Network TV Attempts To Figure Out Modern Feminism, Might Just Be On To Something

Television is a trend-driven business: Bridesmaids does well and suddenly, everyone's looking for funny women, Modern Family is a hit, and suddenly, multicamera comedies are in and single-camera comedies are out. Most of the time, these trends are big, broad attempts to chase increasingly rare success stories. But this year, network TV, in its own halting way, is going after something a little more unusual: network TV is trying to figure out modern feminism.

The first attempt was Next Caller, a sitcom starring Dane Cook that NBC put into production to start airing in the midseason. On the surface, the show's premise is disastrous: Cook was set to play Cam, the host of a shock-jock satellite radio show called Booty Calls, who's paired with a feminist co-host, Stella (Collette Wolfe), promoted from a local NPR station to the big time because, as his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) puts it "Your show sucks and your ratings are garbage." But apparently NBC lost faith in the concept, which many of my fellow critics hated in the first place—the network canceled Next Caller before it even assigned the sitcom a time slot for January.

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