Jenny Schecter was a mess. There’s no denying it. The writing for her character was so outlandishly inconsistent that you never knew which incarnation you were going to get from one season to the next. She was a duplicitous megalomaniac whose self-indulgent, self-destructive antics knew no boundary. But you know what? So is Don Draper. So was Walter White. So was Dexter and Jack Bauer and Greg House and Tony Soprano. But they’re dudes, so that makes them interesting. Jenny Schecter is a lady, so her deal makes her a cunt. […]
I hadn’t realized it the first time I watched: how righteous her fury really was, how deeply neglected were the wounds of her childhood (one of the show’s many enormous failures was never getting Jenny into therapy), how terrified she was of her own potential for creating chaos, and all the million ways she begged and pleaded and cried out for compassion.
—from “Schecter 3:16 (Or How Jenny Schecter Saved My Life)” by Heather Hogan, 20 January 2012, for autostraddle










