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Neito posted:HIMYM is definitely my go-to example of quote-unquote normal shows that dunk on trans people for no reason because they were acceptable punchlines in 2005 and a scene hadn't had a punchline yet. IIRC both Ted and Barney make some really gross trans jokes throughout the series. House is gonna be mine, I'm giving it a rewatch and it's kind of surprising how regressive it is even during the moments where Hugh Laurie has to drop his guard and be compassionate. He goes against the wishes of a deaf child and installs a cochlear implant and everyone stands up and claps for him, he reduces an intersex child to tears by constantly calling her a man despite being raised from birth as a woman and then cracks jokes about how her father must feel weird for molesting her now. I shouldn't be too surprised since the creators current medical kit involves autism being a superpower.
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Aug 30, 2021 15:35
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Yeah the show actually had a pretty realistic duplication of what his character would have. Kind of out of place in a family sitcom tho
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Aug 30, 2021 15:37
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:House is gonna be mine, I'm giving it a rewatch and it's kind of surprising how regressive it is even during the moments where Hugh Laurie has to drop his guard and be compassionate. Don't forget the episode that flat out stated that asexuals either have a serious medical problem or are just faking it.
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Aug 30, 2021 15:53
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:House is gonna be mine, I'm giving it a rewatch and it's kind of surprising how regressive it is even during the moments where Hugh Laurie has to drop his guard and be compassionate. House has a weird dissonance from episode to episode and while the text is always "this guy is an rear end in a top hat", most of the time the subtext is "and he's cool because of it"; but from time to time the series engages with his toxicity as if it was a bad thing - which, of course, it is. I think some of the problem stems from the series being from a time when "prestige TV" still meant 20+ episodes per season, mostly serialized content that could be consumed piecemeal. Sometimes, House being an rear end in a top hat is "genius does mean things = funny", while some other times this is treated like a serious problem, often connected to his pain/addiction; in general, the latter is more common when the target of his behavior is a recurring character.
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Aug 30, 2021 15:59
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Can't remember if I mentioned it in this thread but fairly recently I watched through odd little show 'Eli Stone', about a lawyer who starts having premonitions in the form of musical numbers. It's very decent and charming and has some great actors in it (Jonny Lee Miller, Matt Letscher, Tom Cavanagh, Victor Garber). But the very first episode is about a woman with an autistic child whom Eli helps to successfully sue the company that gave him the EVIL VACCINE that caused his autism, so that's something I have to warn people about. And her fuckin character doesn't go away! Though she does turn out to be awful. Spoilers I guess.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:01
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I mean house was basically episode of the week for like 90% of the run
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Aug 30, 2021 16:02
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CharlestheHammer posted:I mean house was basically episode of the week for like 90% of the run The problem with all of this, if I remember correctly, is that while the detective correclty implies that House is getting high on being the center of his own world, the solution to the situation is not House being humbled, but him outsmarting his nemesis (who's made out to be as much of an rear end in a top hat as House is and even tries to frame him? I may be misremembering something though, it's been a while). That Italian Guy has a new favorite as of 16:11 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 16:06
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Neito posted:HIMYM is definitely my go-to example of quote-unquote normal shows that dunk on trans people for no reason because they were acceptable punchlines in 2005 and a scene hadn't had a punchline yet. IIRC both Ted and Barney make some really gross trans jokes throughout the series. He willingly marries and stays married to history's greatest monster Lily
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Aug 30, 2021 16:11
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That Italian Guy posted:Yes and no...most of the time there was a season spanning story underneath the story of the week. Like him being an rear end in a top hat to a random patient during clinic hours (a thing we've seen him do dozens of time at this point) turning into that weird season-long enmity with the cop played by David Morse, almost costing him his medical license cause he was too much of an rear end in a top hat to say "I'm sorry" (which was S3 if I remember correctly). Yeah, the main issue with House overall is one of just not quite knowing where to stop. They want their funny shithead doctor, but they don't want to imply that it's okay to behave that way, but they don't want to have him change too much either, so like a lot of long-running TV characters it feels like he learns the same thing over and over again and it gets less and less clear why anyone would bother being around him. To be fair I think they handle it better than some shows in that eventually, nobody *does* want to be around him. Except Wilson and the show is also quite good at showing that Wilson is in some ways just as damaged and dysfunctional as House, but hides it better because he's more socially adept and superficially charming. I enjoyed it mostly but after a while I was watching for Wilson, not for House. And *that* worked out really well.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:17
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Calaveron posted:He willingly marries and stays married to history's greatest monster Lily It is kind of funny one of the last season arguments is how he’s not fully over the time she abandoned him and the group, and since he feels guilty about it gives up a promising career move to live in Europe for a little, only for a flashforward shows this decision also made him miserable for a time and hurt his job again.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:22
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I mean, judging by the stories I've heard from anyone who isn't a cis white male this seems like normal doctor behavior to me.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:24
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bobjr posted:It is kind of funny one of the last season arguments is how he’s not fully over the time she abandoned him and the group, and since he feels guilty about it gives up a promising career move to live in Europe for a little, only for a flashforward shows this decision also made him miserable for a time and hurt his job again. This is compounded by the fact that he worked a job he hated for years due to Lily's terrible shopping habits and when he finally starts to get his shoe in the door for something he wants she again has to turn his life upside down with her own job opportunity. And then when he brings up the very valid question of hey is your life with me a consolation prize since your career as an artist never took off? the writers proceeded to go oh gently caress that's a good question we really can't write around in the literal last three episodes of the series and threw a new baby smokescreen
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Aug 30, 2021 16:29
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I mean, Lily's terrible and all but Barney is a literal rapist who would break into "amnesia wards" to convince brain-damaged women he was a loved one and rape them and who also, in his own words, "once sold a woman." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iDSIVrJuFo&t=16s
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Aug 30, 2021 19:23
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Barney seems like a live-action Quagmire from Family Guy basically. When they're a creep as their baseline, any time you feel the need to up the ante and exaggerate them in wacky ways you end up with stuff like "Quagmire rapes Marge Simpson......but in a funny way??"
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Aug 31, 2021 03:58
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If I'm being honest though, I did think the one where he pretends to be an older version of himself from the future was pretty funny. But his random magic tricks were better than his PUA bits.
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Aug 31, 2021 04:54
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The reason It's Always Sunny works so well is once you look at the big picture most sitcom characters are as hosed up as the gang. A lot of shows have weird sex pests that no one ever seems to be bothered by.
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Aug 31, 2021 05:53
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rodbeard posted:The reason It's Always Sunny works so well is once you look at the big picture most sitcom characters are as hosed up as the gang. A lot of shows have weird sex pests that no one ever seems to be bothered by. One of the easiest ways to do a deconstruction is to simply play genre conventions straight without the trappings and tricks to obfuscate and excuse their questionable nature.
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Aug 31, 2021 06:01
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It's definitely more of a cult sitcom, but the League of Gentlemen is one that has some jokes and characters that have aged great but also some of the shittiest transphobic jokes I've seen, even by the standards of its turn of the millenium release. I don't remember ever finding those funny growing up - not because I was a particularly woke teen or anything, I was an edgy little protogoon, but because my reaction was always like "oh okay". It always felt like incredibly lazy humour.
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Aug 31, 2021 09:30
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Barney got as rapey and horrible as he did because it was popular. He started off, and his rapeyness was the butt of the joke. As in, he was the tryhard in the suit exaggerating all his misogynist stories about how he like totally scores with hot chicks all the time bro, no really he does. But then the writers realized "hey, people like it when we make this character horrible and rapey. That gets laughs and positive feedback. Lets do more of that!" and so doubled and tripled down on it till you get poo poo like the aformentioned pretending to be the husband of amnesia patients just to gently caress them amongst other atrocities. Basically early on Barney got all the "funny" lines about sexual assault and tricking women into having sex with him and toxic masculinity etc. But a whole bunch of people didn't realize that the jokes were on him and took them seriously and started laughing WITH him and cheering him on. The writers ran with it and made him more and more rapey coz ... Hey, gotta give the audience what it wants. Even if the audience are mouth breathing fuckwits, and what they want is more rape jokes. It all counts the same as ratings to the advertizers.
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Aug 31, 2021 09:45
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A recurring issue with ongoing sitcoms is that characters all end up becoming caricatures of themselves. Can be a problem with other series that go on too long, but at least those can have characters gain depth and nuance, if the writers remember it. But then, long-running sitcoms probably don't keep the same writers.
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Aug 31, 2021 11:24
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A recurring issue with ongoing sitcoms is that characters all end up becoming caricatures of themselves. Can be a problem with other series that go on too long, but at least those can have characters gain depth and nuance, if the writers remember it. But then, long-running sitcoms probably don't keep the same writers. One of the nice things about the last three seasons of Law and Order is that they had a horrible season previously (the 17th was literally the worst) then did a cast refresh and pivoted on the long-lasting characters to show how they had grown and changed. Jack McCoy was infamous for doing the absolute most absurd poo poo to win a case, but he got moved to DA so wasn't directly the prosecutor any more. Instead, they filled his old spot with Michael Cutter who was possibly even MORE absurd than McCoy was, but had McCoy as his boss going "I did this, I regret it and it was wrong and I'm not going to let you do it." So you had a really good interplay of the very experienced, older lawyer who we'd all seen go to far, and the young gun champing at the reins - and it made it all the more delicious when Cutter does something crazy. Jack drops a bunch of ammunition to try and convict a gun company for a mass shooting, Cutter bluffs the state governor into resigning with a "confession" that turns out to be a blank piece of paper. Things didn't change quite as much immediately with the long-standing police lieutenant, but they cashed in all the chips with the 20th season plotline where she struggles with a cancer diagnosis and the entire department shifts to aid her in various ways.
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Aug 31, 2021 11:44
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BrigadierSensible posted:Barney got as rapey and horrible as he did because it was popular. Isn't that what happened with Al Bundy too? He was supposed to be the butt of the jokes and constantly dunked on, but then the audiences kept rooting for him so they had to start giving him some wins.
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Aug 31, 2021 13:48
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the_steve posted:Isn't that what happened with Al Bundy too? He was supposed to be the butt of the jokes and constantly dunked on, but then the audiences kept rooting for him so they had to start giving him some wins. I never watched HIMYM so I can’t compare, but IIRC Al’s “wins” were generally few and far between, and I don’t think really increased as the show went on. People loved Al but he still usually come out on the losing side in most of his schemes.
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Aug 31, 2021 14:14
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It’s the same issue with Home Improvement - Tim is constantly dunked on for his toxic masculinity and almost every lesson of the episodes is Tim learning to be a better person, which are generally forgotten by the next episode. But audiences takeaways, including Tim Allen himself, were somehow to double down on toxicity…
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Aug 31, 2021 14:22
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Al Bundy is a land of contrasts. I can understand why audiences would connect with him on a much bigger level than anyone on HIMYM though, for better or for worse.
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Aug 31, 2021 14:23
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Nottherealaborn posted:It’s the same issue with Home Improvement - Tim is constantly dunked on for his toxic masculinity and almost every lesson of the episodes is Tim learning to be a better person, which are generally forgotten by the next episode. But audiences takeaways, including Tim Allen himself, were somehow to double down on toxicity… And that’s how we got Last Man Standing.
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Aug 31, 2021 14:25
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Speaking of 'did not age well' the loving basic situation of Married with Children. So Al is supposed to be a loser because he's worked the same crummy job for two decades to keep a roof over the heads of his family and is the butt of the cosmic joke that is his life in pretty much every situation. Only imagine trying to paint someone today as a loser for managing to provide for a family of four with a three bedroom house all on a single income, especially working retail. Yeah, Al was a poo poo head about a lot of things but he's basically a loving mythical hero for managing that. The house they used for exterior shots is apparently worth $500k today.
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Aug 31, 2021 14:31
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As a recent homeowner myself I realize there's no way Al could have paid the property taxes on his house, let alone the mortgage, working retail. But that's Hollywood for you, always putting average schmoes in houses they couldn't possibly afford because the writers have no idea how real America lives.
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Aug 31, 2021 15:49
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Kwyndig posted:As a recent homeowner myself I realize there's no way Al could have paid the property taxes on his house, let alone the mortgage, working retail. But that's Hollywood for you, always putting average schmoes in houses they couldn't possibly afford because the writers have no idea how real America lives. Buddy, the 80's were so vastly different from today.
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Aug 31, 2021 16:05
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Disco Pope posted:It's definitely more of a cult sitcom, but the League of Gentlemen is one that has some jokes and characters that have aged great but also some of the shittiest transphobic jokes I've seen, even by the standards of its turn of the millenium release. I think this came up not too long ago and it sucks that that's in there because otherwise it's got some really amazing stuff in it otherwise but it's almost impossible to recommend because of how bad the transphobic stuff is. Like most of the rest of the show is great so it's very out of left field.
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Aug 31, 2021 16:13
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I've been watching a lot of Shaun the Sheep with my kid. It's mostly a good show, certainly easier to handle than most kids shows. But drat, this show gets real racist sometimes. There's a whole episode where the protagonist sheep characters are partying in a makeshift disco club in their barn. Then, the pigs (who are the jerk troublemaker characters) sneak into the club wearing chains and "urban" clothing. They aggressively take over the sound booth and put on some pseudo hip-hop sounding music. Then they do some break dancing, get out of control and trash the place, wrecking all the sound gear. The entire time my spouse and I just sat there with our jaws open going "Oh god, they didn't just code the pigs as black people did they? And then make them gently caress up everything for everyone? Oh god, they did. Oh nooooooo..."
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Aug 31, 2021 16:13
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And that house would have been built/bought in the late 60s - early/mid 70s, along with his car, and neither had been upgraded/updated/replaced since. It's not so much a stretch then as it would be today.
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Aug 31, 2021 16:15
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Lemony posted:I've been watching a lot of Shaun the Sheep with my kid. It's mostly a good show, certainly easier to handle than most kids shows. But drat, this show gets real racist sometimes. Pigs are undercover cops, clearly.
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Aug 31, 2021 17:17
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hallo spacedog posted:I think this came up not too long ago and it sucks that that's in there because otherwise it's got some really amazing stuff in it otherwise but it's almost impossible to recommend because of how bad the transphobic stuff is. Like most of the rest of the show is great so it's very out of left field. It's out of left field because if you go back 20 years, most people didn't know much about trans people. I certainly didn't, and I don't think I was unusual. When I was watching The League of Gentlemen for the first time I don't think I'd ever heard the word transphobia, let alone know how to recognise it. I have seen some recent interviews with the League guys where they've said they absolutely wouldn't do things the same way if they were making it now.
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Aug 31, 2021 18:11
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Regarding Shaun, I will say this. The earlier seasons included stuff like sheep crap strewn around parts of the field they hear in. Because it's a farm and that's part of what happens on a farm. This detail appears to have been excised from later seasons, v for what are I assume stupid reasons. Or maybe it's some dumb regional thing.
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Aug 31, 2021 18:51
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Nottherealaborn posted:It’s the same issue with Home Improvement - Tim is constantly dunked on for his toxic masculinity and almost every lesson of the episodes is Tim learning to be a better person, which are generally forgotten by the next episode. But audiences takeaways, including Tim Allen himself, were somehow to double down on toxicity… Wilson's advice is generally whatever is needed to tone down Tim's exhibition of toxic masculinity without actually opposing or combating it. Less "better person" and more "socially acceptable person." He reverts because he's never pushed to actually change. ChickenOfTomorrow has a new favorite as of 19:58 on Aug 31, 2021 |
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Aug 31, 2021 19:55
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There's an epsiode of Spaced (which was just about contemporaneous with League of Gentlemen I think) that's extremely uncomfortable now, in that it's not even just incidental transphobic humor but the entire plot resolves with the protagonist attacking a trans woman in a fit of rage (who is in fairness being completely horrible to another character, but that's not really why it happens). Most of the show isn't (to my recollection) like that in the least which makes it really stand out. The episode also contains my favorite joke in the entire series ("It's not finished...it's finished") so it's especially uncomfortable.
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Aug 31, 2021 20:28
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docbeard posted:There's an epsiode of Spaced (which was just about contemporaneous with League of Gentlemen I think) that's extremely uncomfortable now, in that it's not even just incidental transphobic humor but the entire plot resolves with the protagonist attacking a trans woman in a fit of rage (who is in fairness being completely horrible to another character, but that's not really why it happens). I think this is the episode "Art", but the plot of the episode is about a Job interview and an art opening, and also one of the characters being out of his mind on cheap speed and Resident Evil games. The character you're talking about isn't a Trans Woman, they're based on / directly parody Leigh Bowery, but Brian refers to them as non-binary, not that it excuses violence. I rewatched the episode to be sure, and while I don't think you remember the plot correctly, you may have done it to black out the surprisingly large number of T-Bombs they drop.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:08
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docbeard posted:There's an epsiode of Spaced (which was just about contemporaneous with League of Gentlemen I think) that's extremely uncomfortable now, in that it's not even just incidental transphobic humor but the entire plot resolves with the protagonist attacking a trans woman in a fit of rage (who is in fairness being completely horrible to another character, but that's not really why it happens). It makes it a little rougher that Vulva was played by David Walliams, and his shows Little Britain and Come Fly With Me were incredibly mean spirited.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:10
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Disco Pope posted:It makes it a little rougher that Vulva was played by David Walliams, and his shows Little Britain and Come Fly With Me were incredibly mean spirited. The british ruling class often confuse cruelty with comedy, because they are vile.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:23
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