2015-02-12

The other day, I was not having a great day. I had a ton of work to do and deadlines to meet, and my computer had suddenly decided to do a thing where it substituted the numbers 43, 79 and -56 whenever I tried to write an o, an l, or a full stop. I am not good at computers, and I was tearing my hair out, when my apartment intercom buzzed.

I had a package. I assumed it was just some books I’d ordered – old romance novels arrive at chez Jodi at least once a week – but it was not. It was a care package from two of my best friends, with the following card.



Isn’t this the loveliest thing ever?!

And, because I have some of the best friends in the world, my day was instantly better… and I’m not unconvinced that they are the reason my computer magically fixed itself.

The romantic relationship is regularly held up by our society as the Ultimate Relationship™, the one without which your life will be empty and meaningless. But for me, the most rewarding, enduring, important relationships of my adult life have been with my female friends.

Because romance is held up as this Ultimate Relationship™, friendship kind of gets relegated to the next tier down. We’ve all heard the cliché about the person that finds themselves a boyfriend/girlfriend and then never sees their friends again, right? But as far as I’m concerned, friendship is incredibly important, and it is a relationship that should absolutely be celebrated in more media.

This is especially true of female friendship. There’s a tendency in media to portray women almost wholly as competitors, as rivals – often in a romantic context. Much as I love the romance genre, this is something it has been especially guilty of, particularly in earlier decades, where the vampish, banal other woman regularly menaced the heroine. (The rise of linked series romances based around a group of friends – such as Lisa Kleypas’ Wallflower quartet – is a welcome corrective to this, and I totally dig this type of book.)

But when female friendship is portrayed and portrayed well, it is 100% boss. Anyone who reads my The Bold and the Beautiful recaps will know just how much I am digging the portrayal of the genuine friendship between Ivy and Aly, which is, as far as I know, kind of groundbreaking for soaps. So this post is my celebration of female friendship, featuring five of my favourite ever friendships between ladies on TV.

#1: Lynda and Sarah – Press Gang

I suppose this is kind of a strange one, coming after I’ve been all “yay non-competitive ladies”. There is no one more competitive than Lynda Day, who is competitive with literally everyone in the world, including herself.



Lynda was an absolute queen and I idolised her.

But while the heart of this early 1990s show was Lynda’s relationship with bad boy Spike, I always enjoyed her time with Sarah. It was a contentious, prickly friendship – “of all my best friends, you are the one I hate the most,” Sarah once told Lynda – but they genuinely got each other, and I loved (and still love) their complicated relationship.

Lynda and Sarah were two of the founding members of the Junior Gazette – Lynda the editor, and Sarah the head feature writer. What I loved about this show when I watched it as a kid was the fact that both of them were super smart writer ladies. What I love now is that they both had great faith in each other’s abilities. Neither of them ever doubts the other’s competence, and despite the fact that Lynda has a very abrasive personality, she never tries to outshine Sarah or underestimate her importance at the newspaper.



Also, they both had GLORIOUS early 1990s fashion sense. You rock that hat, Sarah.

There’s one episode in the second season that always stuck with me. Lynda is not a person who particularly likes to be criticised, but in this episode, Sarah tries to leave the paper, and Lynda is desperate to get her to stay. There’s this great bit of dialogue, where Lynda offers her a trade for staying at the paper:

LYNDA: How long have we known each other?

SARAH: Two thousand years. I counted.

LYNDA: Okay, two thousand years. And in all that time, there’s got to be a lot of stuff you’ve always wanted to say to my face, right? There’s got to be a lot of things boiling up in you.

SARAH: Is there anything you don’t try and turn to your advantage?

LYNDA: Say it all now. This offer won’t be repeated. Say it all to my face now.

SARAH: And what do you get out of that?

LYNDA: Nothing. I just think if we talk all this through, good things might happen.

SARAH: You’re mad.

LYNDA: Okay, so take advantage. Tell me about it. Get it all out of your system. A one way slanging match. Can you really say no to that?

SARAH: …no.

Lynda and Sarah are both prickly and difficult people, and, as the excerpt above shows, they have a prickly and difficult friendship. But they understand each other, and ultimately, are willing to do what’s best for each other. A few seasons later, Sarah leaves the paper for real to go to university, and psychs herself up for another difficult, awkward conversation with Lynda – only to find that Lynda, knowing Sarah needs to go, has lovingly fired her.

AND LOOK AT THEIR 90S FASHION

Sometimes they can’t stand each other. Sometimes they want to tear each other’s hair out. But they understand each other, and respect each other, and – underneath their prickly, difficult exteriors – like each other.

#2: Elena, Bonnie and Caroline – The Vampire Diaries

The Vampire Diaries is a show that is full of ships, and ultimately revolves around the central love triangle between Elena and the Salvatore brothers, Damon and Stefan. (Team Damon!) But one of the most important bonds is the one between its three central lady characters.

True love

Elena, Bonnie and Caroline have been friends since childhood and have remained so, despite the fact that now both Elena and Caroline are vampires and Bonnie is a witch. There have been some nasty tensions in their varying friendships – Elena and Caroline in particular have had some memorable clashes, which Bonnie has had to mediate. But at the end of the day, this is three ladies who will go through hell for each other. Sometimes literally.

“Can we make a pact that none of us is going to die again any time soon? PLEASE?”

I think one of my favourite scenes with these three ladies is this one, which takes place on Caroline’s birthday. It’s Caroline’s first birthday as a vampire, and she’s not having a good day – but Elena, Bonnie and their male friend Matt know just what she needs.

BONNIE: This is creepy, even for us.

ELENA: No, Caroline was right. Technically, she’s dead. Sorry. But you don’t need a birthday, you need a funeral. You need to say goodbye to your old life, so that you can move on with your new one.

CAROLINE: Okay. Here lies Caroline Forbes.

ELENA: Cheerleader, Miss Mystic Falls, third grade hopscotch champion.

BONNIE: Friend, daughter, overachiever.

MATT: Mean girl – sometimes. No offense.

CAROLINE: None taken.

ELENA: She was 17, and she had a really good life. So rest in peace, so that she can move forward. That’s what you really need. What we all really need. Amen, or cheers or whatever.

Friends know when friends need funerals.

…and friends also know when a funeral is not final, because Elena, Bonnie and Caroline have raised each other from the dead a lot.

…but they always find their way back to each other.

#3: Jess and Cece – New Girl

I’m not the huuuuuuugest fan of this Zooey Deschanel-led sitcom – mostly because some of the dudes come out with some pretty objectionable things sometimes – but I do love the friendship between central character Jess Day and her longtime bestie Cece Parekh.

They are adorbs.

There was one bit of dialogue in a recent episode which I thought was 100% perf:

JESS: I can’t believe I’ve known you for twenty years and you’re still my favourite person to talk to.

CECE: And you’re my favourite person to talk to.

Daaaaaw.

I like how Jess and Cece can talk to each other about literally anything. There are no boundaries for them – they have known each other so long and so well that they know all of each other’s’ stories. And they have each other’s backs without question – when Jess first moves into her apartment with three male roommates, Cece tells the three dudes  that “Jess is by far the best person I know, so if you guys let anything happen to her, I’m going to come here and crazy-murder you.”

And despite all the flaws of the show, I’m not sure if there are many lovelier descriptions of a female friendship than this: “Sometimes she just calls me up and she’s like ‘Bitch! I love you!’ and then she just hangs up.  No other information.”

So good.

#4: Aria, Spencer, Emily and Hanna – Pretty Little Liars

If you haven’t watched Pretty Little Liars, stop what you’re doing and go and watch it right now. Be prepared for five seasons of total amazing mindfuck. Then come back here and listen to me rant about how great this show is at female friendship.

Ladies who are being stalked by a vague menacing evil still have time to be friends

The central relationship in this show is the friendship between these four girls. They’re being menaced by a mysterious figure known only as A, and that has drawn together tight together. Friends before it started, now they close ranks. If there’s a message at the heart of Pretty Little Liars, it’s this: when it comes down it, the only people you can really trust are your friends.

Because your friends will participate in awesome fashion parades with you

Seriously, this show does female friendship so beautifully. When Emily came out as a lesbian early in the first season, there was no weirdness from any of the girls – there was only love and acceptance. As Hanna told her: “Emily, you’re not signing a contract. You were Emily dating Ben, and now you’re Emily dating Maya. We love Emily. No one cares who you’re with.” Emily’s rejoinder is, “really? have you met my parents?” and she’s not wrong. The acceptance Emily gets from her friends is not mirrored by her family – but because her ladyfriends have her back, Emily survives and thrives.

I also love that there’s no competition between the four friends over romantic partners. All four are currently coupled up, but none of the three straight Liars has ever poached on another’s territory, and they never would. Their friendship is too important for that. As Hanna says: “Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool my best friend? You’re dead freaking meat.”

Friends first and forever

(Fellow Liar Aria also offers the advice, “friends don’t let friends sneak into insane asylums alone,” but I’m not sure how applicable that is to everyday life.)

#5: Leslie and Ann – Parks and Recreation

Yeah, as if I could write a post about female friendship on television without including Leslie Knope and her beautiful tropical fish  and noble land mermaid of a best friend, Ann Perkins.

ULTIMATE BROTP

Parks really started with the formation of this friendship. Ann had a giant hole behind her house, and public servant Leslie swore to build a park on it. But it swiftly grew into one of the most lovely female friendships on television.

Leslie became Leslie because of Ann. The lonely, slightly manic woman we met in the first episode of Parks gradually transformed into the enthusiastic, together queen of public servants we know now. And Ann could not help but be infected by Leslie’s wide-eyed optimism and energy – she became the founding member of a community centred around it.

NO IT IS NOT TOO CHEESY THEY ARE PERF

Even when they both found their respective romantic partners, Leslie and Ann have remained the most important people in each other’s lives. “Never send a husband to do a best friend’s job,” Ann says, stopping Leslie from making a big mistake under the supervision of her husband Ben. It’s a discrete relationship – and it is one of the relationships Leslie treasures beyond all others.

Perfection

Even outside of Leslie and Ann’s relationship, Parks is GREAT at female friendship. This is the show that gave us Galentine’s Day. I’ll let Leslie explain what it is:

LESLIE: Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style. Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst. Plus frittatas.

Accurate

Happy Galentine’s Day, y’all.

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