Fall TV 2014: Parade of the Lady BAMFs
September 15, 2014 § Leave a comment
You can smell in the air, folks. TV is coming. Lady BAMFs are coming. Julianna Margulies’s eyebrows are coming.
In the past few years, television has demonstrated that it might be turning the corner when it comes to scripting leading ladies who actually act and think like real women rather than the neurotic and flighty tropes of yesteryear. With the Alicia Florricks and the Sharon Raydors of the world getting top billing, that trend seems to be gaining momentum. Here are a few shows which I will be watching closely.
BAD JUDGE. If there is anything in the universe I love more than Kate Walsh peering over reading glasses, I haven’t found it yet. Combine the comedy potential of creator Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and executive producer Will Ferrell (yes that Will Ferrell) with Walsh’s comedic timing and hairporn, and I think we have a winner. I’m excited to see Kate in something more upbeat than Private Practice and catch her BAMFing from the judge’s seat. Plus rumor has it she’ll be playing “Mom” to an eight-year-old boy, so cue the ocean of feels that accompanies a good mothership. Starts Thurs, Oct 2 at 9pm EST.
MADAM SECRETARY. I have always been a sucker for Tea Leoni, and this show seems like a veritable Hillary Clinton fanfic. I don’t know much about creator Barbara Hall, but it’s always nice to see a lady on top billing for writing, and the show’s lead-off position before The Good Wife on Sunday nights is sure to catch some attention. Who needs football when you have Bebe Neuwirth, am I right? Madam Secretary starts this Sunday at 8pm EST, CBS.
THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA. Honesty, I’m over cop shows. But I’m not over Debra Messing, and this dramedy might be a hit. Negative points for all male developers and producers, a critique I’ve always had for James Duff’s team for Major Crimes and The Closer. The show airs Wed Sept 24 at 8pm EST on NBC.
HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER. This title could be the name of Shonda Rhimes’ autobiography, as she is leading cause of fictional death in the United States. Shonda and I haven’t really been on speaking terms since Grey’s went off the rails and flew over 27,000 sharks, but goddamn you Viola Davis you are a national treasure. I’ll probably wait to see what fellow fangirls think before I give it a shot. The show airs on ABC at 10pm EST, Thursday, Sept 25, after Scandal.
So there you have it. If you’re wondering what I won’t be watching, State of Affairs with the notoriously notorious Katherine Heigl is at the very top of that list. Prove me wrong Heigl. I dare you.
Get Lost Carl: Tackling Self-Doubt
September 8, 2014 § Leave a comment
Carl thinks I’m not a very good writer. Carl tells me I should be working harder at my day job, that I should be getting up earlier, and that I’m have no clue what I’m doing in most areas of my life. If Carl sounds like an asshole, that’s because he is.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying out a new fangirl therapy technique that I’d like to share with with you. Like any writer, or any human for that matter, sometimes I struggle with negative thinking. Turning off self-doubt is about as easy turning off gravity, and even when you know that you’re being irrational, it can seem impossible to do anything different.
So I decided that I would give my negative thoughts a name. In narrative therapy, we call this “externalizing” a problem. If I’m thinking that I’m going to fail at a task, that thought seems pretty daunting. But if Carl says I am, well then what the fuck does he know? Suddenly I’m energized to take risks, and his opinion means about as much to me as an internet comment or a plotline from the final season Gossip Girl.
If you want to give it a try, pick a name (male or female, doesn’t matter). Then visualize a character from fiction that you despise and can associate with the name. I like to think of Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica. Joffrey from Game of Thrones or Thomas from Downton Abbey would also be great picks. Or Mr. Healy from Orange is the New Black. I’m trying to think of a lady, but damn, ladies are just awesome aren’t they? Maybe Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter. Just anyone you despise and whose opinion has no value to you whatsoever. 
And the next time you have a negative thought, say it out loud but preface it with your character’s name. For example, “Milton thinks I will die alone with 57 cats.” Honestly, what the hell does he know? Milton does not operate on facts.
You are not the problem. You were never the problem. The problem is the problem. So you might as well give it a name and a face, and keep on walking.
5 Quotes From ‘The Good Wife’ That Changed My Life
August 28, 2014 § Leave a comment
My latest in Thought Catalog
I’m a licensed therapist and a mental health journalist, but when I get home at night and my laptop blinks to life, I’m a fangirl. Fictional characters have transported me through more than one challenge in my life, from job interviews to bad dates to the death of my mother. Story is powerful, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s coming from across the table or from your Netflix account.
Last winter break, desperate to detox from graduate school, I went on a therapeutic TV binge. In a superhuman feat requiring years of fangirl preparation, I inhaled almost 100 episodes of CBS’s hit drama The Good Wife in just a few weeks. The show’s brilliant take on office politics and its pioneering female roles made me sit up straight. And before you could say “Christine Baranski” three times fast, I began to take notes.
Perhaps my professors might cringe and weep, but I learned more about my abilities and my goals in those two weeks than I have in five years of graduate education. The field of psychology is dominated by women, so you’d think that the following wisdom have come up once or twice. But the truth is that sometimes TV is the best teacher of them all. Here are five lessons the show taught me that have legitimately changed my entire life in the last seven months.
Read the rest here.
The BAMFiest Cap
August 25, 2014 § Leave a comment
Congrats to Sarah, the winner in our BAMFiest Cap Contest. She submitted this glorious cap of Mary McDonnell playing Captain Sharon Raydor in TNT’s The Closer.
Here’s the full scene for those of you who aren’t familiar with Raydor’s badassery.
Thanks to everyone who participated! I’ll be bringing you more fangirl advice soon. Keep on BAMFin.
fangirl dilemma: oh the feels
August 21, 2014 § Leave a comment
Ph. Don’tknowwhattodo asks,
I recently discovered your site and am grateful for the work you’re doing. It has shown me how many ways there are to fangirl over something or someone. For me, a lesbian at odds with the paucity of diverse female representation in media, fangirling has been a way to find representation via subtext. Yes, it’s cathexis, yes, it’s a way to negotiate desire (especially at times in my life when I’ve been less than comfortable with my own identity), and hell yes it’s about finding heroes. Smart girls, brave girls, strong girls. I can understand all this on an intellectual level, and even be OK with the fact that I am a grown professional who spends way too much time on Tumblr.
What I am not as OK with is the feels. They are impossible to describe to someone who does not experience them. How is it possible to be emotionally mature (as I strive to be) and still have an uncontrollable crush on a fictional character? Your advice to channel this energy into productive real-world pursuits in most welcome. But oh, the pain of it. Objectively, I know that it is a little bit nuts to swoon over Maura Isles. Rizzoli and Isles is not even a very good show! And yet here I am. Fangirling. Help.
Oh the feels. I’ll never forget the time I led a therapy group not realizing I had written “feels” on a whiteboard instead of “feelings” until afterwards. Super professional am I.
Feels are a lovely, affordable, and physically safe high when you think of all the other nefarious activities we could doing in search of a delicious rush of emotion.
I wish I could bottle up the feels I get around Day 6 into a new TV lady crush and use them on days I feel down. The air smells sweeter, I’m lighter on my feet, and I’m grinning like an idiot.
But that initial dose of feels turns into a ravenous monster the longer you go. It takes more viewing, more ficwriting, more headcanon, more gifing to reach the high as your tolerance increases. It becomes a painful chore as we carry the obsession on our back throughout the day.
Unfortunately, there’s no cure for the feels, my friend. But you can pay attention to what they tell you. 90% of the time when our feels don’t burn out after the first few weeks like a supernova of hairporn, they serve a purpose. And this purpose is usually to disengage or distract us from our own anxieties.
So the best way to tackle feels isn’t to delete all your Sasha pics. It’s taking inventory of your life right now. You seem like a super professional lady, so there’s sure to be some stressors in your life. What are they? Attack them. Engage them. Cope positively. The more you face anxieties head on, the less your mind will need to check out via the nearest ladyBAMF. You can squeeflail like a crazy woman when you need to, but you won’t carry the feels around like a 350 pound gorilla. It’ll be more like a tiny organ grinder monkey with a top hat. Way more manageable.
Enjoy your feels lady! But enjoy the rest of life as well. When you take care of business and your brain, the rest is icing on the cake.
A Cap is Worth a Thousand Creys
August 19, 2014 § 1 Comment
What do you do in your spare time? I take pictures of TV shows.
Why do we take screen captures (aka caps) when we can just watch a scene over and over again? Because hairporn. Because feels. Because everything. Stories move quickly, and sometimes we just want to freeze a moment in time. Here are a few of my favorites.
This is from season 2 of Cheers. Nothing sums of the pinnacle of comedy TV romance than this nose pulling shot of Sam and Diane.
This cap literally changed my life. Captivated by Glee designer Lou Eyrich’s vision for TV fashion icon Emma Pillsbury, I gave up pants for a year, added color to my wardrobe, and made many fangirl friends as we tracked down Glee fashion on eBay. After all, Penelope J. Crew Mary Janes are the most dangerous game.
LOST’s The Constant is arguably the best television episode ever written. I see this cap and start wailing, “I love ya Penny. I’ve always loved ya!” in a horrible Scottish accent. I mean it’s Christmas Eve for crying out loud. EIGHT YEARS.
Our social media lives are so saturated with selfies and sepia-toned instagram shots these days that we honestly don’t need any more pictures of ourselves. But what if you started watching your own life and taking mental screen caps? Freezing the moments you’d like to examine more closely, and capturing your BAMFy self in action. What would you see? What would other people see?
You should have at least one moment every day where you can take a mental screen cap and be proud of yourself. Maybe you’re taking initiative at work, or standing up for yourself in a relationship. Perhaps you got out of bed early to do some yoga. Being able to see yourself in the moment working toward your goals is worth more than a thousand “I should’s.” So live a life that’s worth capping.
That being said, thanks to those of you who submitted BAMF caps for our first ever Fangirl Therapy Capoff! Here are your submissions, and you can vote for your favorite! Poll closes on Friday at 5pm EST.
1. First Lady Martha Logan, resident badass of 24
2. Sassy Detective Amy Sykes of Major Crimes
3. Captain Sharon F**king Raydor of Major Crimes
4. Laura Roslin of Battlestar Galactica becoming President of the Universe
5. Laura Roslin looking into your soul
6. Helicopter view of The Good Wife’s Diane Lockhart
7. Diane Lockhart Does Fierce
8. Barn Casual Diane Lockhart seducing her Republican boyfriend
9. And finally, elevator!rage Diane Lockhart
Thanks for everybody who submitted! For those who forgot and still want to share your favorites, you can email me and I’ll post them on twitter.
Have a great week, and live a life worth capping! I’ll be answering your questions this week and can’t wait to hear from you.
1st Annual Fangirl Therapy Cap-off
August 14, 2014 § Leave a comment
Fangirls love taking horrible, violent words and reappropriating them for their fluffy feels. Take the word BAMF for example.
Starting next week we’re going to change what it means to bust a cap. If you’re like me, there’s nothing you love more than a good screencap. Chances are your desktop is literally filled with them because you couldn’t be bothered to put them in a folder. Or run a brush through your hair. Seriously brush the crumbs off your face and get some fresh air.
So like the environmentally conscious fangirls we are, we’re gonna recycle all those caps and have a good old fashioned cap-off!
Step 1. Ask yourself, “What is the best screencap I’ve ever taken of my favorite ladyBAMF?”
Step 2. Email me the cap at fangirltherapist@gmail.com, post it on the facebook wall, or comment on this post with a link to your cap.
Depending on how many entires we get, we’ll either vote all at once, or have a March Madness style bracket, only with pretty ladies.
Thanks to everybody from tumblr who’s already sent entries! Keep them coming!
I’ll be away this weekend, technology-free in Vermont. Here’s Kalinda with a sledgehammer to tide you over.
See you Monday!
Professor Fangirl: What TV Can Teach Psychology
August 13, 2014 § Leave a comment
My latest in Thought Catalog.
When I teach graduate courses to therapists in training, I start every class by going around the room and asking each student the most fundamental relationship-building question I can fathom.
“What’s your favorite TV show?”
I get a flurry of arching eyebrows. They were expecting the “What did you do on your summer vacation?” question. Or the agonizing “two truths and a lie” charade we’re all forced to play at one point of another. But no professor has ever planted a seedling of a relationship with this query.
Yep, that’s me. Professor Fangirl. I may be a PhD student and a mental health writer, but my students will never know that when I get home at night, I surf Tumblr and fawn over my favorite fictional characters. They don’t know that I’ve written fan fiction, or that I run an advice website that helps fans work through their own obsessions. I can even make gifs. So cool, right?
This chunk of me stays tucked away in the nearest phone booth most of the time. But time and time again I discover that fiction, particularly television, is a beautiful starting point for big-picture thinking. For thinking about our therapy clients’ lives as well as our own stories.
Read the rest here.
SCIENCE!
August 13, 2014 § Leave a comment
We interrupt your regularly scheduled creys to bring you some fangirl science.
Why mess with perfection, am I right? And for the psych folks. . .
Hairporn and subtext can power an armada of ships. Whereas angsty yelling is a more coveted but rarer vessel.
fangirl dilemma: real life lady crushin
August 12, 2014 § 1 Comment
Rose asks,
What do you do when you start fangirling over people in your personal life? Like, I can cope with crying over Sasha Alexander’s hair while cocooned in a blanket at 3am, but I don’t really know how to handle the real life swooning and endless weeping when your friend crushes become too much to handle. Thank you for your input 🙂
Thanks, Rose. First of all, why don’t you write up a little how-to on that Sasha hair survival method, because I have a heap of followers on twitter who are put out of commission by her locks about 3.5 times a day. It would be nice to know there’s hope for them!
Okay, sorry, I just got distracted for thirty minutes looking for hairporn gifs in tumblr. . .
ANYWAY, YES, FRIEND CRUSHES. First of all, congratulations on having friends who are crush-worthy. Many people don’t ever make the effort to get to know people whom they admire.
I think the mistake most fangirls make is that they try to get over their intense admiration of the friend. But honestly, why hide that little light of yours under a bushel when it will only just burst into flames anyway? Don’t snuff out your feelings. Let them be. Respect the fangirl nature.
The problem here is that you aren’t applying the same dedication to yourself. Give yourself a little self-esteem boost. Tell yourself how amazing you are. Inspire yourself. Write a letter to yourself and put it in the mail. Leave yourself a voicemail.
You are fucking wonderful Rose, and it is okay to say that. Go say that in the mirror three times right now. Get up. Do it. Do it now.
Don’t worry about people saying you have an ego. Don’t feel like you have to dismiss your accomplishments or the compliments that come your way. The sooner you learn to have a mega fangirl crush on yourself, the less you’ll be weeping over your friends. You’ll still get giddy over them, but you know what’s even better? Getting excited that you get to be you. I mean what a phenomenal casting choice, am I right? You’ll grin at that very realization as you lay awake in the dark. And perhaps you’ll dream about where life will lead you, with a sprinkle of Sasha hair added for good measure.
Fangirl Therapy 