![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Shortly after Adult Swim was coming under fire for greenlighting the alt-right "comedy" and putting in on for a season, a lot of questions began to surface. Why were all the shows male-dominated? Why did they think that throwing money at this thing was a good idea and more importantly, did this alt-right comedy really go against the Adult Swim brand? If a network is playing to the 4chan crowd, what is the difference between "ironic" racism, sexism and misogyny and the real thing?
This ruined Children's Hospital for me. When I first watched it, I thought it was funny and edgy. Hell, I quite love most of the people in the show. There are still funny bits and razor sharp parodies of hospital show tropes including the sudden death, the voiceover, the doctor walking around on crutches, but too often the jokes relied on everyone being shitty to everyone. There was even one episode that ended with a cameo from the Party Down actors talking about Jews. There was no joke. It just added the two Party Down actors who weren't in the show to the ones who were in the show talking about Jews while the Party Down music played.
I did not realize that this discussion would ruin most sitcoms for me. Too often they seem like Pewdie Pie paying an actor to dress up like Jesus and do that "Hitler did nothing wrong" gag from 2011 and then drag it out to the Jesus actor saying that Hitler was cool and in Heaven, because Hitler is edgy and edgy=funny, right? RIGHT? Come on, someone say that Pewdie Pie is funny. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to read Piers Anthony or Tom Robbins and I am a better man for it.
That's a long windup to get to the point that The Mindy Project is fucking lazy and stupid. I am so fucking sick of "funny misogynists" and broad ethnic stereotypes. The black nurse walked out of ghetto stereoytpe central casting and her white (but acts like a black stereotype) boyfriend is pathetic. They did the episode where the protagonist starts dating a snob (played by the guy from Mad Men who looks a lot like Scott Baio without the 60s hair style) who makes her feel stupid. So she makes a fool out of herself trying to prove that she has culture. This stupid fucking plot was pathetic when it was done on Full House with Jesse left bereft trying to call Picasso overrated ("did you see his blue period?" "Yeah, why didn't he use another color" - I did not realize I still remembered that exchange. What kind of shit am I forgetting to store that dialogue) and it really curdled in HIMYM where Ted kept trying to talk about interesting things and everyone kept making fake fart noises at him. It also makes less sense on The Mindy Project where the main character is supposed to be a doctor. Yes, the main character is Mindy Khaling pretending to be a doctor, but still - doctor.
Also there are people who are getting in "funny" situations that work like idiot plots in movies where the plot hinges on the characters being cluelessly awful to each other. The boyfriend character gets written off the show by being a loser who quits his minister job to become a DJ and then becomes an event planner and we are supposed to get that Mindy is VERY sad. The breakup scenes are realistic but they are unearned since the character was never going to be interesting.
I don't think there's an episode where I'm not wondering why I'm watching it. Right now I am watching the Xmas episode where our heroine gives us THE RULES for seduction. I suppose it should be funny because she will fail, but it's still tired. And then there are moments of genuine crap like the one that begins with the clinic getting a good review on a KKK webisite. The premise seems funny but then it goes to shit real fast with a guest character (the holistic healer guy upstairs?) holding protests outside the clinic to denounce the clinic's racism. Which makes no damn sense but every character will start being all whacky and "accidentally" saying racist things.
I don't know if I should watch it. Mostly I don't know why I am putting myself through this shit because there are so so many GOOD sitcoms out there that this lazy shit has no excuse. We liked Family Ties and The Cosby Show because 80s sitcoms were crap and they were comparatively decent.
This ruined Children's Hospital for me. When I first watched it, I thought it was funny and edgy. Hell, I quite love most of the people in the show. There are still funny bits and razor sharp parodies of hospital show tropes including the sudden death, the voiceover, the doctor walking around on crutches, but too often the jokes relied on everyone being shitty to everyone. There was even one episode that ended with a cameo from the Party Down actors talking about Jews. There was no joke. It just added the two Party Down actors who weren't in the show to the ones who were in the show talking about Jews while the Party Down music played.
I did not realize that this discussion would ruin most sitcoms for me. Too often they seem like Pewdie Pie paying an actor to dress up like Jesus and do that "Hitler did nothing wrong" gag from 2011 and then drag it out to the Jesus actor saying that Hitler was cool and in Heaven, because Hitler is edgy and edgy=funny, right? RIGHT? Come on, someone say that Pewdie Pie is funny. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to read Piers Anthony or Tom Robbins and I am a better man for it.
That's a long windup to get to the point that The Mindy Project is fucking lazy and stupid. I am so fucking sick of "funny misogynists" and broad ethnic stereotypes. The black nurse walked out of ghetto stereoytpe central casting and her white (but acts like a black stereotype) boyfriend is pathetic. They did the episode where the protagonist starts dating a snob (played by the guy from Mad Men who looks a lot like Scott Baio without the 60s hair style) who makes her feel stupid. So she makes a fool out of herself trying to prove that she has culture. This stupid fucking plot was pathetic when it was done on Full House with Jesse left bereft trying to call Picasso overrated ("did you see his blue period?" "Yeah, why didn't he use another color" - I did not realize I still remembered that exchange. What kind of shit am I forgetting to store that dialogue) and it really curdled in HIMYM where Ted kept trying to talk about interesting things and everyone kept making fake fart noises at him. It also makes less sense on The Mindy Project where the main character is supposed to be a doctor. Yes, the main character is Mindy Khaling pretending to be a doctor, but still - doctor.
Also there are people who are getting in "funny" situations that work like idiot plots in movies where the plot hinges on the characters being cluelessly awful to each other. The boyfriend character gets written off the show by being a loser who quits his minister job to become a DJ and then becomes an event planner and we are supposed to get that Mindy is VERY sad. The breakup scenes are realistic but they are unearned since the character was never going to be interesting.
I don't think there's an episode where I'm not wondering why I'm watching it. Right now I am watching the Xmas episode where our heroine gives us THE RULES for seduction. I suppose it should be funny because she will fail, but it's still tired. And then there are moments of genuine crap like the one that begins with the clinic getting a good review on a KKK webisite. The premise seems funny but then it goes to shit real fast with a guest character (the holistic healer guy upstairs?) holding protests outside the clinic to denounce the clinic's racism. Which makes no damn sense but every character will start being all whacky and "accidentally" saying racist things.
I don't know if I should watch it. Mostly I don't know why I am putting myself through this shit because there are so so many GOOD sitcoms out there that this lazy shit has no excuse. We liked Family Ties and The Cosby Show because 80s sitcoms were crap and they were comparatively decent.
