LOL Women: Maureen Ryan has revealed her awards for the best leading comedic actresses from the 2006-2007 television season. We discussed her previous lists here, but she calls this one “the hardest category to fill,” explaining, “It’s not that there aren?t funny women out there; it’s that opportunities for them to shine seem fewer and further between.” Her choices are, as usual, perceptive.

Tina Fey as Liz Lemon on “30 Rock”

Anyone could have chosen the transcendent America Ferraro for her leading role in “Ugly Betty,” but few would have noted Elizabeth Perkins for her supporting role in “Weeds.”

I must disagree with her dismissal of Mary-Louise Parker from “Weeds,” though, whose lead performance is subtly complex — making the role of a suburban pot-dealing mom as remarkably paradoxical, at times, as Tony Soprano.

I also wouldn’t have put Tina Fey from “30 Rock” on the list. Thanks to Fey’s sharp-witted writing, the show itself has become a brilliant satire, unabashedly embracing a feminist standpoint while making being a feminist look like more fun than it’s possibly ever appeared in popular culture. But in her portrayal of Liz Lemon, Fey doesn’t do much more than deliver the great lines.

Bad Girls, What Ya Goin’ Do?: Complementing Naomi Wolf’s recent argument about America’s obsession with women in disarray, Ginia Bellafante analyzes the parallel obsession with “bad women.” While she sees Oxygen’s “Snapped” as doing to “women in trouble” what “Cops” has done to the poor and minorities, she admires WE’s “Secret Lives of Women,” which takes a more subtle approach: “The series attaches a certain sense of empowerment to unconventional behavior — like infidelity — and it defies the standards of pop-cultural feminism by refusing to solicit our sympathies for women obviously in trouble.”

Connie Britton and Aimee Teegarden as Tami and Julie Taylor on “Friday Night Lights”

Sexy Eyes, Full Heart, Might Lose: No broadcast TV series has more compelling and complex female characters than “Friday Night Lights.” See Christine’s previous posts on the subject. So it’s no surprise to us that NBC would be attempting to court female viewers in order to enlarge the show’s audience during its second, critical season.

Unfortunately, we are scared when we hear executive producer David Nevins describe the attitude of NBC program chief Ben Silverman toward the show: “We have big-stakes stories. Ben wants to bring sexy back, and this show has sexiness.” Marketing chief John Miller, furthermore, envisions an advertising campaign using “terms like sexy and adultery and humor.”

Sure, people on “Friday Night Lights” look a little more beautiful than your average person, but in almost every other way, the show has embraced a refreshing realism. It’s not afraid to show the ugly complexity of messy relationships and insular small-town life. And that perspective, not any Hollywood sparkle and sheen, is what has and will continue to create an army of what Miller calls “evangelists for the show.”

In the Eye of the Camera: And speaking of beauty — although it’s not strictly about TV, Virginia Hefferman has an informative reflection in the New York Times on how our attitudes toward celebrity’s appearances have changed over the years. She focuses, specifically, on the slew of new websites devoted to dissecting images of Nicole Richie, Britney Spears and others.

Considering that all the troubled celebrities happen to be women, however, she should probably have read Naomi Wolf first.