(Fully Fleshed Out) Characters Needed

So "Gossip Girl" is hot. I saw ten minutes of it and never went back. But according to Newsweek, lots of men are loving it (Dawn Ostroff wants proof of this, in the form of ratings.) Why? Because it has fully fleshed out male characters.

Well, duh. I don't like buffoons and one-note male characters any more than I like silly and one-dimensional female characters. Joshua Alston notes that the reason why the Sex and the City movie got thumbs-down by men is because the men were "pencil sketches", "a cavalcade of broken men" with a variety of hang-ups ill-suited for their ages. Hey, I agree! One of my biggest problems with that movie was that the men were so underutilized, and their sides of the story (specifically Steve's) needed to be told. Just like women want to see a female character hanging out with the boys (Seinfeld, see anything related to superheroes), men want a male character who doesn't suck in their chick-heavy entertainment.

I knew many males who liked "The OC" back in the day, too. Cause the friendship and the characters of Seth and Ryan was compelling and realistic; it was Marissa and Summer who were boring. Everyone agreed on that, and Seth Cohen's character became an icon for a certain type of male.

There's always a lot of talk about how television dumbs down it's audience. That's true, especially if you watch a lot of "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?", but in creating shows with compelling characters, it pays to make sure that they're interesting no matter the gender or genre.