McG Too Busy Empowering Next Generation Of Feminist-Freaks To Solve Middle East Crisis
This week's TCA press tour events have already provided us with so many memorable moments, from ABC's Steve McPherson's enthusiasm for bumping off Michelle Rodriguez to NBC's Kevin Reilly's mental coping strategies for dealing with his Idol problem to Aaron Sorkin's disdain for the opinions of the unemployed, that to add still more to the already lengthy highlight reel feels greedy. But a panel earlier today for The CW's The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search For the Next Doll, the fledgling network's attempt to empower a new generation of feminists to nurture their inner, "Don't Cha"-inspired freaks on national television, easily cracks our crowded TCA best-of list, as frustrated executive producer McG (you know him better as the visionary behind the Charlie's Angels films) eagerly debated the assembled critics on the up-with-skanks virtues of his forthcoming series. Reports the Critical Eye blog:
"Not everything is going to solve the crisis in the Middle East," he says, almost certainly not for the first time in his career. "Sometimes you want to have some fun ... and women celebrating one another being beautiful, and, frankly, being appreciated by me, has been around for a long time. Under no circumstances is it shameful. And there's even a position to take that this is, frankly, third-wave feminism. You know what I mean?"
The critics don't know what he means.
One middle-aged critic asks how lyrics like, "Don't you wish you were a freak like me?" celebrates women.
"You must understand the fundamental paradox of a gentleman of your age demo asking that very question," McG says. "I don't know if you two-way your friends on your Sidekick ... It's just saying, 'Don't you wish your girlfriend could be free and comfortable in her own skin and do her own thing like me?' That's what we're saying."
In the interest of helping to settle this generational impasse over the meaning of the word "freak," we turn to Urban Dictionary, pop culture's up-to-the-minute lexicon, which defines the term alternately as "a person who likes to do kinky shit in bed or have sex a lot" and "a girl most likely that likes to act all innocent then she has sex with you and she is real freaky or kinky, she likes to have sex alot and do weird stuff." If this non-two-way-Sidekicking relic from a demographically undesirable audience segment can't see how the unabashed, televised pursuit of freakdom celebrates women, The CW isn't the least bit interested in his viewership.