Prestige shows have failed their teenage girl characters

Paste Magazine

Framing Britney Spears has put a spotlight on how pop-culture has been cruel to female teenage celebrities, but that focus should also be put on famous fictional teens. "They grow up under the glare of an unrelenting spotlight and are not allowed the the space to make mistakes," says Amy Amatangelo of female teen celebrities like Britney Spears. "What’s really weird," she adds, "is we do the same thing to fictional characters, too—especially teenage girls on so-called prestige dramas. Let’s start with 24. When you think about the series, which ran on Fox for nine seasons, what’s one of the first things that comes to your mind? Is it the innovative format which had each episode play out in real time? Perhaps. Is it the way Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) could travel across LA in minutes never encountering traffic or having to use the bathroom? Maybe. But you know what most people remember? The way Jack’s daughter Kimberly (Elisha Cuthbert) was trapped by a cougar (and trapped in a cougar trap) in the eleventh episode of the show’s second season. The show’s go-to move was to put Kimberly in constant danger. I lost count of how many times she was kidnapped during the show’s first season, and the cougar move was just a bridge too far for so many viewers. Entertainment Weekly named Kimberly one of the 21 most annoying TV Characters in 2016. Television Without Pity, which was at its peak during the show’s run, simply referred to her as the Spawn...Not many years later a similar thing happened with another one of executive producer Howard Gordan’s shows. Homeland, which premiered on Showtime in October 2011 was another taut thriller—this time about POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) who returns home and is suspected by CIA Agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) of being a sleeper agent. Like Jack Bauer, Brody also had a daughter, Dana (Morgan Saylor) who had a knack for picking the wrong boyfriends, making questionable decisions, and constantly getting herself into trouble. Saturday Night Live made fun of her in an October 2013 sketch...The examples of female teenage characters inciting ire among viewers are many. Meadow Soprano (Jamie Lynn Sigler) is pretty much universally the most despised character on The Sopranos, and this is a series where characters routinely murdered people in increasingly violent ways. Meadow didn’t murder anyone (we think) yet fans found her behavior untenable. NBC’s Friday Night Lights is pretty much universally adored except Coach Taylor’s daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden), who viewers seemed to hate even more than the storyline we don’t talk about. Vulture ranked Julie second on their list of 'The Brattiest Teens in TV History, Ranked.' Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) on Game of Thrones was vilified in the first seasons for liking lemon cakes and wanting to marry a prince, and was only redeemed to some toxic viewers as a 'worthy' character after she was tortured and sexually abused."