Normally this is where I bring up gay men as the other radical element that ruins that economy -- who, like hot chicks, are forced into silence and infantilism in order to survive -- but of course this show doesn't have any of those. What it does have is a femme fatale with mysterious supernatural powers and darkness like a black hole, who after six seasons is only now revealing her basic mundane details to us. Who is getting shaded in, after all that time, and thereby losing her power. In a way that's fundamental to any hero cycle, which is what this actually is, but looks so different and meets such different requirements that it often seems to have no plot at all.

Because she is a widow, wearing widow's weeds even today, she couldn't be a succubus and she never plays that archetype. But she plays vampire, and siren, every single time. And there aren't many narratives smart enough to tell that story from her point of view, because there aren't many narratives that women have enough industrial currency to tell. Which makes this show itself part of the shadow economy, a nonstandard narrative passing itself off as a dark comedy rather than the supernatural biography of a vampire. The lady in black who moves in the shadows behind the scenes of every part of the male narrative like Forrest Gump, pushing buttons and holding onto it as hard she can so she doesn't fall off into the outer darkness. The second she lost her man, Nancy lost her place in the system. Everything else is survival.

And so as a man, or a person upholding the straight narrative which is all of us, you have your orders of severity: Sexism is living in the Matrix and thinking it's real and anybody who says different is a problem. Feminism is living in the Matrix and realizing it. Bad feminism means assuming the whole thing is evil just because you've recently learned about it, but don't have perspective on the difference between descriptive and prescriptive or between sexism -- which is about ignorance -- and misogyny, which is about malice. And misogyny is fighting for the lie regardless. Hooman is sexist, the Popsicle Patty situation in a second is misogynist. (PS: "Matrix." Not unintentional, there or here.)