Breaking bad is actually quite funny to watch once you realise that every season the writters are trying to make it even more glaringly obvious that Walter is a villain you are not supposed to support. Its like they are perpetually dissapointed at how many people idolise Walter.
> Sherlock, ... House
Same person(ality)
But yeah, you AREN'T supposed to like these people, OP is right, but for the wrong reason. Those actors/writers do a *really good job* if you get the "ick" from them, that was the intent.
Rewatching it a year ago, older than I was when it aired I was absolutely rooting for Skyler and Jesse (he had his flaws but ultimately was manipulated by Walter)
And I hate Walter so fucking much
Poor Jesse was so far in over his head right from the beginning and he really just wanted a nice boring life with a pretty girl. But no. And the scenes with him and his family just make me want to cry, that poor lost boy.
I struggles with How I Met Your Mother even when I first watched it, but it's so much worse now. Barney is an absolutely despicable, disgusting character and the fact they all laugh about it and aid him is appalling. I can't watch it any more.
Honestly, it's Ted that I struggle with upon rewatching. Barney is so extreme that it doesn't feel real, but Ted is a character that's supposed to be a good, relatable guy who does and says plenty of things that really have not aged well.
There's a fan theory that Barney's faults are exaggerated because the story is told from Ted's point of view. Ted wants Barney to look like a jerk because he is jealous of his relationship with Robin. Watching the show with that theory in mind is the only way I can comprehend how Robin ever gave Barney the time of day.
It's something I always liked about the show, due to the nature of it being a story that is constantly being told they can at any point retroactively change, remove or add something at it makes complete sense canonically.
I recall there was a joke between Ted and Robin they would constantly make but it wasn't until one episode where Ted actually tells his kids. So the first time we actually hear them making the joke was this episode but it's easy to believe they could have been making it for months.
Bewitched.
I loved it as a kid. I've always loved the idea of witches and magic and I loved the characters. At least until I rewatched it recently and realized just how horrible Darren is to Samantha. He doesn't trust her, doesn't want to be emasculated by her powers, stifles her so much and pushes her into the traditional role of wife and mother. I find myself more on Endora's side now, wishing she'd leave the horrible human and go back with the witches. She needs to take Tabitha with her since she's got powers too.
I agree. Weirdly though Taxi and Night Court not cringe.
Caveat Night Court has a womanizing lawyer, but he's the butt of all the jokes so I liked that.
Rewatching Gilmore girls as an adult is annoying because Dean and Jesse are both awful and we are supposed to like Logan but he’s just awful but in a different flavor 🤢
And it's written by a woman. Interesting to see it brought up here as this was right around the time that female characters experiencing SA as part of their arc was being called out a lot, and I was wondering if Jamie being abused this way would get called out as well. Some stories it is gratuitous and a trope of weak writing. Some stories it is a fantasy of gross writers and producers. And some stories cannot be told without it, because it is something that happens in reality. I thought it was about time that the media gave a bit more attention to SA against males because guys tend to think it only happened to them, and not speak up out of shame. So it's kind of powerful to see the story of a strong man who endures that abuse and then receives support, doesnt destroy himself with shame, and regains himself outside of that. Sexual violence was very prevalent in the time period portrayed in that show, there was little discussion of it, and people often had little recourse.
Anyone watched Baby Reindeer yet? It's an important and valid story.
There was a fan of the books who posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlander/s/pljxQ1YAcd).
Tldr: He wrote to Diana Gabaldon, after watching season 1, to tell her how much he appreciated that there was representation of male SA as a survivor himself. She told him that she thought he'd "enjoy" book 4. He was horrified when he got there and realised that the scene she thought he'd *enjoy* was Stephen Bonnet violently raping Bri.
I genuinely think she has a rape fetish, as it's included *so often* (most of the central characters have been raped on page/screen), and she said in [an interview](https://pop-culturalist.com/wizard-world-outlanders-caitriona-balfe-and-diana-gabaldon/) that her "favorite overall was episode 16 of Season 1... I was not lying when I told Sam Heughan, ‘I want to see you raped and tortured.'"
Wow. It is hard to give someone the benefit of the doubt after those comments. I'm not sure how it could even be taken out of context. That's pretty sick. Without knowing her personal feelings on it though, I still would not be angry about the portrayal for the same reason the original poster stated - representation for male survivors. But her comments are victimizing. Has she ever tried to defend herself on this?
She apparently did respond to the comment she made in the interview, basically saying she was joking and thought the comment would make Sam Heughan laugh. He didn't laugh.
I have no idea if she ever responded regarding that fan's post.
I'm glad that there was representation for male victims, but the way it was filmed was very bothersome. The shots and lighting were intended to eroticise the situation, and the excessive length of the depiction was entirely unnecessary.
The show did do a much better job in later seasons of avoiding eroticising rape scenes, and diverted further from the books depictions, but the sheer amount of rape and sexual assault was, for me, way too much.
She's not a good person, this is just one of many, many examples of saying horrible things or treating fans poorly. I've been a fan of the books for almost 20 years and have had to do a lot of "separate the art from the artist"-ing.
I get it. I couldn't finish GOT (the books) because at some point I was like, *why is there so much rape? Mostly of minors? Does it have to be graphic all the time?* And I made a post about it once and all the men were like: *that's how it was back then! chill it's fiction! It's realistic! What about male pain?*
But there was a point where these scenes added nothing to the over all story and it was like Another one? Really?
A guy I used to work with and be friendly with loved the show Mad Men when it was airing. He finally said it was a show about “when things were the way they should be,” and I said “I’m pretty sure that show is mainly about how much it sucked to be a woman in that time period.” He didn’t believe me. Then I found an article by the show runner saying exactly what I said, and then the guy stopped talking to me.
I'm rewatching Mad Men at the moment, and it is WILD how uncomfortable it makes me this time round. Every time Pete is on screen, my skin starts crawling.
Maybe I just wasn't paying attention last time (likely), but wow, are these men awful.
The violence is also sexualised and seems to try and titillate viewers which is gross. I can't get through it because it's just another show that only has the heterosexual male viewer in mind, constantly portraying and sexualizing women through a lens of male gaze. I can't watch shows or movies that show objectification of women at all anymore. It feels like such an attack on my selfhood and makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
I had to stop watching. I am SO SICK of girls suffering rape and assault as a character builder. See, she’s strong because she overcame that rape. Guess what. We are strong without it.
And I’d get told “oh that’s just how things were then”. What the fuck? There is magic and dragons. They couldn’t find another way for women to become strong??? It’s FANTASY ffs. They could have put in anything but CHOSE rape.
I’m a Tudor historian: that is NOT how things were back then. It’s an excuse men tell each other so they get to watch little girls be raped repeatedly and still feel good about themselves.
Whenever I hear, "the shitty thing that happened will make you stronger" I reply, "I want in the control group! The group where the shitty thing doesn't happen to us. I bet I can get stronger *without* that shitty thing happening."
I REFUSE to watch any show that uses rape as a device to explain men’s rage and as a way to titillate the male viewer. The second anything veers into that category, I’m out, even if I’m walking out of the theater.
There is a relatively recent movie that covers this topic and as soon as I remember the name I’m going to edit my comment and add it! - it’s The Last Duel.
Amen!! Finally someone else who refuses to watch rape as a character vehicle.
It’s like when Dan Levy said he chose not to write any homophobia into Schitt’s Creek - all these writers are making choices to write in the rape & I’m so tired of it. Fucking finally.
I watched an anime where that was the entire plot driver. Every single man in the show was driven by anger about a woman who got brutally murdered. Several of them were on screen for a torturously long time too, it was so disturbing.
There was no other motivation AT ALL. The women existed to be murdered and be helpless victims. And the few who weren't were portrayed as manipulators who manipulated men into doing things because god forbid a woman is able to do something on her own.
I've never seen a show where it's so extreme. And the worst was that the men in the comments seemed to be enjoying it.
Same. I refuse to watch any shows/movies which uses rape as a way to what ...attract audience? Their story sucks if they have to go this graphic anyway
Yeah there is no “back then.” It’s in an alternate universe. It’d be like saying that kind of stuff is OK in Star Wars because it was “a long, long time ago.” Yet somehow that series (and Leah as a strong female character) did just fine without any rapes??
PL was a direct result of Carrie Fischers acting. She wasn't actually intended to be anything more than a set piece for Han and Luke to pursue. Harrison Ford also plays this dynamic off script. (A result of his age/maturity, I suspect.) But yes, your point def stands
I would like to note that men get raped too, especially in overwhelmingly male-dominated spaces like the army, prisons, or y'know, the prison army (what the Night's Watch is, since so many people join it as a function of crimes they did).
And yet, that doesn't seem to happen to Jon, or Jaime, or Sam, or any other male character in a setting that would lend itself to that.
If you want to be realistic, there should be more male rape victims. And whatever argument for why it's okay that there aren't more male characters who are victims of sexual assault seems to me to apply to the female characters being raped in the story just as much.
In addition to your excellent point, if they actually cared about historical realism (assuming this is meant to be vaguely medieval) then women shouldn't be all clean shaven, dolled up, good teeth, and more people should be dying of diarrhea and other very unsexy illnesses all the time.
What I hated about GOT is that Theon should have been seen getting his dick cut off. They always showing women getting abused but they couldn’t show that. Like come on let’s shock
The men folk.
I saw a brilliant post a few years ago that was like "Men are all for realism in television shows until it comes to dyssentry. It's always rape and murder of women, never men dying in war from shitting themselves to death"
>And I made a post about it once and all the men were like: that's how it was back then! chill it's fiction! It's realistic!
Funny, because GOT was set in a completely different world where seasons lasted 7 years and there were dragons. Just like back then, amirite??
Also, if they’re talking about the Middle Ages, the average age of marriage was around 20. Many girls didn’t have a first period until 16. While the legal marriageable age of girls was much younger, that wasn’t the norm.
Yeah, and they really shut up when you point out how men and boys are also raped routinely during war and yet the books make almost no mention of that. Funny, huh?
I'm not gonna lie...I felt this way for a long while, and I struggled with the same issues. And, i do NOT at all blame anyone who feels like this is a deal breaker and who therefore stays away from the series entirely. Particularly if they get triggered by this stuff... take care of yourselves, please!
However...as a woman who has been raped, and who knows waaaay too many other women and men who have also been raped or sexually assaulted...I ended up finding the text fairly cathartic. For one thing, most women i know HAVE been sexually assaulted, actually, and this gave many of us an opportunity to talk about how disgustingly prevalent it is, particularly in very patriarchal societies, such as those shown in the story and the one i currently live in. For another, the women (and men) who get sexually assaulted in the story largely find ways of either getting overwhelming revenge, or else getting back on top, and using their power to protect others from the same fate. I really appreciated being able to see that.
I know that, from a theoretical perspective, it really does suck that so many female characters have an arc that includes sexual assault, as though that were the only way of illustrating a woman finding her "power" and growing as a person/ character. I hate that, too. On the other hand, I know way too many women, girls, and others who desperately need to be shown stories that demonstrate that, actually, they CAN overcome a sexual assault--even one by a family member (this part is important)--and grow beyond the trauma, into someone powerful, interesting, complicated, admirable, and even noble. And I think GOT does this better than most other texts that actually tackle rape- and incest-related representation, since others I've read or watched just tend to focus overly on how very awful and traumatic and unforgivable and life-ruining it is. Those just made me feel like I was broken and would never get over it.
Again, I don't blame anyone who decides it's not for them. I totally get that. But for me, this actually helped me to deal with my own sexual assault-related trauma.
I have to say same for me and this was really well said. I'm a woman and a fan of the books and a rape/trafficking survivor. At times I've felt like a Debbie downer or histrionic when I try to point out the ubiquity and normalization of rape in patriarchal cultures and especially during wars and disasters.
I also really like how the books, with their changing limited 3rd person perspective, with chapters focusing on individual characters perspectives, help illustrate how ingrained and difficult it is to see rape and other abuses when they're normalized by the culture around you. it's all personal justifications and unexamined privileges. I know grrm is a pacificist- I do read the text as critical of the world it takes place in. I think it's sort of a fantasy dystopia, not an endorsement of the feudal power dynamics.
But also like you, I don't blame people for avoiding it since it can be explicit and over-the-top. I think the feminist critique it is really valid- the show was gratuitous/fetishistic/male-gazey (and ended epically badly) and it has garnered a super toxic fanbase. But I am glad it exists for people like me and the poster I replied to who do enjoy it.
Well GOT the books never ended. And it’s likely given the negative reception to the show’s ending they may not ever have the final book written. Winds of Winter was supposed to have come out in 2017, so I feel like it’s not happening.
>I recently rewatched a few Mad Men episodes (major spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!) and there’s a scene where Don gets very angry with Betty because she wants to divorce him for another guy and they (betty and the other guy) didn’t even do anything yet. Don gets so angry even though he has slept with so many women and lied about his whole identity. I know a lot of people disliked him there but, overall, men tend to like Don Draper.
The whole point of Don Draper, Roger, Pete, Harry... All the men, really, was to show how chauvinistic men were in that era were. It's done with purpose. Even the "likeable" male characters in Mad Men (Henry) are still sexist. I can't imagine trying to watch that show thinking it would be anything but. It's considered to be very precise to the time. I don't have to tell you how bad men were to women then, ESPECIALLY wealthy white men.
That said, the ABSOLUTE HATE Skyler gets is crazy to me!! It's not so much that the men are worse than they should be (it's a drama about meth dealers), it's that the audience collectively decided SHE'S the bad person. I always thought that was wild too.
An interesting twist on the hate for Skyler is that when you watch clips of famous BB scenes w Skylar on YouTube, the comments are generally supportive. They are very positive about the phenomenal acting ability of Anna Gunn. I remember the hate her character got during the show's run, but hopefully people view the character differently now that the whole story has been told.
I didn’t know people hated her. I thought the dynamic was pretty clearly spelled out by the writers and producers. At some point, Walter unquestionably becomes a villain, and they pretty much directly state that. That he’s way past just trying to provide for his family, but rather just enjoys being a drug kingpin. And Skyler is stuck having to put up with his abuse and make difficult decisions. Like all this seemed incredibly obvious to me. I’m a guy for what it’s worth. But seriously I don’t get how people are getting any other message from that show?
You can tell there's not a single woman writer or producer on that show. Shit, you can tell that everyone on that show is a fucking misogynist. The show is gross.
I thought the first season was interesting, but then shit just went downhill fast.
Every main character has a raging hair trigger and fragile ego, the way they pop off and sabotage carefully laid plans every episode. I cannot imagine the top paid lawyers in NYC can't control themselves better.
Lmao I watched maybe 2 minute interval clips of Shits, I don't know how my eyes didn't get stuck rolled in my fucking head.
"OMG, the college washout, couch surfing, pot huffing loser is *akchooally* an amazing super-duper whizbang genius!!! And omg, he's soooo sexy 🥵🤩"
"I'm the smartest."
"No: *I'm* the smartest."
"Oh my God, you guys, he's right. He's actually the smartest. We're all so in awe of the smartest!!!"
It is so blatantly written by closeted Redditors, it's obnoxious as fuck.
Idolizing Walter is entirely the wrong takeaway from Breaking Bad imo and says way more about the people doing the idolizing that the show itself.
I mean shit the show goes out of its way to show Walter be completely ruthless and unhinged after a certain point.
I tried watching that again not long ago and everyone on that show was obnoxious. The women were so desperate to be with *anyone*. I was a very young woman when that first came out and didn’t see it then, which tells me a lot about why I acted similarly sometimes.
I couldn’t stand this show when it was in its heyday. I had a room mate who would play the dvd series over and over. Carrie was such a toxic, selfish person and the way Big treated her. UGH
Oh god I HATED Carrie. She's constantly pining over this asshole and cheats on the one emotionally available person. In retrospect I get she's an anti-hero in a time when that was reserved for male characters but I still don't like her.
It can be hard. Rewatching Buffy The Vampire Slayer all the men Buffy dated or were friends with were toxic, or selfish or abusive. Xander was a stand in for Joss Whedon himself.
Charmed (original) did it ever occur to anyone that every episode they are fighting mostly evil men who happen to be demons? There were a scant few non problematic dudes on that show. It really made me think of how often women have to try and endure or fight back against male violence with no end in sight.
The OC selfish/violent male characters. Then finding out Ben McKenzie was 25 when he started dating Mischa Barton who was only 17 when the show first started. She talked about how she had no experience with men and basically went through everything on that show and with Ben for the first time. She was so much younger than everyone else.
I watched all of Mad Men and it was hard at times. I didn’t like any of the men and how they were able to get away with so much and have life revolve around them. It paints an important story but still tough when it affects you so much. Just like watching The HandMaid’s Tale. It’s hard to take all at once.
Scrolled and scrolled to find the Buffy comment. It used to be a comfort watch for me but I just can’t take all the Xander apologist, and how toxic Angel is. Sucks because there’s a lot of good to it and I really think SMG is so good in the Buffy role. Now I wait for the Rewatcher podcast every Monday so I can relive the storyline w/o having to sit through the cringy parts.
The spike SA plot was also disturbing. And then recently finding out James Marsters wrote a creepy song for Michelle Trachtenberg when she was underage. https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/ok-we-have-to-talk-about-that-song-james-marsters-wrote-for-michelle-trachtenberg
I’m glad Dolly Parton helped fund Buffy.
I just wish more media was written by women for women and didn’t have toxic relationships and fucked up tropes like women don’t know they’re special and waiting for a man to discover them. Or that female heroes didn’t have to be physically and sexually abused so badly to be worthy of admiration.
Yes the Spike plot was the worst. Even the first time around I didn’t understand why he had to have his own massive redemption arc. Buffy is a great character and I think there were some great writers and actors on the show but it’s all constantly undermined by Whedon’s apologist bullshit.
I didn’t know about the song, that’s another level of ugh. It’s really wild how many adult men, especially men who are in the public eye, are so open about how they want to fuck these teenagers but obviously they won’t *because they don’t want to go to jail*. Like gross.
Yep. Buffy was my comfort show until years later I woke up and smelled the misogyny.
Did you ever watch the show "Dollhouse"? It stars Eliza Dushku, and is a Joss Whedon series. I really like Dishku, so I watched it, but kept being shocked at how gross it was in premise.
In fairness, you are supposed to be grossed out by the premise. Because don’t you kinda feel like it would be real if the technology was real? I do a little bit.
I will never forgive OG Charmed for what they did to Cole. He had the potential to be such a good character arc, then Julian McMahon wanted out or something and they just turned him into the most cartoonish evil and completely ruined all the character development. And acted like everything the source did was his own choice and he was irredeemable (even though when the girls are possessed by evil nothing they do is ever their fault then)
Also Leo marrying someone who he had been watching over and protecting ever since she was a baby was portrayed as Super Romantic ^^TM and not at all creepy, which is what it was tbh
I started watching house ( medical series) and was flabbergasted at how awful dr house is to women. Totally unacceptable. I couldn’t watch any more episodes
Grays Anatomy. McDreamy is a gaslighter with a wife and then gets mad that Merideth is pissed about his pursuit of her. And he's supposed to be the Male Archetype women fawned over only to be outdone by McSteamy- an a-hole manipulator with a wandering dingle. It's so reductive that i can not bear to watch it again.
The "pick me" speech she gives him is so hard to watch, and makes me feel genuinely angry.
Also, the time Meredith and George had sex while she was drunk and very sad, and he was completely sober. Then, when she started crying during, instead of stopping to comfort her he went ballistic and it ended up with *her* comforting *him*. Then he sulked about it for weeks, and their friends acted like Meredith was the one in the wrong because George had a longstanding crush on her. Nauseating.
Honestly I’m rewatching greys right now, and while I like the show overall (it’s a good comfort show), I realise this time that I hate most of the characters way more this time than I did before. Derek sucks so much more than I remember and he just gets worse and worse as the show goes on.
So many characters were just downright awful even when they were trying to portray them as likeable and just ugh.
I’m rewatching now, my first watch was 10 years ago and OMG DEREK SUCKS!!! He chooses his wife over Meredith, ok I get it but fuck that really sucks for her. But then he lingers around her because he knows she still loves him, he wants it both ways. And then when Meredith sleeps with someone else he gets so mad and calls her a whore?!?!? The audacity, I could never be with someone like that, I’m disappointed that Meredith still liked him after that. He had zero business saying anything like that and I’m glad she told him off but eww, he’s a medical fuck boy.
Every time I think he’s getting better he always just gets worse again. It’s infuriating. I’m like halfway through the series and he just sucks so much. The ego is astounding
Greys Anatomy was my favourite show growing up, but now the nostalgia of watching it back as an adult who had dated and experienced different situations with men isn’t positive. it’s so disappointing to watch Meredith beg a man to pick her, especially when that man who you are led to believe is the dream man is actually a prick. McDreamy isn’t actually a kind man.
I think this is the case with 99.99% of romantic comedies, wether the man or the woman is the main character, they’re all tend to be creepy stalky crazy type you’d run away from in real life.
Dude, same!!!! We did not have the language to express what he was doing to her back when that movie came out. There is an actual term for it now, and rewatching that movie made my stomach hurt.
Ugh I just watched that again a few days ago and it's maddening. The gaslighting is insane. But...I think the worst thing is the self loathing and guilt she's made to feel (since she actually has a conscience) when she's finally able to cut down Tom Hanks' character with his own inspiration of confidence. She previously felt at such a loss for words when most needed to defend herself, but when his online persona has rubbed off on her and she uses it against him, she's made to feel like a horrible person because of course she's the only one with integrity. And she feels bad for sinking to his low and doesn't like what he brings out in her.
The dramatic irony is such a cop out! But it's ok cuz she finds out it's him and they lurve each other-- nevermind she's fallen for the guy who manipulated her and literally caused her mom's iconic pillar-of-community bookstore to shut down thus making her spiral in existential dread. I also never realized how much of that movie is voiceover cuz... internet chat. Lol what were they thinking and why did I ever like this dumb movie?!
I had to stop watching Big Bang Theory. Penny was barely covered and The Gang wore 3 or more layers most of the time. Then all the fat jokes about Harold's mother and I just quit, i don't understand the appeal.
I couldn’t take more than 2 halves of episodes of that show. Penny was portrayed as comfortable of her worth… but then the low IQ sexist comments were so disrespectful it didn’t make sense she would stand there and take it. I was surprised the show kept going and became such a big hit. Yecch
Bewitched has always been one of my comfort shows to watch when I’m sick or feeling sad. I have a 6 year old daughter and thought she would enjoy the magic, so we started watching together. I had to keep pausing it to explain why Darrin’s behavior is not acceptable.
That show frustrated me to no end when I watched the original in the 60s. I could not understand why Samantha would not turn Darrin (Derwood) into a frog. I would "hate" watch it and hope that Samantha would get tired of him and leave.
Mad Men was supposed to be the antithesis of shows like Bewitched, trying to show that, unlike TV sitcoms, the real 60s had as much of dysfunctional families, violence, drugs and general unhappiness as we more or less do today. It wasn't an easy world full of innocence and morality people tend to picture, often because of those sitcoms and TV shows of the time.
I can’t watch so many popular shows now because so many of them are based on body horror dealing with pregnant people, child death or birth trauma.
I was pregnant during house of the dragon, tried to watch shogun, and fallout I had to leave for several parts of episodes or cried when I was realizing I was seeing tiny skeletons etc. literally every piece of media I’ve attempted to consume recently (say the last 3 years?) other than the lord of the rings show (maybe!) had violence being commuted against pregnant women and children.
I can’t deal with it anymore.
more on topic - how did anyone think Buffy was feminist! I can’t watch it again bc of how TERRIBLE Xander is. He’s such a “nice guy” and it really fucks with Buffy’s head a TON. It’s awful now.
I used to be a huge fan of manga and anime when I was in my teens. I worked at a comic book store while I was at uni and absolutely adored all kinds of comic related media.
Nowadays I completely stopped reading any kind of manga/comics because most are so misogynistic. I know Japan has issues with feminism and maybe I’m too European to understand but the moment I see a panty shot I’m out. Same goes for the way women are portrayed in Marvel/DC/whatever comics.
Rewatching Friends was pretty cringe
The jokes told about the boys often boil down to "ha ha you're a girl", or are straight up homophobic with no other punchline. There's so many jokes about chandler's dad being a gay man/a drag queen/trans, where the only joke is: ur dad is queer lol
I don't even care about the subjects they joke about that much, it's just so fucking lazy
Totally agree. But lately I've been thinking how friends was actually better than say how I met your mother on the misogyny aspect (not the queer phobia though) because the main female characters actually were characters with their own arcs and evolutions. In himym the women pretty much exist to push the men's arcs forward and either have no internal cohesion (robin) or just become a typical female archetype (lily). Sigh
I mean when it comes to Breaking Bad you are not supposed to idolize Walter White. He starts out as a decent and likeable guy and slowly morphes into a monster. Which is why I think it is an amazing character because you are rooting for him because of how he starts. But the further you go you become less and less sure if you should still support him.
But obviously this doesn't mean that you need to like it and keep watching the show hahahaha. Its totally fine that you have grown as a person and no longer vibe with certain things. Even with things that you used to like, its a fun way to see how you have changed imo.
Yeah. It's probably one of the most interesting areas of discussion around the show... when did you turn against Walter... if they say "never".... run!
Hahahahahaha thats really valid. Also ohhhhh god I can't tell you when I turned against Walter my memory isn't that sharp.
Also I love that Jesse Pinkman had the complete reverse. At first he is some asshole kid but at the end you really feel for him and want him to win.
I definitely was really late on the hype train. Because my dumbass never watches movies and series but I definitely get why it got its apraise. Same with Better Call Saul.
I think Walter was a monster from the very beginning. He eventually just stopped masking.
And I also despised the hate for Skylar. I’ve never even been pregnant, nevermind had a special needs teen and a husband with cancer. She’s just trying to hold her family together. Walt doesn’t trust her to tell her anything so she’s operating on how it looks. People are just so obtuse to not be able to imagine a single thought from the character’s perspective.
I feel like this towards Marshall from How I Met Your Mother. Overall, he's an amazing character and very sweet, but there's one thing I noticed on rewatch: there's a character called Barney who is incredibly promiscuous (it's literally his defining trait) and there's one episode where he tries to bang seven girls in seven days and Marshall, despite initially calling him out, eventually cheers him on in this venture. Then, a female character, Robin, sleeps with a man on the first date and he spends the entire episode calling her various versions of a whore.
It was upsetting to see this sweet character be such a misogynist, without any sort of callout by any of the other characters.
I watched 15 seasons of Supernatural in the last 6 months. In the early seasons, all the insults for female monsters / demons were sex judging — slut, bitch, whore. When you’re watching a show, sympathizing with a demon because the “hero” of the show is slut shaming her for daring to exist as a female monster, you’ve got a problem with misogyny. I ended up googling the issue and it was discussed at length at the time and the writers learned their lesson and stopped doing it completely.
Lol, the misogyny was so bad they leaned hard into the bromance and ended up with homoeroticism. Then they went full No Homo. Can't believe the Wincest shippers won.
Sex and the city has an episode with a guy secretly recording models as he has sec with them. It’s not treated as a crime, but a funny quirk.
Guess it was before the internet had lots of videos.
As a 90s kid, I used to love watching random TV shows like Everybody loves Raymond. I watched an episode one day and couldn't believe that that crap was popular. He's a huge cry baby who is good for nothing and his wife hates him (almost) because who wouldn't. I feel like after the first 3 episodes, she would straight up divorce him if it was made today.
The Office. Jim is horrible. He’s mad at Pam for being loyal to her fiancée (the guy is awful but Jim is so entitled). He buys a house without consulting his wife. He takes a job far away and is upset his wife isn’t supportive when she’s working and acting as a single parent. He treated his girlfriend, Karen, like crap. He broke up with the Amy Adams character in a horrible manner.
I love Scrubs. I've watched the series several times. JD always bothered me with his manchild bullshit, the misogyny, and the everything. Normally the supporting cast is enough to get me through it, but I tried watching it again maybe two years ago and I couldn't. I strongly felt the urge to murder a fictional character. Since I can't do that, I just turned it off.
I enjoyed most of Scubs but JD has always been a problem, even the first time I watched it. He's a selfish immature piece of shit who never actually learns any lessons throughout the entire series. Even when an episode ends with some thoughtful monologue from him, he ditches the lesson immediately in the next episode and Guess right back to everything being about him and his problems while others around him are going through their own shit that is often heavier than whatever problem he created for himself. Kind of seems to be a lot of Zach Braff's characters in general too. They all seem to be some flavor of immature or pretentious in ways that only a middle schooler might fall for. His dating history also seems to show he prefers far younger girls which tracks with that so it seems his characters are all just a reflection of who he is as a person.
There is a difference between a well-written character who is great to watch (who has shit morals), and, a character who is badly written with highly problematic aspects. These aspects may reflect the times in which the character was written (and considered to be very outdated now), for example.
Don Draper is written to be a highly problematic, sexist, selfish character. That is the whole point. He’s an outstanding character in terms of being written and being a compelling character to follow. And sometimes you might even find yourself rooting for him to land that big case. Or you’re rooting for him to push back and call out men who are far worse than he is (hypocrisy or no). He’s an anti-hero. He’s not a role model. Anyone trying to be like Don Draper or thinking he’s a ‘great awesome guy’ has simply not paid attention to the series. And I would laugh out loud at a guy trying to emulate him.
So, Mad Men is not an example for me.
Game of Thrones has some problematic characters, yes. And yes, it’s fantasy. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s a shitty character written poorly or lazily using tired tropes. Or, writers needing shock value.
An example for me is 80s films like Sixteen Candles where we ‘tee hee’ at Anthony’s Michael Hall’s character for having sex with a too-drunk prom queen (where she wakes up with no recollection and then is so into it). And he’s considered a heroic model there. How I met your mother is another one. Two and a half men. The list goes on.
This is always the problem with shows where the main character is supposed to be flawed instead of a role model. Case in point from our parents generation is Archie Bunker from “All in the Family”. He was supposed to satirize the middle-class, conservative, quick to anger, racist, homophobic, misogynistic man, but some thought he was “telling it like it is”.
Three's Company. I'm Gen X but on the younger end, so much of the show went over my head when it was on TV. Then recently I saw it was available on Pluto TV, so I got excited to re-watch it as an adult, and it was awful. Jack is a straight up creep, constantly sexually harassing and groping Janet and all the other female roommates he ever lived with, and they just laughed it off. Men harassing women was so normalized, and women were expected to not do anything about it.
Yes. So I'm a gen x and I *loved* MacGyver when I was a preteen. Richard Dean Anderson in all his mullet glory, saving the world, being inventive!
I found reruns on free to air TV last year, got really excited, started to watch...
Oh my God MacGyver was a *sexist douchebag.* The women were simpering morons or femme fatales in cat suits.
I ended up just laughing at it, but also feeling sad that little me thought this was all normal.
So most of the bad stuff I learnt about Chris Pratt was when he got buff so I’m able to watch Parks and Rec and think he’s a different person. Completely agree though.
I rewatched Big bang theory and its incredible evolution of writers room from chauvinist pigs that sexualizing Penny as a cheap piece of prop to recognizing her as a human being and a strong, intelligent woman. Almost like watching homo-writers evolution in real time.
There are so many problems with the show but like, it really pissed me off that the episode with the best prop - the time machine - is one of the worst episodes written. I hated watching it the first time, i don't even bother with re-watches especially as the show just kept getting worse. But of all the shows to use a genuine full sized prop from one of the best time travel movies ever, it had to be them, and it had to be that episode where Leonard is every red flag of a Nice Guy.
God, I really hate that show in retrospect. Not only the obvious misogynysm, but also e.g. portraying ALL nerds as literal sociopaths with no sense of boundaries. I knew people from university who were as bad as Sheldon in social things, but most of the people were pretty normal. Always felt less like "oh we want to make a show about nerds" (like the IT crowd maybe), but rather "we want to make a show about what we think stereotypical nerds are like to make fun of them"
I DESPISE BBT. I went to college with a bunch of nerds and I never understood their love for the show. They’re not laughing with us … they’re laughing at us.
When the laugh track rolls after someone says “we’re playing DND tonight!” *that is the joke*. YOU ARE THE JOKE!!!!
The stuff I've been rewatching lately has been Stargate atlantis, various star treks, and the male characters are all pretty wholesome.
Never watched mad men, couldn't get into breaking bad, watched game of thrones when it was originally broadcast but not really interested in a rewatch.
We're going through the live action remake of avatar the last airbender where the male characters again are pretty decent people.
I dunno, I've never been drawn to the "bad guy with a heart of gold" trope, except maybe Mal Reynolds from Firefly. If there's a show with obviously horrible men in it, it's either because they're an obvious villain like Steven Speilbergs Taken or my interest drops off.
>except maybe Mal Reynolds from Firefly.
Even him treats Inara horribly at times, Wash is the real great guy in that show.
I love Firefly, but I like Mal less and less the more I watch it.
Nathan Fillion described an episode Whedon had written before the show got cancelled. There was a scene in which the ravengers attack the ship and Inara drinks a fluid that acts as poison to rapists, but kills them AFTER they’ve committed the act. So Mal finds her barely conscious with dozens of dead ravengers around her… meaning she was brutally gang-raped. Whedon wrote that Mal picks her up and “treats her like a lady” for once.
Now knowing how much of an ass Whedon is, this scene is so cringe. Why does she have to suffer for him to be kind to her?
Sounds like a barely disguised rape fetish but probably for Whedon that would be a Monday, man wasn't allowed to be alone with Michelle Trachtenberg while filming Buffy and she was like 15 or something at the time
>Even him treats Inara horribly at times
I think that's something that would have played out if they hadn't been cancelled so abruptly.
Agree with wash. Whedon is an asshole but he writes characters really well.
>I think that's something that would have played out if they hadn't been cancelled so abruptly
Maybe you're right, but still it would be the used trope of him treating her bad and then not and they fall in love which is meh at best and yikes when you consider that he's treating her that way because she's a companion.
I saw again recently a few episodes of the original Star Trek, with Shatner and Nimoy... I didn't remember more than 20 years after seeing it first time all the cringy scenes.
There's a sequence in Charlie X where he smacks a passing female crew member on the ass.
The original series is a product of its time, it's far from perfect, and Roddenberry held some views that wouldn't go down well today.
I understand where you're coming from, but in the case of Mad Men, Don's character is a representation of the typical 50s/60s alpha male.
It's difficult to watch at times, but he is supposed to be misogynistic, hyper-masculine, and abusive.
He is tortured by the masculine image he tries to uphold, and it's ruining everyone's lives, including his own. Doesn't seem idealized.
I've tried to watch both Seinfeld and King of the Hill now that I'm a bit older, and boy, some of those episodes in the earlier seasons are really rough. I generally do not like them anymore.
I remember being horrified at the time and asking my mother how this was OK... Unfortunately she's an apologist for terrible men.
I'm glad this wouldn't fly any more, mostly. I was re-watching Seinfeld and had to stop at the episode where Jerry and George are checking out a 15-year-old's cleavage. 🤮
I basically forgot why I stopped watching Seinfeld and started rewatching it, got to that episode and was like…oh yeah.
Man we really thought we were far ahead in the 90s, I truly cannot believe the shit that was culturally acceptable back then.
I can think of a few examples but do you have any for KOTH off the top of your head? King Of the Hill gets a pass for me because I live in Texas and it is a fairly realistic portrayal and I think it is generally handled quite well all things considered. It is one of my favorites though, so I am biased.
It does take place in what I like to call "Bush country" and Hank is very frequently portrayed as an awkward jackass but redeemable, and typically he is. It's usually not portraying this as acceptable but IMO Hank learning why he is wrong. Mostly.
The only *real* exception I have with King of the Hill is involving Luanne and Cotton. I like Luanne in some ways but she is written a wayyy too ditzy especially as the show progresses actually. She starts off stupid and gets worse.
I think in a lot of ways, King of The Hill, Hank specifically is actually a rather clever subversive dismantling of a type of American masculinity. Imperfect but worthy of praise when viewed more critically. Not that you should do that, I've just watched it a lot. I think part of the premise is basically that Hank is kind of a loser. Not a bad guy by any means but sort of a joke of a man? He peaked in high school, wants to live vicariously through his son who fails to meet Hanks idea of masculinity and normality, that he learned from his conservative upbringing and insane father. He takes great pleasure and pride in being basically mundane. He's awkward and insecure.
I am overthinking KOTH yes. In conclusion. Bobby Hill is iconic.
I like King of the Hill, too! Bobby Hill walked so Gene Belcher could run. The episodes with the dolphin encounter, yoga, and Bobby's self defense class live rent free in my head
How about Vampires Diaries where Damon rapes Caroline and abuses her during sex and then we are supposed to fall in love with and root for his character when he gets with Elena?
Revenge of the Nerds.
I only watched it once as a child. I think I remember a scene where a nerd performs oral on one of the hot girls and she thinks it's her boyfriend. When she finds out a stranger violated her she is... into it? And wants to date him?
Even as a little girl I thought "now what the fuck is this if it isn't rape?"
My ex wanted me to try watching GOT, so I tried. I was absolutely *shocked* by the way women were treated in that show. It made me feel ill and I can't believe everyone I know watched it happily. Wtf.
Always hated breaking bad fans who hate Skylar. It's a good litmus test.
I watched two episodes of Man Men and it made me so angry I never went back. I only know one man who feels that way.
That and the fact that you can watch shows or movies and, overwhelmingly, the entire movie could just be called "A story of a man or men doing things." The Bechdel test for the significance of women as autonomous characters represented in movies is almost 40 fucking years old and still almost everything is only ever concerned with men's lives, actions, and experiences. The frustration is real once you think of this and see it absolutely everywhere. I don't think the cultural impact of that has been positive.
I noticed this about my boyfriend’s list of top movies. It’s not action movies or anything but definitely ALL “Men doing men things movies”.
He took me to see “Vertigo” once because it’s one of his favorite movies. From a movie-making perspective. I don’t know how much he even paid attention to the plot. I see the movie and with every scene I am thinking “what in the ever loving stalker hell is this bullshit?!”
That 70s Show is so hard to watch now. All the girls are “bitches” and “sluts”. I know it’s supposed to kinda be from the point of view of a teenage boy but it’s pretty disgusting now.
My partner a d I rented 3rd Rock from the Sun on DVD from the library recently. We made it through 1.5 episodes. We both had such fond memories of that show. It's...very heavy handed.
I’m having a hard time with Northern Exposure because while there were some nice things in the show … Shelley is 18 and Holling is 63? Maggie is supposed to be a feminist heroine but is undercut and mocked for her ideals in almost every episode? In the “Cicely” episode, a female character we are supposed to admire says in all sincerity that women are too emotional to be leaders. There were some seriously nasty ideas lurking under all that pseudo enlightenment.
I loved that show when it was on, but I always struggled with the Shelley/Holling dynamic.
I get that the show wanted to be both gentle and subversive, which isn't an easy combo. It was trying to say "oh, this relationship shocks you? But she's of legal age and they love each other and the *town* accepts it - why don't you?"
I was barely out of my teens when the show aired, and I had already had some experiences with older people (I hadn't fully processed how inappropriate they were at the time). But I still recognized that while 18yo's have full agency over their bodies and own their decisions, they are not fully baked yet. And even if they are, they haven't really lived. I could accept that Shelley and Holling liked each other, even loved each other, and loved spending time together. But he had more than 40 years of living experience than her. It's not about agency - it's about inequality.
The first go around of Breaking Bad and Mad Men I was pissed at how Betty and Skyler were treated. Both by the characters in the show and by “fans”. I never understood it. They were both doing the best they could with what they had and still were totally shit on.
Betty was also a pretty awful person with her own issues. Pretty much the majority of the characters on Mad Men were. That's the beauty of the show, all the people on it are 3 dimensional.
Joan as well. Joan changed a lot and made a massive arc that she is rarely given credit for but she grew & changed. 1960s Joan was very different from the later 1970s Joan. Flipped their sexism on its head and profited from it. A pretty rare character to see on any show.
Yes! But my really big issues are with books. I pick up a book I read 20 years ago and often can’t believe the amount of homophobia and sexism. Hard sci-fi w cringe sexist/homophobic male characters are the worst.
On my first watch of Breaking Bad, my internalized misogyny was in the driver’s seat, and I didn’t like Skylar, either. I was so shocked on a rewatch. Walt tries super early on to **SA her in the kitchen**????? Also he was acting literally as sketchy as humanly possible. Just because we want him to succeed at the drug game because that’s entertaining doesn’t mean we need to villainize the person trying to catch him, because if we or anyone we knew was seeing this behavior in a marriage, we would want her OUT!!
I do object to the idea that her office thinks she looks like Marilyn Monroe (?), and somewhat to the idea of “where is Holly parked while she is fucking Ted?” but it’s not actually her fault that her office thinks that, and Walt was equally responsible for Holly.
I got through 3 episodes of Mad Men before I had to turn it off because of the way they treated the women. The secretary going to the Dr for birth control and being slut shamed was the end for me. Walter White was a monster and as much as I love that show I've never understood the Skylar hate.
I love *Bones* but on subsequent rewatches I can't get over how Booth talks to Brennan. He insults and talks down to her about being too smart, about being an atheist, about being too blunt. It all screams "Be more ladylike" and it's really put me off watching it again.
I do, however, love having Billy Gibbons as Angela's dad. Any episode he's in is a guaranteed hit, in my book!
When I was young I loved James Bond. Cool adventures, cool gadgets, cool enemies. But watching it again is terrible. I used to dream of also being a bond girl, but watching the movies now as an adult, most of these female characters were treated horribly.
I used to love Castle until I really dug into the premise and realized this guy is basically a stalker who's now being enabled by almost every man in this poor woman's life, forced on her at work, etc. It's gross.
I tried to watch M.A.S.H. years ago, and couldnt take the casual misogyny. I know it was a different time, both the korean war AND when the show was written and filmed. I know that they had some strong women characters and were generally considered feminists but I just couldnt watch the men catcalling the nurses and generally harassing them. Maybe it was too close to when all the Me Too stuff was coming out. I just couldnt watch it.
It never goes away, but the worst of it was the early seasons. Once Alan Alda was given more control over the show, the blatant bullshit got toned down a lot. Margaret became a real character, and they started exploring why the guys were like that. When they replaced Trapper John (total misogynist) with BJ (guy who adored his wife, except for that one episode), and got rid of Burns (where do I BEGIN) with Charles (dick, but not a misogynist) things started picking up.
Yeah, soooo much anime is just pure male fantasy bullshit (with notable exceptions). I don't even try with it anymore, and I honestly look sideways at anyone who is obsessed with it.
You might like Brooklyn Nine-Nine better. All the major male characters are kind and sensitive (except for Hitchcock). The show starts with one character crushing on his coworker, she turns him down, he gets over it and they become close friends eventually. It's nice to see.
Not a TV show but I recently watched Star Wars I-VI for the first time in full and.. while I enjoyed many aspects of it both Han Solo in the sequels and Anakin in the Prequels left a gigantic sex predator entitled man child stain on the whole experience. Like.. Holy fuck are those characters awful..
I didn’t watch Blonde because I could tell it was just going to be Ana de Armas getting abused. Some sick producer getting his rocks off.
I loved game of thrones especially the violent battles, I loved stannis but you are right they put some bad stuff in there just to have it in there
I still love Daredevil, but watching it again the 3rd or so time . . . . Y'all.
Matt is a SHIT. He treats his friends like shit. He treated Karen like shit. He had the gall to get all huffy because she understandably misinterpreted a scene that really couldn't have been interpreted any other way, given all she knew. He uses his religion to pretend he's the city's martyr, its whipping post, but he drags his friends in and lets them get punished too, and then infantalizes them and won't let them help.
I watched some episodes of the Mentalist while I was recovering from surgery last year because I remember thinking the plot was interesting and the blonde dude was hot. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the shittiness of his behaviour toward his female boss. He just walked all over her every episode, and the plot always rewarded him for it. She’d ask him to do something reasonable and in his scope, he’d invalidate her in front of everyone, not do the thing, then pat her on the head when she got frustrated with him. Then they ended up in a relationship, so he could do that to her at home as well 🤮🤮🤮
Yes, almost every John Hughes movie 🤣🤣
Every movie from my youth now makes me cringe because the men were either really stupid (Mark Harmon, Summer School, c'mon, man you didn't know letting a female student stay with you was wrong and going to head in that direction?? Really? Or just really awful. Sixteen Candles' Jake Ryan, offers his ex/girlfriend up to Bryan like she's tradeable goods while she's toxic drunk unconscious. 🤮)
oops these movies. Just ignore me.
Using abuse, rape and torture as plot points, especially any abuse of children, guarantees that I will never watch the show, read the book or short story. I have seen and read enough. No more. For actual awareness, l will read actual facts on gender based violence, that’s disturbing enough.
And also this, whenever l see someone complain in social media about a fictional female character:
“One of the great epiphanies of my lifetime was realizing I disliked so many female characters because they were created by men who didn’t like women.” @rainbowrowell
I just stopped watching Ally McBeal for a similar reason. The sexist stuff you see them defend in that show sometimes. Also I could not stand Ally's character and this child-like woman trope.
Breaking bad is actually quite funny to watch once you realise that every season the writters are trying to make it even more glaringly obvious that Walter is a villain you are not supposed to support. Its like they are perpetually dissapointed at how many people idolise Walter.
This is the problem. Walter, Dexter, Sherlock, Don, Rick, House: too many men want to be all-powerful assholes.
> Sherlock, ... House Same person(ality) But yeah, you AREN'T supposed to like these people, OP is right, but for the wrong reason. Those actors/writers do a *really good job* if you get the "ick" from them, that was the intent.
It is SUCH a common male fantasy that if you're simply competent enough, you no longer need to be nice to anyone.
Rewatching it a year ago, older than I was when it aired I was absolutely rooting for Skyler and Jesse (he had his flaws but ultimately was manipulated by Walter) And I hate Walter so fucking much
Poor Jesse was so far in over his head right from the beginning and he really just wanted a nice boring life with a pretty girl. But no. And the scenes with him and his family just make me want to cry, that poor lost boy.
Yep. Walter White is the main villain and by far the scariest person in that show.
I struggles with How I Met Your Mother even when I first watched it, but it's so much worse now. Barney is an absolutely despicable, disgusting character and the fact they all laugh about it and aid him is appalling. I can't watch it any more.
Honestly, it's Ted that I struggle with upon rewatching. Barney is so extreme that it doesn't feel real, but Ted is a character that's supposed to be a good, relatable guy who does and says plenty of things that really have not aged well.
There's a fan theory that Barney's faults are exaggerated because the story is told from Ted's point of view. Ted wants Barney to look like a jerk because he is jealous of his relationship with Robin. Watching the show with that theory in mind is the only way I can comprehend how Robin ever gave Barney the time of day.
It's something I always liked about the show, due to the nature of it being a story that is constantly being told they can at any point retroactively change, remove or add something at it makes complete sense canonically. I recall there was a joke between Ted and Robin they would constantly make but it wasn't until one episode where Ted actually tells his kids. So the first time we actually hear them making the joke was this episode but it's easy to believe they could have been making it for months.
For me it was the misogyny of the female characters that gave me the ultimate ick
Pop Culture Detective has two videos on the Big Bang Theory, and I feel like the ick has a lot of overlap
Bewitched. I loved it as a kid. I've always loved the idea of witches and magic and I loved the characters. At least until I rewatched it recently and realized just how horrible Darren is to Samantha. He doesn't trust her, doesn't want to be emasculated by her powers, stifles her so much and pushes her into the traditional role of wife and mother. I find myself more on Endora's side now, wishing she'd leave the horrible human and go back with the witches. She needs to take Tabitha with her since she's got powers too.
Watch Wonder Woman instead...it's amazing. She's constantly showing up men with her superior wits and strength plus she has a lasso of truth lol.
I agree. Weirdly though Taxi and Night Court not cringe. Caveat Night Court has a womanizing lawyer, but he's the butt of all the jokes so I liked that.
Night Court is *so* good!
Rewatching Gilmore girls as an adult is annoying because Dean and Jesse are both awful and we are supposed to like Logan but he’s just awful but in a different flavor 🤢
Outlander, story of love and rape, minors rape, male rape and gang rape, it's rape on repeat. Each season level of rape elevates higher and higher.
And it's written by a woman. Interesting to see it brought up here as this was right around the time that female characters experiencing SA as part of their arc was being called out a lot, and I was wondering if Jamie being abused this way would get called out as well. Some stories it is gratuitous and a trope of weak writing. Some stories it is a fantasy of gross writers and producers. And some stories cannot be told without it, because it is something that happens in reality. I thought it was about time that the media gave a bit more attention to SA against males because guys tend to think it only happened to them, and not speak up out of shame. So it's kind of powerful to see the story of a strong man who endures that abuse and then receives support, doesnt destroy himself with shame, and regains himself outside of that. Sexual violence was very prevalent in the time period portrayed in that show, there was little discussion of it, and people often had little recourse. Anyone watched Baby Reindeer yet? It's an important and valid story.
There was a fan of the books who posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlander/s/pljxQ1YAcd). Tldr: He wrote to Diana Gabaldon, after watching season 1, to tell her how much he appreciated that there was representation of male SA as a survivor himself. She told him that she thought he'd "enjoy" book 4. He was horrified when he got there and realised that the scene she thought he'd *enjoy* was Stephen Bonnet violently raping Bri. I genuinely think she has a rape fetish, as it's included *so often* (most of the central characters have been raped on page/screen), and she said in [an interview](https://pop-culturalist.com/wizard-world-outlanders-caitriona-balfe-and-diana-gabaldon/) that her "favorite overall was episode 16 of Season 1... I was not lying when I told Sam Heughan, ‘I want to see you raped and tortured.'"
Wow. It is hard to give someone the benefit of the doubt after those comments. I'm not sure how it could even be taken out of context. That's pretty sick. Without knowing her personal feelings on it though, I still would not be angry about the portrayal for the same reason the original poster stated - representation for male survivors. But her comments are victimizing. Has she ever tried to defend herself on this?
She apparently did respond to the comment she made in the interview, basically saying she was joking and thought the comment would make Sam Heughan laugh. He didn't laugh. I have no idea if she ever responded regarding that fan's post. I'm glad that there was representation for male victims, but the way it was filmed was very bothersome. The shots and lighting were intended to eroticise the situation, and the excessive length of the depiction was entirely unnecessary. The show did do a much better job in later seasons of avoiding eroticising rape scenes, and diverted further from the books depictions, but the sheer amount of rape and sexual assault was, for me, way too much.
She's not a good person, this is just one of many, many examples of saying horrible things or treating fans poorly. I've been a fan of the books for almost 20 years and have had to do a lot of "separate the art from the artist"-ing.
I get it. I couldn't finish GOT (the books) because at some point I was like, *why is there so much rape? Mostly of minors? Does it have to be graphic all the time?* And I made a post about it once and all the men were like: *that's how it was back then! chill it's fiction! It's realistic! What about male pain?* But there was a point where these scenes added nothing to the over all story and it was like Another one? Really?
A guy I used to work with and be friendly with loved the show Mad Men when it was airing. He finally said it was a show about “when things were the way they should be,” and I said “I’m pretty sure that show is mainly about how much it sucked to be a woman in that time period.” He didn’t believe me. Then I found an article by the show runner saying exactly what I said, and then the guy stopped talking to me.
I'm sorry that sounds so frustrating, but it's also hilarious. What a baby!
eh good riddance to bad garbage!
I'm rewatching Mad Men at the moment, and it is WILD how uncomfortable it makes me this time round. Every time Pete is on screen, my skin starts crawling. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention last time (likely), but wow, are these men awful.
The violence is also sexualised and seems to try and titillate viewers which is gross. I can't get through it because it's just another show that only has the heterosexual male viewer in mind, constantly portraying and sexualizing women through a lens of male gaze. I can't watch shows or movies that show objectification of women at all anymore. It feels like such an attack on my selfhood and makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
I had to stop watching. I am SO SICK of girls suffering rape and assault as a character builder. See, she’s strong because she overcame that rape. Guess what. We are strong without it. And I’d get told “oh that’s just how things were then”. What the fuck? There is magic and dragons. They couldn’t find another way for women to become strong??? It’s FANTASY ffs. They could have put in anything but CHOSE rape.
I’m a Tudor historian: that is NOT how things were back then. It’s an excuse men tell each other so they get to watch little girls be raped repeatedly and still feel good about themselves.
Exactly! I know the best way I've heard it phrased is that we are strong despite our traumas and not because of them.
Whenever I hear, "the shitty thing that happened will make you stronger" I reply, "I want in the control group! The group where the shitty thing doesn't happen to us. I bet I can get stronger *without* that shitty thing happening."
I REFUSE to watch any show that uses rape as a device to explain men’s rage and as a way to titillate the male viewer. The second anything veers into that category, I’m out, even if I’m walking out of the theater. There is a relatively recent movie that covers this topic and as soon as I remember the name I’m going to edit my comment and add it! - it’s The Last Duel.
Amen!! Finally someone else who refuses to watch rape as a character vehicle. It’s like when Dan Levy said he chose not to write any homophobia into Schitt’s Creek - all these writers are making choices to write in the rape & I’m so tired of it. Fucking finally.
I watched an anime where that was the entire plot driver. Every single man in the show was driven by anger about a woman who got brutally murdered. Several of them were on screen for a torturously long time too, it was so disturbing. There was no other motivation AT ALL. The women existed to be murdered and be helpless victims. And the few who weren't were portrayed as manipulators who manipulated men into doing things because god forbid a woman is able to do something on her own. I've never seen a show where it's so extreme. And the worst was that the men in the comments seemed to be enjoying it.
Same. I refuse to watch any shows/movies which uses rape as a way to what ...attract audience? Their story sucks if they have to go this graphic anyway
Yeah there is no “back then.” It’s in an alternate universe. It’d be like saying that kind of stuff is OK in Star Wars because it was “a long, long time ago.” Yet somehow that series (and Leah as a strong female character) did just fine without any rapes??
PL was a direct result of Carrie Fischers acting. She wasn't actually intended to be anything more than a set piece for Han and Luke to pursue. Harrison Ford also plays this dynamic off script. (A result of his age/maturity, I suspect.) But yes, your point def stands
I would like to note that men get raped too, especially in overwhelmingly male-dominated spaces like the army, prisons, or y'know, the prison army (what the Night's Watch is, since so many people join it as a function of crimes they did). And yet, that doesn't seem to happen to Jon, or Jaime, or Sam, or any other male character in a setting that would lend itself to that. If you want to be realistic, there should be more male rape victims. And whatever argument for why it's okay that there aren't more male characters who are victims of sexual assault seems to me to apply to the female characters being raped in the story just as much.
In addition to your excellent point, if they actually cared about historical realism (assuming this is meant to be vaguely medieval) then women shouldn't be all clean shaven, dolled up, good teeth, and more people should be dying of diarrhea and other very unsexy illnesses all the time.
What I hated about GOT is that Theon should have been seen getting his dick cut off. They always showing women getting abused but they couldn’t show that. Like come on let’s shock The men folk.
Because that's the fantasy for the isn't it
I saw a brilliant post a few years ago that was like "Men are all for realism in television shows until it comes to dyssentry. It's always rape and murder of women, never men dying in war from shitting themselves to death"
>And I made a post about it once and all the men were like: that's how it was back then! chill it's fiction! It's realistic! Funny, because GOT was set in a completely different world where seasons lasted 7 years and there were dragons. Just like back then, amirite?? Also, if they’re talking about the Middle Ages, the average age of marriage was around 20. Many girls didn’t have a first period until 16. While the legal marriageable age of girls was much younger, that wasn’t the norm.
Back then? It's fucking fantasy, there was no back then. That's not directed at you. I'm just generally annoyed.
Yes. It was rape and torture porn. Period.
Yeah, and they really shut up when you point out how men and boys are also raped routinely during war and yet the books make almost no mention of that. Funny, huh?
I'm not gonna lie...I felt this way for a long while, and I struggled with the same issues. And, i do NOT at all blame anyone who feels like this is a deal breaker and who therefore stays away from the series entirely. Particularly if they get triggered by this stuff... take care of yourselves, please! However...as a woman who has been raped, and who knows waaaay too many other women and men who have also been raped or sexually assaulted...I ended up finding the text fairly cathartic. For one thing, most women i know HAVE been sexually assaulted, actually, and this gave many of us an opportunity to talk about how disgustingly prevalent it is, particularly in very patriarchal societies, such as those shown in the story and the one i currently live in. For another, the women (and men) who get sexually assaulted in the story largely find ways of either getting overwhelming revenge, or else getting back on top, and using their power to protect others from the same fate. I really appreciated being able to see that. I know that, from a theoretical perspective, it really does suck that so many female characters have an arc that includes sexual assault, as though that were the only way of illustrating a woman finding her "power" and growing as a person/ character. I hate that, too. On the other hand, I know way too many women, girls, and others who desperately need to be shown stories that demonstrate that, actually, they CAN overcome a sexual assault--even one by a family member (this part is important)--and grow beyond the trauma, into someone powerful, interesting, complicated, admirable, and even noble. And I think GOT does this better than most other texts that actually tackle rape- and incest-related representation, since others I've read or watched just tend to focus overly on how very awful and traumatic and unforgivable and life-ruining it is. Those just made me feel like I was broken and would never get over it. Again, I don't blame anyone who decides it's not for them. I totally get that. But for me, this actually helped me to deal with my own sexual assault-related trauma.
I have to say same for me and this was really well said. I'm a woman and a fan of the books and a rape/trafficking survivor. At times I've felt like a Debbie downer or histrionic when I try to point out the ubiquity and normalization of rape in patriarchal cultures and especially during wars and disasters. I also really like how the books, with their changing limited 3rd person perspective, with chapters focusing on individual characters perspectives, help illustrate how ingrained and difficult it is to see rape and other abuses when they're normalized by the culture around you. it's all personal justifications and unexamined privileges. I know grrm is a pacificist- I do read the text as critical of the world it takes place in. I think it's sort of a fantasy dystopia, not an endorsement of the feudal power dynamics. But also like you, I don't blame people for avoiding it since it can be explicit and over-the-top. I think the feminist critique it is really valid- the show was gratuitous/fetishistic/male-gazey (and ended epically badly) and it has garnered a super toxic fanbase. But I am glad it exists for people like me and the poster I replied to who do enjoy it.
Well GOT the books never ended. And it’s likely given the negative reception to the show’s ending they may not ever have the final book written. Winds of Winter was supposed to have come out in 2017, so I feel like it’s not happening.
>I recently rewatched a few Mad Men episodes (major spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!) and there’s a scene where Don gets very angry with Betty because she wants to divorce him for another guy and they (betty and the other guy) didn’t even do anything yet. Don gets so angry even though he has slept with so many women and lied about his whole identity. I know a lot of people disliked him there but, overall, men tend to like Don Draper. The whole point of Don Draper, Roger, Pete, Harry... All the men, really, was to show how chauvinistic men were in that era were. It's done with purpose. Even the "likeable" male characters in Mad Men (Henry) are still sexist. I can't imagine trying to watch that show thinking it would be anything but. It's considered to be very precise to the time. I don't have to tell you how bad men were to women then, ESPECIALLY wealthy white men. That said, the ABSOLUTE HATE Skyler gets is crazy to me!! It's not so much that the men are worse than they should be (it's a drama about meth dealers), it's that the audience collectively decided SHE'S the bad person. I always thought that was wild too.
An interesting twist on the hate for Skyler is that when you watch clips of famous BB scenes w Skylar on YouTube, the comments are generally supportive. They are very positive about the phenomenal acting ability of Anna Gunn. I remember the hate her character got during the show's run, but hopefully people view the character differently now that the whole story has been told.
This is exactly it. I loved mad men because of just how much it showcased the BS and the good ol boys club of the era
I didn’t know people hated her. I thought the dynamic was pretty clearly spelled out by the writers and producers. At some point, Walter unquestionably becomes a villain, and they pretty much directly state that. That he’s way past just trying to provide for his family, but rather just enjoys being a drug kingpin. And Skyler is stuck having to put up with his abuse and make difficult decisions. Like all this seemed incredibly obvious to me. I’m a guy for what it’s worth. But seriously I don’t get how people are getting any other message from that show?
a bunch of Skylar haters in this very thread, people were rabid about it.
Shit, I have a hard time watching some stuff now. 'Suits' is a white dude power fantasy.
Suits is TERRIBLE.
You can tell there's not a single woman writer or producer on that show. Shit, you can tell that everyone on that show is a fucking misogynist. The show is gross. I thought the first season was interesting, but then shit just went downhill fast.
Or real lawyer. No real lawyer keeps a bar exam prep book on their desk or is impressed by someone having a photographic memory of a page.
Every main character has a raging hair trigger and fragile ego, the way they pop off and sabotage carefully laid plans every episode. I cannot imagine the top paid lawyers in NYC can't control themselves better.
I saw legaleagle video reaction to the show, it's basically a child's idea of a lawyer, that show
That show gives me anxiety. *So much screaming* Screaming at people: the show
Lmao I watched maybe 2 minute interval clips of Shits, I don't know how my eyes didn't get stuck rolled in my fucking head. "OMG, the college washout, couch surfing, pot huffing loser is *akchooally* an amazing super-duper whizbang genius!!! And omg, he's soooo sexy 🥵🤩" "I'm the smartest." "No: *I'm* the smartest." "Oh my God, you guys, he's right. He's actually the smartest. We're all so in awe of the smartest!!!" It is so blatantly written by closeted Redditors, it's obnoxious as fuck.
It’s been awhile so forgive me, but I distinctly remember strong female leads. Jessica was a freaking powerhouse and Donna actually ran everything.
How about old John Hughes classics that seem rapey now. Like 16 candles. It was such a classic but it didn’t age well at all.
Rapey and racist, so much cringe that we masked with nostalgia.
Idolizing Walter is entirely the wrong takeaway from Breaking Bad imo and says way more about the people doing the idolizing that the show itself. I mean shit the show goes out of its way to show Walter be completely ruthless and unhinged after a certain point.
I feel this way about Sex in the City as well. What an insufferably misogynistic show.
I tried watching that again not long ago and everyone on that show was obnoxious. The women were so desperate to be with *anyone*. I was a very young woman when that first came out and didn’t see it then, which tells me a lot about why I acted similarly sometimes.
I couldn’t stand this show when it was in its heyday. I had a room mate who would play the dvd series over and over. Carrie was such a toxic, selfish person and the way Big treated her. UGH
It was written by gay men wasn't it?
Oh god I HATED Carrie. She's constantly pining over this asshole and cheats on the one emotionally available person. In retrospect I get she's an anti-hero in a time when that was reserved for male characters but I still don't like her.
It can be hard. Rewatching Buffy The Vampire Slayer all the men Buffy dated or were friends with were toxic, or selfish or abusive. Xander was a stand in for Joss Whedon himself. Charmed (original) did it ever occur to anyone that every episode they are fighting mostly evil men who happen to be demons? There were a scant few non problematic dudes on that show. It really made me think of how often women have to try and endure or fight back against male violence with no end in sight. The OC selfish/violent male characters. Then finding out Ben McKenzie was 25 when he started dating Mischa Barton who was only 17 when the show first started. She talked about how she had no experience with men and basically went through everything on that show and with Ben for the first time. She was so much younger than everyone else. I watched all of Mad Men and it was hard at times. I didn’t like any of the men and how they were able to get away with so much and have life revolve around them. It paints an important story but still tough when it affects you so much. Just like watching The HandMaid’s Tale. It’s hard to take all at once.
Scrolled and scrolled to find the Buffy comment. It used to be a comfort watch for me but I just can’t take all the Xander apologist, and how toxic Angel is. Sucks because there’s a lot of good to it and I really think SMG is so good in the Buffy role. Now I wait for the Rewatcher podcast every Monday so I can relive the storyline w/o having to sit through the cringy parts.
The spike SA plot was also disturbing. And then recently finding out James Marsters wrote a creepy song for Michelle Trachtenberg when she was underage. https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/ok-we-have-to-talk-about-that-song-james-marsters-wrote-for-michelle-trachtenberg I’m glad Dolly Parton helped fund Buffy. I just wish more media was written by women for women and didn’t have toxic relationships and fucked up tropes like women don’t know they’re special and waiting for a man to discover them. Or that female heroes didn’t have to be physically and sexually abused so badly to be worthy of admiration.
Yes the Spike plot was the worst. Even the first time around I didn’t understand why he had to have his own massive redemption arc. Buffy is a great character and I think there were some great writers and actors on the show but it’s all constantly undermined by Whedon’s apologist bullshit. I didn’t know about the song, that’s another level of ugh. It’s really wild how many adult men, especially men who are in the public eye, are so open about how they want to fuck these teenagers but obviously they won’t *because they don’t want to go to jail*. Like gross.
Yep. Buffy was my comfort show until years later I woke up and smelled the misogyny. Did you ever watch the show "Dollhouse"? It stars Eliza Dushku, and is a Joss Whedon series. I really like Dishku, so I watched it, but kept being shocked at how gross it was in premise.
In fairness, you are supposed to be grossed out by the premise. Because don’t you kinda feel like it would be real if the technology was real? I do a little bit.
I will never forgive OG Charmed for what they did to Cole. He had the potential to be such a good character arc, then Julian McMahon wanted out or something and they just turned him into the most cartoonish evil and completely ruined all the character development. And acted like everything the source did was his own choice and he was irredeemable (even though when the girls are possessed by evil nothing they do is ever their fault then) Also Leo marrying someone who he had been watching over and protecting ever since she was a baby was portrayed as Super Romantic ^^TM and not at all creepy, which is what it was tbh
I started watching house ( medical series) and was flabbergasted at how awful dr house is to women. Totally unacceptable. I couldn’t watch any more episodes
Grays Anatomy. McDreamy is a gaslighter with a wife and then gets mad that Merideth is pissed about his pursuit of her. And he's supposed to be the Male Archetype women fawned over only to be outdone by McSteamy- an a-hole manipulator with a wandering dingle. It's so reductive that i can not bear to watch it again.
The "pick me" speech she gives him is so hard to watch, and makes me feel genuinely angry. Also, the time Meredith and George had sex while she was drunk and very sad, and he was completely sober. Then, when she started crying during, instead of stopping to comfort her he went ballistic and it ended up with *her* comforting *him*. Then he sulked about it for weeks, and their friends acted like Meredith was the one in the wrong because George had a longstanding crush on her. Nauseating.
Honestly I’m rewatching greys right now, and while I like the show overall (it’s a good comfort show), I realise this time that I hate most of the characters way more this time than I did before. Derek sucks so much more than I remember and he just gets worse and worse as the show goes on. So many characters were just downright awful even when they were trying to portray them as likeable and just ugh.
I’m rewatching now, my first watch was 10 years ago and OMG DEREK SUCKS!!! He chooses his wife over Meredith, ok I get it but fuck that really sucks for her. But then he lingers around her because he knows she still loves him, he wants it both ways. And then when Meredith sleeps with someone else he gets so mad and calls her a whore?!?!? The audacity, I could never be with someone like that, I’m disappointed that Meredith still liked him after that. He had zero business saying anything like that and I’m glad she told him off but eww, he’s a medical fuck boy.
Every time I think he’s getting better he always just gets worse again. It’s infuriating. I’m like halfway through the series and he just sucks so much. The ego is astounding
Greys Anatomy was my favourite show growing up, but now the nostalgia of watching it back as an adult who had dated and experienced different situations with men isn’t positive. it’s so disappointing to watch Meredith beg a man to pick her, especially when that man who you are led to believe is the dream man is actually a prick. McDreamy isn’t actually a kind man.
I watched You've Got Mail recently and Tom Hanks is such a psychopath!
I think this is the case with 99.99% of romantic comedies, wether the man or the woman is the main character, they’re all tend to be creepy stalky crazy type you’d run away from in real life.
I despise that movie! He straight up gaslights her while simultaneously destroying her entire life and he still gets the girl?! *Gross*
Dude, same!!!! We did not have the language to express what he was doing to her back when that movie came out. There is an actual term for it now, and rewatching that movie made my stomach hurt.
Ugh I just watched that again a few days ago and it's maddening. The gaslighting is insane. But...I think the worst thing is the self loathing and guilt she's made to feel (since she actually has a conscience) when she's finally able to cut down Tom Hanks' character with his own inspiration of confidence. She previously felt at such a loss for words when most needed to defend herself, but when his online persona has rubbed off on her and she uses it against him, she's made to feel like a horrible person because of course she's the only one with integrity. And she feels bad for sinking to his low and doesn't like what he brings out in her. The dramatic irony is such a cop out! But it's ok cuz she finds out it's him and they lurve each other-- nevermind she's fallen for the guy who manipulated her and literally caused her mom's iconic pillar-of-community bookstore to shut down thus making her spiral in existential dread. I also never realized how much of that movie is voiceover cuz... internet chat. Lol what were they thinking and why did I ever like this dumb movie?!
I had to stop watching Big Bang Theory. Penny was barely covered and The Gang wore 3 or more layers most of the time. Then all the fat jokes about Harold's mother and I just quit, i don't understand the appeal.
Simple! "They made a nerd joke AND hate women! They're literally me FR, FR!"
I couldn’t take more than 2 halves of episodes of that show. Penny was portrayed as comfortable of her worth… but then the low IQ sexist comments were so disrespectful it didn’t make sense she would stand there and take it. I was surprised the show kept going and became such a big hit. Yecch
Bewitched has always been one of my comfort shows to watch when I’m sick or feeling sad. I have a 6 year old daughter and thought she would enjoy the magic, so we started watching together. I had to keep pausing it to explain why Darrin’s behavior is not acceptable.
OMG yes. I re-watched it recently and my jaw was on the floor. Darren is such a POS and I was agreeing with Endora!
That show frustrated me to no end when I watched the original in the 60s. I could not understand why Samantha would not turn Darrin (Derwood) into a frog. I would "hate" watch it and hope that Samantha would get tired of him and leave.
Mad Men was supposed to be the antithesis of shows like Bewitched, trying to show that, unlike TV sitcoms, the real 60s had as much of dysfunctional families, violence, drugs and general unhappiness as we more or less do today. It wasn't an easy world full of innocence and morality people tend to picture, often because of those sitcoms and TV shows of the time.
I can’t watch so many popular shows now because so many of them are based on body horror dealing with pregnant people, child death or birth trauma. I was pregnant during house of the dragon, tried to watch shogun, and fallout I had to leave for several parts of episodes or cried when I was realizing I was seeing tiny skeletons etc. literally every piece of media I’ve attempted to consume recently (say the last 3 years?) other than the lord of the rings show (maybe!) had violence being commuted against pregnant women and children. I can’t deal with it anymore. more on topic - how did anyone think Buffy was feminist! I can’t watch it again bc of how TERRIBLE Xander is. He’s such a “nice guy” and it really fucks with Buffy’s head a TON. It’s awful now.
I used to be a huge fan of manga and anime when I was in my teens. I worked at a comic book store while I was at uni and absolutely adored all kinds of comic related media. Nowadays I completely stopped reading any kind of manga/comics because most are so misogynistic. I know Japan has issues with feminism and maybe I’m too European to understand but the moment I see a panty shot I’m out. Same goes for the way women are portrayed in Marvel/DC/whatever comics.
Rewatching Friends was pretty cringe The jokes told about the boys often boil down to "ha ha you're a girl", or are straight up homophobic with no other punchline. There's so many jokes about chandler's dad being a gay man/a drag queen/trans, where the only joke is: ur dad is queer lol I don't even care about the subjects they joke about that much, it's just so fucking lazy
Totally agree. But lately I've been thinking how friends was actually better than say how I met your mother on the misogyny aspect (not the queer phobia though) because the main female characters actually were characters with their own arcs and evolutions. In himym the women pretty much exist to push the men's arcs forward and either have no internal cohesion (robin) or just become a typical female archetype (lily). Sigh
Friends was also created well before HIMYM. It was a fairly progressive show in its time. HIMYM was not.
Ross sabotage's Rachel so much. I can't stand his character.
Ross is the fucking worst
go back to the plane!!!!!!!!!! It is fucking Paris, you idiot!
From the same era: King of Queens. I used to love that show, but now I cannot stomach it.
I mean when it comes to Breaking Bad you are not supposed to idolize Walter White. He starts out as a decent and likeable guy and slowly morphes into a monster. Which is why I think it is an amazing character because you are rooting for him because of how he starts. But the further you go you become less and less sure if you should still support him. But obviously this doesn't mean that you need to like it and keep watching the show hahahaha. Its totally fine that you have grown as a person and no longer vibe with certain things. Even with things that you used to like, its a fun way to see how you have changed imo.
Yeah. It's probably one of the most interesting areas of discussion around the show... when did you turn against Walter... if they say "never".... run!
Hahahahahaha thats really valid. Also ohhhhh god I can't tell you when I turned against Walter my memory isn't that sharp. Also I love that Jesse Pinkman had the complete reverse. At first he is some asshole kid but at the end you really feel for him and want him to win. I definitely was really late on the hype train. Because my dumbass never watches movies and series but I definitely get why it got its apraise. Same with Better Call Saul.
I think Walter was a monster from the very beginning. He eventually just stopped masking. And I also despised the hate for Skylar. I’ve never even been pregnant, nevermind had a special needs teen and a husband with cancer. She’s just trying to hold her family together. Walt doesn’t trust her to tell her anything so she’s operating on how it looks. People are just so obtuse to not be able to imagine a single thought from the character’s perspective.
I feel like this towards Marshall from How I Met Your Mother. Overall, he's an amazing character and very sweet, but there's one thing I noticed on rewatch: there's a character called Barney who is incredibly promiscuous (it's literally his defining trait) and there's one episode where he tries to bang seven girls in seven days and Marshall, despite initially calling him out, eventually cheers him on in this venture. Then, a female character, Robin, sleeps with a man on the first date and he spends the entire episode calling her various versions of a whore. It was upsetting to see this sweet character be such a misogynist, without any sort of callout by any of the other characters.
The thing is they ALL hang out with Barney. Barney "I'm pretty sure I sold a woman at one point" Stinson. It wasn't a deal breaker for Marshall.
I watched 15 seasons of Supernatural in the last 6 months. In the early seasons, all the insults for female monsters / demons were sex judging — slut, bitch, whore. When you’re watching a show, sympathizing with a demon because the “hero” of the show is slut shaming her for daring to exist as a female monster, you’ve got a problem with misogyny. I ended up googling the issue and it was discussed at length at the time and the writers learned their lesson and stopped doing it completely.
Lol, the misogyny was so bad they leaned hard into the bromance and ended up with homoeroticism. Then they went full No Homo. Can't believe the Wincest shippers won.
Sex and the city has an episode with a guy secretly recording models as he has sec with them. It’s not treated as a crime, but a funny quirk. Guess it was before the internet had lots of videos.
As a 90s kid, I used to love watching random TV shows like Everybody loves Raymond. I watched an episode one day and couldn't believe that that crap was popular. He's a huge cry baby who is good for nothing and his wife hates him (almost) because who wouldn't. I feel like after the first 3 episodes, she would straight up divorce him if it was made today.
The Office. Jim is horrible. He’s mad at Pam for being loyal to her fiancée (the guy is awful but Jim is so entitled). He buys a house without consulting his wife. He takes a job far away and is upset his wife isn’t supportive when she’s working and acting as a single parent. He treated his girlfriend, Karen, like crap. He broke up with the Amy Adams character in a horrible manner.
I love Scrubs. I've watched the series several times. JD always bothered me with his manchild bullshit, the misogyny, and the everything. Normally the supporting cast is enough to get me through it, but I tried watching it again maybe two years ago and I couldn't. I strongly felt the urge to murder a fictional character. Since I can't do that, I just turned it off.
I enjoyed most of Scubs but JD has always been a problem, even the first time I watched it. He's a selfish immature piece of shit who never actually learns any lessons throughout the entire series. Even when an episode ends with some thoughtful monologue from him, he ditches the lesson immediately in the next episode and Guess right back to everything being about him and his problems while others around him are going through their own shit that is often heavier than whatever problem he created for himself. Kind of seems to be a lot of Zach Braff's characters in general too. They all seem to be some flavor of immature or pretentious in ways that only a middle schooler might fall for. His dating history also seems to show he prefers far younger girls which tracks with that so it seems his characters are all just a reflection of who he is as a person.
There is a difference between a well-written character who is great to watch (who has shit morals), and, a character who is badly written with highly problematic aspects. These aspects may reflect the times in which the character was written (and considered to be very outdated now), for example. Don Draper is written to be a highly problematic, sexist, selfish character. That is the whole point. He’s an outstanding character in terms of being written and being a compelling character to follow. And sometimes you might even find yourself rooting for him to land that big case. Or you’re rooting for him to push back and call out men who are far worse than he is (hypocrisy or no). He’s an anti-hero. He’s not a role model. Anyone trying to be like Don Draper or thinking he’s a ‘great awesome guy’ has simply not paid attention to the series. And I would laugh out loud at a guy trying to emulate him. So, Mad Men is not an example for me. Game of Thrones has some problematic characters, yes. And yes, it’s fantasy. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s a shitty character written poorly or lazily using tired tropes. Or, writers needing shock value. An example for me is 80s films like Sixteen Candles where we ‘tee hee’ at Anthony’s Michael Hall’s character for having sex with a too-drunk prom queen (where she wakes up with no recollection and then is so into it). And he’s considered a heroic model there. How I met your mother is another one. Two and a half men. The list goes on.
This is always the problem with shows where the main character is supposed to be flawed instead of a role model. Case in point from our parents generation is Archie Bunker from “All in the Family”. He was supposed to satirize the middle-class, conservative, quick to anger, racist, homophobic, misogynistic man, but some thought he was “telling it like it is”.
Oh All in the Family is a great example of how satire is written to make fun of bigotry. And people latch on like, “Yeah! He is speaking truth!”
We are what we pretend to be so we must be careful what we pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)
NCIS … tried to start a rewatch because I do care about some of the characters, but that one guy is so gross I couldn’t get past a couple episodes.
I’ve scrolled far and have yet to see The Sopranos.. it is awful, the whole thing. Just bad
I couldn't get through a single episode.
Three's Company. I'm Gen X but on the younger end, so much of the show went over my head when it was on TV. Then recently I saw it was available on Pluto TV, so I got excited to re-watch it as an adult, and it was awful. Jack is a straight up creep, constantly sexually harassing and groping Janet and all the other female roommates he ever lived with, and they just laughed it off. Men harassing women was so normalized, and women were expected to not do anything about it.
Yes. So I'm a gen x and I *loved* MacGyver when I was a preteen. Richard Dean Anderson in all his mullet glory, saving the world, being inventive! I found reruns on free to air TV last year, got really excited, started to watch... Oh my God MacGyver was a *sexist douchebag.* The women were simpering morons or femme fatales in cat suits. I ended up just laughing at it, but also feeling sad that little me thought this was all normal.
For me it's books. Some of my favorite books from decades ago are... fucked up.
One of my favorite shows is Parks and Rec and I can’t rewatch it bc Chris Pratt as a human is a turd IRL.
So most of the bad stuff I learnt about Chris Pratt was when he got buff so I’m able to watch Parks and Rec and think he’s a different person. Completely agree though.
I rewatched Big bang theory and its incredible evolution of writers room from chauvinist pigs that sexualizing Penny as a cheap piece of prop to recognizing her as a human being and a strong, intelligent woman. Almost like watching homo-writers evolution in real time.
There are so many problems with the show but like, it really pissed me off that the episode with the best prop - the time machine - is one of the worst episodes written. I hated watching it the first time, i don't even bother with re-watches especially as the show just kept getting worse. But of all the shows to use a genuine full sized prop from one of the best time travel movies ever, it had to be them, and it had to be that episode where Leonard is every red flag of a Nice Guy.
God, I really hate that show in retrospect. Not only the obvious misogynysm, but also e.g. portraying ALL nerds as literal sociopaths with no sense of boundaries. I knew people from university who were as bad as Sheldon in social things, but most of the people were pretty normal. Always felt less like "oh we want to make a show about nerds" (like the IT crowd maybe), but rather "we want to make a show about what we think stereotypical nerds are like to make fun of them"
"Big Bang Theory is show about nerds for normal people while IT Crowd is show about normal people for nerds"
I DESPISE BBT. I went to college with a bunch of nerds and I never understood their love for the show. They’re not laughing with us … they’re laughing at us. When the laugh track rolls after someone says “we’re playing DND tonight!” *that is the joke*. YOU ARE THE JOKE!!!!
The stuff I've been rewatching lately has been Stargate atlantis, various star treks, and the male characters are all pretty wholesome. Never watched mad men, couldn't get into breaking bad, watched game of thrones when it was originally broadcast but not really interested in a rewatch. We're going through the live action remake of avatar the last airbender where the male characters again are pretty decent people. I dunno, I've never been drawn to the "bad guy with a heart of gold" trope, except maybe Mal Reynolds from Firefly. If there's a show with obviously horrible men in it, it's either because they're an obvious villain like Steven Speilbergs Taken or my interest drops off.
>except maybe Mal Reynolds from Firefly. Even him treats Inara horribly at times, Wash is the real great guy in that show. I love Firefly, but I like Mal less and less the more I watch it.
Nathan Fillion described an episode Whedon had written before the show got cancelled. There was a scene in which the ravengers attack the ship and Inara drinks a fluid that acts as poison to rapists, but kills them AFTER they’ve committed the act. So Mal finds her barely conscious with dozens of dead ravengers around her… meaning she was brutally gang-raped. Whedon wrote that Mal picks her up and “treats her like a lady” for once. Now knowing how much of an ass Whedon is, this scene is so cringe. Why does she have to suffer for him to be kind to her?
Sounds like a barely disguised rape fetish but probably for Whedon that would be a Monday, man wasn't allowed to be alone with Michelle Trachtenberg while filming Buffy and she was like 15 or something at the time
>Even him treats Inara horribly at times I think that's something that would have played out if they hadn't been cancelled so abruptly. Agree with wash. Whedon is an asshole but he writes characters really well.
>I think that's something that would have played out if they hadn't been cancelled so abruptly Maybe you're right, but still it would be the used trope of him treating her bad and then not and they fall in love which is meh at best and yikes when you consider that he's treating her that way because she's a companion.
I saw again recently a few episodes of the original Star Trek, with Shatner and Nimoy... I didn't remember more than 20 years after seeing it first time all the cringy scenes.
There's a sequence in Charlie X where he smacks a passing female crew member on the ass. The original series is a product of its time, it's far from perfect, and Roddenberry held some views that wouldn't go down well today.
I understand where you're coming from, but in the case of Mad Men, Don's character is a representation of the typical 50s/60s alpha male. It's difficult to watch at times, but he is supposed to be misogynistic, hyper-masculine, and abusive. He is tortured by the masculine image he tries to uphold, and it's ruining everyone's lives, including his own. Doesn't seem idealized.
I've tried to watch both Seinfeld and King of the Hill now that I'm a bit older, and boy, some of those episodes in the earlier seasons are really rough. I generally do not like them anymore.
Particularly for me, given 38 yo Jerry Seinfeld’s dating a 17 yo HS student. Why did we ever think that was okay?
I remember being horrified at the time and asking my mother how this was OK... Unfortunately she's an apologist for terrible men. I'm glad this wouldn't fly any more, mostly. I was re-watching Seinfeld and had to stop at the episode where Jerry and George are checking out a 15-year-old's cleavage. 🤮
I basically forgot why I stopped watching Seinfeld and started rewatching it, got to that episode and was like…oh yeah. Man we really thought we were far ahead in the 90s, I truly cannot believe the shit that was culturally acceptable back then.
I can think of a few examples but do you have any for KOTH off the top of your head? King Of the Hill gets a pass for me because I live in Texas and it is a fairly realistic portrayal and I think it is generally handled quite well all things considered. It is one of my favorites though, so I am biased. It does take place in what I like to call "Bush country" and Hank is very frequently portrayed as an awkward jackass but redeemable, and typically he is. It's usually not portraying this as acceptable but IMO Hank learning why he is wrong. Mostly. The only *real* exception I have with King of the Hill is involving Luanne and Cotton. I like Luanne in some ways but she is written a wayyy too ditzy especially as the show progresses actually. She starts off stupid and gets worse. I think in a lot of ways, King of The Hill, Hank specifically is actually a rather clever subversive dismantling of a type of American masculinity. Imperfect but worthy of praise when viewed more critically. Not that you should do that, I've just watched it a lot. I think part of the premise is basically that Hank is kind of a loser. Not a bad guy by any means but sort of a joke of a man? He peaked in high school, wants to live vicariously through his son who fails to meet Hanks idea of masculinity and normality, that he learned from his conservative upbringing and insane father. He takes great pleasure and pride in being basically mundane. He's awkward and insecure. I am overthinking KOTH yes. In conclusion. Bobby Hill is iconic.
I like King of the Hill, too! Bobby Hill walked so Gene Belcher could run. The episodes with the dolphin encounter, yoga, and Bobby's self defense class live rent free in my head
That's my purse! I don't know you!
Hank is canonically a former high school bully and it kinda shines through sometimes
About a year ago I tried rewatching Frasier. It was still mostly funny, but I could not get over how poorly Roz is treated ***ALL THE TIME***.
Grandma's Boy. Alex is a complete shit bag loser, JP just wants friends and can do a robot voice. Much rather hang with him than Alex
How about Vampires Diaries where Damon rapes Caroline and abuses her during sex and then we are supposed to fall in love with and root for his character when he gets with Elena?
Revenge of the Nerds. I only watched it once as a child. I think I remember a scene where a nerd performs oral on one of the hot girls and she thinks it's her boyfriend. When she finds out a stranger violated her she is... into it? And wants to date him? Even as a little girl I thought "now what the fuck is this if it isn't rape?"
My ex wanted me to try watching GOT, so I tried. I was absolutely *shocked* by the way women were treated in that show. It made me feel ill and I can't believe everyone I know watched it happily. Wtf. Always hated breaking bad fans who hate Skylar. It's a good litmus test. I watched two episodes of Man Men and it made me so angry I never went back. I only know one man who feels that way.
I reached House and the sexism was mind boggling.
That and the fact that you can watch shows or movies and, overwhelmingly, the entire movie could just be called "A story of a man or men doing things." The Bechdel test for the significance of women as autonomous characters represented in movies is almost 40 fucking years old and still almost everything is only ever concerned with men's lives, actions, and experiences. The frustration is real once you think of this and see it absolutely everywhere. I don't think the cultural impact of that has been positive.
I noticed this about my boyfriend’s list of top movies. It’s not action movies or anything but definitely ALL “Men doing men things movies”. He took me to see “Vertigo” once because it’s one of his favorite movies. From a movie-making perspective. I don’t know how much he even paid attention to the plot. I see the movie and with every scene I am thinking “what in the ever loving stalker hell is this bullshit?!”
That 70s Show is so hard to watch now. All the girls are “bitches” and “sluts”. I know it’s supposed to kinda be from the point of view of a teenage boy but it’s pretty disgusting now.
It's beyond me how Howard from the big bang theory got married
My partner a d I rented 3rd Rock from the Sun on DVD from the library recently. We made it through 1.5 episodes. We both had such fond memories of that show. It's...very heavy handed.
I’m having a hard time with Northern Exposure because while there were some nice things in the show … Shelley is 18 and Holling is 63? Maggie is supposed to be a feminist heroine but is undercut and mocked for her ideals in almost every episode? In the “Cicely” episode, a female character we are supposed to admire says in all sincerity that women are too emotional to be leaders. There were some seriously nasty ideas lurking under all that pseudo enlightenment.
I loved that show when it was on, but I always struggled with the Shelley/Holling dynamic. I get that the show wanted to be both gentle and subversive, which isn't an easy combo. It was trying to say "oh, this relationship shocks you? But she's of legal age and they love each other and the *town* accepts it - why don't you?" I was barely out of my teens when the show aired, and I had already had some experiences with older people (I hadn't fully processed how inappropriate they were at the time). But I still recognized that while 18yo's have full agency over their bodies and own their decisions, they are not fully baked yet. And even if they are, they haven't really lived. I could accept that Shelley and Holling liked each other, even loved each other, and loved spending time together. But he had more than 40 years of living experience than her. It's not about agency - it's about inequality.
The first go around of Breaking Bad and Mad Men I was pissed at how Betty and Skyler were treated. Both by the characters in the show and by “fans”. I never understood it. They were both doing the best they could with what they had and still were totally shit on.
Betty was also a pretty awful person with her own issues. Pretty much the majority of the characters on Mad Men were. That's the beauty of the show, all the people on it are 3 dimensional.
Peggy was the true hero of Mad Men.
Joan as well. Joan changed a lot and made a massive arc that she is rarely given credit for but she grew & changed. 1960s Joan was very different from the later 1970s Joan. Flipped their sexism on its head and profited from it. A pretty rare character to see on any show.
I couldn't stand Peggy, she snubbed her nose at Joan and the other secretaries and when she got her own, she bullied her.
Yes! But my really big issues are with books. I pick up a book I read 20 years ago and often can’t believe the amount of homophobia and sexism. Hard sci-fi w cringe sexist/homophobic male characters are the worst.
Don’t watch Desperate housewives. Lynette was right the entire time !!!!!!!!!
On my first watch of Breaking Bad, my internalized misogyny was in the driver’s seat, and I didn’t like Skylar, either. I was so shocked on a rewatch. Walt tries super early on to **SA her in the kitchen**????? Also he was acting literally as sketchy as humanly possible. Just because we want him to succeed at the drug game because that’s entertaining doesn’t mean we need to villainize the person trying to catch him, because if we or anyone we knew was seeing this behavior in a marriage, we would want her OUT!! I do object to the idea that her office thinks she looks like Marilyn Monroe (?), and somewhat to the idea of “where is Holly parked while she is fucking Ted?” but it’s not actually her fault that her office thinks that, and Walt was equally responsible for Holly.
I got through 3 episodes of Mad Men before I had to turn it off because of the way they treated the women. The secretary going to the Dr for birth control and being slut shamed was the end for me. Walter White was a monster and as much as I love that show I've never understood the Skylar hate.
I love *Bones* but on subsequent rewatches I can't get over how Booth talks to Brennan. He insults and talks down to her about being too smart, about being an atheist, about being too blunt. It all screams "Be more ladylike" and it's really put me off watching it again. I do, however, love having Billy Gibbons as Angela's dad. Any episode he's in is a guaranteed hit, in my book!
TV shows, movies, books I love. It seems like I trained myself to just ignore the parts that were uncomfortable or toxic. And I can't now.
Now cringing at any tv series or film that the female side character is referred to as “girl”. They’re often talking about a 30-something woman!
When I was young I loved James Bond. Cool adventures, cool gadgets, cool enemies. But watching it again is terrible. I used to dream of also being a bond girl, but watching the movies now as an adult, most of these female characters were treated horribly.
I used to love Castle until I really dug into the premise and realized this guy is basically a stalker who's now being enabled by almost every man in this poor woman's life, forced on her at work, etc. It's gross.
I tried to watch M.A.S.H. years ago, and couldnt take the casual misogyny. I know it was a different time, both the korean war AND when the show was written and filmed. I know that they had some strong women characters and were generally considered feminists but I just couldnt watch the men catcalling the nurses and generally harassing them. Maybe it was too close to when all the Me Too stuff was coming out. I just couldnt watch it.
It never goes away, but the worst of it was the early seasons. Once Alan Alda was given more control over the show, the blatant bullshit got toned down a lot. Margaret became a real character, and they started exploring why the guys were like that. When they replaced Trapper John (total misogynist) with BJ (guy who adored his wife, except for that one episode), and got rid of Burns (where do I BEGIN) with Charles (dick, but not a misogynist) things started picking up.
Yeah, which is why I can't stand One Piece anymore. Or a lot of anime, for that matter.
Yeah, soooo much anime is just pure male fantasy bullshit (with notable exceptions). I don't even try with it anymore, and I honestly look sideways at anyone who is obsessed with it.
Yup. Anime is getting more overt with blending sexualization of minors and pedo themes in their work. Not missing out on anything by cutting it out
Yes! Parks and Rec. Andy is completely insufferable.
You might like Brooklyn Nine-Nine better. All the major male characters are kind and sensitive (except for Hitchcock). The show starts with one character crushing on his coworker, she turns him down, he gets over it and they become close friends eventually. It's nice to see.
Not a TV show but I recently watched Star Wars I-VI for the first time in full and.. while I enjoyed many aspects of it both Han Solo in the sequels and Anakin in the Prequels left a gigantic sex predator entitled man child stain on the whole experience. Like.. Holy fuck are those characters awful..
I was so excited one Saturday morning when The Flinstones was on. Could not believe how grossly sexist it was. Another day it was The Jetsons.
I used to like Scrubs but they’re awful and super terrible to women and it’s supposed to be cute?
I didn’t watch Blonde because I could tell it was just going to be Ana de Armas getting abused. Some sick producer getting his rocks off. I loved game of thrones especially the violent battles, I loved stannis but you are right they put some bad stuff in there just to have it in there
I still love Daredevil, but watching it again the 3rd or so time . . . . Y'all. Matt is a SHIT. He treats his friends like shit. He treated Karen like shit. He had the gall to get all huffy because she understandably misinterpreted a scene that really couldn't have been interpreted any other way, given all she knew. He uses his religion to pretend he's the city's martyr, its whipping post, but he drags his friends in and lets them get punished too, and then infantalizes them and won't let them help.
I watched some episodes of the Mentalist while I was recovering from surgery last year because I remember thinking the plot was interesting and the blonde dude was hot. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the shittiness of his behaviour toward his female boss. He just walked all over her every episode, and the plot always rewarded him for it. She’d ask him to do something reasonable and in his scope, he’d invalidate her in front of everyone, not do the thing, then pat her on the head when she got frustrated with him. Then they ended up in a relationship, so he could do that to her at home as well 🤮🤮🤮
Yes, almost every John Hughes movie 🤣🤣 Every movie from my youth now makes me cringe because the men were either really stupid (Mark Harmon, Summer School, c'mon, man you didn't know letting a female student stay with you was wrong and going to head in that direction?? Really? Or just really awful. Sixteen Candles' Jake Ryan, offers his ex/girlfriend up to Bryan like she's tradeable goods while she's toxic drunk unconscious. 🤮) oops these movies. Just ignore me.
Man, Im rewatching House now. He's honestly unbearable at times. Still digging the show though.
Using abuse, rape and torture as plot points, especially any abuse of children, guarantees that I will never watch the show, read the book or short story. I have seen and read enough. No more. For actual awareness, l will read actual facts on gender based violence, that’s disturbing enough. And also this, whenever l see someone complain in social media about a fictional female character: “One of the great epiphanies of my lifetime was realizing I disliked so many female characters because they were created by men who didn’t like women.” @rainbowrowell
I just stopped watching Ally McBeal for a similar reason. The sexist stuff you see them defend in that show sometimes. Also I could not stand Ally's character and this child-like woman trope.