Jeremy, I posted this message for the very same reasons you mention. The popular opinion seems to be that the television viewing experience is very different from the film experience -- the dark theatre, the intimate relationship the spectator shares with the screen, and the diegetic continuity the film experience offers the spectator. Mulvey suggests that this situation sets the mood for the masculine gaze; the fetishistic/ scopophilic gaze that objectifies the anxiety producing female character. My argument is not a knee jerk reaction to the inference that the female spectator has no place in the theatre. I think Mulvey put out that fire when she revisited the original article. Rather, I'd like to use Mulvey's ideas to discuss how the female spectator can participate in the program NYPD Blue. In my opinion, it would be difficult for the female spectator to adopt an ego-recognizing position. At the same time, I don't see how the television viewing experience predetermines a masculine gaze of this program. In NYPD Blue, it seems that the gaze of the camera and the spectator are not subordinate to the gaze of the characters. Rather, the camera offers a subject position for the spectator. Consequently, the female spectator is able, as a result of the desire created by the male characters, to adopt her own scopophilic gaze or to resist the anxiety by fantasizing within the boundaries of the narrative. As psychoanalytic criticism is not my gig, I'm not sure that these ideas are appropriate. But I am interested to know if anyone disagrees with _Channels_ and/or has used psychoanalytic criticism of television texts. Robert