How important is gender balancing for the success of a season

[The Bronze]

So the lack of females in Angel season 5 was brought up as a problem in another thread. Not wanting to drag another thread off topic again I thought I'd start this one to see how important it is. So what does the gang look like in each season:

BS1 - Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel - +1 female
Bs2 - Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Oz - Even
BS3 - Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Joyce, Faith, Giles, Xander, Angel, Oz - +1 female
BS4 - Buffy, Willow, Tara, Anya, Giles, Xander, Riley, Spike - Even
BS5 - Buffy, Willow, Tara, Anya, Dawn, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Riley, Spike - +2 female
BS6 - Buffy, Willow, Tara, Anya, Dawn, Xander, Spike - +4 female
BS7 - Buffy, Willow, Anya, Dawn, Kennedy, (+3 potentials), Xander, Giles, Spike, Andrew, Wood - +4 female

AS1 - Angel, Doyle, Wes, Gunn, Cordelia, Kate - +2 male
AS2 - Angel, Wes, Gunn, Cordelia, Kate - +1 male
AS3 - Angel, Wes, Gunn, Lorne, Cordelia, Fred - +2 male
AS4 - Angel, Wes, Gunn, Lorne, Connor, Cordelia, Fred - +3 male
AS5 - Angel, Wes, Gunn, Lorne, Spike, Fred, Eve, Harmony - +2 male

That's not very nicely laid out but it's a starting point. Obviously I'm making a few judgements about who to include and the skewing of the potentials. Angel might be a bit off because it's a while since I've seen the show through.

Anyway what does everyone think? Does it look like there could be a link between how highly you would rate a season and the balance of the team that year?

 

[Fuffy]

I don't think that gender balance is an important factor in the season's quality.
If anything, the quality and watchability of a TV show mainly depends on the writers involved (main reason why I don't trust TV shows created by Ryan Murphy or Shonda Rhimes).

 

[white avenger]

So the lack of females in Angel season 5 was brought up as a problem in another thread. Not wanting to drag another thread off topic again I thought I'd start this one to see how important it is. So what does the gang look like in each season:

Anyway what does everyone think? Does it look like there could be a link between how highly you would rate a season and the balance of the team that year?

I don't see where any sort of "balance" based on gender, race, age, or any such criteria should even be considered to be any sort of "problem." What difference would it have made if the cast had been all male? Sure, we would have never had Cordy or Fred, which, looking back on it, would have been a loss, but if Xander had moved over to "Angel" instead of Cordy, Fred had been a man, and, do I dare even suggest, Gunn had not been an African-American, would those simple changes in and of themselves have detracted from the quality or even the believability of the show?

The premise of the series is that a vampire with a soul, guided by an agent of a group of Higher Beings, has a self imposed mission to "help the helpless" in a large city in order to in some way atone for his past. He is aided in his mission by a small group of dedicated friends. Personally, none of those cast members has to be either gender, or race specific to effect my enjoyment of the show, and as for realism? We're talking about a show whose title character is a vampire, a regular member of the support cast is a half demon, and a large portion of the guest performers aren't human. Just how realistic is that?

 

[Taake]

For me the number of characters of either gender has a lesser significance than does the quality of the character as well as the purpose of them.
So it's not about being "even".

Example given; for me Harmony doesn't count in season 5 because she's only there to fill up the v-card quota. But this doesn't make the season better in anyway, or even more politically correct in terms of "gender balance" (only at the most superficial level, i.e. the number game) or whatever.
One Harmony is not going to "balance" one Wesley, or Gunn, or Spike, or Lorne etc etc because she's nowhere near the fullness of these characters. She's just the punch-line. Even in her own episode, which only serves to show how gratuitous her presence is because after it she goes back to being a table lamp, there only for convenience not because she has a sense of agency or purpose in and of herself.


So no, for me you can't list up all the main characters and go "even steven" if it adds up, because (to borrow a Dollhouse phrase) any amount of dumb-shows aren't going to be better than one real and genuine character. Of whatever sex or race.
It's problematic when there's no balance of course (like the Avengers and many other movies* e.g. where the females or ethnic people are "token" characters there mostly to fill up some kind of nebulous quota like the list above) but the strive should be for good and plausible characters, not an identical number of gender cards.

In other words, gender 'balance' is not what makes a season good for me.
Well-written characters and well-written plot developments makes a season good for me.


*like anything where there's one woman or one black guy to like 11 white males... that's what I'd call no balance.

 

[The Bronze]

Yeah I must say it's not something I'd really noticed one way or the other. I remember Xander saying he missed having more male company in the scoobies at some point in the later seasons and hearing people unhappy at the lack of females on Angel. Looking at it the way I've laid out seems to suggest there was always a slight lean for more females on Buffy and more males on Angel but nothing drastic. I think we're probably all agreed it's quality over quantity that really counts with regards to whoever is on the screen at the time.

 

[Blaze]

I don't think balance comes from #female=#male. Balance comes from the strength of the characters, how well written they are, the role they play, and how important they are. This also applies to race in a way. Like Taake pointed out, Harmony doesn't equal Wesley for example, not even near. Harmony is actually kind of pointless, and if they put her there just to fill in the female quota, well that's kind of offensive. Might as well just not have her there at all.

It's possible to have a show entirely made of guys, or entirely made of girls and still have a good show, that isn't being sexist (same apply to racism). But when a show only has 99% male roles for absolutely no reason (aka when a role could easily be played by a woman but it's given to a male), well that's not okay with me. And a LOT of the movies/TV shows are very male centered for no other reason than "male strong, female need saving". If you have one female role playing the typical female role, the damsel in distress etc in a cast almost exclusively made of males, that isn't okay with me either. You're just having your token female that needs saving, and just because you have that one role doesn't mean your show isn't sexist. Actually, it makes it more sexist (again, same could be said about having that one POC on a show full of whites and giving that POC the typical role just to fill in the black quota).

Let's take Angel. Let's for the sake of argument remove Fred and Cordy, would I still watch the show? Probably because it's part of the Buffyverse and there are plenty of other strong female character in that verse. If Angel was a show on it's own, with absolutely no female characters, I actually might have been put off a bit but if I watched the show than I'd realize that the show is good regardless of what kind of gender is in it. Let's say we only had Cordy. In this case, she's not the typical damsel in distress role, she actually has substance and is a real, strong, important character. So that again, would be fine. I'd tune in because the show is obviously about building strong important characters regardless of the sex. If the show had no other females but Harmony, than I'd probably pull the sexist card and never turn on the show again 😛.

Overall though, I find it's easy to tell when a show deliberately give all the males those hero roles while all the girls are stuck needing saving. If you want to write a show about guys only, or write a show about girls only, that is completely fine. If the show isn't my cup of tea, I won't watch, but that doesn't mean the show is sexist. It's when a show type cast that it becomes a problem. Do I think Hollywood is over saturated with hero roles only given to males, yes, I do. But having a balance doesn't mean we should have an equal amount of male and female playing those roles either, it just means that strong roles should be given to both genders (and all other gender, but I don't see that happening any time soon).

 

[AnthonyCordova]

Worrying about that I feel is getting things backwards. "Gender balancing", as well as most other things, should be in service to the story, not the other way around. Artists shouldn't think to themselves "I need to balance out the gender representation, so how can I manipulate the story to make that happen?". Real artists make good human stories and the rest of it just falls into place naturally the way it should be for that particular story. If you focus on telling a human story (human: meaning authentic and relevant to the human experience) most of everything else gets taken care of in the process. Same with race, sex, etc. It feels very contrived otherwise; especially on other topics, like when an ethical or political position or something like that is being consciously forced through and not organically developed, it feels like I'm being told how to think and feel, and I don't care for that at all. I can make up my own mind thank you very much.

 

[Blaze]

Worrying about that I feel is getting things backwards. "Gender balancing", as well as most other things, should be in service to the story, not the other way around. Artists shouldn't think to themselves "I need to balance out the gender representation, so how can I manipulate the story to make that happen?". Real artists make good human stories and the rest of it just falls into place naturally the way it should be for that particular story. If you focus on telling a human story (human: meaning authentic and relevant to the human experience) most of everything else gets taken care of in the process. Same with race, sex, etc. It feels very contrived otherwise; especially on other topics, like when an ethical or political position or something like that is being consciously forced through and not organically developed, it feels like I'm being told how to think and feel, and I don't care for that at all. I can make up my own mind thank you very much.

I agree, more and more nowadays many movies and show feels forced. Like they're just doing it to be politically correct, but it comes out as the complete opposite.

Do we need more representation of race, 100% we do. Do we need more bad ass roles played by females, 100% we do. Do we need to represent different genders and orientations, yes, yes we do. But real roles need to be created because the artist wants to create those roles, not because they want to be correct or avant gardiste. We NEED diversity and representation, but that will come when artist from around the world are being given a chance, instead of paying the big bucks to have that one middle aged white Hollywood man direct a movie. The real problem is that we don't get many good female characters because many female directors are simply being disregarded in Hollywood. Of course, it doesn't take a female director to have good female characters, but I guaranty if more people of color, if more females, if more people of diverse cultures were given the opportunity to break into Hollywood, we would get many more organic characters that are diverse without feeling forced. 
Actually interesting in light of this conversation, I made a little trip to the IMDB board for Mad Max, and you wouldn't even believe the amount of complaints there about too many females being in the movie and turning this amazing series into a feminist rant. Goes to show the problem isn't just with the cast and directors, it's with the public.

 

[Under Her Spell]

It's not really important. I always felt there should be more female than male characters on BTVS, and I never thought of that as sexist or anything. BTVS is a haven of strong, amazing female characters. Buffy, Willow, Cordelia, Anya, Tara, Dawn, and to a lesser extant, Joyce, Jenny, Faith and all those potentials in season 7; the show may be named after Buffy, but it really is an ensemble-type show. Think on the central tenants of the show. The men have a place, big time, sure, but it's still in many ways all about girl power, for real.

But hey, maybe that's me. As a man, I do tend to love strong women. 😀

 

[SiegePerilous02]

It's generally pretty important to me: I like having male characters I can identify with, but I also love strong women, so a healthy mixture of both is a great way to success for my liking something. It's why I love stuff like the X-Men so much.

One of my major problems with the final season of Angel is that it is practically a sausage fest. The only major female character in the first half of the season is Fred, and she's stuck being a love object for Wesley most of the time before a long, drawn out death scene before transforming into Illyria. After that (excluding Illyria, whose true gender has always seemed nebulous to me), the only women on the show are friggin Harmony and Eve. It was so avoidable too. Joss getting over himself and keeping Cordelia as a regular would have been all that was needed to solve the problem, and maybe not replace Lilah with the non-entity that is Eve. As it is, all the main women get stuffed in the fridge before series end while all the men get to go out as heroes. As much as I love the season, it still rankles a bit. It was always a very macho show compared to BtVS, but the early season treatments of Cordelia, Kate and Darla make up for it. What's weird is that this is when uber-feminist Joss Whedon had more involvement in the show in place of Greenwalt and Minear, and yet it's more sexist than the early years.

 

[bespangeled]

I don't think that the problem is having any amount of either gender as much as having strong characters in each gender, and that is where season 5 is a let down. IMO, both Eve and Harmony are one note characters. Lilah was a complex character - Eve is a joke. Cordelia was a complex character - Harmony is a joke. This leaves Fred as the lone strong female but as the group fragments we see less and less of her until she becomes Illyria.

It's a satisfying season overall - and I love Spike and Angel together - but I do find it less satisfying than other seasons in this area. Seasons two and three had Faith, and even if she was not a regular, she had more impact in her episodes that Harmony and Eve did in an entire season. It's like the show just found it to be too much trouble to bother creating strong females and threw in a few stereotypes. Even the arcs are more satisfying on the male side. Look at both Gunn and Wesley - their arcs over the death of Fred are larger and more complex than Fred's is.

 

[SiegePerilous02]

If the originally planned idea for Willow to bring back Fred's soul and have her and Illyria share a body was able to pan out in season 6, it would have rectified a lot. Really, none of the deaths are bad on their own except for Cordelia's. But killing off Cordy AND Lilah AND Fred is just too much.

Is there a reason Lilah never returned to season 5? "Home" seemed to be setting her up for a recurring role, and Eve seems like a last minute replacement. Scheduling conflict with the actress?

 

[Mr Trick]

I don't think the balancing of gender on screen is that important. Like others have said it is about how the characters are written. As a rule I think we need to see more females represented and better writing of those characters, but sometimes you are in danger of just ticking boxes if you stick an extra female character in there just for the sake of evening things up.