Within the structure of male/female partnerships is a trend toward the model of flipping traditionally understood gender roles. This usually is demonstrated by the female character being grounded by experience, logic and analytical thinking, while the male becomes a creature of intuition, insight and an innate, ‘out of the box’ mentality driven by a unconventional background.
Probably the most famous, and popular, version of this model would be Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Mulder as the believer was balanced out by Scully’s hard-line skepticism and her strict adherence to science and the scientific even in the face of the most paranormal aspects their X-Files investigations. Mulder was a creature of intuitive leaps, driven often by as consuming a need to believe in things outside of the realm of science as Scully was driven by the need to quantify and categorize the outlandish creatures and situations they encountered. The partnership which developed between them found the two of them fulfilling these roles almost as a habit, with Scully doggedly holding onto the need to believe only what she could prove largely in response to her partner’s determination to prove the existence of all things unscientific.
An older model for this type of relationship could be found in the relationship between the titular character of Remington Steele and Laura Holt. The premise of the series was predicated on the idea that Laura herself was a trained and capable private investigator who has not been given a chance at success and had therefore invented a phantom boss named Remington Steele. He existed to give the rest of the world the persona they expected while in reality, Laura was doing all the work and running the show. Her plans were sent into chaos when a con man arrived, realized her deception and smoothly stepped into the vacant role of Remington Steele. She allowed the deception in part because of how effectively he fit the bill and also because of a clear romantic interest in him which they toyed with through the run of the show. As a girl, what I loved the most about this partnership was that there was no question where the brains of the operation existed. Especially in the beginning, Steele was characterized by charm as much as his utter incompetence. He was there to create chaos while Laura came along behind him, solved the cases and brought everything back to order.
In many ways, it was a flipping of a Thin Man type of relationship, where there was love and banter, played off as sexual tension and romantic comedy in the midst of their investigations. Steele’s background as a thief and con man often served to give him insight into the criminal minds they were investigating because he had more in common with them than he did the straight laced detective Laura Holt. While Laura was bright, and especially in the early days of the show, was the one who solved the mysteries, sometimes making it a game of not even filling Steele in until she was spelling everything out as well as any of the classic ‘gum shoes’.
These days, one of the programs which is using this type of model is the generally light-hearted Bones. Like Dana Scully, Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan is a creature of science. She eschews the emotional, scorns psychology as a ‘soft science’ and sees the world through the lens of an anthropologist, studying people and situations in terms of socio-cultural roles and mores. This is often characterized by a lack of tact and blunt assessment of people and situations. She is balanced by partner is FBI agent Seeley Booth, who despite his background as a sniper, is presented as being more in touch with humanity and emotion than his analytical counterpart. He’s a father, grounding him in those solid emotions and characterizes the scientific team who quite literally do the dirty work in their cases as ‘Squints’, seeking to find a more intuitive path to solving their cases even as he allows himself to be guided by the hard science of their investigations.
But perhaps the most interesting example of this dynamic exists in NBC’s freshman drama, Life. Charlie Crews is the lead character, a man wrongfully imprisoned for years who won, as part of his multi-million dollar settlement, a place as detective in the local police department. He has deep, emotional scars due to torturous condition in his long incarceration and a quirky, ‘zen-ish’ way of looking at the world. His unlikely balance is found in Detective Dani Reese. From the beginning, her history was left murky and uncertain, the audience only being told she has a history with drugs and is at least a second generation police officer.
Like the case which Crews pursues relentlessly as an undercurrent of the series, Dani’s history is likewise revealed in bits and pieces. And like Crews, her history has left it’s mark on her. She is presented as a person who drinks on the way to AA, and makes it a habit of seeking out one night stands almost as often as Charlie indulges in groupies happy to come play in the house his settlement bought him. Their diverse histories allow the two character an oddly well matched sense of mystery.
In their work, Dani is the one who takes the lead. She’s the one who drives, the one who takes the lead with subjects, and almost naturally plays the hard-ass, bad cop role to contrast Charlie’s quirky persona even as it’s balanced by his insight and uncanny ability to read people. And like Remington Steele before him, Charlie’s background gives him at times a closer connection to the mind of a criminal then that of a detective. And also like Steele, his style of investigating is at times almost child-like, even as it masks a darker interior. So like Laura Holt, Dani at times assumes an almost parental type of role, where it seems she’s as much there to keep him out of trouble as it is to do the police work.
Early in the series, they have had many characters comment on the gender roles of the two, questioning Charlie’s willingness to let Dani do the talking and embody a more aggressive style of investigating. His response is often silence, letting Dani’s hard eyed stare speak for itself, or once offer advice to a male suspect who was questioning Dani’s competence – he called attention to her badge, and her gun, and advised him that when a woman with a badge and a gun asked him a question, he should answer it. The assumption by many is that Dani’s strength signifies some sort of weakness in Charlie, but instead it seems his ability to so easily accept and appreciate her strength which serves as an equal strength within him.
As a viewer, it is this partnership which was the most unexpected and welcome surprise of the new season. Though it is advertised and hyped as Charlie’s story, it’s the interaction between the two of them which will help this series define itself if it’s given the chance to thrive. Because they’ve managed from early on to find ways of showing how instinctually these two characters balance each other. They have a teasing, insightful banter and have now intertwined the mystery inherent in each of them by having Dani’s picture appear on Charlie’s closet sized diagram of the case which sent him to prison in the first place, linking their histories, and mysteries, together irrevocably.
This, and her slowly, yet powerfully, unfolding background allow her character to be more than a foil or a straight man to Charlie’s quirky persona and enhances the growing sense of unexpected equality between them. And like so many that have gone before, I hope the characters are given the chance to grow and explore their unconventional partnerships.
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