Quirky girls are a peculiar archetype, a subculture in entertainment that includes disparate wackadoodles like Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby and the effervescent young Goldie Hawn in anything. And this past year it included a sitcom tenuously built around the one-note manic-pixie-dream-girl trope’s pageant queen, Zooey Deschanel, who has almost single-handedly infantilized America’s latest sweetheart-type into ridiculousness through her Fox series New Girl.
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These borderline-annoying pixies see the world with wide eyes (in Deschanel’s case, doe eyes surely augmented with the plentiful false eyelashes, Photoshop and Rimmel mascara she shills in every woman’s magazine) — they’re lovable, free-spirited eccentrics in baby doll dresses left to run rampant.
The term “manic pixie dream girl” may have been coined by film critic Nathan Rabin (for Kirsten Dunst’s character in 2005’s Elizabethtown) but it also encompasses plucky silent film star Clara Bow, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park and half of Dharma & Greg. Quirky has its place. It can be funny, even charming. But on its own, in the absence of any other qualities, it doesn’t equal funny. At least 2 Broke Girls is crude, sassy and wise, and Whitney has a potty mouth, to name two of this year’s other female-centric sitcoms.
Initially, I welcomed the idea of offbeat and adorkable as a respite from primetime comedy’s usual shrill scold foils (Last Man Standing) and sex-object-punchlines (Two and a Half Men is flush with both). But quirk has varying dilutions on its spectrum, on a scale of Lucille Ball to Björk.
On New Girl, Deschanel’s Jess floats through life in vintage floral dresses; she’s not just spacey but dumb as a puppy. She’s erratic to the point of manic. At least the functioning-Asperger’s-spectrum characters on Community, The Big Bang Theory and Criminal Minds are given the smarts to offset their stereotypical lack of affect. Heck, Deschanel’s own sister Emily may have no EQ but her Dr. Temperance Brennan at least gets to provide Bones’ deadpan.
New Girl’s Jess gets to makes scrunched-up faces, and occasionally bursts into song at inappropriate times. It’s madcap, get it? Most audiences don’t, judging by the show’s December ratings, the show’s lowest since its fall premiere. It seems being the lady-child with no guile is worse than being the dumb blonde.
And at least in Big Bang Theory, Kaley Cuoco’s book-stupid-but-street-smart Penny (the Chrissy Snow of Gen Y) gets to play the straight man observer, thereby also getting some of the best lines, and biggest laughs. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s also not ingratiating.
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These borderline-annoying pixies see the world with wide eyes (in Deschanel’s case, doe eyes surely augmented with the plentiful false eyelashes, Photoshop and Rimmel mascara she shills in every woman’s magazine) — they’re lovable, free-spirited eccentrics in baby doll dresses left to run rampant.
The term “manic pixie dream girl” may have been coined by film critic Nathan Rabin (for Kirsten Dunst’s character in 2005’s Elizabethtown) but it also encompasses plucky silent film star Clara Bow, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park and half of Dharma & Greg. Quirky has its place. It can be funny, even charming. But on its own, in the absence of any other qualities, it doesn’t equal funny. At least 2 Broke Girls is crude, sassy and wise, and Whitney has a potty mouth, to name two of this year’s other female-centric sitcoms.
Initially, I welcomed the idea of offbeat and adorkable as a respite from primetime comedy’s usual shrill scold foils (Last Man Standing) and sex-object-punchlines (Two and a Half Men is flush with both). But quirk has varying dilutions on its spectrum, on a scale of Lucille Ball to Björk.
On New Girl, Deschanel’s Jess floats through life in vintage floral dresses; she’s not just spacey but dumb as a puppy. She’s erratic to the point of manic. At least the functioning-Asperger’s-spectrum characters on Community, The Big Bang Theory and Criminal Minds are given the smarts to offset their stereotypical lack of affect. Heck, Deschanel’s own sister Emily may have no EQ but her Dr. Temperance Brennan at least gets to provide Bones’ deadpan.
New Girl’s Jess gets to makes scrunched-up faces, and occasionally bursts into song at inappropriate times. It’s madcap, get it? Most audiences don’t, judging by the show’s December ratings, the show’s lowest since its fall premiere. It seems being the lady-child with no guile is worse than being the dumb blonde.
And at least in Big Bang Theory, Kaley Cuoco’s book-stupid-but-street-smart Penny (the Chrissy Snow of Gen Y) gets to play the straight man observer, thereby also getting some of the best lines, and biggest laughs. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s also not ingratiating.
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