#definitely still some I can see being replaced and that were arbitrary picks over women I like equally well and cut

[televinita]

Top 100 Ladies of TV

Looking at old blog posts, many years ago I did a "100 favorite female characters" list, but I have met so many wonderful new ladies now that it is quite out of date and needs a major update to accommodate them. International Women’s Day seems like the perfect time to do so!

Only this time I'm restricting it to TV characters, or I will die of Overwhelm.

NOTE: This list is not in any kind of order, I just wrote them down as they came to mind. I considered alphabetical, but found it was nicer to keep everyone from a given show together. And rather than starting from scratch, I kept as much of the original list as I could and just added newer favorites on at the end, if you're wondering why some of these Very Old Fandoms are clustered at the top.

Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

Donna Noble (Doctor Who)

Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who/The Sarah Jane Adventures)

Kimberly Hart (Power Rangers)

Katherine Hillard (Power Rangers)

Pamela Beesly Halpert (The Office)

Kelly Kapoor (The Office)

Angela Martin (The Office)

Amita Ramanujan (Numb3rs)

Abby Sciuto (NCIS

Ziva David (NCIS)

Abby Lockhart (ER)

Neela Rasgotra (ER)

Sarah Riley (ER)

Rachel Berry (Glee)

Quinn Fabray (Glee)

Tina Cohen-Chang, respect (Glee)

Marley Rose (Glee)

Juliet Burke (Lost)

Alex Rousseau (Lost)

Kensi Blye (NCIS: LA)

Nell Jones (NCIS: LA)

Marisol Delko (CSI: Miami)

Alexx Woods (CSI: Miami)

Calleigh DuQuesne (CSI: Miami)

Samantha Spade (Without a Trace)

Miranda Bailey (Grey's Anatomy)

Cristina Yang (Grey's Anatomy)

April Kepner (Grey's Anatomy)

Addison Forbes Montgomery (Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice)

Sara Sidle (CSI)

Jess Angell (CSI: NY)

Dana Scully (X-Files)

Summer Roberts (The O.C.)

Charlotte "Chuck" Charles (Pushing Daisies)

Olive Snook (Pushing Daisies)

Joan Girardi (Joan of Arcadia)

Kat Miller (Cold Case)

Tru Davies (Tru Calling)

Elaine Benes (Seinfeld)

Daphne Moon (Frasier)

Carla Espinosa (Scrubs)

Jordan Sullivan (Scrubs) -- it's either her or Ellie Torres from Cougar Town, real 6-of-1 situation

Donna Pinciotti (That 70s Show)

Jackie Burkhart (That 70s Show)

Kitty Forman (That 70s Show)

Kara Danvers (Supergirl)

Stephanie Tanner (Full/er House)

Grace Adler (Will & Grace)

Lexi Vaziri (Blood & Treasure)

Jaz Khan (The Brave)

Lux Cassidy (Life Unexpected)

Rachel Matheson (Revolution)

Julia Shumway (Under the Dome)

Nancy McKenna (L.A.'s Finest)

Paige Donohue (Scorpion)

Happy Quinn (Scorpion)

Max Black (2 Broke Girls)

Penelope Garcia (Criminal Minds)

Jennifer "JJ" Jareau (Criminal Minds)

Emily Prentiss (Criminal Minds)

Mae Jarvis (Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders)

Reba Hart (Reba)

Cheyenne Hart (Reba)

Jess Parker (Primeval)

Abby Maitland (Primeval)

Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones)

Tani Rey (Hawaii Five-0)

Kate Beckett (Castle)

Alexis Castle (Castle)

Kat Warbler (The Class) - FOREVER UPSET we were robbed of more than 22 eps of her snarky glory!

Ivy Lynn (Smash)

Elizabeth McCord (Madam Secretary herself)

Carrie Heffernan (i'm sorry i LOVE HER) (The King of Queens)

Frankie Heck (The Middle)

Sue Heck (The Middle)

Mindy Lahiri (The Mindy Project)

Lisa Miller (News Radio)

Beth of no apparent last name (NewsRadio)

Sabrina Spellman (the Teenage Witch, Good Version [WB])

Tia Landrey & Tamera Campbell (Sister, Sister) (I know it's rude but they're both aces and this way my list is secretly 101!)

Jade McKellan (Family Reunion)

Holly Tyler (What I Like About You)

Anathema Device (Good Omens)

Eve Baxter (Last Man Standing)

Sabina of no official last name (Siberia)

Ryan Clark (Off the Map)

Phoebe Buffay (Friends)

Monica Geller (Friends)

Rachel Greene (Friends)

Janine Teagues (Abbott Elementary)

Melissa Schemmenti (Abbott Elementary)

Barbara Howard (Abbott Elementary)

Ava Coleman (Abbot Elementary)

Molly Flynn (Mike & Molly, a terrible show made watchable by its women, though I only have room for 1 today)

Henrietta/Hetty Woodstone (Ghosts [CBS])

Shirley Bennett (Community)

Alex Russell (Maid)

Jenny Hoyt (Big Sky)

Cassie DeWell (Big Sky)

In conclusion:

[turtletotem]

Episode 1 - Birds of a Feather

First of all, I should note that my Dresden Files journey began with the TV show. I started watching it as it first aired, drawn in by this moment in the trailer, right here:

I loved the show, mourned when it didn't get a second season, and thereafter sought out the books—which have since become one of those life-defining things where their story is part of your story. So I might have more issues with the show if I'd been a book fan first, but I wasn't and I don't. I do consider the books superior in most ways, but they've also had 15 books to get that way; the first couple were much shakier, and in my opinion closer to the show in quality. (…though probably still better.)

So anyway. I'm rewatching the Dresden Files TV show and writing up my observations and opinions about it, particularly as compared to the books. Spoilers for both GALORE.

Episode 1: Birds of a Feather

We see a lot of Harry's dad in these first few episodes, and that's one thing I really love about the show. Book!Harry loved his dad, but barely remembers him, and is ultimately more concerned with his mother's complex magical legacy than that of his vanilla mortal father. Which is fine, it's even pretty cool to have the Orphaned Hero obsessed with his mother's legacy instead of his father's, but I really enjoy seeing more of Malcolm Dresden and the kind of dad he was, the kind of happy childhood Harry could have had if his father hadn't died. And I very much consider the two Papa Dresdens to be the same character; the only difference between them that I can think of is that show!Malcolm got to live longer. (And yeah, supposedly book!Malcolm's death was natural but tbh I am sooo not convinced of that.)

The show combines Harry's shield bracelet with his mother's amulet. I'm not sure why they would make that change; maybe just to streamline some of Harry's magical gear, which he gradually gets quite a lot of. Maybe they thought it would be weird to have a male protagonist wearing a necklace? Idk, I'm only saying that as a woman whose dad was very weirded out by her brother wearing (perfectly masculine) necklaces.

We first meet adult Harry in bed with a pretty woman, which is… rather hilarious considering book!Harry's track record with women. That is one slight beef I have with the show; here and elsewhere they characterize Harry as someone looking for a casual good time with a lady, and Harry is emphatically not that way. To the point that it costs him potential relationships, i.e. Murphy who doesn't want to get serious and Harry who's incapable of not getting serious. The only remotely casual sex Harry has in the books is with Anastasia, whom he was still explicitly and exclusively Dating.

Show!Harry drives a Jeep instead of book!Harry's famous Blue Beetle, which I think is a change a lot of people disliked. The justification I heard for it was that the actual visuals of putting a long-legged stork of a man like Harry/Paul Blackthorne into a VW Beetle were hilarious in an unwanted way. The Jeep doesn't bother me overmuch, because they did still take the effort to find an older, sturdier sort of car, like the Beetle, that Harry might actually be able to keep running—but I can't help thinking they missed the point, because the Beetle is supposed to be hilarious.

I love this opening sequence, guys. So much. So much.

It's nice that Bob calls Harry out on his Arbitrary Skepticism after he fails to believe the kid about being followed by monsters. It still bugs me that it happened. Yeah, being the only wizard in the phone book brings out the crazies, but seriously, Harry, you know there is such thing as monsters.(Nice nod to the "no birthday parties" rule, though, in that conversation.)

Show!skinwalker is an entirely, entirely different creature than book!skinwalker, to the extent that I'm pretty sure they just heard the word "skinwalker" and ran with it, but at least this skinwalker is still a very-bad-news heavy-hitter, more or less worthy of the naagloshii's legacy.

SHOW!BOB. Guys, I could easily write an entire series of essays just about show!Bob, and to my knowledge he's one of the major changes that was actually well-received by fans—because even though the similarities between the two characters are minimal, show!Bob is such a fantastic character in his own right that it's impossible to hold it against him. And honestly the show works much better with this Bob than it would have with book!Bob. He needed an actor, for one thing. A person who can emote and interact. A voice issuing from a skull is fine in a book, but makes for very boring screentime. And then weaving Bob into so much more of Harry's backstory, and giving him a more human and interesting backstory of his own—well, it works, we'll leave it at that.

Show!Murphy—I mean, she looks all wrong for the character, aside from being appropriately short, but she's got the performance down pat. She does such good exasperated I-am-trying-to-be-professional-here and I love her. On one hand it's a shame to lose "adorable perky blonde" Murphy, because watching that play out on screen would have been a trip, but it's also cool to have a Hispanic Murphy. It's one of a few different ways they sneak some diversity into the story, which it needs, because guys. Guys. I love Jim Butcher, as both a writer and a person, but he's very white, and it shows. He absolutely defaults to white, not maliciously but unthinkingly, and taking a chance to correct that is a good thing.

I wonder if this diner Harry goes to several times in the first episode is intended as version of Mac's pub? And Melissa, who could search the Council records without leaving her seat, as a version of Ivy—but if so, completely underused and prematurely discarded. I hope they had better plans for Ivy than that.

Changing the White Council to the High Council was probably another attempt to be Not Racist, which, eh, I applaud the goal and for the most part it's fine, but what were they gonna do about the Black and Grey Councils later? Change them to Low and Medium?

The kid with the monsters is supposed to be in junior high, which would make him at least 12, but he both acts and is treated more like he's 8 or 9. :P

One book-accurate trait of show!Harry is how he's always on the hustle for money because he has no money and I love that. Good noir-style voiceovers, too.

One BIG thing I hate about the show is that they have Harry combining his office and his home. WHAT. NO. HARRY WOULD LITERALLY NEVER DO THAT, TALKS EXPLICITLY ABOUT WHY HE WOULD NEVER DO THAT, AND SCOLDS OTHER PEOPLE FOR DOING THAT. The threshold is a very important magical concept, guys! Did you even read the books!

Uncle Justin Morningway vs. Justin duMorne is such an interesting thing, and one of the few instances where I think I actually like the show better?? It's always been so random that Harry happened to get orphaned and picked up by this random dark wizard. It makes a lot more sense that Harry's evil uncle offed his father specifically in order to get custody of Harry. It streamlines a lot of things about Harry's backstory—his mother's "grey magic" past, his father's death, his iffy training, Justin's death, everything. It does appear that they eliminated Elaine from the story, with Bob taking her place as little Harry's BFF, but I can deal with that because Elaine's been underutilized anyway.

The invention of a kid for Murphy is more mysterious to me, especially since, as far as I can recall, they never really went anywhere with that. Maybe she would have been some sort of Maggie replacement at some point?

Also this kid-with-the-monsters (his name is Scott) confuses me. He's been hidden from the Council, given the ravens as protectors (possibly by his birth parents? it's never explained), bad guys are trying to find him, all because he has The Gift. Well, if The Gift just means magic, that's not that unusual. I mean, the Council already has as many wizards as it can handle, the rising generation is mostly just a tiresome opportunity for someone to go all Sith on 'em, and lesser talents are frankly beneath their concern. (I have issues with the Council.) So either that's a significant worldbuilding change, or Scott is something way bigger than just another wizard.

Speaking of, lol@ the Doombox being such a big deal? Anyone can blow stuff up. Even mortals can blow stuff up, but Harry Dresden can definitely blow stuff up without needing a special box cooked up over centuries of delicate research. BUT HEY. They ended the first episode with Harry blowing up a building. You can't ask for a better Harry moment than that!