His mother is fucking abusive, that’s why.
And his dad is a meth dealer
Nah that was just a dream, remember?
Isn’t that Breaking Bad?
And completely unhinged. One child joined the military to escape her. She tracked him down, charmed military personnel, and went to drag him home
That is TERRIFYING! And the family starts to dig themselves out of a hole when Hal can’t have sex, but oh no! That means he’s happy and she’s DENIED! She seduces him until he caves. She’d rather have power than stability for her and her family
There was an episode where Lois got orthotics for her shoes and became a whole new person, nicer, happier. Hal couldn’t stand that she didn’t need foot rubs anymore and sabotaged them, condemning her to a life of pain so his codependent ass could feel needed. That whole family was fucked up.
Cripes, doomed by foot fetish
> live in a big house
> three teenage boys crammed into one small bedroom
Nah I think they were definitely struggling a bit.
There’s a few episodes that actively showed gow much they struggle. Like one of their biggest vacations is going to a waterpark in a car that has the heater on full blast so it doesn’t cook the engine. They only eat super cheap food and mystery meat. They lived in a camper because they could barely afford to get termites removed. Hal has no money to go to a dentist. As soon as hal lost his job they are cooked. They lived paycheck to absolute paycheck. They never pay all their bills. I would say they struggled a lot. They struggled more than al bundy.
In the Flashback episode it is noted their house is smaller then their previous apartment. It also shows how they went from comfortable/upscale living to cheaper conditions with each additional child, specifically stating they had less money with each birth.
I distinctly remember an episode where Lois was watering down their orange juice, and realising that it was becoming more water than juice. They were definitely poor, and decidedly trashy for their neighbourhood.
Anon is such a sperglord that they dont understand that all experiences are subjective. Also that its a prime time sitcom.
Also that its a prime time sitcom.
That just reminded me of the reoccurring joke “because you can’t say handjobs at 7:00 on a Friday on ABC” from A Very Special Episode
Also that its a prime time sitcom
you say that as if it were a good thing?
The “Reece gets groomed by a predator” and “Deweys leukaemia diagnosis” story arcs werent appropriate for 7:00pm.
A lot of those shows have aged pretty badly in terms of what “struggling” looks like. The idea of a boring office job being some awful fate is also kinda dated.
At least shows like the Simpsons were self aware about this.
A boring office job is an awful fate, we should bring that perception back!
There’s a fair few people who would straight up murder someone for a boring, stable office job.
After a few years in a boring job they’ll be ready to kill again.
Guy who’s “living the dream” here:
I wish death upon everyone.
Unfortunately, murder will often land you in prison, making your freshly earned office job not that stable.
Don’t ask me how I know.Big difference between a low paying boring office job and a high paying one lol.
There’s a lot of starving children in Africa who would be ecstatic with a job that paid American minimum wage, that doesn’t mean anything.
In a lot of ways, we are those starving children.
The Bundys had a one income household, where dad was working minimum wage at a shoe store and he could feed and clothe his kids, have a big house, a car, and all the adventures they pulled. You couldn’t even feed yourself on that income these days
Someone who’s life is really not that bad whining because they think it’s terrible? That sounds pretty common to me, especially for suburban teenagers
I’d complain too if i had to share my bedroom with two other boys.
And even a bed
The show treated his attitude as a huge flaw. I interpreted his character in earlier seasons as despite being a genius in many ways, he was still an immature child. He was often ungrateful for his parents’ sacrifices and unempathetic to those around him, like a lot of kids his age. He even had trouble making friends because others found him difficult to be around. As annoying as he could be, I think it also made him a more realistic character and set him up for later character development.
Life is unfair 🎶
Few things for the family
- Malcolm gets called out by EVERYONE of the main characters and major side characters at one point or another in the series for his crappy attitude… It’s a running joke by the end of it…
- This is one of those fox “see! the poor don’t have to be poor, they just need gumption and having less kids” shows… (Bones is another ex.)
- Malcolm’s always whining and it causes him to lose out on many major opportunities (both relationship-wise and career-wise)
- Hal says they have sex several times a day, even when they’re camping with another family. Thus he’s always tired and can’t concentrate
- In one episode, Lois and Hal have to stop having sex for a week because of some medical issues, the grass gets attention and turns green, hal gets a promotion, and they stop being so trashy. All in one week. Once the issue is gone and they can have sex, everything goes back the way it was, grass looks like shit, house is a wreck.
- In one episode they show how each time they have a kid, the parents lives get progressively worse.
One of the running themes on the show is basically “work sucks but there’s nothing you can do about it”.
There’s an episode where Francis has to work at Lois’ job to help with inventory and Craig is in charge and is being extra incompetent. You’d figure with all of the opposition Francis organizes at military school that he’d be able to easily handle Craig and start a union or something. Instead, when everyone else decides to just give up and go home after they lose the competition to get it done before another store in the area, Francis is fighting to get everyone to finish what they started.
I don’t think any of the times when the show has a “character vs their employer” conflict works out in a way where the character wins. The closest I can think of is when Lois has a conflict with a manager that fired her wrongly, but even that one isn’t resolved in a great way because his downfall comes from Lois telling him she has dirt on him but would never tell anyone about it and the rest of the staff overhears and does tell. So it’s got a bit of “Lois is good because she keeps her boss’ secrets” mixed in with the messaging.
It sucks because it’s otherwise such a well made show. Every character on the show sucks for some reason, but it doesn’t just let them get away with it. Unless it’s an employer or cop, at which point the message pivots to “it sucks but there’s nothing anyone can do about it other than bitch”.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to support or counter my point.
It sounds like you’re supporting it because it’s brainwashing you to think, “meh. Work sucks. Just deal with it and don’t try to improve it”
It reminded me of another point that in one episode when Hals company is trying to frame him for something the big wigs did… you find out that he’s never worked a friday in years. So him lacking commitment to try his hardest actually works in his favor. … As well as the fact that he matters so little that nobody noticed.
Yeah it was meant to go along with your point as a “I noticed it had this similar propaganda”.
I’ll take it :)
Wait really Bones did this? I thought I remember an episode where Bones says “you just need to work hard, my life was hard too but I didn’t end up like that” and learned by the end that wasn’t a fair judgment. Maybe I’m misremembering?
Bones had a lot of subtle things … Each character has some weird quirks that almost always has the future conservatives would tell them.
(Spoilers for a 10 year show)
If the top of my head …
- Both of the women (bones and the hot girl intern) who were proud of having a lot of premarital sex end up accidentally getting preggo and don’t even think of not keeping it
- The super duper rich guy, although he loses all his money due to outside circumstances, he works his ass off all the time, and becomes super duper rich again
- The only “poor” later season intern is a southern guy (ya know, from “real America”) who works hard and gets rich by capitalizing on his family stuff
- The sexy “free spirit” artsy girl is an airhead in most areas of life.
- Forgets she was actually married, (and secretly wants the black guy more than the rich white guy)
- She’s a programming genius, but her program gets hacked in the stupidest way possible
- Of course she has an out of control hard rocking dad, who ends up getting drunk with her fiance and getting him tattooed (because you can’t trust drifter dads)
- The og intern is also poor, also works hard, but is not rich for two reasons >!He’s obviously on the autism spectrum and also turns into one of the multi-episode killers also showing to not trust people with mental issues!<
Hmm I may actually re-watch it and keep an eye out for these but you are more correct than I remember. I would say Bones does seem a little bit autistic, and some of the people in power are women, but it’s in a little bit of a hamfisted way (look at these badass women!).
I think the episode where one woman got pregnant with someone else’s kid she was thinking of not keeping it but got convinced to keep it by her husband (fiance?), the message still being “them keeping it obviously good.”
Seems like the writing was mostly fine but sometimes very conservative-coded when the director wanted to insert some spiel about life values. I appreciate the examples, I think I immediately forgot about those episodes specifically because of the weird messaging.
Oh, bones is def ok the spectrum, but that’s explained away by being caused by her upbringing… Since she was in the adoption system due to her dad iirc.
She’s also rich due to her stubbornness and “pulling herself up by her own bootstraps”.
She also is drawn to Booth, a childish man who constantly makes fun of her peers, and has a derogatory nickname for people in her profession (squints), but he’s an old values man (reads the paper with his coffee and prefers it to bones’ iPad, sleeps around pre-bones but loves every woman he does sleep with, he basically rebuilds their house himself, is a company man who regards the bureau above all else, and he likes guns but keeps his safe like a model citizen should)… and is hot.
There’s also an embarrassing amount of obvious product placement in the show (the cars, the diff apple products they use and comment on throughout the show) that I’m pretty sure they were self aware of it and making fun of it later on. …
The woman who is in charge s2 and later is not nearly as smart as any of her subordinates, meanwhile the guy who is in charge during season 1 always seems to have more respect given to him than his successor. Other women who are in charge also usually turn out to be the big bad at the time.
I don’t remember the woman deciding to keep her baby. Was that one of the one-episode people who are adjacent to a victim?
Sorry. Went down a rabbit hole here. But yeah, as a kid I was always curious how such a conservative leaning news channel like Fox could have such shows that are either super liberal or super raunchy… Turns out a lot of them have a lot of conservative coded messages. The writing was pretty standard for a crime procedural.
Still trying to figure out how such a gay friendly show like X-Men got made…
I think the reason I didn’t see booth as conservative-coded, is because he seemed to be portrayed (or maybe just regarded by bones) as foolish and outdated (and usually also wrong) for basically every reason you said, but he was a good guy who always showed up and did the right thing. Though I definitely remember some times where he was doing some “hard working man protects the woman” stuff and that was seen as “good” which I thought was very out of place, especially bones reacting to it positively… Maybe the times he looked foolish were meant to be serious and they just couldn’t make it not sound ridiculous lol
Hearing this makes me really want to re-watch it as I wasn’t thinking about any of this… hmm…
https://bones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Proof_in_the_Pudding here’s the episode, Angela is pregnant (thinks she is pregnant) with Wendell, but is dating (?) hodgins, who tells her to keep it. I guess maybe this is still a bit conservative coded? Hard to say maybe it’s pretty neutral
I liked it:)
genius IQ
Many studies show that having a higher intellect correlates with higher unhappiness. In many cases, the text of the show itself is explicitly about how Malcolm’s intellect either makes him a target or itself causes problems.
omg * THEY’RE ffs
Not OPs fault this dumbass language has 3 words with the same pronunciation and different spellings
I couldn’t connect at all with those series because of this.
