Also examples of poor sexual politics that pass Bechdel: most teen dramas (eg. Gossip Girl, 90210)/soaps in general, sitcoms with a large enough population of female characters (eg. Scrubs, Friends). These shows tend to be grounded in conventional stereotypes as story telling devices, so the relationships depicted are generally less than impressive, yet female characters will often dicuss their work/family situations with each other (or clothes/shopping yay more stereotypes) which means they pass Bechdel.

In the vein of BSG I’d like to mention Stargate Universe, previous SG shows tend to be pretty low on female characters which has often prevented them from passing Bechdel, but SGU has done very well so far – also one of the main characters is a lesbian and after 1 and a bit seasons this is yet to be a plot point (her relationship has been a plot point, but the fact it’s a same sex relationship has not). Also Robert Carlysle is in it and is awesome.

I like the idea of the Bechdel test, but it’s about representation, not about anything further. It’s a really good test for any form of representation. For example, if you like sci-fi shows, replace ‘female’ with ‘Aliens’ and ‘man’ with ‘human’. If you like teen shows replace ‘female’ with ‘adult’ and ‘man’ with ‘teenager’. If you’re part of the ethnic majority replace ‘female’ with ‘black’ and ‘man’ with ‘white’. How many tv shows pass that one?

I think Clinking Dog also once pointed out to me that Juno doesn’t pass the reverse Bechdel.

Also, I think Lost has got a very big variety of women talking about the many many plots (if there were only sexual interaction conversations there would not be room for the much intrigue.) In fact if anything I think it’s the men constantly talking about the women. Jack and Sawyer’s interactions always have a massively loud “KATE” subtext.

I absolutely adore the little I have seen of Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck. And yes, Buffy is excellent. Joss Whedon generally does pretty well, I think.

Firefly wasn’t as good as Buffy, but not because it failed Bechdel (it doesn’t, to my memory, though its pass “level” I can’t quite remember, now I think about it). More just because I found the women in it less interesting – I’m pretty sure the producers have actually said in an interview that Kaylee provided “someone to rescue”, even if she is a kickass mechanic on the exterior (the episode where a bounty hunter asks her if she’s ever been raped is a bit horrendous!). I very much dig Zoe, but I feel like we don’t see enough of her inner life in between all that ass-kicking. And Inara is, I think, interesting, but also a play on some cliches that I’m not sure always goes over perfectly. “Heart of Gold” is one of the ep titles (inference: Hookers With A…) – Whedon is always thoroughly well-versed in his pop cultural language and tropes – but sometimes I’m just not sure it quite ticks all my personal boxes. Think I need to re-watch it. It’s a good example of some very good TV where Bechdel is indeed only the tip of the iceberg!

And it’s even less likely than that, of course, because women aren’t 50% of the characters on a show. We’re lucky if there’s 2 at all to have the conversation. But it’d still pass Bechdel, so for my slightly modified version I’m tightening it up a *bit* on the understanding that everything is still very crap :)

Absolutely, but the initial standard for Bechdel is “once in the whole thing”.

Besides, let’s take 4 characters: two women, two men. The two women talking should happen at least 1/6 of the time, the other options being woman/man x4 and man/man. And when the woman/woman conversations DON’T include 50% of the other characters on the show (the men), you’re down to 1/12 of all conversations already and it’s still arguably ‘equal’.

And that’s assuming there’s time for any conversations between the explosions. I’m pretty happy with 20% representation, I think it’ll give a realistic impression of the approach of the whole show.