Yiipee! Blood Ties Is Back! (With A Side Of Feminism)

Well, my insomnia has reared its ugly head again tonight, and I cannot go to sleep at ALL. However, tonight I'm not actually too upset about staying up until 4:00 AM. Why? For once I actually turned on the TV and looked through the guide (I'm not a TV person), and guess what I saw? Blood Ties, one of my favorite shows of all time, is being aired again on Lifetime Real Women!

Is it a guilty pleasure? Hell yeah. But the show is based off of books by one of my most worshipped authors, has great actors, a great feminist lead (Vicki is an incredibly realistic and powerful heroine, one of the first I was introduced too), and is just overall creative and entertaining. Tonight, at 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 (all AM, Central time) they'll be showing "5:55" (you know, the one where we all wanted to see a different ending), "Bugged" (my second-favorite episode!), and "The Devil You Know". Tomorrow, they'll also have the episode with the artists drowned in paint, which was the very first episode I saw.

But yes, on the topic of Vicki Nelson being a feminist hero. See, here's what caught me: She's strong, independent, and intelligent, obviously. However, she also is not anywhere near Mary Sue territory - she's realistic, she knows when she can't overcome things like her RP, when she's gotten in too deep to something. But what's important is that she doesn't let anything, including her vision, diminish her effectiveness as a detective. What I see in a lot of books involving one-human and one-supernatural teams is that we'll start off with a relatively strong human heroine, but as soon as the vampire/werewolf/demon/whatever male comes in, she'll take a backseat. It's "Oh, well he's a [insert creature here] and I'm just a human, so I'll let him do everything now."

NO! Heroes should not do that! And that's where the Blood books, and Blood Ties, give a perfect idol: Yes, Henry is more powerful than Vicki, but she doesn't just sit back and let the vampire do the hard work. This is her team, damn it, and she'll be the detective.