A "Huff" revelation

Each week during the hour of torture that used to be my new favorite TV show, "Huff," I find myself devoting at least part of my brainpan to trying to figure out how a series that I liked so much went so bad.

One of the more schizophrenic things about this season for me has been that I've noticed a lot more women's names in the producing, writing and directing credits. I admit I haven't made a direct comparison, but it seems like a lot more than in the first season.

As I think most of you know, I'm a man who likes writing women characters. And I think, he said modestly, the consensus among both women and men who've read my work is that I do it well. I would never suggest that women couldn't produce or write a show where the protaganist is a man.

A theme this season has been men trying, in their variously fucked up ways, to get things right and getting no sympathy from the women in their lives, who are never called on their own bullshit.

The last thing I want to sound like is a "men's rights" advocate here but it's getting ridiculous. Not least because it's completely out of key with the writing last season, which was supposed to have ended a couple of weeks (at best) before this one started.

Yes, characters evolve, people change. But in two fucking weeks of character time, I'm supposed to accept this new Beth, Izzy (and Bird) as though they were the same people?

What I couldn't figure out-and I've been asking myself for the past two weeks or so--is why, if more women are writing them, the women characters this season have turned almost uniformly nasty and unpleasant.

In tonight's episode, the answer flashed before my eyes like a searchlight. I think it was during the scene when they decided to turn Huff's son Bird into a violent criminal.

It's not that this season of "Huff" was written by women. It's that this season of "Huff" was written by women who, clearly, hate men. They are like the cliche of the man-hating, "feminist" (in the most wearisome sense of the term) lesbians.

I didn't think such women really existed. Yet once I imagined the characters and writing this season being shaped through such a perspective, it all made frightening amounts of sense.

That's why Huff is taking all the punishment for his marriage falling apart and Beth's holding dinner parties. Beth cannot share the responsibility, she can only be the victim. That's why Bird has suffered arguably the most wrenching character change-he's a boy, and boys are icky.

That's why the only exception to the above-stated theme of men who are fucked-up but trying getting no sympathy from the women in their lives is Teddy-because Teddy is completely dependent and childlike.

That's why Beth gets to have her hot tongue-kissing action with a girlfriend, but then is freed from the responsibility of dealing with that further. By a frickin' woman priest, no less, who dismisses it as "multi-tasking." How modern.

That's why the girlfriend is then exposed as a "drunken train wreck" about whom Beth says "her problems aren't my problems." Suuuuure they're not, Bethy. That's why Beth gets the thrill of being offered a night of string-free sex with a British stud but turns him down, because all of a sudden she's got morals and strength of character.

And that's why, meanwhile, Huff is betraying his wedding vows with an Asian hooker. In the kind of place where men lie in tubs while women pee on them (as they're all-too-happy to show us in a quick, explicit, "It's Showtime!" flash).

Men can be degraded, but women must be allowed to keep their dignity. They can flirt with being immoral, because that's dirty and sexy and fun, but only men, those callow beasts, can actually cross the line.

Because man is irredeemable unless, like Teddy, he is completely dependent on women.

"Huff" has been written this season by women who clearly hate men.

And I don't think I should suffer to endure it any longer.