with this specific character, I enjoy the subversion of how well she succeeds at it, without ever straying into territory that would get her labeled (in a negative, sexist way) "butch".
Anyway, one other area I've noticed Olivia taking on a male role is in her home life.
I was quite pleased to see from the finale that it looks like her sister and niece are still living with her. While I wish we saw them more, to be honest, the fact we almost never do kind of adds to the net effect. She's the never-at-home father figure who nonetheless dotes on her child. I enjoy unconventional family dynamics and I also enjoy the fact that Olivia is allowed to have a positive, influential relationship with a child - to participate in parenting her, to a degree, without actually having to have a child cus we all know that's what girls really want.
A parallel issue that is rampant in television, some women don't want kids at all, not even getting to be the Cool Aunt/Surrogate Father Figure, and I'm not trying to undermine that here, but I am talking about something slightly different - i.e. Olivia gets to have a kid, sort of, without having to literally have a kid. I mean, it's basically a very stereotypically male way of having a kid.
Olivia has basically become Ella's workaholic father. I find this hilarious and kind of awesome.
Ella has totally internalised the "Don't bother Daddy when he's doing important work," routine, as evidenced by her being okay with Olivia having to blow off their Daddy-Daughter Aunt-Niece day together.
When Rachel dumps Ella on Olivia in an emergency, Olivia panics somewhat and then dumps Ella on her assistant.
And Rachel does hilarious things like ask if Olivia will be home for dinner, and touching things like saying Ella has inherited some of Olivia's traits.
So. Yeah. Olivia Dunham, totally the Man of the House. <3
I wish I knew why. Possibly some of my fears would be allayed if they went back to treating Peter like the plot-point/damsel-in-distress he used to be. I think he did better in that role - they keep trying to make him relevant, but it's not really working for me. I just miss Olivia.
SPEAKING OF. I will permit myself a brief bit of meta:
Olivia Dunham: TOTALLY THE MAN OF THE HOUSE.
One of the things I like about this show is how physically confident they allow Olivia to be. She really owns the space she moves in. One of the things that originally made me sit up and pay attention to the show's treatment of Olivia in terms of her gender was when they had her grab a bad guy by the lapels in a classic Cop Move, but it's just something so male that it was really startling to see a woman do it, succeed at it, and have it pass without comment. Similarly, I love in the Noir musical episode, they had her as a Private Eye, so what did they do? They had her move like one. They had her play it like Humphrey Bogart, not like Lauren Bacall. There's a wonderful, physical matter-of-factness to Olivia's character.
I enjoy that a lot of what they've done with Olivia's character on a day-to-day basis, is just...write her exactly as they would write a man in her position. There's rarely any effort to feminise her, to make this argument that she's a competent female cop as opposed to a competent cop. Now, that attitude would not be helpful in all situations because one could rightly argue that in this situation "cop" is very "male" and all I'm doing by enjoying Olivia's ability to assume male traits is reinforcing that Cop=Male. But, without getting into schools of feminism, which always confuses me, in this specific instance, with this specific character, I enjoy the subversion of how well she succeeds at it, without ever straying into territory that would get her labeled (in a negative, sexist way) "butch".
Anyway, one other area I've noticed Olivia taking on a male role is in her home life.
I was quite pleased to see from the finale that it looks like her sister and niece are still living with her. While I wish we saw them more, to be honest, the fact we almost never do kind of adds to the net effect. She's the never-at-home father figure who nonetheless dotes on her child. I enjoy unconventional family dynamics and I also enjoy the fact that Olivia is allowed to have a positive, influential relationship with a child - to participate in parenting her, to a degree, without actually having to have a child cus we all know that's what girls really want.
A parallel issue that is rampant in television, some women don't want kids at all, not even getting to be the Cool Aunt/Surrogate Father Figure, and I'm not trying to undermine that here, but I am talking about something slightly different - i.e. Olivia gets to have a kid, sort of, without having to literally have a kid. I mean, it's basically a very stereotypically male way of having a kid.
Olivia has basically become Ella's workaholic father. I find this hilarious and kind of awesome.
Ella has totally internalised the "Don't bother Daddy when he's doing important work," routine, as evidenced by her being okay with Olivia having to blow off their Daddy-Daughter Aunt-Niece day together.
When Rachel dumps Ella on Olivia in an emergency, Olivia panics somewhat and then dumps Ella on her assistant.
And Rachel does hilarious things like ask if Olivia will be home for dinner, and touching things like saying Ella has inherited some of Olivia's traits.
So. Yeah. Olivia Dunham, totally the Man of the House. <3