If I hadn't spent so long watching things with my feminist glasses on, I doubt I'd notice. It's such a typical dynamic for male leads on non-noir procedurals. (No romances work out in noirs. No happiness!) But then, I explained the Bechdel test to my dad this weekend. We watched Born Yesterday, a Judy Holliday movie from 1951, and of course my first reaction was, well, that passed the Bechdel.