The Cutprice Guignol

Outside of my incrasinagly suicidal Doctor Who reviews, I feel like I don’t review enough bad television nowadays. Christ, it was only a couple of years ago that I spent the winter holed up eating crisps and shouting at the Food Network; sometimes heaping praise on TV (or the new Star Wars movie) gets tiring, and I want to tear into something with all my bottled-up vitriol. So here’s a run-down of the worst pieces of pop culture I’ve seen this year, old and new. Merry Christmas one and all!

Worst Pilot-The 100

It’s not like any other young adult sci-fi franchise about at the moment and frankly they’re insulted you even asked.

Look, I know that everyone loves this show now, and even I can admit that it got better (not enough to convince me to watch an entire season, but still), but my God was this a staggeringly bad opening. The premise- in which one hundred children are dropped back down to Earth after a global evacuation for reasons that failed to imprint themselves on my memory- stank of cashing in on a recent young adult sci-fi boom, and wasn’t helped by the gawky nature of the premiere. The symbolism was as subtle as a marble bust to the back of the head, the dialogue ferociously awful, and the “characters” drifting off into the distance like the scent of a retreating bin lorry. It took me two goes to get through the whole thing.

Most Inexplicable Failure-Breakout Kings

I’ve never been super into procedural shows, but following my love affair with the brilliant How to Get Away with Murder, I decided to give this one a go. It had one of the Macpoyles from It’s Always Sunny in the main cast, for Christ’s sake! But then I actually watched it, and decided to assume for my own sanity that it’s some sort of derangedly po-faced satire on the genre. Following a bunch of inmates matched with police officers to try and capture escapee prisoners, it’s got every dumb renegade-cop-show cliché you could probably imagine, but doesn’t even have the good manners to make them any fun. I refuse to understand how or why this was considered a good idea.

Biggest Disappointment-Houdini

I ESCAPE THE FATAL LURE OF GOOD TELEVISION

I wrote about this miniseries before, mainly to rant on the historical accuracy (or complete lack thereof), but I think it’s also worth pointing out that this show-which should have been a fascinating biography of one of the most interesting figures of the last century, played by the always-brilliant Adrien Brody, rarely allowed itself to get beyond (somewhat appropriately, I guess) shallow spectacle. And was paced dramatically badly.

Worst Movie-Avengers: Age of Ultron

Of all the films I saw in the cinema this year, this was the one that just straight-up sucked the hardest. I think I tried to be reasonably diplomatic in my review, but as the film has faded in my memory all I can really remember is a jumbled bunch of samey action sequences and allowing my brain to get soothed into a coma by the sound of James Spader’s lovely, lovely voice. In a year with a few cracking blockbusters, AoU was one of the worst examples of the genre I can remember in recent memory. Except my nemesis Man of Steel, of course.

Most Unwatchable Scene of the Year

An accurate representation of the season to date.

American Horror Story’s violent spike sodomy. All the ugh.

Worst New Show-Scream Queens

After I watched the first couple of episodes, I kind of dismissed this with a shrug that it didn’t do it’s horror was particularly well handled and forgot about it. But I eventually caught up, and the whole thing had just become a manifestation of Ryan Murphy’s raging id; violent candy hues, intricately horrible violence, and uncomfortable doses of ironic racism at every turn. I mean, this got bad, and not even entertainingly bad- embarrassingly, avert-your-eyes awful. #GetLeaMicheleBacktoBroadway2K15

Worst Performance of the Year

I’M ACTING AS HARD AS I CAN

I seem to have gotten all snobby about performances this year, and lots of my reviews have taken time specifically out to rip on certain actors. The two most egregious failures that come to mind are Frank Dillane in Fear the Walking Cashcow, playing a pirate except without all the characteristics that make a pirate fun or cool, and Freema Aygeman in the otherwise superb Sense8 (a small nod has to go to Jenna Coleman’s texted-from-the-inside-of-a-tunnel turn in this year’s Doctor Who, too). John Barrowman in Arrow should probably take the biscuit, but he looks like he’s having too much fun to care.

Worst Episode Ever

The Girl Who Died. The Girl who Murdered the Show I Loved, more like.

So, what were your worst (and best) episodes, characters and shows on TV this year?

So, this is the last part in my blog series about Doctor Who and all things feminism-related. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and thanks for reading along! This week, I’ll be looking at the fallacy of the strong female character in Doctor Who.

For starters, I find the phrase “strong female character” a bit…ugh in itself. Because it suggests that a strong female character is something notable and different, which isn’t wrong, but still kind of depressing to think about. I can’t remember the last time someone referred to a “strong male character”, because it’s just a given that a show will have solid roles for it’s men more often than not. And, more and more often, that phrase has come to mean a very specific thing- a woman who seems superfically powerful but actually has very little else going on underneath. But still, in all the diatribes I’ve read and heard about Moffat’s era of Doctor Who and how it isn’t, in any way, at all sexist, many people make reference to this concept, arguing that Steven Moffat has filled his series with powerful and significant women characters.

And to some extent, that’s certainly true. Women have a constant presence on the show, whether as assistants (Clara, Amy) or as recurring characters (River Song, Madame Vastra). And that’s great. But lot of the women on Doctor Who seem to fall very squarely into the trap of creating female characters who basically echo each other.

Let’s start with a look at the three most significant women in Moffat’s run- River Song, Clara Oswald, and Amy Pond. River Song encountered the Doctor as a child, fell in love with him, and pursued him through time and space until they got married. Clara Oswald encountered the Doctor as a child, took off with the Doctor as an adult, and jumped into his time stream to scatter herself all through his many lives. Amy Pond encountered the Doctor as a child, became obsessed with him after he vanished, then fell in love with him when he eventually returned for her. Not to mention the newly-introduced Ashildr, from this series, is brought back to life by the Doctor as a child and every time she encounters him begs him to take her on adventures with him. Are you seeing a theme here? Because I’m seeing a theme here.

Despite the fact that Amy, Clara and River seem outwardly different (let’s ignore the fact that they’re all saucy, quippy, flirty, etc), their personalities revolve around one man. For all these women, their entire lives have revolved around the Doctor, and their stories just don’t exist outside of him. Even in a couple of standalone episodes- notably the Girl in the Fireplace- the female characters meet the Doctor as a child then spend the rest of their lives pining for him. Compare this to the Davies years, where Martha actually left the Doctor and pursued her own life when she realized her feelings for him were hurting her, and it seems worryingly repetitive.

And speaking of worryingly repetitive, remember that episode with the tightly-attired, usually older, ruthless woman who turns out to be using her non-threatening exterior to mask inner evilness? Oh, sorry, I should be clear- I was talking about Ms Delphox in Time Heist. Or was it Miss Kizlet in Bells of Saint John? Maybe I meant Madame Kovarian.  Or Madam Gillyflower in The Crimson Horror. Sorry, no, Missy. I’m not saying that there haven’t been repetitive male character tropes either, but this one seems a particularly telling one to bash over the head, especially when you consider that it also turned up in some of Moffat’s other work (Jekyll and Sherlock.

What I’m trying to get across here is that, yes, while Doctor Who does feature women in lots of different roles doing different things, when you strip away the exterior, what’s going on underneath is extremely repetitive. I can appreciate, to an extent, what the show is doing with it’s women now, I think it’s fair to ask for a little bit more variety. And I’m not just talking about keeping the Daleks out of just one series.

No, not THAT Star Trek reboot.