Where is the 2010 Cagney and Lacey?

I suppose I should preface my rant by saying that I don't watch a lot of first run TV... it's so hard to find first run TV these days because most of the shows are reality series crap, interspersed with a fiction show once in a while.

But, what crime shows today star women?

There are 3, if memory serves. Bones, which I like for the most part, although the amorous adventures of Angela the forensic artist getting on my nerves. I like Cam the Head of the Forensic Division though. But in any event, this is an ensemble cast.

I never watch Saving Grace, I dont like such severely flawed heros (I hate people who are so stupid as to become alcoholics, especially if they are supposed to be police officers), but according to Wikipedia its another ensemble show. (It also has apparently been canceled, even though it got high ratings in the US, because overseas sales of DVDs were disappointing. Not sure if that shows good taste on the part of foreigners -- they don't like hard-drinking promiscuous women cops -- or if it just shows them to be chauvanistic and they dont' like women of any kind...)

And The Closer, another ensemble show. The lead character, Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson, is definitely in charge of her people, but still, it's an ensemble show.

And that's it.

Now, where are the shows where it's just a woman or two women, doing their job?

THere are plenty of "retreads" of TV shows. For example White Collar is a version of It Takes A Thief. Two guys, the con man soooo sexy and appealing to women, and his FBI minder. Why couldn't that have been a con woman and her FBI minder, also a women. Women can't be reformed conwomen? Of course I despise these types of shows (all excep the original - I loved It Takes A Thief!) As if some dishonest thief can do better than a stand up law enforcement officer when it comes down to foiling the bad guys.

What about shows for kids?

We've got The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. Based on the movie of course, which has the obnoxious girl, kind of like Lucy Van Pelt from the Peanuts Cartoons. Dora the Explorer is I think the only female character who has her own TV show. Everything else has a boy lead. (So it was kind of funny that, a couple of days ago, they did an episode of Arthur where Arthur, the boy, was concerned about and obsessing over his weight, whereas DJ, his annoying sister, wasn't. Never mind the fact that Arthur has always been a slender... ardvark, not in the least overweight. But however old he is, and however old his audience is, of course they must start becoming obsessed with their weight even earlier than they usually do!)

I rant quite a bit about the status of women in US society these days, how we are more free now than ever before to do anything we want - invent, explore, be a scientist, and so on, and yet more and more women just settle for marriage and kids...and increasingly....just kids....with no education, no desire to be the best they can be... indeed, any show on TV that features a woman character these days invariably seems to have a young woman with a kid and no dad in the picture... that's what they did with the Bionic Woman if memory serves...it wasn't her kid but her young sister who was a pain...and the lead character wasn't some scientist or adventurer like a skydiver, as the original had been, but rather a waitress. A waitress.

No, I'm not "dissing" waitresses...except in so much that waitressing should be a job one takes while one goes to college, so one can then move on to getting a better job and a career...or if one chooses only the career of raising ones kids, one can raise them with knowledge of one's own to earn some respect from the little rug rats.

There's a TV series called Burn Notice, which co-starrs Sharon Gless as the lead character's mother. Gless has put on quite a bit of weight since her Cagney and Lacy days, a circumstance that I do not care about at all, after all it has been 20 years, and the same thing happens to guys...pace William Shatner and his spare tire in TJ Hooker and his spare tires in Boston Legal! And Tyne Daly also is showing her age - I think both these women are in their 60s now. And all I have to say is, MORE POWER TO THEM!

But they are being reunited on an episode of Burn Notice, and it will be interesting to see what the plot is. Normally I don't watch Burn Notice, but I'm going to try to make an effort to catch this episode.