I Have to Vent. About a TV Show.

 This is so silly of me, but I have to vent about a TV series I've watched. The show is not a new one (I never watch new shows it seems) and started in 2005 and lasted 7 seasons. I just finished it and, to quote the lead character, "Oh, that woman!"

Kyra Sedgwick plays the main character who lives up to her reputation as "The Closer", by doing anything to close a murder investigation. And anything means anything. The woman is a complete and laser-focused hound when it comes to getting people to confess. And that is what could have made her kind of cool but, in my opinion, it made her totally unlikeable. 

You know how it's said that the most successful people in some careers are psychopaths? I've always thought that is probably true of most politicians, lawyers and, maybe, helicopter parents. I know it's true if this fictional character that I have no business thinking so much about...

I have convinced myself that the show creators tricked people. They made the lead character (Brenda) so horrible that viewers would watch each week just waiting for her to get less horrible. She never did. At the very end, I was left hoping that maybe she was going to be a better person in her future life. But I doubt it.

This woman - Brenda - was almost inhuman. Seriously. To the point where her own house could be about to catch fire and she'd ignore it and the people inside to answer a call about a murder. Nothing seemed to ever matter to her more than being The Closer - not her husband or her any of her blood family. 

Brenda might have been awful before becoming The Closer. She had zero friends to speak of. Her only past romantic interests were and ex-husband and a former lover (who'd been married at the time) who became her boss. The man she dated and later married must have liked being walked on by her little heels. She treated him like he was disposable the entire time they dated and when they got married, it got worse. I started out feeling sorry for him and ended up repulsed. 

The fact that her former lover/current boss remained as hot for her as her current husband makes me wonder if psychopaths have something special going on behind bedroom doors. Brenda surely was not wowing men with her appealing feminine wiles. She's not bad-looking but is built like a plank (though she has the boobs men love) and has the attitude of a drill sergeant. 

Understand that I am not invested in this character as if a fictional person could mean anything to me. What bothers me is that a show based around such a character was so massively popular - something I didn't know until I checked. 

And honestly, the longer I watched the show - you know, waiting for something to defrost Brenda's heart - the more I wondered about the actress. Don't get me wrong, I know almost nothing about Sedgwick's career. I don't think I've ever seen anything else she's been in. But I did wonder how someone could play such a dislikable character so well. 

It gives me the creeps now to think of how horrible Brenda is as a character. Why was she written to be so nasty and just, ew? By the last couple of episodes, when I was sure time had run out for Brenda to be more human, I realized that her eyes look black. 

The realization about the character's eyes kind of gave me the creeps. I went back to pan through some old episodes and, yep, the eyes were always very dark. I do think they got darker as the show went on.

Anyway, I'm now done watching the show, but it's one of the reasons I don't watch much TV. I think some programs are programming society to become comfortable with personalities of darkness.

Peace

--Free