Where Have All the Good Women Gone?

I remember the crushing sense of sorrow when one of my favorite TV series was canceled. It was all wrapped up haphazardly with a 2-hour finale as a gift to the fans and left me wanting more. The story had so many untied threads; nevertheless, the executives at NBC decided “Timeless” wasn’t worth the airtime. Several weeks later while I was wallowing in Nethery Hall, Dr. Pittman and I struck up a conversation over things we were watching and I mentioned that “Timeless” was canceled even though it had a strong fan base (which stopped it from being canceled during the first season) and very strong ratings. “Was the lead character female?” was her reply. I quickly replied “yes,” and she nodded knowingly. I was startled by the idea at first, but in our male-dominated society, it made sense. Ever since then, I’ve been hyper-aware of TV series cancellations with female leads.

Let’s recap some of the more recent cancellations on network television and streaming services:

1) “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” starring Jane Levy in the leading role of Zoey Clarke, a woman who sees people’s inner feelings displayed as musical numbers, lasted two seasons and had a score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes.
2) The Netflix hit teen series “Julie and the Phantoms” was canceled after one season despite its Daytime Emmy wins and ongoing and overwhelming response to renew it for a second season (please tell me I was not the only one seeing all those Instagram comments).
3) “Diary of a Future President” also had a two season run on Disney+, being one of the first original series to be on the streaming service, and despite also having good ratings, it was sadly short-lived.

Reflecting back on these and many more examples of unjust cancellations of quality television shows starring leading women, it just boggles my mind how network executives decide to pull the plug on them. At least Netflix should know better; “Orange is the New Black” was one of their highest watched shows of the past decade and won multiple awards for them. It seems to me that the industry believes that women’s stories are not as interesting or profitable as men’s; that people would rather watch the same boring morally-gray male try to navigate his job, his alcoholism, and his nagging wife. But what can one expect when, as of 2020, 68% of chairs and CEOs are men and 60% of senior executives are, you guessed it, men.

I know that there are many decisions that are necessary to plan out the future of a television series, but women are being shown time and time again that their experiences and lives are just not worth telling, and that is something that I cannot sit with. We deserve to see ourselves on screen, taking up as much time and space as men. I know that in the future we will see more amazing female shows, but for now I have a bone to pick with all the networks who gave up on all the projects that had more life to give.