skygiants | (no subject)

I was going to start this post 'my kryptonite is . . .' but to be honest, many things are my kryptonite. But AMONG the many things that are my kryptonite are female characters who aren't nice. For whom nice is just not important becuse they are too busy getting shit done.

Which is to say,

innerbrat has been making me watch Press Gang the past two weeks and it's kind of eaten my brain.

Press Gang is a nineties show written by a gentleman whose name some of you may recognize, one Mr. Stephen Moffat. It's about a bunch of tiny ace reporters who run a JUNIOR NEWSPAPER which eventually becomes an actual self-running newspaper once they all graduate and keep doing it. It is full of clever dialogue, sort of adorable in the way it tackles Serious Issues, and driven by a female character who is rapidly becoming one of my favorites of all time.

This is Lynda Day, editor of the newspaper and heroine of the show. She is everyone's boss. INCLUDING YOURS.

Some of you may recognize Lynda from other things:

Which both hilarious and a testament to Julie Sawalha as an actress, because after seeing just one episode of her as Lynda I would never, ever have known.

Lynda makes J.J. Jameson look cuddly. She doesn't make small talk. (She tries once! The lucky recipient, panicked, demands to know whether there's been bad news about his health.) When Lynda says 'hello' it comes out as an order. She has no qualms about locking her whole staff in the newsroom all night if that's what it takes to get things done. She crosses the line enough to make people walk out on her just about every other episode . . . and that's just her best friends. She's ruthless, unscrupulous, often cruel, and completely and one hundred percent dedicated to getting the news out.

Also, she wants a newsteam meeting before she finishes this sentence.

This is Spike, the resident DANGEROUS BAD BOY who's been sent to work for the paper as his last chance at school before EXPULSION. You can tell he's cool from his sunglasses and leather jacket. Also his TOTALLY CONVINCING AMERICAN ACCENT.

(You may also recognize Spike from his days as a WWII soldier:

)

Honestly one of my favorite things about the show is that we're supposed to believe even for a second that Spike is at all hardcore. He SKIPS CLASS! 'cause he's cool! He beat a guy up once! . . . for writing mean things about the boss.

Spike's other hobbies include cooking, playing Trivial Pursuit, and making this face at Lynda:

He just really likes girls who order him around, okay? Just for the record, she's the last person in the world he would ever let down. (Even if that means saving her from her own terrible eighties fashion sense.)

Kenny, on the other hand, is Lynda's assistant editor and (wonderfully platonic) life partner; he's spent the last twelve years following her around picking shrapnel out of people.

This is tiny Kenny, white knight, lying to Lynda's mom about the fact that she's crawled out from the fence and run away. On his birthday.

Kenny is calm, nice and understanding, as anyone who's been friends with Lynda since they were kids would have to be. He's so nice, he gets socks for Christmas . . . and he likes it. People say he's too reasonable to have opinions, but he doesn't know about that.

Nonetheless he keeps his schadenfreude and his sarcasm-o-meter fully charged (his face of glee when he fondly reminisces about that time Lynda broke her arm after shoving him out a window is a sight to see) and he's about the only person who can get away with telling Lynda when she's being insensitive and demanding. Also, when he finally does blow his top, it's TERRIFYING. THINGS GET DONE.

This is the kind of thing that tends to happen to Kenny. The rabbit, by the way, is Colin, the newspaper's financial manager. He has the soul of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the bad luck of Xander Harris, and the fashion sense of Se Gi on a bad day.

. . . Debi actually thinks he dresses himself out of Se Gi's reject pile, and I can't really argue with that assessment either. He's usually to be seen either attempting to sell something, or hiding from the number of people who are in line to kill him.

This is Sarah, the paper's chief writer. She has as much journalistic integrity as Lynda and she's actually nice about it. Usually. Unless she's writing the theater reviews and you give a bad performance, at which point, WATCH OUT.

But most of the time she's pretty adorable, and regularly drives herself into the ground trying to keep on top of her schoolwork and the paper. That next to her is Sam, who joins as head of the graphics department in season 2.

Sam is actually supposed to be fashionable. Fashionable like Claudia Kishi, perhaps.

(You are probably more used to seeing Sam looking like this:

There are no guns in Press Gang. YET. But I'm told in season three or four they get held up in the newspaper office at gunpoint! I LOOK FORWARD TO IT.)

This is Fraz, who does the horoscopes, looking HIGHLY PUZZLED that Lynda is trying to make small talk with him. Is he bleeding? Has she perhaps found out that he has a fatal illness and is trying to soften the blow?

Fraz starts out as a bit of a cloudcuckoolander, but by my perspective in season two, as everyone else becomes more cloudcuckoolandish, he has pretty much become the voice of sanity.

This is Tiddler, the mini-Lynda who runs the Junior Junior page. Tiddler has possibly even fewer scruples than Lynda; her preferred methods for getting people to see things her way include lying, cheating, and - well, I quote: "Kenny, let me tell you what I've got out here. I've got a nomination form for the editor election. I've got eight of my best friends waiting to see you when you come out. And I've got your trousers. Let's talk."

Even more terrifying than Tiddler: Sophie and Laura. They look so cute, don't they? They were only making that guillotine for a school project! Don't be silly, they were just joking about using the science department rabbit for their cooking project. The science department doesn't even have a rabbit . . . anymore.

This is Billy, part-time staff writer; he's a recurring character rather than a regular but who nevertheless gets a spot here because I love him. He's a quadroplegic character actually played, for a wonder, by a quadroplegic actor; the episode where he's introduced is fairly anvilicious, but after that his storylines tend to center much more on his mad computer hacking skills (well, mad for 1990) and his vicious sense of humor. He has a dog named Paralysis, so that people can call him up and ask, "Hey Billy, how's Paralysis?"

I'm about halfway through the show right now and just enjoying it more and more as it goes on; it's clearly growing up with the characters, and I'm excited to watch as they actually get out of high school.

I am also in the process of talking Debi into writing me the AU where Lynda is the Slayer. The best part is the paper would never ever stop being her chief priority, and destiny be damned; when the new edition was coming out the vampires would JUST HAVE TO WAIT.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com

It took me at least three or four episodes to realize that Spike was supposed to be American. And then it was only after I happened to look up from my laptop long enough to notice he was wearing a baseball hat.

New law: Characters named Spike will ALWAYS have questionable accents.

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