Murder She Watched, Part 2

Angela Lansbury was 59 what she began starring in "Murder She Wrote" as Jessica Fletcher. Cristen and Caroline pick up their lady detective talk with JB Fletcher and why television has been friendlier to older women as crime solvers and how femininity is played on screen on Law and Order: SVU, Prime Suspect, Top of the Lake and other lady detective-driven shows.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and this is part two of Murder.
She watched our two partner on women detectives on television. Yeah,

(00:25):
in our last episode, we gave you sort of a
rundown of the history of where these lady detective characters originated,
Thank you Victorians, and how second wave feminism sort of
ushered in this amazing era of women on television. Although
we've sort of had a long way to go to
go from somebody like uh Andie Dickinson's character on Police

(00:45):
Woman to Cagney and Lacy too, shows like Murder, she wrote,
and Prime Suspect. That's right. And speaking of Murder, she wrote,
We're going to kick things off by talking about the
importance of Jessica Fletcher, one of my most just personally
beloved TV characters crime solving or not on television. We

(01:13):
could talk about Cagney and Lacy forever, but we have
to move on and mention one of the women who
featured so prominently in our childhoods, which is Jessica Fletcher.
On Murder, she wrote, which aired from four to Yeah,
she sort of described as a Miss Marple figure we
mentioned earlier in the podcast how her portrayal of Miss

(01:35):
Marple in nineteen eighty sort of seeded this idea for J. B. Fletcher.
But she's a Miss Marple who is maybe a little
more fierce. And also, though like Marple, relies on her
feminine grandmotherliness, she's Jimmy Fletcher gets. She can get riled
up sometimes, but for the most part, she's relatively soft spoken.

(01:59):
She buys a goes around Cabot Cove, she wears rad cardigans.
She's always clacking away on her typewriter. Now I'm just
listening all the things I love about Murder she wrote. Well,
I mean, she's an incredible character. Like here she is.
I think she was retired, I believe, and she starts
writing novels. It's just a whim like she's she writes
something and her grandson takes it away and sends it off,

(02:21):
and suddenly she's this world famous writer. She travels the globe,
solving crimes as she goes, and and just like this Marple.
I mean, you wouldn't look at Jessica Fletcher slash Angela
Landsberry and think like she's a detective. She's an investigator.
I gotta watch out for that one. She's she flies
under the radar. And it's significant too that she is

(02:42):
a widow. Her husband dives that like frees up more
time for this writing. And Slade Somner over at the
All wrote a pretty funny essay about watching going back
and watching all of murder. She wrote, and uh Slade wrote,
She's a quote feminist blueprint, strong confident icon, leading by
example by actions by deeds, not slogans or words or

(03:05):
academic blabber. She's not equal to men. She exceeds their
intellectual capacity. She out foxes them at every turn. And
that is true. It's usually the plot lines involve a
murder happening. There are so many murders. By the way,
don't ever go to Cabit Cooke, you will die. Um.
But a murder happens, and then of course it's the

(03:27):
male police chief, or if she's traveling abroad, it's the
male constable, and they don't know what to do. JB.
Fletch has to step in and be like guys, guys, guys.
J B. Flett I got this. Let me put on
my giant glasses. I wonder. I'm sure Jessica Fletcher T
shirts and other swag exist, but I wonder if there

(03:47):
is one that says just j B. Fletch and maybe
Angela Landsberry as a cartoon with wearing the glasses. We
need this to happen, as what I'm saying. Yes, if
it doesn't, we're going to make it someone somehow. But
the cool thing too, that kind of blew my mind,
even though obviously she was an older woman when she
started this role. But considering how successful Murder she wrote

(04:10):
was and how long it was on the air she
started when she was fifty six and finally into the
show when she was seventy one, how often do we
see outside of say The Golden Girls or Betty White
on you know, Hot in Cleveland, which is about too
to end. How hotten do we see seventy one year
old women starring in their own shows? Yeah, you don't.

(04:33):
And that's why I think it was summer at the
all who was arguing that, hey, I mean, it's great
that you're giving Betty White all of this love and
these accolades and this like pop culture obsession. But I
was about to say Jessica Fletcher, but Angela Landsberry deserves
the same attention and affection because she was also such
a groundbreaker. Well, and she's still doing so much. She's

(04:55):
performing on stage and hopefully still solving crimes. And I
kind of like to think that that Angela Landsberry when
she is at home, does you know, pull up to
a typewriter and click clacks away. I like, I like
that image too. But one one female character, one investigative

(05:16):
lady that we have to talk about who doesn't fit
the Miss Marple rely on your grandmotherliness factor. That would
be Helen Mirren in the British show Prime Suspect, which
ran from two thousand and six, and the show was
actually produced by a woman, Sally Head and written by
a woman, Linda Laplant, in addition to starring Helen Mirren. Yeah,

(05:39):
and Mirren's character has to face misogynistic police kind of
per usual at this point. And also though she's not alone,
she has a lover, a man in her life who
is not so keen on how her life starts changing
once she heads her first murder investigation. So that's also

(05:59):
an is staying dynamic to bring into it as well
of how you know a lot of times it's the
you know, frustrated wife or girlfriend feeling neglected at home
while the guy is out working all hours. But this
is the role reversal here. Yeah and so uh. And
in this Telegraph article we were reading about Lady Detectives

(06:20):
in general, but Prime Suspects specifically. They were talking about
how the show is very clear and depicting the struggle
that she she faces. It's not easy for her to
deal with this constant barrage of misogyny from within her
own department and also the problems at home, and so
she's often depicted just like chain smoking, or she's in
the hall, you know, having a heavy sigh, she's about

(06:43):
to enter a room full of male detectives, you know.
But but the audience does get to watch her become
eventually an accepted and respected figure in the department. And
probably due to the success of shows like Murder she
wrote and Prime Suspect, even though clearly they're very print
kinds of shows, but nonetheless female fronted and all about

(07:03):
you know, women solving crimes. The modern landscape of lady
detectives on TV is quite rich with all sorts of characters,
and I'm also there's lots to talk about in terms
of feminism as well. Um, in the summer of two
thousand three, for instance, women were regular members of investigating

(07:25):
teams on nine Network and cable TV series. Again, it's
just incredible how this particular genre on TV is so
women welcoming. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be
the person who just sits here in the list shows.
But you've got shows like Castle. You have shows not
only like Lawn Order SVU, but C s I. There's

(07:45):
like fifty million C s I shows. Um, you could
list bones in with that, even though it's a little
more forensics, but still it's still it's investigating. It is
it's investigative women. And of course one of the most
well known American detective names is Olivia Benson of Lawn
Order s VU, not just Taylor Swift's cat Olivia Benson,
but the actual Olivia Benson, played by the wonderful Mariska

(08:08):
Haggerty and Emily Nuss bomb Over at The New Yorker
describes her as a zena with empathy. Yeah. Swu debuted
in and was a far cry from the original n
premiering Law and Order, which, like we mentioned earlier, starred
no women Dick Wolfe had to be kind of reminded

(08:30):
that yes, women also bill play a role in legal
professions in the United States. Um, but not everybody loves
s v U. And before we get into some of
the analysis from it, Honestly, Caroline, I have a hard
time watching SVU sometimes, you know, I my this is weird, idol.

(08:52):
But all a minute, my boyfriend and I will binge
watch SVU. We both had this moment of like when
we realize the other ones obsessed with it, so I
of it. And and for your average run of the
mill spew episode, I can watch a thousand of them,
but it real I feel like it. Recently, Uh, A
new season recently started and I don't I don't know

(09:13):
what the last season, how it ended. But when it
came back on, there was an episode that featured Olivia Benson,
the character like having been assaulted and held hostage and
raped and and all of this terrible stuff. And even
that I'm like, okay, I can I can watch this.
That's that's all right. But it wasn't until later in
the show when her attacker was just absolutely toying with

(09:35):
her in court actually actually made my boyfriend turned the
show off, I was like, this is this is too
much for me, this is making my heart race. Well.
I think that that incident in SVU of Olivia Benson
being attacked and assaulted was something that no Baum called
out in terms of a turning point of its watchability.

(09:56):
And it's because of its focused largely on and sexual
crimes rape violence against women that there are critics who
think that s VU portrays a kind of misogynistic feminism
because it does include in some episodes false claims of rape,

(10:17):
negative portrayals of feminine characteristics, um also having women's jealousy
of each other being motivations for crime rather than just
the lust for the crime itself. So they're definitely people
on both sides of the SVU fence. But nonetheless, Olivia

(10:38):
Benson is a character will get back to in the
second half of the podcast because despite all of the
kinds of crimes and perhaps the sometimes questionable ways that
they are portrayed on the show, she herself is also
fits in this broader female detective characterization of being both

(11:00):
strong and also having a backstory that plays into her
strength and also why we probably as viewers gravitate to
her and you know, at the risk of going on
and on for hours about amazing women on amazing detective shows.
We do have to mention before we break the fact
that the Brits are kicking, but with the number of

(11:23):
amazing lady detective characters that they have, people like the
fabulous Jillian Anderson who's starring in The Fall, which I
need to watch, but which I've also heard is incredibly
intense in terms of the sexual violence of portrays Um,
also Olivia Coleman and broad Church, Leslie Sharp and Saran
Jones and Scott and Bailey, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There are
just a lot of rich, amazing, colorful lady detective characters

(11:47):
on television if you're willing to netflix them. Yeah, I've
also heard that Bletchley Circle is one to watch as well.
And it's not just in Britain. We've got to give
props to New Zealand for Top of the Lake, directed
by Jane Campion, which is significant and also starring the
fantastic Elizabeth Moss. That show is incredible And that's another

(12:08):
show which I think is a good example of what
christ and I will talk about after the break in
terms of using sexual violence as the crux of the show,
but also having a main female detective character who is
inspired and driven by her own past as a survivor

(12:29):
of assault. So we want to talk more about the
use of gender and femininity in this traditionally masculine role
of the detective, because there's some really fascinating ways that
this plays out on screen. Yeah, because these characters typically
have have never from from the Victorian novels that we
had that we talked about at the top of the podcast.

(12:50):
They've never just been detectives. They've always been women detectives,
or as we're calling them, lady detectives. And one thing
that those Victorian novels in particular really played up was
the issue of of things like feminine intuition, the fact
that they solved cases using that very feminine trade of empathy,

(13:11):
meaning that their sex, their femaleness was definitely part of
their lives, part of their profession, and worked in their favor.
And it's really not so different from the shows that
we see today. Yeah, And and that whole use of
a reliance on feminine intuition is one of the negative
critiques on shows like Law and Order SVU. But honestly,

(13:35):
and maybe because we did a podcast a while back
on women's intuition and kind of looking into the science
of it and where it came from. I don't see
it as a negative necessarily. No. I don't think that
women should be perceived as wise and capable only because
we have this sixth sense, possibly related to our menstrual

(13:56):
cycles or something like that. But I think it I
don't think there's anything wrong with it, because a lot
of intuition is just meaning that we're possibly paying attention to,
maybe emotional currents running through rooms and things that other
people might not pay attention to. I think I think
there's a very interesting multilayered argument to be made about that,

(14:19):
because on the one hand, like, Okay, they're using feminine intuition,
they're using these these natural quote unquote natural feminine attributes.
We derive it from the moon, Caroline, when the moon
is full and replenishes our intuition. That's right. But on
the other hand, I mean, is it better or worse

(14:39):
to have a female detective character who's playing off of
or or using so called natural traits, or is it
better to have a woman who is completely stripped of
feminine attributes and just shoved into a male character role.
I mean, you could argue either way that one is

(15:01):
better than the other. But I mean, let's not begrudge
a woman of being a woman or being womanly exactly. Um,
and this whole gendering, that question that you just raised of,
you know, whether it's that versus sort of shoving a
woman into a masculine role. Kathleen Murray in her dissertation

(15:24):
for the University of Pittsburgh looked into this aspect of
gendering and whether they can just be detective shows or
whether they will always be lady detective shows. Yeah, she
writes basically that the investigating woman character interrupts the smooth
running of the detective film genre because they disrupt, They

(15:48):
fundamentally disrupt. She says, this narrative upon which genre films depend.
So basically she's arguing that lady detective are both of
the detective film genre and outside of it, because so
many detective films or shows or whatever are also pulling

(16:08):
in these very quote unquote again like feminine attributes, relying
on uh, female intuition, but also sometimes when you pair
a woman detective with a male detective, there has to
be almost like it's ordained that like there has to be, uh,
this sexual tension between the two, and so that sort

(16:29):
of inevitably and unavoidably leads to a slightly different bent
on a traditional genre. Yeah. And this is something too
that Linda Mazuski talks about in Hard Boiled and High
Healed Um, which was a resource that we relied a
lot on. She talks about how it can be shocking
and not to mention sexual when the detective genre switches

(16:53):
gender in that way. Yeah, and then when it comes
to shows like The Closer, Saving Grace and Damages, Oh
my god, do not get my mother started on The Closer.
She's obsessed with it. She thinks it's so great. But
you know, I'm not just saying that to just to
say it. But the whole issue with The Closer, with
the character of Brenda, is that she's a hard hitting,

(17:17):
super smart, super tough woman who's also super feminine and southern, y'all.
She's like super proper, and so somebody like my mother
just like salivates over that. She loves that. She eats
it up. And as Tanya Lavell Banks writes in a
chapter in the book Law and Justice on the small screen,
it's impossible to separate the gender of these particular characters

(17:38):
from the role they're playing. So Brenda Lee Johnson's femininity
in The Closer is critical to her character, just as
her toughness and general awesomeness is. And so Banks writes
that the women aren't just replacing male characters in these shows.
Their character flaws are just judged through a gender lens.

(18:00):
They are very much women, like the character of Grace
and saving Grace had all sorts of problems. She definitely
had a lot of character flaws, but I mean she
was also just like such a woman. And I don't mean,
I know that sounds weird, but there was no there
were no two bones about it. Like she was not
being shoved into a male role and all of her
feminine traits ignored. Like she had very woman's specific issues

(18:23):
that she dealt with. Yeah, and and Banks also ties
in Damages in this analysis, which is more a show
about lawyers and just outright crime than detectives. But she
talks about Glenn Close's character and that in Glen Close
is by no means a detective. But she's a great
example of this of I mean, she's she is almost

(18:45):
masculine in her ruthlessness, but she is. It doesn't feel
like she's sacrificing anything. He doesn't feel like the characters
were like, well, we wanted a dude to play this,
but Glenn Close will do. We'll just change the names
in it. Um. But one thing too, about a lot
of just detective characters in general, I think they are

(19:09):
often portrayed as loners. I mean, think about Matthew McConaughey
and True Detective. When you toss gender into that and
you have women as detectives, um Ana, let's talk about
how that's that makes them kind of doubly alone. There
are sort of outliers of the outliers at that point,
which is interesting. Yeah, exactly. Um. But in terms of

(19:33):
performing femininity, we talked We've talked a lot about performing
gender on the podcast before, but Kathleen Murray talks about
how the investigating woman performs femininity explicitly as a performance,
something that she can shift and adjust based on her needs.
Murray writes, it's a tool at her disposal and sometimes
a trap from which she cannot escape. And this quote

(19:54):
brought to mind somebody like a Miss Marple or a
Jessica Fletcher character somebody who operates very much within her
femininity and performing their femininity to such a degree that
they are perceived as harmless completely well in the appearance
factor too, that a lot of people who have focused
in on, you know, this genre and really dug into it,

(20:16):
such as Linamajuski he wrote Hard Boiled and High Heeled,
do pay attention to how these women detectives are portrayed
in their in their outer trappings, because there has been
an evolution from say Um Andrew Dickinson and policewoman having
to wear gowns sometimes and bikinis to still though, one

(20:38):
thing that I really love about Olivia Benson's character in
Law and Order SVU is that she always wears incredibly
flattering blouses even still. And I know that sounds like
that might be a strange thing to say that I
really love, but I feel like that is so much
part of her character. And in the Telegraph, one of

(20:59):
the Telegraph articles we were reading about um female detectives
on British television, there was a lot of talk of
their signature clothing pieces as well. There are lots of
silk blouses and well fitting blazers, and I think it
is still part of us in the same way though
that you have. You know, a lot of detectives in
the past sort of have their their costume. I mean,

(21:21):
you have Columbo and his dirty trench coat, or Dick
Tracy and his trench coat. Okay, there's just lots of
trench coats. Yeah, exactly. But one of the most fascinating
hallmarks of more contemporary fictional female detectives, unlike say a
Miss Marple or a JB. Fletcher or maybe just you

(21:42):
know that the whole spinster type of detective, is that
I feel like there's there are more character flaws in
detectives today, which I think is a sign of progress
of showing these women as fully realized characters with baggage. Yeah,
a lot of these characters are victims of abuse themselves,

(22:04):
or they're avenging the suffering of family members, like Grace
from Saving Grace or Olivia Benson from s VU, Olivia
Dunham from French Temperance Brennan from Bones k back At
from Castle And the purpose basically is that it's often
used to explain why characters have trouble forming connections. You
have to explain why a woman can't be in a

(22:24):
romantic relationship. But it's also as Jess McCabe from Bitch Rights,
it's also often the crack and the characters strong woman
armor that ends up inviting in the almost inevitable male
love interest. I mean, just watching Castle like that's all
it is. The sexual tension, yeah, I mean if you
flip the roles too, if you have the kind of

(22:47):
loner male detective, I think it's it is also to
that baggage that tends to draw in the female love interest. Sure,
and then of course because of that, I gatch a
lot of them end up exhibiting self destructive behaviors Sarah
Lun from the Killing Chema, Gregs from the Wire. They
end up struggling between making time for family and dedicating

(23:09):
themselves to the job, which can of course lead to
destructive behavior like drinking, cetera. And it's important to talk
about because, except for get Christie Love, we really have
not touched on the race and ethnicity aspect of this.
That so many of these detectives, in being in these
very traditionally masculine roles, tend to be very conventionally attractive

(23:32):
cis gender able, bodied, white women. Yeah, you do have
some age diversity obviously, um, but yeah, Chima is a
rare example not only though a woman of color in
one of these roles, but also an LGBT character, which
I mean that's also something that we haven't talked about
much at all. And there was I forget which source

(23:54):
it was who was talking about Risoli and Aisles and
how they secretly longed for there to be a lesbian
romance between the two because that is something that you
don't see too much. It is very is a very
heteronormative genre at this point. Yeah. I think it was
a list from She Wired about all of the different

(24:15):
female detective the hot female detective characters who the writer
was longing to be actually lesbian character, whether they're in
love with their partner or whatever. And they even had
a clip of Resolti being you know, like quote unquote
butch or whatever is she's helping her father fix something
and how attractive it is Angie Harmon. But over the

(24:38):
Guardian they were arguing that perhaps these character flaws wouldn't
be such heaboos if the characters were men, mainly because
when you have a character like Sarah Lund from The
Killing her whole thing is that you know, she's going
to quit her job, she's going to move away. She's
got a son that she needs to take care of,
but she often can't be there for her son. She
arrives at family occasions late, she's ends up being really

(25:00):
curt And that's what men with important jobs do all
the time. They write, they said it's easier for them
to break the rules since they made them in the
first place. Indeed, the rule breaking, the violence and the
hard drinking seemed part of what makes them effective detectives.
Women's behavior, by contrast, is judged against the norm of
their male colleagues. It can never be invisible, never taken

(25:21):
for granted, although I will say as an extension of
that article or that argument of it, can never be
taken for granted. Um, I don't know that I'm fighting
for rude behavior to ever just be taken for granted, though. No,
But I think it's it's unfortunate that it's somehow fifty
times worse if a woman is doing it than if

(25:43):
a man is doing it. Yeah, it's just portrayed is
like shocking and horrific. If a woman's late to pick
up her son from soccer practice versus a man. Yeah,
um well, and that I think that too is maybe
what makes these more modern female detectives like Elizabeth Moss
on Top of the Lake even more fascinating to us,

(26:04):
because they do embody a lot of these what we
would just think of a sort of normal outsider do
detective kind of characteristics, right, Like one scene from Top
of the Lake that really sticks stuck with me is
when she's in a bar and these guys are kind
of picking on her, and um, they ask, are you
a feminist? Are you a lesbian? And they say that

(26:25):
you know, you'd have better luck around here as a
lesbian because nobody likes a feminist but lesbians. Yeah. Well.
And speaking of Elizabeth Moss, quick side note Caroline that
I want to touch on if only to get a
listener responses to this. She her name was floated when
True Detective season two was going through its casting process

(26:49):
and everyone was waiting to see if she would be
on it. Rachel McAdams was also mentioned as being considered,
and I know a lot of people were asking their
fingers for similarity detectives on the next season of True Detective,
which we could devote an entire podcast due to talking
about the gender representations in that which I mean full disclosure.

(27:12):
I loved True Detective, but not everyone was a huge
fan of it from a female perspective. Um, so disappointed
to see that it's going to be Vince Vawn and
Colin Farrell instead of at least come on at least
like Vince Vawn and Elizabeth Moss, Vince Vawn, Rachel McAdams,
Colin Farrell, you could take him, really relieve them. But um,

(27:36):
you know, one thing that we mentioned earlier, especially talking
about Olivia Benson on s VU, is the whole sort
of rape narrative of using sexual assault as the crux
of a show's plot. And a lot of times shows
that feature topics like this are depicted as being feminist, like, hey,
we're dealing with the horrors of society, the horrors that
face a lot of women. But a lot of folks

(27:57):
really take issue with the depiction of violence and family
dynamic dynamics in this show. For instance, Emily nust Bomb,
who we sided earlier from The New Yorker and Katie
Keller from Jezebel Uh talk about this. Nest Bomb writes
that at its greasy ist, SVU becomes a string of
rape fantasies justified by healing truisms, and Kelly writes that

(28:17):
while the larger narrative is one of justice prevailing, which
is good, it's still using assault for entertainment and for
people troubled by this, it's also the distancing factor of it.
I mean, you can it's a show that you can pause,
turn off. You can cheer when the guy gets arrested
or when Olivia Benson does something awesome. But I mean

(28:41):
some say that it can also be therapeutic, whether or
not you are a survivor. As someone described it as,
quote a ritualistic confrontation with fear. It's the same kind
of thing that we talked about Caroline in our episode
on why women in particular love true crime series. And
it's also too, I think with SVU, the dynamic of
Olivia Benson being the product of her mother's rape and

(29:06):
how that ties into the show, and also women dealing
with women, female victims of sexual assault and violence. Um.
I mean, it's not it's not perfect. No, it's certainly
not perfect. Um, But I think there's a lot there's
still a lot of important stuff in there. Sure, Um, yeah,

(29:29):
especially since a lot of TV is just fantasy, right,
and there is this fantasy from SPU that the police
are always going to be on your side if you're
a victim or survivor of assault. Like it's it's satisfying
to watch week after week is the bad guys go
to jail and the victims, you know, get justice. Um.

(29:50):
But it also features a lot of quote unquote bad
victims storylines where a promiscuous woman wrongly accuses a man
of assault, and it can veer uncomfortably into the gratuitous
violen some voyeurism territory. Well, in speaking of the voyeurism territory, UM,
not to harp on True Detective, but that's that is
something that people who are uncomfortable with in terms of

(30:12):
the portrayal sometimes of just the naked, dead female bodies
done up in very kind of attractive ways, almost in
almost pornographic ways. From time to time in the show,
people were like, oh, I don't know about that. So
at least an s VU, you have some of the
victims survivors have a little more agency at least. Yeah.

(30:35):
But one one question that I really had never considered
before looking into this topic, um, and when you specifically look,
for instance, that Jillian Anderson's show The Fall. When it
comes to women starring in these shows, a writer at
The Guardian says, I wonder if the series could have

(30:56):
gotten away with its portrayal of the sexual torture of
women if it hadn't had a strong professional woman at
its center. Did Anderson's d C I Gibson legitimize the
portrayal of sexual horror? So basically saying, you know, great,
you have these strong female detectives at the center of
a show, but is it like being used as a
gay way to portray so many horrific stories of sexual violence,

(31:21):
whereas if a man were at the helm of the
show it would be more uncomfortable for us to watch.
I don't think that gender is being used as a
tool to legitimize the portrayal of sexual horror. I think
that this is more a product of television in general
taking more chances, becoming more cinematic, telling richer and sometimes

(31:43):
even more horrifying stories than it ever has before. Because
you know, as a lot of people say TV, DV
or television is the new film. Really, I mean, just
look at something like Top of the Lake or or
the Fall, or even True Detective. Just like, how what
in depth and incredibly visual storytelling you have right there.

(32:05):
And I think if anything, it's I I am a
fan of the fact that it's a woman leading these
these stories. Yeah, And I think it's fascinating to see
these women characters leading stories like this now and in
the year. Um, especially when you look back at Angie

(32:26):
Dickinson or Peggy Lipton or or women like that, who
you know, we're basically there to just kind of be
props essentially, um. And so yeah, there's a lot of
ick factor when you have really graphic or horrible sexual violence. Um.
But I mean, I think it's an very interesting illustration

(32:47):
of how far we've come in the portrayal of women
and women's issues. Well, and then it becomes the point of, well,
that's more a conversation about the line of what is
important to see and confront and what just desensitizes us.
But when it comes to these female detective characters, um,

(33:07):
maybe it's good in terms of being desensitized to the
shock of seeing them in these roles. So maybe you know,
five ten years from now, lady detectives, Lady detective shows
will just be detective shows, So we had so much
to talk about, and hopefully you all have lots to

(33:30):
talk about to us as well. What are your favorite
kinds of women lead detective shows? Who are your favorite detectives?
Where are j B. Fletch Fans? Email us mom Stuff
at how stuff works dot com is our address, And
we didn't even have time to talk about all of
the shows and all the detectives. Hello, Veronica mars Um.

(33:53):
So there were characters or shows that we didn't mention.
Please alert us to that again. Mom Stuff at how
stefwork dot com is our email address. You can also
tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and messages on Facebook,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. Al Right, we have a couple of

(34:16):
letters here about our vaping episode. This one's from Emmy.
She says I smoked cigarettes for more than twenty years
and my partner smoked as well. We have recently quit smoking,
and what made it possible was the cigarettes. He prefers
the cigarette shape and I prefer the vape pen. Whatever
it takes to get off the tobacco, we decided. I've
been to three different vapor shops. One was so dude, bro,

(34:36):
I just left. It was more misogynistic than radio shack
in the eighties. One was fine geared towards d I
y culture and not overly gendered, but one. I usually
go to a staff mostly by women, but there are
men who work there. Also. The atmosphere is welcoming, and
they answered all of my many, many questions for me.
The general idea is that the vaping is a stopgap
measure between a pack a day and healthier lungs. Nicotine

(34:58):
has nothing to mess around with, and adding cold turkey
is like being dropped into the deepest pit of depression
with a side order of migraine. I have enough trouble
with depression, so I'm going to taper down. I failed
at tapering down. My cigarette used because I love smoking,
but vaping is just nicotine delivery. I don't love it,
but it's enough to keep me off the smokes, even
though I have a pack in my desk drawer. Not

(35:20):
smoking because I have no cigarettes isn't the same thing
as deciding every day that I no longer smoke. I've
gone without cigarettes before, but this time I quit f Yeah,
I have two weeks of zero cigarettes and only one
pack in the month before that. I'm really glad to
have the option to vape, at least until I give
that up. Also, so thanks Tommy Well. I gotta let
her here from Milly about our episode on is cat

(35:42):
calling harassment? Sheer right, Hi, I really like your podcast.
I just wanted to say I found your episode on
cat calling very interesting. I am just twelve, I am
very strong, politically viewed and mature, I think, and I'm
quite the fear of alcohol and drunk people. Before watching
I did watch the ten Hours in New York video

(36:04):
and was very surprised, not only at the editing but
the amount of cat calling, especially considering she wasn't doing
anything provocative. After watching this video, I was also surprised
how little I've noticed cat calling in both New Zealand
and Australia. I've lived in both places, even in major centers.
Your episode helped me understand why the freaky men in

(36:24):
that video said and did the things they did. I
really enjoyed this episode, and you guys are awesome. Well, Milly,
you are awesome twelve year old who uses provocative correctly,
and so is everybody who writes into us mom stuff
at how stuffworks dot com is our email address. You
can also find links to all of our social media blogs, videos,

(36:46):
and podcasts, including this one with links to all of
those books and articles we talked about with Lady Detectives
over at our website, stuff mom Never Told You dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com