The Box

If you have a tendency to get sucked into bad movies starring formerly famous actresses, you've probably watched some “Fa la la la Lifetime”, a month-long event in which Lifetime Television brings out its considerable collection of Christmas movies.

Whether they're are about Christmas dating, Christmas engagements, or Christmas weddings, the movies usually to have a few things in common: sassy friends with Canadian accents, insipid male love interests, excessive seasonal decorations, embarrassing covers of Christmas carols, and unconvincing dye jobs. I watched enough this year to discover a sub-genre that’s even more unsettling than your average cute-heroine-finds-Christmas-love story. I call it the Second Chance Fantasy.

Of all the lady cops on TV, Debra Morgan from Dexter is my fave. She's a dedicated cop with a very dirty mouth whose aggressive police work often intimidates male co-workers. But Deb (played by Jennifer Carpenter) is more than just another woman acting like one of the guys. 

E! wants us to know just how smart the girls of The Girls Next Door are. Their bios at E! Online even include a “Beauty & Brains” section which detail their ambitions and accomplishments (outside of posing nude).

But if we're supposed to give the Girls credit for intelligence, autonomy, or just plain-old professionalism, then what's with the show's producers constantly undermining them? Post-production sound effects and editing portray these women of “beauty and brains” as silly, vapid, and even ridiculous.

This week the box crushes on one of TV's most entertaining actresses. Marcia Cross has been a guest-spot staple since she made her first television appearance in 1985, but she's best known for playing very different roles on Desperate Housewives and Melrose Place.

So which is more fun: an obsessively traditional housewife or a baby-napping husband hater?

There's been a lot of talk lately about fictional teen romances setting a bad example for young-lady viewers. Whether the portrayal of a relationship can be deemed "good" for girls seems to rest on the morality of the boy involved.

But is falling for a bad boy really anti-feminist?

By taking her girly character to the extreme on The Office, Mindy Kaling's showing over 9 million viewers a week just how laughable feminine stereotypes can be.

Plus, she'd be SUPER fun to go shopping with.

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are easily TV's most hated couple. He's such a douche! She's such a pushover! And while Heidi always seems on the brink of coming to her senses breaking it off, their recent elopement would suggest otherwise.

Heidi's said publicly that they're both just playing parts, but why does the only remotely stable relationship on The Hills play out as boy = villain and girl = victim?

He's taken the role of "ladies man" to new levels on How I Met Your Mother, played himself as a child actor turned mega-douche in the Harold & Kumar movies, and even used his rep for machismo to shill Old Spice.

So why should feminists be crushing? Because he's redefining the way masculinity is portrayed in pop culture.

Now that Tina Fey is Saturday Night Live's most visible alumni, it's easy to forget that female cast members have historically had to bust ass to get noticed.

So here's a look at Saturday Night Ladies of the past, remembering their contributions to the show and following up on what they're doing now...

Rachel Maddow wins the soon-to-be coveted title of The Box's Crush of the Week thanks to her mad reporting skillz, refreshing sense of humor, and love of cocktails.

The fact that she's a groundbreaking lesbian news anchor? Icing on the crush cake.