The Same Scene, Every Night
It always started the same way.
Cross-legged on the living room carpet, elbows pressing into the worn shag, chin propped in my palms. The television hummed quietly, just above a whisper--like it had secrets meant only for me.
I could feel the sun going down behind the house, though I never looked. The light shifted without my attention, turning the room a soft gray-orange as afternoon surrendered to evening. I didn't move. Not for snacks. Not for dinner. Not for anything.
The curtains were always half-drawn. I liked it that way. The dim made the screen glow brighter. It made the figures inside it look less like they were being watched--and more like they were watching me.
My parents assumed I was there for the stories. The sitcoms. The jokes. The love triangles.
But I was watching for something else.
Something quieter.
Something I couldn't explain, but felt down in my ribs.
I was watching for her.
A woman like my mother--but not my mother.
Someone else.
Someone out in the world who moved the same way. Who didn't reach for power but carried it. Who didn't ask for what she could simply expect.
I didn't know what I was looking for. But I knew when I wasn't seeing it.
Black-and-White Ghosts
And at first?
It was a wasteland.
My parents loved the classics. Golden-age sitcoms. Black-and-white reruns with syrupy music and canned laughter. Everything softened. Sanitized. Grinning.
They made my skin itch.
The women especially.
Wilting wives. Frazzled secretaries. Daughters who fell in love too easily and apologized too much.
They forgot the milk. They burned the roast. They got patted on the head for being silly.
They weren't just boring. They were insulting.
And worst of all--I knew they were meant to be role models.
I watched them and thought: This is what I'm being told I should become.
Take I Love Lucy.
Everyone loved her. She was iconic. And sure, she was funny.
But the rhythm of every episode was the same.
She'd scheme.
She'd get caught.
She'd grovel.
Ricky would roll his eyes. Raise his voice. Take the final word.
Lucy, with her genius and her timing and her spark, would be humiliated.
Every. Single. Time.
I didn't want to be Lucy.
I wanted to be the one Lucy feared.
Even the elegant wives--the June Cleavers, the Donna Reeds--left me cold.
They were statues. Women in pencil skirts with helmets for hair and voices made of sugar.
They didn't laugh. They didn't rage. They didn't want.
They smiled.
They served.
They made pot roast and folded napkins into birds.
I remember staring at the screen one evening, tilting my head, and whispering, "What do you want?"
But there was no answer. Just a long, gentle nod from a woman who'd learned to disappear inside herself.
I wasn't just bored.
I was restless.
Because even then, I knew--
I didn't want to please the world.
I wanted to shape it.
A Flicker of Something More
Then one evening--almost by accident--I stumbled on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
And for the first time, I felt my pulse shift.
She didn't pout.
She didn't giggle.
She didn't bat her lashes or apologize when she got things right.
She worked.
Yes, technically she was Lou Grant's assistant. But let's be honest--she ran the place.
She moved through the newsroom with clean lines. She made plans. She made mistakes. She corrected them.
She had poise. Competence. Clarity.
It wasn't just that she didn't wait for permission.
It was that permission didn't even seem to occur to her as a concept.
And that?
That was new.
It was the first time I saw a woman on television be excellent without softening herself to make it palatable.
That mattered.
But it still wasn't enough.
Because I didn't just want to be respected.
I wanted to be obeyed.
Desired.
Felt.
The First Shock: Chaos, Desire, and Command
That's when I found something I wasn't supposed to be watching.
A show called Soap.
And it wrecked me--in the best possible way.
It was unhinged. Hilarious. Raw. Smart. Dirty.
It didn't pretend.
It pulled back the curtain on what people actually thought--lust, jealousy, ambition, rage--and let the women live inside all of it.
They weren't saints. They weren't sidekicks.
They were dangerous.
And they weren't just beautiful.
They were commanding.
They could be wrong and still win the argument.
They could be reckless and still get the last word.
They didn't flatter.
They didn't apologize.
They expected.
They weren't trying to be liked.
They liked themselves.
And watching that?
That felt like rebellion. Like relief.
Camouflage and Control
Jessica Tate was the first to catch me off guard.
At first, she seemed like all the others--distracted, delicate, constantly on the verge of collapse.
But then?
Then she'd deliver a single line. Quiet. Offhand. Almost a throwaway.
And suddenly the whole room tilted.
You realized she had been paying attention the entire time.
That the woman they thought was unraveling was actually watching everything with surgical precision.
It wasn't incompetence.
