I didn't watch from the beginning and I might have missed eps, but she seemed to be portrayed as good at her job but having a wildly dysfunctional family. Things that she couldn't fix and people she couldn't quite cut off.

Which isn't to say they weren't playing the whole "strong female characters must be obviously flawed in some way" because they were. Just they did at least pay her the courtesy of it not being entirely her fault with her sister and mom.

They did screw around with the fiance though for a while. I think they got better.

I'll likely do another power watch at some point when I can plow though a bunch of eps at once.

I liked IPS. I identified with Mary. Basically a strong, competent, smart woman, with a permanently screwed-up family. She's much more aggressive and bitchier than me, but I could easily have turned out that way. Inside I'm that way.

I do hope they don't mess the show up.

It's hard to write an interesting story about a character who has all their shit together. I mean, you could do one story that showed off their competence but in a continuing series it'd get dull in a hurry.

I don't think so. You don't have to have stereotypical inherent flaws to have an interesting character. Look at Peter Burke in White Collar. Good at his job, great wife/marriage, smart guy, hidden depths. That's never going to get old.

I hated shit like the running "gag" that her car always broke down.

I hated shit like the running "gag" that her car always broke down.

I forgot about that. I thought that was ridiculous - she makes a decent salary, if she can afford that nice house with room for her mom and sister too; she can't buy a new car? Especially since being able to get places reliably was an important part of her job.

The one bit from last night's WC that I didn't get was Peter coming over to Neal's with a single piece of pizza in his hand, and then offering it to Mozzie.

It seemed so random that it threw me out of the scene, and there was never any pay off, like "no, this can't be the real bottle, because it has pizza grease on it."

Was last night new? Crap.

You don't have to have stereotypical inherent flaws to have an interesting character.

Peter's absolutely who I was thinking of to disagree with the point. Sure, it's fun to have a douchebag like Nathan Ford, but you don't have to go there. And for women it's too often framed like being kickass means you have to give up something (note, I don't watch IPS, so I have no opinion on the specifics) to be able to compete in a predominantly masculine world. Whereas the male protagonists often display nothing worse than obsessiveness and a bit of situational tone-deafness.

See "car always breaking down" equals "bad luck" to me, which seems gender-neutral, but I guess it would matter on how they played it. I've not seen the show.

They made it seem like her car was a POS, as opposed to it just being a run of bad luck.