They have our troubles and our weaknesses, we can hear their stomachs rumble, they are as messy as we are ourselves. The sitcoms are as uncomplicated as serial comic strips. Critical attempts to make them more significant than they are show only the paucity of material. The over-simple images reverse sexual roles, too. Women cops make the same noise blowing up things as the men.
Women lawyers seem to be popular lately.
At least the women are lawyers, first, for once. Predictably, the shy man finds a secret of sexual performance to show his manliness. There we are with the flip side of the classic old movie where dowdy Bette Davis takes off her glasses, lets down her hair, accepts a cigarette, finds out she has a body under her cardigan and becomes a successful sex object. This role-reversing revenge started with women writers. Almost unremarked, Ellen Glasgow, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather first wrote about men as the weaker sex.