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What I Like About You (TV show (2002-2006)
What I Like About You is a long-cancelled sitcom starring Amanda Bynes and Jennie Garth (yes, she who is campaigning against immunizations because she thinks they cause autism).
It ran for four disjointed years with a supporting cast that changed practically every season. Bynes plays Holly, originally about 16 years old, and Garth plays her older sister who has custody of her. Garth's Valerie is uptight, a real Felix to Holly's Oscar Madison. The show starts out emphasizing Holly's klutziness, often inspired by The Lucy Show and other classics of the sitcom genre, and rapidly moves into both women's relationships with the men in their lives. They do have female friends, of course, and male friends. One friend has a long-standing affair with a married man-and isn't apologetic about it. Holly has a string of boyfriends whom she drops as soon as things "get serious".
I haven't thoroughly analyzed it because honestly, it annoys the hell out of me. Sure, it's great that it has two female leads, just like The Gilmore Girls; a rare beast on television! Of course, since it's a sitcom, the situations are often embarrassing, or stupid, or really stupid. Valerie, the uptight older sister, ends up very drunk in Vegas and marrying a fireman she had a crush on. This is after another attempt at marriage when she left her fiance at the alter because he called up his ex-girlfriend without telling her.
It can be amusing, and does have some genuinely funny moments, but...and I don't know why this show irritates the crap out of me. Is it Jennie Garth's shrillness? Is it Amanda Byne's often smarmy insincerity as Holly?
It DOES fulfill the Bechdel Test--but if you listen a crapload of the sisters' conversations are about men. Often enough, sure, it's about their relationship as sisters, or conversations with their friends, female and male.
But after watching two episodes of it in a row (which Mermaid loves to do, now that she's seen all of the Gilmore Girls) I want to kick the TV in. And The Guy would not like that.