Elle

[unmellow-yellow.livejournal.com]

Who do so many fans of this show dislike Elle? I just don't get it...

Comments

[sonnenschein4.livejournal.com]

Niether do I. I like her. I'm hoping the end of the last season was not the end of her run on the series.

[susanthecurious.livejournal.com]

Speaking only for myself, I don't dislike Elle-I just never really liked her or thought much of her at all. I think that this is part of the deal with fairly large ensomble casts-some people are just there and you don't feel particularly invested in them one way or another.

[marvinetta.livejournal.com]

I got the vibe that it was JJ people really didn't like. I like Elle but it seems she's getting a bit too skinny..

[theoriginalspy.livejournal.com]

I find JJ's character essentially useless.

[getupandbeit.livejournal.com]

I liked her a lot, actually.

[lysachan.livejournal.com]

I've always liked her. ♥

[slash-girl.livejournal.com]

I love Elle, although not as much as I love Garcia. I think she's good at her job and she kicks ass!

[chitown-gal.livejournal.com]

I liked Elle a lot, at first. Then "Derailed" happened. A number of things in that episode bugged me about her. And then it seemed for a long time like the writers couldn't really figure out how to use her character effectively.

I don't dislike her, but I'm not crazy about her. If we have to lose one team member, however, I'd much rather it were JJ.

[unmellow-yellow.livejournal.com]

What bugged you about her in "Derailed"?

[chitown-gal.livejournal.com]

Two things: First - and I admit this one is kind of stupid - my friend and I had really liked Elle at the beginning and said more than once that if Kate from NCIS had been like Elle, we'd have liked Kate a lot more - and then in "Derailed" Elle went and had her gun taken from her by the unsub. This was just like Kate, but in a bad way. (I know it wasn't as bad as Kate. Kate had a tendency to leave her gun where the bad guy could just take it - like in "Meat Puzzle" and in "UnSEALed".)

Elle really wasn't at fault, but I'd been making so many comparisons between her and Kate that it bugged.

Second was that whole "Dad" thing. I'm not sure it was really in character for her, but we didn't know much about her character at that point. It really, really sat wrong with me. Still does. And now it seems even more out of character than it did then.

I might also have been peeved because I'd hoped "Derailed" would be Elle-centric and it turned out to be Yet Another Reid-Focused Episode. I don't think we got to know much about Elle until "Machismo".

[unmellow-yellow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am so sick of Reid episodes. I want ones that are about any other character, preferrably Gideon or Elle (and I've had enough of Hotch for now, like in "A Real Rain," "Machismo," "Natural Born Killer," and "The Tribe" all featured Hotch in some way).

I miss Kate :) But I like Ziva too... I never used to care about tv shows but this past semester I've started to (but only about NCIS & CM. I ADORE Scrubs, but it's a comedy show, so spoilers aren't that important. With Scrubs every episode is great!)

[sonnenschein4.livejournal.com]

Noooooo! I love JJ!

[wisetara.livejournal.com]

•Low cut, impractical tops on several occasions.
•In “Riding the Lightning,” she rudely questioned the presence of the lawyer even though it was obvious that everyone else on the team was fine with him.
•Also in “Riding the Lightning,” while she and Morgan were in the driveway with the parents, she faced away from them while communicating with Hotch. When she had news, she summoned Morgan over to her, still without turning to him. It looked ridiculous and totally unnatural.
•She is frequently seen shrugging or looking perplexed in reaction shots. In short, she's written as an idiot with no clear motivating personality. The writers could make her better, but they haven't. I REALLY hope she dies--if not this time around, then soon.

[gnimaerd.livejournal.com]

Warning: this is long. This subject relates to one I've been thinking about lately so here's me splurging all my un-ranted thoughts to you guys. Bare with me! ;)

I love Elle - but I think she's suffering from Terminal Underdevelopment, a syndrome a LOT of female characters unfortunately come down with in these high-powered, non-character-centric, post-CSI genre shows. Female characters are in there because not having any would not only be rather unnatural (hello, we make up fifty one percent of the population!) not to mention totally un-PC, but really, that's the ONLY reason they're in there. It's like having the token black guy (or other ethnic minority character) that a lot of these shows have. The writers/producers/whoever the hell decides these things have (somewhat inaccurately) decided that they are making a program chiefly watched by men. Therefore, the majority of the characters, are also men to make it uber-easy for the presumed screeds upon screeds of macho, sexist men-people watching to relate and empathise with the characters. As a result, the few women that ARE on the cast are often left underdeveloped because the writers/prodcuers/whoever-the-hell-dcides-these-things are terrified of somehow alienated their presume core audience of said men-people. Any woman who takes any promenant role on the cast also has to look very pretty because the presumed core audience of man-people all, of course, (when resting their brains from the endless manly action,) want to see CLEAVAGE.

ENDLESS CLEAVAGE.

Belly-buttons are also generally appreciated.

I may be over-symplafying slightly, but, unfortunately, large chunks of what I'm saying rings true about a lot of the stuff currently on. Even on CSI:NY, which I consider one of the better programs in this genre for promoting strong women dress Stella and Lindsay in pretty un-practical, low-cut stuff for HUGE amounts of time.

The -insert name of people in charge of show-development here- fear that giving Elle some space to develop (let alone giving her a wardrobe that would actually make sense for someone with her high-stress, hands-on line of work - I mean, seriously, who wears tops THAT low cut whilst at a blood-drenched crime-scene or pointing guns are psychopaths?) would mean focusing on 'women's issues' (whatever the hell those are, exactly), which they fear would make their presumed male audience groan into their macho beer-cans and go and watch monster-trucks or WWF or porn instead.

It's deeply frustrating, not only because it subtly supports gender steriotyping of both women AND men, (men are either old and jaded, geeky, womanisers, black/brown or family-orientated, women are either pretty or weird and generally either want a high-powered career or BABIES and lots of 'em) but because what little ungender-bias, genuinely human character development we've seen from Elle has made me like her and pine for her lost potential.

cont to avoid character-limits

[gnimaerd.livejournal.com]

So for all that, I like Elle - and those that don't, tend not to for reasons that are far from the character's fault. I've seen the situation repeated a lot across the fandoms - both Aiden and Lindsay-haters in CSI:NY, people who can't stand Calleigh in CSI:Miami, the problems people had issues with Kate in NCIS, etc. Potentially likable femae characters who end up being dropped into steriotypical, low-cut-top-wearing background roles because the writers are afraid that viewers are completely gender-bias. Frankly, it's that kind of parnoid must-please-the-networks-and-make-money attitude that produces these gender-biases in the shows and therefore feeds sociatal gender-bias in the first place!

If anyone is interested in this kind of issue, (which you probably aren't having heard FAR too much from me by now ;) )a good place to go is http://www.seejane.org/ which is a site that tackles gender-bias and steriotyping of both sexes in kids programming. Lots of interesting research.

(Now go have some ice-cream for managing to read this to the end!) :D

Re: cont to avoid character-limits

[unmellow-yellow.livejournal.com]

AMEN! I love Elle myself, but many women, like my mother, dislike her because her face seems "stone-cold" a lot of the time. That's just who she is, and also a victim of underdevelopment. Who is complaining that Hotch is expressionless? No one.

I love tough women on TV, especially Kate Todd and Ziva David on NCIS. But that show actually developed them some. A show that is actually not a crime show, but a comedy - "Scrubs," develops the characters of Carla and Elliot (a woman) throughout 5 seasons, and shows how they grow, and deal with their flaws and insecurities. If you want some women-strong character development, that's a very good (and insanely funny) show to watch.

Re: cont to avoid character-limits

[gnimaerd.livejournal.com]

I liked Kate too - though my like of her was limited because I don't watch NCIS to any substancial degree, just catch an episode every now and again. She seemed like a good character, though, again, fell pray to some of the steriotypes so usual in this genre, and I know people in the fandom enough to pick up people's attitudes towards her. I haven't seen enough of Ziva to really comment on her, though.

I'm already a Scrubs addict. :D And yeah, I hadn't really noticed it before, but it really IS a good show as far as steriotyping (or lack there of) is concerned. The female characters are given as much time to develop as the male ones, and NOT dressed in stupidly inpractical clothes all the time. I did notice it a bit a while ago, in the episode 'My Life in Four Cameras'? The one where JD imagines himself inside a sitcom - they give Carla and Cameron MASSIVE hair and MASSIVE cleavage, and they both became 1-dimensional bimbos, totally making fun of what most genre shows do to female characters. Yes, it was exagerated, but it hit a very pure note of truth. It highlighted how differently Scrubs treats it's female characters to what's normal for network dramas/sitcoms. It brought me up short for a second.

Re: cont to avoid character-limits

[gnimaerd.livejournal.com]

Eeep - not I'm crossing over my fandoms... (it's five to midnight here, I'm allowed to slip) ;P I said Carla and Cameron (probably thinking of Cameron in House, who is another female character I think defies steriotypes in a very interesting way, mostly because, on the surface, she is the absolute EPITOME of female-steriotyping, then proves us wrong by being much, much more complex and interesting beneath that). Anyway, when I put Cameron, I MEANT Eliot, obviously. *yawn* I have to go sleep now...

[demoka.livejournal.com]

i like her! but... i've only seen two episodes... being in Aus kinda sucks when it comes to tv.... well, i need to watch more and get to know the characters more too....!