I am flummoxed by the new Charlie's Angels show. A quick perusal of my post history will reveal that I am not averse to trash television, but I think this one is going about 3 things all wrong:
1 - the characters suck. This kind of ephemeral television doesn't actually require much from its characters beyond that they deliver their soundbites in good time and aren't actively unlikeable - unless they are actually meant to be unlikeable bitches or jerks But With A Heart Of Gold so their redemption is something in which the viewer can invest - but CA has dirty cops and rich thieves as its protagonists and that's a tough starting point before you get to the only reason that they're 'good' now is because they are pretty by the standards of multi-ethnic televisual casting. Seriously - that's all you get. While I am inclined to not get het up about there being so many remakes and reboots as other people might, this is because I accept that rebooting or remaking an old show has certain advantages like brand recognition, but right away these aren't new takes on characters from the tv show or movies, they're new characters created for the show, so the branding is eroded almost immediately. Bosley is also now a buff hacker and pussy hound - more erosion. Eventually you have something that doesn't resemble what it's supposed to be remaking and while this might work with something like the third season of BattleStar Galactica where it all became about how women ruin everything even if they aren't killer sex robots, with the very first episode of a new series this is not a route you want to explore, you want your audience onside right away and you want them rooting for the main cast rather than hoping there's three car bombs in the immediate future and that Bosley is impaled by shrapnel from one of them. I found myself in the latter camp about three minutes in.
These people are dicks and I hate them - and that's coming from someone who watches CSI.
2 - Charlie's Angels assumes a male paradigm for 'toughness' as how you measure a woman's 'toughness', but this kind of tit-for-tat reasoning isn't a good idea because last I checked no dude has ever shit out a baby. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against kick-ass women as I lived and breathed Cynthia Rothrock and Michelle Khan movies in my mis-spent youth (which also gave me an appreciation of well-filmed action scenes, which Charlie's Angels does not have), but those were dedicated kung-fu films and the gender of their protagonist was irrelevant because men (or boys) were the primary audience, while Charlie's Angels is aimed at a wider audience, yet does nothing to show that its female characters have traits that women admire in the same way we men admire their ability to kick someone in the head or murder a child molester, such as ambition or a talent for nonviolent conflict resolution because these are pussy traits and real tuff grrls kick arse. GRRR. Then they get saved by Bosley (a computer programmer) because they can't take one random dude in a straight fight even though as we have already seen quite clearly this female character is a decorated police officer. The approach is wrong-headed in theory, but also uncommitted in practice. These women have no drive, no goals, no longer game, they pretty much just do what they're told, and the only one who goes against this policy, the entire pilot is dedicated to showing how she is wrong and must ultimately tow the line. These women are weak.
3 - it is made by the guys who made Smallville. For some reason, I just find this hilarious.
No comments:
Post a Comment