yes! (also: thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful reply here. DC discourse usually stops at "And he's crying lol")

giving Jen a half-sister and have TWO sex-positive girls become friends sounds great, but Eve never was that. (and in the end, Audrey wasn't either because she propped up Joey, not Jen.)

yes, Dawson would want a super-earnest show about his life etc. and he'd like the IDEA of "Dawson's Creek", of course. but I think he would hate or lampshade many of the weirder decisions of the show (the Eve storyline, for example).

German here, born in 1983. up to 5th grade, we had school every second Saturday, so I couldn't watch things regularly. things that I distinctly remember as being on during Saturday morning blocks are:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• MASK
• the "Land of the Lost" remake
• classic Scooby-Doo
• Bucky O'Hare
• COPS
• and a sitcom called "Major Dad"

I think it's like with Ross in "Friends" being the "nice guy": you can still say "the female characters are the worst characters" even when they are more accomplished or "nicer" or less controversial in-universe (...the same way people don't like "nice guy" Ross, or "nice guy" Dawson in "Dawson's Creek" etc.)

Reddit is so male-dominated that these kind of questions often lead to guys venting against the female characters.

that being said: BBT was shitty at writing women/female characters, so I do understand if the women end up being named the worst characters.

still: I think most shows have a female "worst character", not a male one (because sexism in the writer's room) and most viewers are more annoyed with bad female characters (because sexism in the fanbase), and in the end, you can gain reddit karma easily by posting "Let's face it: In Star Trek, Beverly Crusher is even worse than her son" etc.

Emma Peel (as a character. the name is kinda bad because it means: female character that appeals to MEN - so: Men - Appeal, M-Appeal.)

I think most queer people who care about representation would say: shows are doing more now and that makes the current decade better. the same goes for disabled people. and while the 90s felt like black shows were gaining traction, I think the 2010s were better than the 2000s.

I like many old shows, but I don't think anyone who cares about marginalized people and characters will pick an earlier era: it's slowly getting better, it still needs to get much better, and the current savings/cuts might be the sign that 2017, 2019 etc. were a high point (that wasn't even that "high").

BBT seemed to say "Let's tell a fake and myopic story" but then sometimes gave me moments of sincerity that were a pleasant surprise.

Modern Family seemd to say "We are a sincere and progressive show" but then often felt fake and myopic.

I still prefer Modern Family, by a long shot, but I often felt underwhelemed - while with BBT, I expected nothing and then was pleasantly surprised from time to time.

I think BBT will age well in the way "Three's Company" aged well: it is sexist trash, but many things about it worked surprisingly well or were better than they had to be.

it's not THAT huge on TV - but I think in the YA book market, romance and teen drama are merging in a way that makes romance more normal & mainstream. so: you will find many shows like "Heartstopper", "Love, Victor", "Never have I ever", "The Summer I turned pretty" right up to stuff like "Bridgerton" and popular K-Dramas that are all much less niche than similar teen romances 10 or 15 years ago. (plus, all these Christmas/Hallmark movies for older people and stuff like "Emily in Paris").

I don't mean "there are romantic comedies, and some of them happen to get a TV series version", I mean "romance fiction was this very ghettoized genre, and now the tropes and dynamics of romance fiction suddenly dominate most queer and most female-skewing TV dramas and a lot of current YA fiction"

yes! the stakes are very low, but the characters are very intense about everything. I like these kind of dramas that don't have any additional gimmick, setting, genre or ticking clock; I'm a big fan of "My so-called Life", I liked "Dawson's Creek" and I always suspect that "A Million Little Things" might have these vibes, too? in a way, "Girls" and "Looking" are similar: just groups of friends who might become couples and have some goals and some growing-up to do.

(I never watched "Smallville", but there is a comics continuation that was super-good, for the most part. "Buffy" is awesome, but somehow predictably given my comment about mundane/domestic things, I liked season 6 best.)

in terms of sheer numbers, I think "Star Trek: Voyager" because I never had a VCR, tried to watch the first four seasons whenever episodes aired and after that stopped looking at TV listings but still watched whenever I had time and an unfamiliar episode happened to be on German TV.

in terms of "What am I doing?": "One Tree Hill" had three so-so final seasons, seasons 7 to 9, but both S7 and S8 had great midseason finales. somehow, the follow-up episodes to the S7 midseason finale and the S8 midseason finale were so trite that I stopped watching until the next seasons in the fall. so... bizarrely, I've watched like... 17 eps of S7, 17 eps of S8 and, strangely, 5 (?) eps of S9 even though people say that all seasons went out on a high note.

I get your point - but then, some of my favorite showrunners and TV writers are gay men and write awesome female characters.

and no, I think the author is straight (he was married and is dating lots of women and his alter ego in the book only has straight sex and straight desire), but the character loves working with men, looks up to men, has more male friends, fights for the respect of men etc. etc.

yes, I absolutely would. there are some aktivist hashtags like "men are trash" and I abandon/unollow people who use these to gain clout.

that being said: I feel like I've seen so many fun and well-rounded male characters and listened to so many male authors that I'm more excited about female characters and voices etc. - and I like it if characters mess with gender roles or make me/us question the binary.

right? (and how cool is that?) I feel like I could also name (current US mainstream superhero) comic books, and tons of cartoons from my childhood in the 80s. but I think TV shows "proved" that this is a problem that can be solved.

hehe - no. my theory is that TV shows are too lucrative and too important to actively alienate women in 2022. but it seems wild to say that as a blanket statement for all shows, so I'm looking for counter-examples.