Featured Image Credit: IMDb
Topics: Entertainment, TV
Emma Sharpe
Our rom-com queens only have one goal in mind when it comes to their careers: become a Serious Journalist. Come on, is writing about celebrity butt implants and Real Housewives tea really that bad?! Sounds like a dream job to me, but stay woke, I guess.
Despite their inherent girlboss nature, most of these women’s professional ambitions end up severely sidetracked by guys named Ben who they have crushes on, so it’s time to decide once and for all which of these Walter Cronkite wannabes have what it takes to work in this town, and who should settle for mommy blogging.
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Amber Moore gets plucked out of bullpen obscurity at a fashion magazine when she’s given the opportunity to fly to Aldovia and report on playboy Prince Richard, who’s returned home to take over the throne from his late father. Amber does one better, becoming enmeshed with the royal family when she poses as their young princess’s tutor, granting her unfettered access to Richard.
After falling in love with the prince, she writes a delightful profile, but omits the exclusive adoption papers bombshell she stumbled upon in the castle because of her personal feelings. Her boss, Kim, is understandably pissed and refuses to publish the piece altogether because “puff pieces” aren't "on brand" for this sleazy rag.
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Amber takes her story indie, starting a shitty WordPress blog creatively titled “Amber’s Blog.” She does zero marketing, so her should-be explosive piece only makes it to 20,000 likes which, in the biz, we call a flop.
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Abby is a producer / on-air talent (?) for a morning news show that’s underperforming, leading her network to hire her Joe Rogan-esque nemesis, Mike, a self-proclaimed sex and relationships expert, to spice up their program.
Naturally, she and Mike fall into the enemies-to-lovers trope, causing the sexual tension between them to lead to. . .unsightly behavior. During a remote at a hot air balloon festival, Abby launches into an off-script tirade about her hatred of men. She starts airing her network’s dirty laundry surrounding Mike’s departure to a rival show, while the control room looks on in horror, and a producer nervously assures the top boss that they’re doing “an Andy Kaufman” bit.
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This peak unprofessionalism only gets worse when Mike joins her in the balloon to fight about their personal grievances toward one another, prompting Abby to start making lewd jerking off motions to the camera. The only thing more embarrassing? The fact that she'll spend the next six to eight months with the LinkedIn "Open to Work" badge of shame.
Amy is a party girl columnist at S’Nuff, a magazine dedicated to “teaching the strong-willed man how to dress, think, eat, and fuck.”
She gets assigned a profile on Aaron Conners, an up-and-coming sports doctor, despite the fact that hating sports is a core tenet of her personality (kind of like a reverse pick-me?).
Amy shows up to her introductory conversation with Aaron having done no research, and immediately confesses that she knows nothing about his industry and is only writing the piece because her boss is making her. A great tactic to make your source comfortable and excited to work with you!
Her run at S'Nuff ends prematurely after she almost hooks up with the magazine's 16-year-old intern -- thankfully, his mom calls when things are about to heat up, revealing that he’s a minor. Amy gets canned (FAIR!) and sells her Dr. Aaron piece to Vanity Fair, which really doesn’t seem like the right audience for sports journalism, but sure.
Josie is so desperate to prove herself as a writer that she agrees to an assignment that requires spending months undercover as a high school student, attending geometry class and reliving her pubescent trauma.
However, Josie not only fails to rewrite her own high school history (wearing a white feather vest is her first mistake), she also fails at the objective of her entire charade, which is to write a story exposing the seedy underbelly of the American teenage experience. Almost immediately, a rival newspaper scoops her on a piece about a local hangout where kids are drinking and hooking up, since Josie can’t get past the cool kid bouncer. (All she needed to do was pull up with some pink lemonade Svedka, but what do you expect from a 25-year-old who's never sucked face?).
The story Josie finally files ends up having nothing to do with the social issues facing teens today, but rather her personal feelings about being an adult virgin and her romantic interest in the guy who was her English teacher. I’m not sure that this is what the Chicago Sun-Times was looking for, but I guess Elite Daily didn’t exist yet.
After rage-quitting her job at a publishing house because of her smoking hot, mean boss, Bridget Jones lucks her way into an on-screen reporter position at Sit Up Britain despite no formal training or relevant prior work experience. While reporting at a local fire station, her producer tells her she needs to slide down the fire pole in a mini skirt, which leads to her unglamorously falling to the ground like a maimed antelope, broadcasting an up-the-skirt ass shot in the process.
Fortuntaely, sex sells, and her boss then sends her to the High Court for a Hard-Hitting Piece™ about the extradition of a Kurdish freedom fighter. It’s been dominating the news cycle, but this is the first she’s heard of it, so naturally, she’s the woman for the job!
Bridget initially misses her chance to interview the defendant because she was too busy buying cigarettes at a bodega, but thanks to her ongoing flirtations with his lawyer, she magically gets an exclusive sit-down — she squanders the opportunity by asking PR softballs that are more vanilla than a Dairy Queen, but at least she managed not to flash anyone this time.
Despite barely cracking into the eighth grade, when 13-year-old Jenna Rink finds herself living in her 30-year-old body as a high-powered editor at Poise Magazine, she's honestly operates at a similar level of competence as most of the adults you have the displeasure of working with in corporate America.
Tasked with pioneering a complete rebrand of the magazine, Jenna cobbles together a high school spirit week-inspired mood board (her only frame of reference for meaningful popular culture) and suggests trading supermodels for real women like “your next-door neighbor” or “the girls from the soccer team.”
It’s a total 180 from a grown-up fashion magazine to a Seventeen copycat, which would require a complete strategy overhaul, abandoning relationships with existing sponsors, and creating marketing plans for an entirely new demographic, but her amateur collage knocks everyone’s socks off, and she gets to go back to being 13 before having to actually execute the logistical nightmare she created.
Growing up is realizing that Andy Sachs is the true villain of The Devil Wears Prada! For starters, maybe do a quick LinkedIn search of the company you're interviewing with and the person interviewing you. Northwestern Career Services didn’t prepare you for the “why do you want to work here” question? Be so for real.
After a dismal start on Runway EIC Miranda Priestly’s desk (she orders clam chowder like a pyscho on her second day, giggles to herself during meetings, and doesn’t know how to spell Gabbana), Andy eventually figures out how to be a great assistant. Securing unpublished Harry Potter manuscripts deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she learns how to pick out a dress that came from somewhere other than the clearance rack at Sears.
Andy could have had a long career at Runway, but it was always beneath her, and she goes on to get her dream job writing about New York state bus driver pensions, or something.
What I like about Andie, a columnist at Composure magazine, is that she will literally subject herself to peak levels of embarrassment for the sake of her story: wooing ad executive Ben Barry and manipulating him into dumping her to perpetuate the stereotype that women are needy and men hate it.
Andie sobs like a lunatic at a restaurant, crying that her boyfriend thinks she’s fat, has a full-fledged meltdown during his poker night, and, most spectacularly, refers to his dick as Princess Sophia during sex. And remember, this is all happening off the clock! She’s unlocked a new category of method journalism that might even make Jeremy Strong jealous.
Unlike most of Andie’s counterparts on this list, she actually delivers the column she promised, albeit with a different thesis. But she still ends up quitting Composure, because her boss won’t let her write Serious Journalism. It’s implied that she seamlessly transitions from writing listicles about the best nail polish shades for spring to joining the White House press corps.
There’s not a lot of room at the top when it comes to the NYC food critic scene, and Jules Potter is clearly a HBIC. Her presence at James Beard chef Charlie Trotter’s restaurant has him screaming at his sous-chef, “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right!” which is pretty crazy considering Jules is only 27 and already commanding the terror and intimidation of Anton Ego from Ratatouille.
After a single bite of veal, Jules unexpectedly informs the waiter right then and there that she’ll be writing up the dish as “innovative and confident.” Sounds like something you say at a wine tasting when you don't have a real opinion, but feel pressured to contribute.
That’s the first and last we see of Jules’ career! From that moment on, she takes her toxic girlboss tendencies elsewhere, using her evil powers to terrorize her best friend's fiancèe.
Becky Fuller is the goat of rom-com media moguls! The Leslie Knope of morning news producers. After getting laid off from her job at a regional news show, she bounces back in record time and secures an EP position at a national station called IBS (lol, this movie came out in 2010 before the rise of hot girls with stomach issues).
Becky single-handedly transforms their underperforming morning show from the Khia Asylum to the Coachella mainstage. She fires the creepy, feet-obsessed host, has her weather guy do remotes on roller coasters, and coaxes the cantankerous Harrison Ford to say “fluffy” during a frittata demo, which was a major point of contention
Her biggest flaw is that when she’s finally offered her dream job at The Today Show, she turns it down due to unfounded loyalty to a company that would definitely replace her with Claude in a heartbeat. . .she's lucky it was only 2010!