before my political awakening I just took them at face value. But now they’re like time capsules of the fairly shallow and hardly biting political commentary of the era.
Specifically im talking about sitcoms that premiered in the late 90s (or early 2000s) and continued thru the 00s. Take Scrubs for example. There’s a few episodes where the hospital workers break into camps discussing the Iraq war. Elliott, played by Sarah Chalke, is revealed as a republican. I suppose this mirrors how actual conversations at the time played out but its somewhat endearing how it all seems so quaint looking back. I know watching at the time I was like wow it’s refreshing how they’re being so political lmao.
I think the cringiest when it comes to this is will and grace. There’s a few episodes with bush-targeted jokes delivered primarily by debra messing (yuck). And they all have to do with his intelligence.
I think the only exceptions are either the shows that did it smartly (for libs anyways) like the first three seasons of Arrested Development or ones that just focused on the domestic/life problems of the characters, like Malcolm in the middle (which is probably the last great working class sitcom) or everybody loves raymond.
love the random transphobic jokes out of nowhere
The Lily Simpson torment routine
It’s crazy to me how prevalent “WIFE BAD” shit was in so many old shows. Not even in a “sexism bad” surprised way to me, but just how hack some of writing for some sitcoms was
“so…
WOMEN BE NAGGING”
That and man fails to perform masculinity a 100% he must be GAY!
The worst thing that could happen to a man in a 90s sitcom was someone thinking he was gay because of a wacky misunderstanding.
The only 90s sitcom that did that storyline right was Seinfeld and only because they turned it up to 11 instead of doing the casual homophobia every other sitcom was doing.
That was like the #1 joke of Everybody Loves Raymond, and most of the time his wife was totally reasonable, the times when she wasn’t she was purposefully written as the most annoying character possible.
I was thinking about Married With Children the other day and wondering to myself what Al Bundy was so miserable when his wife was hot and loved him and he was able to work an easy blue collar job and afford a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs and raise 2 kids… Amazing how much life has slipped that back in the early 90’s he was seen as a loser.
lol, I think the conceit was mostly that his job was demeaning, like he worked in retail at a mall selling shoes to women and I think his boss was younger than him and a shithead. also his car broke down on the way home all the time, so he had to push it for the last miles, but he refused to buy anything not American madr haha. I also think there were multiple episodes that threatened the house and various appliances being repo’d.
I mean it’s quaint by many standards today, but back when there were still some decent paying trade union jobs around Chicago, some guy having to grovel on the floor to put shoes on Karens for shit pay was not where anyone wanted to be at mid 40.
also, one of the themes of the show was that the family were all shitty to each other until any one of them was threatened by outside forces, then they rallied together to defeat the threat and protect each other.
it wasn’t really supposed to be a nightmare life, just the sort of substandard one that could be waiting for anyone. that show caught a lot of flack at the time for not presenting some leave it beaver family.
The Simpsons got the same kind of treatment in the 90s / late 80s too. I remember it being a big deal when the Barbara Bush talked shit about the Simpsons, which prompted the show writers to pen her a letter on behalf of Marge Simpson:
Which then prompted a response from Barbara Bush:
Dear Marge,
How kind of you to write. I’m glad you spoke your mind; I foolishly didn’t know you had one.
I am looking at a picture of you, depicted on a plastic cup, with your blue hair filled with pink birds peeking out all over. Evidently, you and your charming family — Lisa, Homer, Bart and Maggie — are camping out. It is a nice family scene. Clearly you are setting a good example for the rest of the country.
Please forgive a loose tongue.
Warmly,
Barbara Bush
P.S. Homer looks like a handsome fella!
And then we got Two Bad Neighbors out of it
each living our lives to serve an exceptional man
The yikes level of this phrase is astronomical.
The first thing I think of when I remember that show was the episode I saw as a kid where the punchline at the end of the episode was transphobia.
That was probably not the only episode either
It’s a bad show for sure.
Peak political discourse. I could never figure out if we were supposed to think that Al was an idiot, or if he was just a victim of his own life. I haven’t watched the show at all since it was doing reruns on local cable TV. Al clearly had it going pretty good.
Al was absolutely a victim of Al’s choices in life. he was stubborn and dumb and insensitive, so he usually created whatever conflict he found himself embroiled in, and nearly always lost whatever he had staked. usually from his own actions, but sometimes from the shit luck that plagued him his whole life after high school. one of my favorite lines was when something totally random would screw up his plans, as if on cue, and he would just look up and say, “Good one, God.” cracked me up as a little kid.
one of my favorite tropes about that show was how stuck in the past Al was. he scored 4 touchdowns in the homecoming game of his senior year, and everything after was downhill. he brought up that game constantly and nobody ever gave a shit. characters like that, who can’t let go of some b.s. that happened 20 years ago, are so tragic and hilarious to me.
even the “No Ma’am” club they tried to organize was a completely joke. a bunch of dumbass guys in the neighborhood pretending to struggle against the supposed tyranny of their wives, but it’s just guys drinking after work in a garage until they are hungry or sleepy. like little kids running away from home.
You weren’t supposed to “think” of Al, you were supposed to relate to his frustrations and musings. I’d go insane if I played St. Peter with entertainment media characters. They’re meant to be enjoyed not judged.
Right, I hear you. I guess what I was saying, albeit poorly, is were you supposed to be “laughing at” Al, or sympathizing with Al. In the same way that, every character in Seinfeld is more or less “bad” people to be laughed at. Seinfeld makes it pretty clear that the gang should be laughed at.
I’m 90% sure that Married With Children is supposed to be tongue in cheek and that we are supposed to be laughing at Al – the stereotype of a peaked-in-highschool chud.
I feel that it’s like the sitcom equivalent of a Kelly cartoon.
I remember liking Blue Mountain State.
I rewashed half of an episode and had to turn it off, lmao, I cannot recall what drew me to it. Thad was funny I guess.
My memory of it was that it was so over the top it on the sexualized college/high school drama that it was to the point of self parody and that made it funny, but also I don’t think I could re watch it today
I remember thinking Radon was kinda funny with his Dreams bit though. “Please state your question in the form of a dream” lol
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Not exactly a sitcom, but I watched a few clips recently from The West Wing. It’s such a moral high ground ultra lib circle jerk, of moral gotchas against bigots and moral absolutes, without ever touching on capitalism, imperialism or actual problems.
Just regurgitating capitalist propaganda talking points and painting power structures as this “it’s so hard to do the right thing”
Usually when I watch old media I’m most disgusted by the blatant sexism that’s just accepted as normal and skipped over as if it didn’t happen at all.
Not a sitcom, but watched Chinatown for the first time recently. The protagonist literally assaults a woman when she’s trying to tell him about her being raped as a child. He hits her several times, and then the scene continues as if it was justified and normal.
Instead of her grabbing a bat to defend herself or even saying one word indicating that maybe he crossed a line, she hugs him and they continue to be friends as if he didn’t just assault her?
Chinatown
not surprising considering the director of that film
Scrubs is some 2000s sitcom whiplash because it managed to have a lot of heartfelt moments, and be surprisingly current, and then it objectifies women, does some gay panic shit or some other problematic stuff happens. I love it but it feels icky to watch many episodes nowadays.
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Scrubs is really hit or miss. I was expecting to just hate it all after becoming a Marxist, but some of it is still pretty funny.
Went on a bit of a Cheers clip binge on youtube some months back, and the standout for aging poorly for me was “The Boys in the Bar,” where Sam’s old teammate comes out as gay, and the regulars instantly go full homophobic when Dianne mentions that there are 2 gay men in the bar that day.
The regulars flip out and demand that they be identified so that sam can ban them, lest Cheers get too popular with the gays and make the place into a gay bar.
Dianne, the original Lisa Simpson, is the voice of reason, saying the whole time there’s nothing wrong with being gay.
Sam ultimately sides with Dianne for moral reasons (softening from his initial homophobia) and the regulars aren’t ever really chastised for this, hut rather left to be assumed openly homophpbic foe the rest if the series, even though the issue never again came up directly.
Another sitcom that comes to kind for ke is Just Shoot Me, when David Spade finds out his old bestie from back in the day is trans. He’s super shitty about it until he finds out his friend is smoking hot now, which sets him off on his usual womanizer routine. In the end, he comes around to respect his friend’s decision.
Unlike most queer-commebtary plots, this character guest-starred a few times after this. I remember it being pretty good for the time (I actually foubd the teans character relatable as one of very few sympathetic trans characters with agency for the time) but haven’t gone back to see it e the 90s.
Apparently, hving dudes be womanizers was the height of comedy for the time, because that seemed to run thrpugh from the 70s to the 2ks
Came across the original Rosanne series years ago as reruns, was very surprised at how much serious matter was packed into the shows. It blows my mind how chuddy Rosanne became as she got more and more famous.
Also went back and watched a chunk of “The Dinosaurs” after reading some Cracked.com articles back in the day. Holy shit, did all sorts of stuff get packed into that show that’d make the Right Wing Youtube-o-sphere go ballistic.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I really want to rewatch Home Improvement. My memories of it from childhood paint it as the most progressive thing on tv. It was shocking when I went to see Tim Allen perform “stand-up” a few years ago and it was mostly rants about “snowflakes.”
Watched about half of the first season a few months ago.
Seemed more like a normal show without much in the way of radical political subtext.
Though, its been over twenty years since I watched the show as a kid.
Scrolling this thread and realising in horror that sitcoms had a real fixation on doing a Trans related Very Special Episode.
The orientalism in a lot of these shows is off the charts too. For some reason in the 90s they toned down anti-black and anti-latino racism, and replaced it with horrendous depictions of middle-eastern and asian peoples.
