Women are the new men on TV

Broads are the cops and lawyers and masters of the business universe on the new shows. So what happened to the men?

Editor's note: Read more of our TV Week 2007 coverage.

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Women, Men, Arts & Entertainment, Arts & Entertainment TV Features, Rebecca Traister, TV Week, TV Week 2007

Photo: ABC, CBS

Paula Newsome and Laura Harris in "Women's Murder Club," Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons in "Big Bang Theory."

Sept. 12, 2007 | Here's the good news: When you turn on your television this fall, you'll be watching more women kick more ass than you can possibly imagine -- physically, economically and sexually. Hard-bodied and smart, rich and aggressive, confident and independent, the chicks who populate the prime-time lineup are being cast in roles that once belonged almost exclusively to men. These broads are cops and lawyers and masters of the business universe. Hollywood doyennes like Kyra Sedgwick, Mary-Louise Parker and Holly Hunter have already found midlife career solace (and good writing) on cable. This year, Julianna Margulies will star as a nasty Nancy Grace knockoff, Angie Harmon as a police lieutenant, Lucy Liu as a publishing executive, and Patricia Heaton as a news anchor; there's a new "Bionic Woman" and a whole show about the world's leading incubator of the future, "The Terminator's" Sarah Connor. The flinty Cagneys, Laceys, Murphys and Buffys of yore aren't the exceptions in the new TV season; they rule.

So what happened to the men? Nothing good, that's for sure. Here, for instance, is what happens when Lucy Liu's character, Mia, on ABC's "Cashmere Mafia," wins a work contest, and big promotion, over her boyfriend and colleague Richard: He breaks up with her, tail between his legs. "I thought I'd win and buy us a place and take care of you," he explains. "And now that it's reversed I just can't see us ... I'm 40 next month. I want someone to come home to. I'm going to want kids, and we're just going in opposite directions."

Yup. Welcome to the new world on television, where the women are strong, and the men are cavemen. Literally. ABC's "Cavemen," based on the Geico ad campaign character, is about a trio of Cro-Magnons with low self-esteem and a little hair-growth problem. Small-screen heroes who aren't actually dragging their knuckles behave even worse. In the face of professional and sexual equality between the televised sexes, these fictional guys are cowed, angry and generally emasculated by the successes of their female counterparts.

It can't all be coincidence that this season is coming at the end of a summer in which the biggest movie hits have featured dopey, ill-groomed, irresponsible boys who score beautiful high-achieving women and then have no idea what to do once they land them. That's right, we're in Apatowland, baby, where the idea of a male romantic lead now begins with a water bong and ends with a fart joke. This isn't an isolated trend; it seems to be a broad cultural response that speaks to enough people to keep it floating. The shows this fall are not clones of each other: They're written by men and by women; they're geared toward teens and adults; they're comedies and dramas and dramedies. And they all seem to be expressing an anxiety about what on earth is going to happen to American men now that their women are not simply competing at work, sex, friendship, money and politics, but sometimes winning.

Among the degradations about to be heaped on television's men? There are guys whose wives cheat on them, whose girlfriends get promoted over them, whose mates make more money than they do; guys who get left out of baby-making, who date women with penises and at least one who gets anally raped by a monkey.

Seriously.

It's tough to know where to start in explaining how bad these boys have it, but the monkey rape seems as good a place as any. It takes place in the debut episode of the Farrelly brothers' half-hour comedy "The Rules for Starting Over," which premieres on Fox in spring 2008, about Gator (Craig Bierko), a menschy guy tossed back into the dating market after his wife leaves him for a Cirque de Soleil performer. Gator, who hasn't been on a date since his 20s, is mystified by women, and startled to be invited up to the apartment of an attractive naturalist who shows him tapes of the gorillas she's studied. She informs him that "in the world of primates, the female always initiates," pulling him onto the floor on top of her to demonstrate. That's when the woman's pet baboon takes Gator from behind.

Gator's buddies do nickname the monkey "bi-curious George" -- the only funny line of the episode -- but otherwise are a lamentable bunch. They include a heavily accented Indian doctor, also recently divorced, and so lonely and stupid that he invites an escort to his birthday dinner (at "Thank God It Is Friday's" -- think of how hilarious that is in an Indian accent!) and proposes to her. As if getting ditched for a circus acrobat isn't emblematic enough of the clownish powerlessness of modern man, the show's lone female star is dating a short man who works for the Celtics -- as the team's bouncy mascot, Lucky the Leprechaun!

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