I hate the way Jack/Sam is done on the show, and yet? I loved Grace. I think there are maybe 3 of us in the world.

I did, too! I hated they were resurrecting ship, but they were putting it away once and for all in a way the explained credibly how she could've wasted any time on it, why she didn't pursue it, etc. I was so happy. Then after a while, they ran roughshod over the development we saw in her in that episode, and it was like it never happened.

Meanwhile, it's the kiss from that ep that gets on every SciFi commercial, never the bits where Sam saves the whole freakin' crew and merits her promotion to Lt. Col.

And, it bears repeating, I enjoyed the opportunity to watch AT get to do some real acting.

I do, too. A lot of people insist she just can't do anymore than what they give her, but... well, I really firmly believe they don't want females stealing center stage. I've heard more biased things than that said blatantly on film sets, so it doesn't strike me as all that big an accusation. But I've seen 90% of SG's guest actors on Davinci's Inquest (a Canadian series of high quality), and I'm floored by how some of the actors I'd pegged as mediocre on SG are actually quite good on DI.

So my personal jury is still way out on AT. I saw her guesting in a comedy one time, playing a conniving prima donna news anchor, and it felt like a stretch from Sam for me. I do think she has some serious ability, and people are unfair to judge her by what one character has allowed her to do.

I find your breakdown of the writers' attitude fascinating. I've never stopped to break down my annoyance with how a particular character is treated based on who wrote the script.

LOL, it's automatic for me, because I used to write screenplays.

(That's how I know I'd rather have a root canal than watch a Damian Kindler script.)

Grace was DK, though.

I'll have to stop and look at the episodes I most love/hate for a character and see who wrote what.

If you ever want to discuss it and bounce ideas back and forth, I'd actually love to hear what someone else comes up with.

I've noticed that the entrtainment industry has an almost inverse relationship to reality on gender issues at times.

Yes! That's it exactly. All your examples are bang on. And it feels to me like some sort of backlash against women getting any sort of redress or attention for the crap they've had to put up with.

I make up my own Just So Story such that yes, somebody read the script and did say, "Yanno, Sam screws up really, really bad here," and the writer slapped on the benediction because he didn't intend for it to be Sam screwing up; that was just what he needed to move the plot along.

That makes sense.

I hated they were resurrecting ship, but they were putting it away once and for all in a way the explained credibly how she could've wasted any time on it, why she didn't pursue it, etc.

I never would have minded ship if it had been something Sam struggled with, overcame, dealt with, something or if it had been left at the level it was early on, with the actors throwing in occasional, casual appreciation. (They are gorgeous and none of them are blind.) The writers, though, chose to make it less ambiguous, preferring to throw it in as a bone to those who want an active onscreen romance. (I don't mean that to insult shippers; I think what the writers gave them was literally a bone and they have every right to feel screwed that there was no fruition. However thankful I am that there wasn't.)

So Sam makes eyes at her boss and they start writing the character in ways that really frustrate me. When it became about filming hot scenes of Pete banging Sam up against the wall rather than her contribution to this galactic war for the fate of all life in the galaxy? Well, that isn't what I cared about so as a viewer I was unhappy. In the meantime, while AT was doing her best to infuse poignancy into Sam's dilemma, I felt as if RDA played it as Jack was constipated. While a lot of slashers took comfort in that (Look! Jack doesn't even like her!), I thought it made poor Sam look even more delusional and stupid. Bah! I hated the whole of it.

I was happy to see Sam move on in Grace but then it seemed to just get treated as a bridge as to why Sam was now going out with Pete. It reduced what I thought was an experimental show that showed a lot about who Sam is to yet again being about Sam's reproductive organs.

I sound as if I'm against romance. I'm not. I like schmoopy, I like sexual tension, I like hot action. In Stargate, though, these things seem to happen more often outside of the story line and serve to take the character out of the important action. That's what I object to most. And besides, we all know who Jack is really in love with, don't we? ;)

Grace was DK, though.

Now that shocked me. I had no idea. I guess I'll have to alter my opinion: I'd rather have a root canal than watch a DK comedy script. :)

Yes! That's it exactly. All your examples are bang on. And it feels to me like some sort of backlash against women getting any sort of redress or attention for the crap they've had to put up with.

:) That's my only real example and it's one that hit me because I'd spent five years being completely cut off from popular culture. This sort of topic has been on my mind for a while because there are often people who capitalize on backlash and help direct it but there has to be a popular sense of unease to get misdirected in the first place. I think that unease first arises not as a backlash but as a common human response to change.

I'm not expressing myself well and I'm really trying to bring my thoughts on this topic around to the ruts I've been worrying since I first read cereta's brilliant piece on Fandom and Male Privilege, which identified a much more subtle reaction than I'd typically term, "backlash." I'd call it more ignorance and insensitivity. I'm just not certain how to draw the line to a society in which the overwhelming reality is denied, in fact reversed, in its entertainment. I'm not clear on the meaning or the message. I wish I could be clearer but since I haven't formulated a comprehensive explanation, it's still as muddled on the page as it is in my head.

Anyhow, this has been swirling in my head along with other issues such as homosexuality, vegetarianism, and - in the wake IBAR week, racism in fandom. I can feel an underlying common cause in people's uncomfortable reactions to that which is "different" but I don't have my Universal String Theory worked out yet.

That makes sense.

That is the value of the Just So. I don't know the reality, of course, but it's a story that allows me to continue enjoying until faced with an unpalatable truth.

I agree totally with your assessment of ship and Grace and what could have been and what we all got instead. I gather AT thought Pete was an actual attempt for Sam to have an "adult relationship" as she called it - meaning, I believed, one involving compromise and adult decisions. But I have a bad feeling that all along, in RCC's mind, Pete was Plot Device Boyfriend - the guy our leading lady dates in order to learn she just can't live without our leading man. Who's, you know, dating that other woman at the time, but who cares about her, either? /rolleyes

Threads just made them both look so deeply ill-advised. Foolish, sleazy... I'm not sure, so I go with "ill-advised". Making bad decisions. And you know, if bad decisions are properly examined in the script, they can work. This was so not an example of doing it right.

I actually reposted Cereta's article on Hathor because it triggered something in me, too. The general resistance of, say, white men to affirmative action programs is more a case of ignorance than an actual backlash - they don't realize they used to have affirmative action that privileged them. But what Hollywood does is actually sit around in meetings and say things like "Nobody wants to see a woman in that role/another black comedy/some butch [lesbian] running around kicking the crap out of people". So for those guys, I say "backlash". There's nothing ignorant or unconscious about it. I'm not sure I've expressed this well, but I have to run, so please forgive me if I said anything really nonsensical, LOL.

In the case of your example, I can make a good guess what that's about. "Women in jep" movies (the most polite term for movies about women being stalked, raped, kidnapped, etc.) is were relegated to Lifetime TV. Only "thrillers" could make it to the big screen. "Crush" and its ilk are strictly for titillation, whereas bigscreen dramas about women being kidnapped, stalked or raped usually focus more on the cops and criminals and mates of said woman than on her. So: realistic drama about women in jeopardy goes to small screen, thriller about cop chasing down guy who raped his girlfriend goes to big screen.