On shared network worlds

According to the commercials, tomorrow night, Hetty from NCIS:LA is going to help out tr new kids on the block from Scorpion. That is amazing, and lemme tell you why...

See, last week, Scorpion was a fun show that had a few episodes under its belt and, like, nothing else. I really like it, and I'm really enjoying the mix of car chases and smart people, but it only had the world it had built so far.

Now, if the commercials aren't lying--like, if she's guest starring, but not being Hetty, say--now it has this whole bigger world to share. If Hetty can guest, then so can anyone on her team, which would be particularly good for Eric or Nell, who are the resident squints, and anyone off of NCIS or Hawaii Five-0 could come through, and, conceivably, they could bring back someone from all the way back in JAG, if they really wanted to.

Plus, folding Scorpion into the mix adds some other layers:

• Scorpion is a crime-fighty sort of show like the others, but it's the first one where the people involved are not military--in fact, last week, they all failed miserably at being military-types, and that's why they work the way they work on the cases they have. Them being part of the same world brings in the civilian angle that all these military shows sometimes miss, and shows that civvis aren't just victims of the crimes they solve. 
• Also, since they're not military, they can be messier--messier lives, messier personalities, messier stories that aren't constrained by protocol, or rank concerns, or training expectations--they're freer, in a way. And maybe that freeness can inform the other shows at some point.
• AND, even if Scorpion somehow doesn't get picked up (which would make me sad, because I like it), these characters don't have to disappear and never be seen again. They can cross over and guest star on the remaining shows for ages after their own show is gone. They could even, conceivably, join those shows permanently, if the other shows can integrate them smoothly.

And because Scorpion is based (loosely) on the life of a real person, it means that there's this further layer of actual realness on the other shows now. If Walter is real, any of them could be real!

All of this is to say: Yes. This is a good move.

See, when I was growing up, there were all these similarly-constructed crime-fighting shows all over the TV, mostly on the same networks. And the fact that Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, and Murder She Wrote all crossed over at various points added this whole new dimension to television that I had never before thought of--all these shows were in the same world. People in them knew each other. 

It was mindboggling.

Of course, now TV is much more sophisticated (or at least more continuous and more complicated), but I've always had this fondness for shared worlds, and I just really wanted all of them to know each other. 

The JAG > NCIS lineage (or the millions of CSIs or Law&Orders) are a good way to do that, but they're shared by default. They're spun off of each other. Now that Hawaii Five-0 isn't a fluke, and Scorpion is part of it, it feels like a return to that comradery of shows on the same channel being aware of each other, sharing stories and characters, and, behind the scenes, being supportive of each other rather than existing in their own vacuums.

And since we've got Arrow and Flash now, and, potentially, a million other spinoffs they're setting up the world to offer if anyone has them, as well as SHIELD and Agent Carter on ABC, it seems like the thing right now for channels to have their own shared worlds. 

And if CBS would just admit that ALL their procedurals that happen in New York-- Elementary, Person of Interest, etc-- were one world, too, I'd be happy as a clam. It'd be easy. Just have John and Finch wander through the background and Sherlock not notice them because they don't matter to his case. It wouldn't even have to be a whole, formal crossover event.

Also, there's this potential for trans-channel shared worlds. Arrow and Co on CW are, technically, in the same universe as Constantine and Gotham and the proposed Teen Titans and Young Justice shows that haven't happened yet. How cool would it be if they formed the bridge between the networks and the cable channels and proved that they don't have to be in competition? That they can work together? Marvel already has linked movies, TV and Netflix; DC could be the one that links the channels between each other. 

Maybe I'm getting carried away (I probably am), but this feels like a brewing shift in how TV works that makes everything cooler instead of more fractured and annoying!

What do you think?

The problem with Hawaii Five-0 (the new one) is Strong Female Characters instead of female characters who are strong

Okay, first? This title is totally clickbait.

Second? I really like the reboot of Hawaii Five-0. I just keep getting wildly annoyed at how it Doesn't Know What To Do With Women.

Evidence:

1. They switched Classic Kono to Female Kono...and then didn't give her anything to do. 
2. They brought in a cool double agent, made her likable, gave her a great relationship with the team...and then shot her in the heart after being gone for ages, in which most of her story apparently happened off screen.
3. They replaced her with a taller, more classically pretty agent...who then got transfered because she was going soft.
4. They sent Kono on a lame, ages-long story where she was literally only looking for the boyfriend who lied to her and betrayed her and almost got her killed more than once, and presented it as a great love story without ever dealing with all that squickiness.
5. While Kono was gone, they brought Catherine to the front, made her capable, made her funny, and then as soon as Kono came back, shuffled her off with her ex.
6. They brought in Steve's badass RED-style mom, and then continually waffle about what any of it means and whether she even has a moral or story center at all.

Which means:

1. They can apparently only have one sort of woman, and only one at a time.
2. A lot of the women are flat our victims because of love that isn't really love.
3. They're either girlfriends or they're liabilities because of not being girlfriends.

I read this article recently, "We're losing all our strong female characters to Trinity Syndrome", that put it all in context for me, this whole thing that's been bugging me about the series: It's totally Trinity Syndrome, and the writers don't seem to be all that concerned about it. Or, at least, they aren't in all that much of a hurry to figure out how to make Kono less annoying, or how to keep more than one lady in the cast at once, or how to make them valid, competent, independent characters. I mean, it can be argued that the men are co-dependent fuckups, too, but they're not getting shot in the heart or shuffled off when they get sweet on someone.

Here's some options I think would be cool:

1. Have Kono break up with David because he's dangerous and has a history of lying, and let him solve his trust issues on his own without using her as a crutch and a built-in victim. Meanwhile, have her actually do something on the team; at the beginning, she was the one on the ground, and then she was moved to the computers in the office, and then she was the one with the most messed-up storylines.
2. Bring another girl into the team or it's support staff. Better yet, a few other girls. Make them friends with each other away from and not involving the boys. Make them different sorts of girls--a touch chick, a quiet nerdy girl, a gristly veteran, a mom that's not a selfish weirdo.
3. Let the girls rescue themselves sometimes.
4. Let the girls rescue the guys sometimes.
5. Let everyone not need rescuing because they're all literally supposed to be the best of the best, so they can all get themselves out of problems.
6. When the writers catch themselves going down the same old streets, have the girl about to be shot kick the gun out of the guy's hand and stop it before it happens, have the girl who has had crappy boyfriends in the past see the same behavior before she's victimized by it and get out, have the girls refuse to be the reason the boys do stupid things. It's find if they're weak at the beginning; but any character has to learn from mistakes and get better at dealing with life, or they're flat.
7. Let the girls be equals to the boys, and the boys acknowledge that without any drama or machoness (there's plenty of macho in this show already), and have everyone go to whoever has the best skills and info for the problem, regardless of gender.

So what do you think?