meddow: Malcolm and Nicola from The Thick of It (Nicola)
[personal profile] meddow
I wanted to contribute to [livejournal.com profile] halfamoon and decided I would celebrate Nicola Murray, lead character and Secretary of State for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship in the third series of The Thick of It. I'm not sure how well known it is, but The Thick of It changed last year from a show with a male lead, to a show with a female lead, and really, how often does that happen? That in itself is pretty awesome and that way, she is actually quite ground breaking.

But, really, what I love most about her in terms of being an awesome female character is that she is not the singular and not-so-funny female island of competency in a world of screwed up and hilarious males. No, Nicola is just a screwed up, hilarious and incompetent as all the men in The Thick of It. That sounds contradictory, but the above trope seems to be the norm in comedy these days and I think it's fantastic when women get to be funny.


































Date: 2010-02-10 12:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] grenadine.livejournal.com
Oh, Nicola. I do love her, and it did take me a while to figure out why, since like you I tend to be drawn to much stronger, more competent female characters. When I first started watching tTOI, she reminded me of a quote about Sam from West Wing:

"You know, it was a screw-up. But I gotta say, I love the way he did it full speed, bam. Like there's a Sam Seaborn-shaped hole in the wall."

And I think that's why I love Nicola, like, in front of her there's this giant wall made of her own inexperience, and her total lack of power, and the way the system is constantly working against her. But she's just going to keep running into the goddamn wall, because that is literally the only thing there is to do besides going and lying down in the street. Which is what I would have done, if I were her, like a million times over by now.

Plus, she'll do what Malcolm says, but she'll also tell him exactly how much he (his plan, the entire political system) can go fuck themselves. Which is her wringing some shreds of agency out of her own powerlessness, which is totally awesome.

Date: 2010-02-10 12:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meddow.livejournal.com
Yes! Those are thing I love about her as well. Except I couldn't think of how to express them, so thank you for doing that.

And that's a really good point about the powerless thing. Unlike other women in positions of power in things I've watched, Nicola's 'power' is really just a lie, so she only do so much, and it's the very act of trying that makes her admirable. I love how after the disaster of a policy launch in 3x06, she's right back at it with another policy launch at the beginning of 3x07.

And I love that Sam quote XD

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