{"id":1650,"date":"2014-03-20T16:10:25","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T20:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2014-03-20T16:10:25","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T20:10:25","slug":"tina-belcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/tina-belcher\/","title":{"rendered":"LET&#8217;S STEAL FROM THIS! Tina Belcher, TV&#8217;s Best Character"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1650\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Ftina-belcher%2F&amp;text=LET%26%238217%3BS%20STEAL%20FROM%20THIS%21%20Tina%20Belcher%2C%20TV%26%238217%3Bs%20Best%20Character&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Ftina-belcher%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" share_url=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/tina-belcher\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><\/div><div><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div><p>TV, you&#8217;re great. You&#8217;re not at all a wasteland! This is slooowly and finally becoming non-news in all but a few dark corners.<em> The Sopranos<\/em>, <em>Enlightened<\/em>, <em>Parks &amp; Recreation<\/em>, <em>Breaking Bad<\/em>, <em>Mad Men<\/em>, etc. &#8212; for ten years now, no one can have claimed there&#8217;s no good writing on television. So, quality-wise, writing-wise: good going, television.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, but then: Hmm, female characters.<\/p>\n<p>This is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seejane.org\/research\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">not remotely a new sentiment<\/a>, but what the fucking fuck is anyone to think about our treatment of girls and women in 2014, based on our nation&#8217;s main storytelling medium?<\/p>\n<p>Imagine you&#8217;re an alien who&#8217;s just tapped into our satellite feeds. You&#8217;d understand the deal right away: the ones with protuberances on their chests are wives and assistants. (I don&#8217;t know how these aliens know those last two words but not &#8220;boobs.&#8221;) They&#8217;re the ultra-competent coroner or surveillance expert who knows to otherwise go back to her desk and shut the fuck up so the dude(s) can get the real work done. If they&#8217;re somehow in a position of power, they&#8217;re a horrible mess. They&#8217;re unable to balance work and relationships because on <em>television<\/em>\u00a0that&#8217;s somehow a specifically feminine affliction vs. just how life works for almost everyone. They&#8217;re unhappy. Or, if they&#8217;re happy, it&#8217;s because they&#8217;re the dumb one. They don&#8217;t realize they&#8217;re the butt of the joke. Always, regardless of status, they are deeply compromised. Not <em>complicated<\/em>, most of the time, just compromised.<\/p>\n<p>But then there&#8217;s Tina Belcher. She&#8217;s thirteen, she wears glasses and (sorry) unstylish hair, she goes to school, she&#8217;s obsessed with butts, she fantasizes about having a horde of zombie boyfriends. She&#8217;s not only one of the best female characters in any medium these days, I think she&#8217;s the single best, most radical character on TV.<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t know who Tina Belcher is, she&#8217;s a character on <em>Bob&#8217;s Burgers<\/em>, which is maybe the most consistently funny show of the last ten years. It&#8217;s also one of the &#8212; and I hesitate to use this word &#8212; gentlest. That implies the comedy has no bite, though it has plenty. But <em>Bob&#8217;s Burgers<\/em> isn&#8217;t after satire or skewering How We Live Right Now, and no one in its world is an asshole. (Well, almost. Tina&#8217;s classmate Tammy is kind of an asshole.)<\/p>\n<p>If I had to compare <em>Bob&#8217;s Burgers<\/em> to anything, I&#8217;d say it&#8217;s a cross between <em>King of the Hill<\/em> without that show&#8217;s &#8220;simple folks&#8221; fetish and season-one <em>Simpsons<\/em> without the weird &#8217;50s-era family dynamics. Bob Belcher&#8217;s kids are odd and he likes them, even if he knows they&#8217;re in for a lifetime of pain. And no character on television is more aggressively odd &#8212; and therefore aggressively <em>normal<\/em> &#8212; than Tina Belcher.<\/p>\n<p>And there&#8217;s why Tina Belcher is an especially powerful female character: She normalizes normality. Which sounds like either a typo or a load of crap, but I mean it that way. Girl characters on TV tend to conform to yearbook superlatives: Hottest, Smartest, Most Sarcastic, etc. But\u00a0Tina isn&#8217;t The Most Stunning, she&#8217;s not even Secretly Hot But No One Else Sees It Yet, she doesn&#8217;t have Superpowers, she doesn&#8217;t (aside from her facility with Erotic Friend Fiction) even really have a Special Ability. She&#8217;s just Tina and she likes being Tina. (She even digs her own hair and practice swishing it around seductively.) She&#8217;s waiting for everyone else to realize they like Tina.<\/p>\n<p>This, somehow, is maybe the most radical idea going.<\/p>\n<p>Teenage girls on TV, remember, are supposed to be snarky bitches, Disney-eyed quip machines perpetually mortified by their parents&#8217; attempts to be cool. Or they&#8217;re supposed to be Cute, But&#8230; and here you fill in that blank like you&#8217;d fill in a health form: but clumsy; but shy; but miserable; but part of a family with a big secret; but busy running a company. Tina is unashamed of her family, she&#8217;s becoming aware of the hierarchies that rule middle school, and mainly she&#8217;s just doing her thing, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with her. Tina may pine for a lot of things (e.g., Jimmy Pesto, Jr.), but she&#8217;s good with who she is.<\/p>\n<p>This feature is called Let&#8217;s Steal From This. So if you&#8217;re a writer, here&#8217;s what I want you to do. Well, two things. One, watch <em>Bob&#8217;s Burgers<\/em>. It&#8217;s great. Two, though: Steal from Tina Belcher. Make one of your own. She doesn&#8217;t have to look or talk like Tina Belcher (I&#8217;m not sure how you&#8217;d ever get that voice across in print anyway), she doesn&#8217;t have to love butts or write erotic friend fiction. But she should be A) a female character who is B) interesting <em>on her own<\/em>, and she should C) be fine with who she is, D) preferably to the discomfort of others.<\/p>\n<p>That last point is what creates the stakes for a character like Tina. I write a lot on here about how the best characters are always driven and damaged. While that sounds a lot like <em>Scandal<\/em>&#8216;s Olivia Pope or <em>Enlightened<\/em>&#8216;s Amy Jellicoe, it also describes Tina Belcher. (To be clear: &#8220;Damaged,&#8221; on this blog, can mean everything from sociopathic to narcissistic to full of rage to overly shy. Damaged is just what causes friction with other characters.) And Tina&#8217;s certainly driven, powered by hormones and curiosity. But she&#8217;s also &#8220;damaged&#8221; in that she shares a key quality with so many great characters: a distinct lack of self-awareness. And where that may lead, say, Amy Jellicoe to behave as though she&#8217;s still got some currency in the corporate world even after having a terrifying meltdown and going to anger-rehab, it leads Tina into situations where most teenage girl characters wouldn&#8217;t be caught dead. Which makes for &#8212; ta da! &#8212; great comedy that doesn&#8217;t feel quite like everything you&#8217;ve seen before.<\/p>\n<p>Example: Tammy threatens to expose Tina&#8217;s Erotic Friend Fiction to the whole school. And even after Tina&#8217;s siblings sabotage Tammy&#8217;s plan, Tina decides to go Full Tina. She writes a new piece to read aloud in the cafeteria. (Excerpt: &#8220;Everyone touched each other&#8217;s butts&#8230;and it was great.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Screen-Shot-2014-03-20-at-4.00.40-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1665\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-03-20 at 4.00.40 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Screen-Shot-2014-03-20-at-4.00.40-PM-300x169.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Screen-Shot-2014-03-20-at-4.00.40-PM-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Screen-Shot-2014-03-20-at-4.00.40-PM.png 985w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The tension around that scene comes not from Tina&#8217;s mortification &#8212; because why should she have any? &#8212; but from <em>everyone else&#8217;s<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So go. Go and create a Tina Belcher of your own. Make her deeply weird, but treat <em>that<\/em> like it&#8217;s utterly normal. Because here&#8217;s the big secret about her: While lots of us would love to believe we were the cool kids, or at least the <em>undiscovered<\/em> cool kids, most of us we were either out-and-out Tina Belchers or we were constantly suppressing the one who was inside us, thinking weird stuff, touching butts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1650\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Ftina-belcher%2F&amp;text=LET%26%238217%3BS%20STEAL%20FROM%20THIS%21%20Tina%20Belcher%2C%20TV%26%238217%3Bs%20Best%20Character&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Ftina-belcher%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><p>Writing needs more Tina Belchers. Here&#8217;s why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-steal-from-this"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}