The US writers did Karen dirty

Karen Maguire as she’s called in the UK version is one of the most popular characters, which is weird to think about considering she’s one of the Americans versions most hated. The US writers completely butchered Karen’s character after making her rape frank. In the UK version, Karen and Frank have a full blown affair and have sex multiple times. The US writers clearly wanted to include this story of the affair, but didn’t want Frank to lose all likeablity so it turns into this grey area where Frank wants to sleep with her, confesses to fantasising about her, says he liked it after, but was also yelling no while Karen was on-top of him so nobody could say he raped her. The only thing stopping Frank from sleeping with Karen was it was illegal - and she was seeing lip, it wasn’t because he wasn’t attracted to her, he clearly wanted to. There’s a deleted scene of Frank confessing to fantasising about Karen, saying things about how her armpits will be smooth because she’s young and doesn’t need to shave, calling her a “tender age”. Again, they obviously didn’t include this because this would make Frank completely unlikeable to most viewers. Although it was in the UK version, the UK in 2004 is different to US in 2011. I understand not wanting to include a storyline of a grown man taking advantage of a teenage girl but why include it at all and throw Karen’s character under the bus in the process? Especially because their affair in the UK version is way more common and is actually realistic, the way the US writers did it seemed like a weird fantasy of making the teenage girl the perpetrator and the grown man the victim, which again is just unrealistic.

Karen also has bipolar disorder in the UK version, not Ian, which helps explains her hyper sexuality and gives her more depth. She’s also the only original character in the UK version to be in all of the seasons. The US writers really missed an opportunity of making an amazing character.