Writer's Block, Or, the Best Movie Franchise of All Time

 I'm having writer's block, with my blog and my ... novel career, so I thought I'd reflect on the first novel-length book I ever wrote, when I was ten years old, that caused my family to tell me I was destined for greatness. Maybe there's something there. I mean, the kid who wrote Eragon was only like 13, right? He got a movie, and I know I can, too.

This book was called Wolf Moon. It starts with a wolf pup losing his mom, Bambi-style, and the pup stumbles onto a family farm. I'll get into this more, but it is VERY vague what time period this takes place in, I was thinking something Little-House-on-the-Prairie esque but I didn't do any historical research.

So, one of the children in the Bell family, who is a ten-year-old girl JUST LIKE ME, finds the wolf pup and decides she's going to hide it in the barn and sneak out food for it. This girl is named Annetta Bell, a name I stole from an Anne of Green Gables character. Annetta is one of four children. She has an older sister named Sharon who can't walk and is confined to the upper floor of the house, because she fell and hurt her back and I think it's because she was scared by a wolf and that's why she hates wolves. Then there's the feisty younger sister, Missy, and the youngest, Benjamin, because I felt like there had to be a boy even though I didn't know how to write for boys, so I made him four.

I'm not sure how Sharon being confined to the upper floor worked, since they didn't have indoor plumbing and the family ate together downstairs, so I'm guessing they just went upstairs to visit her occasionally. 
Anyway, somehow no one else goes in the barn and no one else notices Annetta sneaking food out there until Missy busts her, and Annetta claims that the wolf's name is Shadow and he's her best friend. 

Now everyone knows Annetta has a wolf and he becomes their new pet, even though Sharon has wolf trauma. At one point, a different wolf, not Shadow, kills one of their sheep, and Sharon pins it on Shadow, saying he killed an innocent sheep that deserved to live. Annetta responds that Sharon doesn't deserve to live. (Sharon and Annetta hate each other.)

Over the next year, Shadow saves Annetta, Missy, and Benjamin from drowning, from a bear, and from a hive full of bees that Benjamin pokes for some reason. How did kids survive in back whenever this was, and why were their parents never around? But one of the rescues injures Shadow badly enough he retreats again to the wild. Sharon still hasn't come around on the whole Shadow thing, despite him saving her siblings' lives three times, but Sharon makes a friend, and they start practicing walking together and Sharon realizes she can walk after all and just needed the power of friendship. So, on Christmas day, she surprises the family by walking down the stairs, and that is the best Christmas present of all.

Then, one day, there's a fire at the one-room schoolhouse, and the teacher asks Annetta to go check on the boiler or whatever, and that makes the fire worse and Annetta is trapped in the burning school. Shadow senses that Annetta is in trouble, so he comes back into town and jumps through the window of the burning school to drag her out, saving her life a fourth time. The book ends with something like, 100 years later, there is still a statue of Shadow in the small Southern Illinois town.

Why 100 years? That seems arbitrary. The characters use horse-drawn carriages and children face almost certain death any time they go outside without a wolf to rescue them, so it seems like it would be longer ago. And why Southern Illinois? Are there wolves in Southern Illinois? I sure don't know! I used to go hiking there, so if there are, I guess I just got lucky I was never mauled.

My parents told me this was the best book ever, and my mom said it could be a movie. That inspired me to write Wolf Moon 2. Buckle up for this one.

So, it's two years later, and there's a terrible drought. All the crops are dying. I don't know if I ever specified what kind of crops the Bells farmed. They had sheep. Are the sheep okay? I don't know if I ever got into that. So, Mr. Bell decides he's going to go on an aimless trip by covered wagon to see if he can find a new home. Is he going to bring the family? No, just one kid, and it's going to be Annetta, which means Shadow is coming too because he and Annetta are soul-bonded.

Missy is mad that she didn't get to go on the covered wagon journey, so she decides to run away from home. She comes across a covered wagon, but it's not her family's, it's an old man named Alan Sain. People call him "Alan Insain" because after his wife died, he just started taking random covered wagon trips. He asks her about who she is, and she lies about her name, but he recognizes her from the missing child posters (????). He says they can be runaways together and takes the ten-year-old girl into his wagon.

Meanwhile, there's a forest fire, because drought and all, and Mr. Bell and Annetta have to take off without Shadow so they can outrun the fire, because that's something you can do in a covered wagon, and they outrun the fire but they assume Shadow is dead.

Meanwhile, back at the Southern Illinois (?) homestead, Sharon is again confined to the upper floor and unable to walk because she has not been eating food or drinking water, so there will be food and water for her mom and her younger brother. I get the feeling they don't like Sharon. I get the feeling they don't care about Missy too much, either, but they at least put up posters ... somehow. Then, six-year-old Benjamin realizes he is the man of the house when his mother collapses and goes into labor! No one had realized she was pregnant. Benjamin thought she looked kind of fat but didn't say anything about it because he's a good son. So he has to load his pregnant mother and his by now comatose sister into the horse-drawn carriage and get them to the hospital! Don't worry. He manages to do it, and the baby is fine. And also ...

The drought finally ends, but it's in a torrential rainstorm, and this results in Annetta hanging off a cliff about to be swallowed by a waterfall. Luckily, Shadow (who miraculously survived) recognizes Annetta is in danger and comes to save her from the waterfall. Seriously, Annetta is too stupid to be alive if she didn't have a wolf with super powers.

So now that the drought is over, Mr. Bell and Annetta just turn around and go home. I forget what happened to Missy. When they get home, Mr. Bell realizes he has a new baby! And that's not the only new baby. Shadow jumps out of the covered wagon along with a girlfriend he met on the road, Scarlet, and their I forget how many puppies! So Mr. Bell and Annetta were in a covered wagon with two full-grown wolves and one of them gave birth during the trip.

I was eleven when I wrote this one. Forgive me.

I don't think anyone in my family read Wolf Moon 2. I actually doubt they read the first one, they were just impressed by how long it was for something written by a ten-year-old. So I didn't get much feedback on this one, but I still felt like I had a Wolf Moon 3 in me.

I never finished this one. It was going to be even worse than the second one. Annetta is off adventuring with her presumably 10 wolves. Shadow, she had raised since he was a puppy, but Scarlet was a random wild wolf, but obviously this twelve-year-old girl proved to be the alpha somehow, so now they are all her pets. This was wish fulfillment writing by a girl who loved dogs.

As for the rest of the family, well, Missy is probably dead or married to Alan Sain right now, I forget whether I killed him off in the second one, and the parents went to get something for the farm, so Sharon is left to care for Benjamin and the baby. That's fine, because she can walk and go downstairs again in this one. But then - some bad guys attack the farm! And Sharon and Benjamin have to put together a plan to survive. What will they do, without any wolves around to save them? Well, nothing, it turns out, because I never finished this book. I finally woke up to how bad this was.

ALL THIS SAID

I think Wolf Moon can still be a movie, and I'm ready to pitch it.

I'm going to tweak some things. In order to get around the historical ambiguity, this is going to be in a dystopian future, or possibly on another planet. And I'm going to age up the characters. I definitely want Zendaya to play Annetta. Also some Handmaid's Tale elements, because this family obviously does not like the non-Annetta daughters, and Mrs. Bell couldn't tell anyone in the family she was pregnant with her fifth child until she was literally giving birth. This actually might be a dystopian musical. Zendaya will totally rock her mournful solo when she thinks Shadow died in a fire. Shadow will be played by Jonathan Bailey in a wolf suit. The wolf puppies will be CGI because I don't really want to work with young children. I don't really have a role for Pete Davidson, sadly, so I might need to write in another character or make Sharon a guy.

Anyway, I'm off to Hollywood. Please tell me, on a scale of 1 (I will watch it as soon as it comes out on streaming services) to 10 (I would cut off my right arm (or my left arm, if I'm left-handed) to come to the premier of the first Wolf Moon movie) how hyped you are.

Crises of Faith in Comedy - Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of TV church! In this post, we'll discuss two shows that came out in 2005, and two men in their early forties led to question the beliefs they thought they had held their entire lives.

As a side note, I have a different perspective on these two entries, and the two that we will cover in part 4, from my prior entries on The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Malcolm in the Middle. The prior three shows are episodes that I remember seeing in real time as someone younger and struggling to find her religious identity, whereas everything moving forward is something I watched for the first time as an adult, so it's going to be more of a detached standpoint.

(And it is I... S, M's church-raised boyfriend, here to pepper this entry with the benefit of my own personal experience within the church.)

5. Ronald (Mac) McDonald - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Finding Your Identity in Christ... In a Manner of Speaking)

Rob McElhenney, creator of Always Sunny, plays the character of Mac. Like one of his two fellow co-writers and costars, Charlie Day, he chose a character name that was close to his actual name. (Glenn Howerton refused to have his character have a name similar to his, as he thought the character was a pretty terrible person and needed to have some distance.) And, you have to believe McElhenney brought a lot of personal background into the creation of Mac's character. McElhenney was raised Catholic, but his mother divorced his father after coming out as a lesbian, and his two brothers are also gay. McElhenney's character, also raised Catholic, is all over the map when it comes to religious and sexual identity, but, basically, he just wants an identity. That's probably because

Mac Is In Denial About His Parents Hating Him

Mac is even more loyal to his parents than he is to Catholicism, even though both of his parents have told him they do not love him. His miserable mother spends all her days smoking and watching TV and is mostly nonverbal, but Mac interprets her grunts to be her attempts to say "I love you." Mac also lives for the moment when he'll finally have a "catch" with his frequently incarcerated father, who has literally threatened to kill him.

In one episode, Mac finds out that his roommate Dennis had been throwing away letters his father wrote from jail, and Mac is devastated, even after Dennis tells him the letters were just asking favors and never said "I love you." Mac longs to impress his earthly and his heavenly fathers, wanting so much to be a good, good boy. Like so many a Radiohead before him, he wants a perfect body, he wants a perfect soul. Even if that consists of getting his pump on at the gym and preaching about the sinfulness of homosexuality. And that's because

Mac Makes Christianity About Suffering and Punishment

This is reminiscent of the Reverend Lovejoy/Ned Flanders school of thought that church should not be fun, it should be about focusing on our sins. When the gang is debating over whether to put up a crucifix in the bar, Mac is adamant that they need to and it needs to be as large and as gory as possible.

(In college, I remember taking a Systematic Theology class on the theology of God the Son, which is to say 'Jesus.' At the beginning of every class, my professor would take a small crucifix out of his bag and hang it up on a hook above the whiteboard. When a student commented on it one class, my professor looked back at it, smiled a bit, and said, "It took me a while to find it. I had a hard time locating one that looked pathetic enough." The ultimate point being that it was the suffering and death of Christ that ultimately brings salvation, so he hung that to focus the class on that fact. I find Mac's insistence on a gory crucifix hilariously theologically sound, even if he'd have no idea that was the point.)

In the season 9 episode "Mac Day" (it's important to state what season, because Mac's many crises of faith have a chronological arc that also reflects the show's alienation of and eventual attempt to make it up to their gay fanbase), Mac plans a day for the gang that is structured around the seven days of Creation and also invites his cousin, Country Mac, who is also Catholic and also a self-proclaimed badass.

The thing is, Country Mac is actually having fun the entire day, while Mac is focusing on doing the required tasks to bring you closer to the Lord. Mac brings them to a planetarium to teach them about God's creation of the stars and is appalled when his cousin smokes weed and advises the others to appreciate all the joys and wonders in God's universe. Mac also volunteers the entire gang to grease up some bodybuilders to celebrate the gloriousness of man made in God's image. Country Mac has a great time here, as well, getting lots of phone numbers because he is openly gay.

The gang realizes, for the first time, that religion might actually be okay. That you can believe in God and be a happy person who is also honest about who you are, unlike their closeted and tormented friend. Dennis reflects, "All these years I thought I hate God, but I now realize what I really hate is ... Mac. And all his God shit has not only been ruining my life, it also might be ruining my afterlife."

In the season 11 episode "The Gang Goes to Hell," Mac invites the gang on a Christian cruise. He's horrified by how jubilant the other cruisegoers are. When their musical revue includes the upbeat song "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," Mac says, "The songs aren't supposed to be fun, they're supposed to be bleak and dreary! We need to punish our ears to suffer for the original sin of being born!" 

Later on the cruise, Mac is playing some kinda game (shuffleboard?) with two church guys and misses a shot. He immediately grabs a cat o'nine tails and asks his new friends to punish him so he can be a better boy. 

Church Guy: Mac, missing isn't a sin. We don't punish ourselves.

Mac: If you don't punish yourselves, how do you become closer to God?

Church Guy: By appreciating the game and this wonderful day.

This is circling back to the Ned Flanders vs. Bode ideation in my first entry. But, then things get next level when Mac discovers the two church guys he was hanging out with are a gay married couple. And that brings us to

Mac's First Crisis of Faith vs. Sexuality

There are gay people on Mac's Christian cruise, and that is shattering his faith, which did not accommodate someone being Christian and gay. We get the idea that Mac probably joined this church and went on this cruise to pray the gay away, and now he's in crisis. He begs God for a sign, and ultimately decides his purpose is to convert the gay couple to straightness. After five minutes in their cabin, he emerges and announces to the rest of the gang that he is gay and that means there is no God or heaven or hell.

The cruise ship nearly sinks, but the gang is saved, and Mac declares that this means he is not gay. "God answered my prayers and saved us, so that means there is a God, and there's no way in His infinite wisdom He would have made me queer."

This did not sit well with queer fans. Possibly due to the backlash, the writers had Mac come out and stay out in season 12, but that was kind of too little too late and played as kind of a joke. But to remedy the harm done, there is

Mac's Second Crisis of Faith vs. Sexuality

Season 13 ends with the episode "Mac Finds His Pride," the most poignant episode the show has ever had (granted, it's a show not known for poignancy). Mac is struggling with his identity as a gay person while simultaneously being Catholic. Frank determines the best way for Mac to feel better is to come out to his currently imprisoned father, Luther.

Mac is struggling with how to come out to his father, as well, and he tries to explain this to Frank.

Mac: It's like there's this storm inside of me, and it's been raging my whole life. And I'm down on my knees and I'm looking for answers and then God comes down to me, and it's a very hot chick, and she pulls me up and we start dancing ...

Frank: Wait wait wait. You're gay and you're dancing with a hot chick who is God?

Mac: Yes.

Frank: The Catholics really ****ed you up.

I cannot speak from experience about this struggle, being a straight person who did not grow up in a church. But I did go to a Catholic high school where it was very clear you couldn't be both Catholic and gay, and I can't even imagine what my queer classmates must have gone through.

Mac ultimately comes out to his dad by performing the dance from his dream for all the prison inmates. His dance with the ballerina he hired to play "God" ultimately becomes a struggle, and at the end, after he pushes her away, she consoles him and tells him that it's okay. It's such a powerful scene, and I get mad at myself for getting tears in my eyes when I watch it, because, come on, it's Always Sunny.

By season 14, we're back to happy Mac who is gay when the script calls for it and Catholic when the script calls for it. In the global warming episode, there's an exchange something like this:

Mac: If God wants to roast us all like turkeys, there must be a good reason for it.

Dennis: So you're saying it's impossible to have a rational conversation with you.

Mac: Yes.

(The fact that Christianity has only gotten LESS rational in recent years is one of the consistent forms of consternation for me. It's as if blind faith has overruled God-given reason as the predominant way of thinking about faith... which is probably why you have a bulk of evangelicals these days voting in ways that are absolutely contrary to Biblical principles. I dunno... maybe Seth MacFarlane was onto something after all...)

But apparently Mac isn't really that settled in his identity as gay or his identity as Catholic, because in season 15 we get

Mac's Third Crisis of Faith vs. Sexuality and Really It's Just About Needing to Belong Somewhere

I'll try not to belabor this one, because this is already LONG. Heck, this entire blog series could have been just about Mac. You know what, I'm not even going to cover the second guy until my next entry. I can do what I want. I am the god of this blog.

The gang is in Ireland for the second half of season 15. Mac is Irish, so he's excited! Except the gang knows he will be annoying about his Irishness so they bribe his mom to tell him he's actually Dutch so he can't have any fun. (Mac's family really does hate him.)

But, he can still have fun hanging out with the Irish Catholic priests. In the midst of his identity crisis ("I used to be Irish, but now I'm Dutch, but I was badass the entire time") Mac decides to join the seminary. And that means abandoning his gay identity ("the most important part of my identity isn't being gay or being badass, it's being Catholic"). 

The first priest that Mac is paired up with is too attractive, so he opts for a less attractive priest to teach him God's ways. They get along great, and ultimately Mac is almost ready to open up about his sinful thoughts, because it seems like the priest would understand. Except ... this priest likes men of a younger variety. And Mac is weirded out enough to scrap the seminary plan, and back in identity crisis hell.

Is Religion Really About Being Able to Call Yourself Something, and Is That All the Security You Need?

We're going to get more into this in my next entry, which will not be included in this post (sorry, my yet-to-be-announced fictional dude) because I have too much to say about Mac. But there is a certain security in being able to say that you are something. You're part of a family, it's part of the construction of your identity, it's something you might be persuaded to wage wars over, but at least you know who you are.

I went to a Nazarene college, but I was not Nazarene. Not everyone who went to the college was, but there were plenty, and it was kind of a cliquey thing. Have you heard of the "Nazarene Nap?" It's a thing, I guess, and the pastor at the church I occasionally attended was all about it. Along with food. We're going to focus on the acceptable vices like sleep and food, so we won't need to stray toward the less acceptable ones, and it's going to become part of who we are. I remember one sermon, the pastor was talking about how Jesus ate in front of His disciples and that's how they knew He had truly risen from the dead. "And that," the pastor said, "is how we know Jesus was a Nazarene." There was much laughter.

(I, on the other hand, was raised in the Church of the Nazarene for the entirety of my upbringing. In fact, my mother was also born and raised in the Church of the Nazarene and her parents attended the same Nazarene church for practically their entire lives. I was raised in one of the most conservative districts of that Church in the United States, in point of fact. I'm talking women with beehive hairdos, no jewelry, and skirts consistently down to their ankles [lest they cause the men-folk to stumble in thought, word, or deed, of course] and men who looked like Baby Billy Freeman from The Righteous Gemstones. And there was a persistent obsession with Sunday afternoon naps. Legitimately, I've never understood it. But I do remember a pastor once making a joke that a Nazarene's two favorite words were 'free' and 'food,' so apparently the gluttony was an acceptable vice that became core somehow to our entire denominational identity.)

And, I get it, kind of. I found a lot of comfort when I was finally able to label myself as an agnostic, because it gave me a sense of knowing who I was, and others label themselves similarly, which makes me feel more okay. Will I always be an agnostic? I don't know, but for now I at least have an answer.

I have to think the gang tricking Mac into thinking he was Dutch was an analogy for religious identity. When Mac is trying to draw on innate Dutch knowledge to solve a problem, he says, "I think I'm a problem-solver. I'm going to add that to the identity list. I'm Dutch first, then gay, then I'm a problem solver." The gang then becomes so fed up with Mac's identity crisis that they confess they tricked him into thinking he wasn't Irish so he wouldn't be obnoxious on their vacation.

Mac: You just unraveled my whole identity!

Charlie: We didn't unravel anything! You're still you!

What Is This Show's Stance?

McElhenney brings a very unique perspective, as he was raised Catholic in a family that mostly identified as queer. While Mac's religious beliefs and sexuality are played for laughs early in the show, the most recent few seasons have taken him on a journey that's actually pretty profound. 

What are we to make of the fact that the second stupidest person on the show is the only religious character? (No, Matthew Mara AKA "Rickety Cricket" doesn't count, as he no longer believes in God after the gang talked him into leaving the church and getting into a drug-fueled lifestyle of prostitution.) I honestly think the show was trying to tackle serious issues, but in a way that would be subtle rather than preachy. And still humorous. As they similarly tackled global warming, suicide, and abortion in season 14.

When I think about it, it's rare for a sitcom to tackle religion as much as Always Sunny does through Mac, and his simplistic view is what allows the show to still be funny and appealing to the masses, no matter what their religious beliefs are.

I've already covered The Simpsons and Family Guy, where everyone goes to church and they all go to the same church, but I think that may be more of a plot device to get everyone in town in the same scene, kind of like in Medieval Europe when church was the one time you'd see all your neighbors and be able to catch up because going to church was a given. 

It's a great plot device when you're working with animation, but doesn't make as much sense in live action. It's not like you're going to get all your minor characters and extras in one scene and have them get in an argument about what's happening to this town, so there's no point in having them be religious.

How many live action shows have addressed religion? In Seinfeld, Jerry is Jewish, but that really only comes to play when it can be used in a joke. On The Office, we have token religious stereotype Angela. I haven't seen too many sitcoms from before the 90's. Did the Lassies or the Brady Bunches or the Welcome Back Kotters go to church? I do not know. I do know that All In the Family tackled religion pretty frequently, but that was intended to be a groundbreaking show. (And is Seth MacFarlane's favorite show, which explains a lot about Family Guy.)

I have to come to the conclusion that Always Sunny has an overall positive view of religion. It's not as cynical as the last few entries. While Mac is depicted as, well, pretty stupid, he's not a blind follower. He thinks about this (to the extent that he is capable). His religion is important to him, and his friends accept that, even when they find it annoying. They just want him to be himself, and if his Catholic heritage brings him comfort, they want him to have that comfort.

(More than any show we've covered in this blog series to this point, I think Always Sunny somehow manages to have more to say about the relationship between humanity and religion than any other show we've covered so far. And I think that's pretty incredible, especially given the nature of the show in question, to be frank... but not Frank Reynolds. That might be a bridge too far.)

Anyway, that was the religious life and times of Mac. Don't worry. Our last three entries are shows where religion comes up only occasionally, rather than one of the main characters having a multi-season religious arc.

Crises of Faith in Comedy - Part 2

 And, we're back for another round of TV church! As I explained in part 1, this four-part blog series is going to explore the crises of faith of eight fictional characters and also examine how religion is depicted on each show. Today, let's meet two children who are their respective family's punching bags and see how they responded to the concept of a different, more heavenly Father.

(I'm here also - M's raised-very-religious partner, S - and I'll be peppering in color commentary and my own experiences as the situation calls for them.)

3. Meg Griffin - Family Guy ("Religion" as Brought to You by a Smug Atheist)

Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, is an outspoken atheist. I am not sure what his background or upbringing were like, but I'm wondering if there is some trauma there, because Family Guy targets religion a lot. 

MacFarlane had a plane ticket for American Airlines flight 11 on September 11, 2001. He got to the airport late and narrowly missed boarding. The plane would go on to crash into the North Tower. I feel like Family Guy's many 9-11 jokes (trust me, there are a LOT of them, and this one is probably my favorite) are a way of MacFarlane unpacking survivor's guilt. But I feel like a lot of the 9-11 jokes are more about the perceived blind patriotism that arose after the attack. In the episode where Lois is running for mayor, she gets overwhelming support by saying "9-11 ... was bad." MacFarlane and his writing staff seem to be against any kind of blind faith, and that extends to religion.

The issue with this show, however, is that either you're an atheist, or you're blindly being taken for a ride. And while South Park's episodes on Mormonism and Scientology are incredibly well-researched, Family Guy depicts every religion as a broad stereotype (for example, when Peter decides to convert Chris to Judaism so he will be better at math).

The Griffins, like the Simpsons, go to church, and, much like in The Simpsons, everyone in town goes to the same church. Which is kind of odd, because this seems to be a Catholic church, unlike Springfield's vaguely Protestant one. (The church in South Park, however, lest we forget is "like, Catholic, or something." Catholicism seems fitting as it is the largest of all Christian subsets, so its representation doesn't feel all that odd to me at least.) Peter Griffin is Irish Catholic, and Lois is Protestant, except in one episode we discover her mother was Jewish. This means Lois immediately must be a Jew, and she starts getting excited about things like bagels and salmon while Peter tries to Schindler's List-style take her out with a rifle. Other than Peter, though, the whole family seems to be down with their sudden, random conversion to Judaism.

The only member of the Griffin household that has a religious stance beyond just parroting things is the talking dog, Brian, voiced by MacFarlane and often seen as a stand-in for MacFarlane's religious and political beliefs. Brian is an atheist, and he's a douche about it. For example, in one episode, he forms a relationship with a girl based only on them both being atheists, and they're obnoxious as ****. When they both reach for the same book written by that sexy, sexy Richard Dawkins we discussed in our last post, they joke about how if God is real, he'll send them another copy. When a waiter at a restaurant asks if they would like to try the heavenly cheesecake, Brian jokes, "No, but I'll have some of the 'there's no afterlife' souffle'" and they laugh heartily. While Brian is supposed to be a mouthpiece for MacFarlane, he's often depicted as smug and as a delusional pseudo-intellectual, and I find that kind of funny.

(Brian's atheism seems a slightly later development. There's a second season episode called "If I'm Dyin', I'm Lyin'" wherein Peter incurs the wrath of God by claiming to be a faith healer, causing the ten plagues of Exodus fame to be visited upon the family. Brian's explanation? "God. Is. Pissed.") 

So, what happens when Meg, the oldest Griffin child, decides to intensely pursue Christianity and tries to convert Brian? Is this going to be an unbiased episode about the characters' soul-searching and their realistic, fair debates?

Spoiler alert: It's not

Shut Up, Meg

There's a somewhat disturbing trend in Christian youth culture that advises teenage girls to view Jesus as their boyfriend. You might think Family Guy would go this route with Meg's spiritual awakening, since she is a miserable, single teenage girl, but thank goodness, they did not. Meg turned to Jesus more because she was unloved by her family, I mean, look how they treated her when she had the mumps. But, while Meg is suffering from mumps, Peter brings her an old TV to watch, and she sees the show "Kirk and the Lord," hosted by Kirk Cameron. Kirk asks, "Do you ever feel lonely, unappreciated, unloved?" etc and then says, "You know who does love you? The Lord." And that's all it takes to make Meg an evangelical Christian. Suddenly, she's spouting phrases like "This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it" and "I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb." And that brings me to

Tangent: Is This How People See Christians?

Ned Flanders never really bothered me. Being a middle-aged fuddy-duddy and an overly anxious parent were possibly even more a part of his personality than him being a Christian, Christianity was just the icing on the cake, except he would not eat cake, he just has plain white bread with maybe a glass of water on the side for dipping. And his well-meaning nerdiness is endearing. I never really saw him as a Christian stereotype; his Christianity is just one facet. 

But there were some stereotypical portrayals of Christians, particularly teenage Christians, that bothered me. I was a somewhat reserved teenager who was attempting to be Christian and had a lot of dear friends who were religious, and when I see a character like Converted Meg in this episode, or Ann in Arrested Development, or the stereotypical missionary kids in Mean Girls, I feel kind of insulted on mine and my friends' behalfs. Religious people are not sexless robots who talk in King James version speak. When I was in high school I would cringe whenever religion was brought up on one of my TV shows because I figured that was where it was going. The token religious character would always be an over-the-top, glassy-eyed sheep.

(I feel like this became a more common thing in the '90s. The Clinton administration was in full swing and America was finally putting the rabid and rampant conservatism of the 1980s behind us. The major religious figures of the day were people like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson whose reactionary nature seemed to make them an easy target for progressives or even just normal, non-religious types. I feel like a lot of the negative depictions of Christians around this time have a lot to do with them and their acolytes... of which my mother could be counted.)

People who had never been exposed to religion at all might believe these stereotypes based on the way religious people are portrayed in media. As a teenager, I listened to both secular and Christian rock music. I loved Green Day, I also loved Thousand Foot Krutch (I still do!). In the Simpsons episode, though, where a Christian rock band (how scandalous!) visited the church, we get this:

What the heck (pardon my language)? My gosh, I don't know what this is, but it sure isn't Christian rock. First of all, it's not rock, it's a mix between country and elevator music and a lullaby, and believe it or not, Christian rock bands do not typically sing about the Bible. I present for your consideration:

A song by a Christian rock band, Thousand Foot Krutch. About fighting with someone or something you've let into your head and you need to feel alive again.

A song by a secular rock band, Linkin Park. A song about feeling numb and having a struggle with someone or something you've let into your head.

A song by a band that could not decide if it was Christian or secular, Evanescence. A song about feeling numb and having a struggle with someone or something and you need to feel alive again.

They're really all the same song, sort of. They're all the same genre, for sure, and great to emo out to.

I used to have the local alt rock station and the local Christian rock station saved on my radio, and would switch back and forth depending on which station was currently playing a song I liked better. So it offended me that people would think Christian rock sounds like ... that awful thing The Simpsons did.

(Oh, trust me - as someone whose listening habits as a youth consisted largely of CCM [i.e. - Contemporary Christian Music], oldies, and 'dad rock,' I can confirm this is absolutely a very specific subset of CCM. This feels like a slightly edgier version of what Sandi Patti was doing at the time or, more accurately, the thing Amy Grant was doing when she went secular for a hot minute.)

Wow, that was a huge tangent. Let's get back to Meg, shall we.

Christianity Is Scary to "Normal" People and Atheism Is Even Scarier

So ... the Griffins are Catholic, right? So why would it be such a big deal when Meg finds the Lord? Isn't that the goal? Her parents seem, while uninterested (I mean, it's Meg), kind of baffled by this new phase.

That's because the Griffins are more of the Christian-by-default ilk I mentioned in both of my last entries and will discuss in the next. They're Christian because they aren't Jewish.  (Except when they're Jewish.) 

The family is mildly annoyed by Meg's religiousness, but the **** really hits the fan when they find out Brian is an atheist. (I mean, has that never come up before?) And that's scary, right? This person opposes my faith, which means my faith might not be real, which means I might not get to go to heaven. So it's better to try to convert them, or if that fails, to shun them. Lois tells Brian that an atheist is the worst thing a person can be, and it soon makes local news that there is an atheist in Quahog, which is something worse than Hitler. Brian is now having garbage thrown at him, and worse yet, because he's banned from every town establishment, he can't go get a drink.

Brian ultimately decides to lie and tell Meg he has seen the light so she can help him get alcohol. But, because Family Guy depicts religious people as insane, Meg takes him to a book burning on the way back from their liquor run. They burn Origin of Species and A Brief History of Time, of course, but one of the books they also burn is Logic for First Graders (in case you were curious about this show's stance).

(This was something that missed me entirely, TBH. Even as an incredibly conservative religious kid, and I was, at no point was there any kind of suggestion to start burning any kind of secular media. [This gets depicted in Arrested Development as well, so it has to have been at least somewhat commonplace in certain parts of the country.] What I experienced instead were the encouragements to abandon secular art for more acceptable, if not lower quality, Christian art. "Like Secular Artist X? Try Christian Artist Y!" The only reason this didn't work on me better was because, as previously mentioned, I wasn't really keeping up on modern secular music, listening as I was to CCM and oldies. When I got to college, though? That's a different story... but not necessarily one for this blog.)

The book burning is Brian's breaking point, and that brings us to

God Doesn't Exist Because Your Butt Is Too Big

Brian needs to talk Meg out of belief in God. Not talk her into openmindedness, or self-searching, or anything like that. There's no middle road here. There's no God. As Brian states, "If there were a God, would He put you here on Earth with a flat chest and a fat ass?" He goes on to tell Meg that her existence is so miserable that it in itself proves that there is no God, and she agrees, and we go back to the status quo.

So, not only does Meg accept that God doesn't exist, but she accepts that her pathetic, unloved, big-butt existence is absolute proof that there is no God.

So, how is Meg doing, after she gave up on the love and eternal salvation she'd believed in for a couple days? She's fine. She rolls with the punches. Just another "shut up, Meg" day.

What Is This Show's Stance?

Well, this one is not hard to peg at all. You're an atheist, or you're a sheeple. 

While South Park has a more ambivalent view on whether religion is inherently good and community-building, or inherently divisive and power-driven, Family Guy makes it really clear where we're at. In a recent episode, Brian has a date with a Christian girl, but when he finds out "going back to my place and getting a little crazy" means watching funny State Farm commercials, not having sex, he is officially DONE with humoring Christianity and decides he should use Stewie's time machine to obliterate it to prevent blue balls, oh, and all the religious war and stuff, I guess, but mostly the blue balls.

They do manage to obliterate religion, but God (who exists in the Family Guy universe, but is described as "mildly autistic") shows up and gives Brian and Stewie noogies until they agree to undo it (man, they didn't know how to end this episode).

Family Guy is one of my favorite shows. But I think it should probably stay away from tackling religion. The Christianity stereotypes are cringe, the Jewish stereotypes are cringe, and its message on religion is ... well, not great. Basically, you can't believe in a higher power and also be capable of independent thought.

So, let's move on to our next entry, who is perfectly capable of independent thought.

4. Dewey Wilkerson - Malcolm in the Middle (How to Become a Deist Without Really Trying)

The Wilkersons are your average middle-class family, and that means that religiously, they are, I guess, whatever "normal" is. But two of their sons are very deep thinkers who are ultimately going to make their own decisions about what they believe.

I won't have as much to say about this show, because, unlike the previous three, it does not repeatedly fixate on religion. Religion only even comes up in a handful of episodes. But, at one point, Malcolm expresses his religious beliefs in one episode, and they are ... absolutely aligned with where I am now and have been for a really long time.

When Malcolm gets a new girlfriend, he has to be grilled by her family first. As they sit there asking "What kind of boy are you," and continuing to stare as he talks, he starts out with the basics, then goes to blurting stuff out from dental records to finally, "Religiously, I classify myself as a hopeful agnostic. I think the basic philosophical question is-" and then they cut him off.

I'd never heard someone classify themselves as a "hopeful agnostic" before, and this replaced Fox Mulder's "I want to believe" as my TV classification of what I ... am. Now. Something that people do not understand about agnostics is that they are not hedging their bets. They may believe in a higher power, but not be confident to declare they can understand it.

To be clear, we're talking about fictional character Malcolm, not me.

But, we're not even talking about Malcolm. We're here to talk about Dewey.

Dewey is about as ludicrously neglected as Meg is. His older brothers treat him terribly, and his parents frequently forget he exists, even scheduling his little brother Jamie's delivery on the same day as Dewey's birthday because, well, they forgot it was his birthday. 

As Dewey gets older, you see that not only is he capable of independent thought, but it sometimes torments him. When he's cast as Abraham Lincoln in the school play, he gets cold feet because he has been reading up about this Lincoln guy and is not sure he really agrees with his incongruous political policies. His mother, Lois, brushes it off as stage fright, and then his parents don't even make it to the play. Dewey has to look at another random couple in the audience and imagine that they are his encouraging parents.

Dewey basically raises himself. The family already has one genius (Malcolm) so they just kind of assume the other kid is still alive and don't seem to notice how intelligent he is. But, because he's a kid, he still gets dragged along into all the family's misadventures, including

The Family Joins a Church

When the family is unable to afford daycare for Jamie, they join a church, because the church provides a babysitting co-op. For some reason, the kids need to join too and start going to Sunday school. When Dewey anxiously says he doesn't know how to pray, Hal responds, "For the next half hour, as far as you're concerned, God is the greatest thing in the universe and that's that!"

Reese is placed in teen Sunday school, and Dewey in child Sunday school. Reese seems baffled as the other glassy-eyed, overjoyed teens sing songs with lyrics like, "I don't need your evil weed, you can keep your coke and LSD, because I'm snorting what God gave me, and it smells a lot like love." The Sunday school teacher tells him, "Reese, the only thing that's making you stay here is that little voice in your head asking, 'Why are all these people so much happier than me?'" And the religious teens giggle enthusiastically as if they are DEFINITELY on coke and LSD. (This is another TV episode that really bothered me when I was younger based on its depiction of Christians, another 'is that what they think Christians are like' moment. To be fair, when I was going to the local youth group in junior high, one of the songs they'd occasionally sing was a rewrite of Queen's "We Will Rock You" that started out with "Jesus was a cool dude, 40 days without food" and I won't subject you to the rest, but the older kids in the group were NOT really jamming to this, we recognized it was more for the little kids who were having fun because this was an easy song to sing and stomp and clap to.)

(This depiction feels very much like someone having been told about what youth group is like by someone who was invited one time by someone they were dating and went because they wanted to sleep with that person, then got so weirded-out by the whole experience that they never went back.)

So, back to Malcolm in the Middle. Reese sees some paintings that one of the parishioners did, one of which is Elijah in a fiery chariot, and he decides this is BADASS and is immediately converted. (That's going to be a common theme in this blog series.) (This is another thing that bothered me when I watched this episode for the first time as a teen - of course, the stupidest person in the family is going to be the one who becomes a Christian. I don't want people to think Christians are stupid.)

Now that Reese has been awakened to the Word of the Lord, he's happy, and he's hugging Dewey and telling him that he loves him, rather than punching him. Dewey is concerned that Reese may be brainwashed, but is at the same time considering religion. He tells the Sunday school teacher, "Ever since we joined this church, all I do is think about stuff. What kind of God makes a kid think about stuff when they're not even in school?"

The teacher responds that God has His reasons, and Dewey says, "Right, like Pastor Roy said, God is so much bigger than us, trying to imagine what He is thinking would be like an ant trying to imagine what we are thinking." The teacher agrees, and that leads to Dewey using a pretty horrific analogy to describe how he's basically becoming a Deist:

Dewey's beliefs reflect the deism that Voltaire expressed in Candide, that God may have created the universe but then basically left it alone, and because we have no way of communicating with God, the best we can do is be good people and not think about an arbitrary higher being who may or may not give a **** about us. "Il faut cultiver notre jardin," etc etc. Yeah, I'm comparing Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle to Voltaire. Deal with it. (To paraphrase Isaac Hayes's backup singers, "I can dig it.")

Why This Makes Sense for Dewey

Dewey takes comfort in his acceptance of Deism, because it leads him to believe that all people are equal and while they cannot predict what God is going to do, they can focus on treating other people on Earth as they should be treated. This makes sense, since Dewey has a somewhat tyrannical mother. In an early episode, Malcolm describes God to Dewey as "kind of like Mom, but invisible."

Not only were the Wilkerson children not raised religiously, their parents apparently have never had a conversation about their own religious beliefs. In a season 6 episode (two seasons after the one where they join a church), Hal says something about how he can't wait until he and Lois can just spend eternity together in the afterlife. Lois announces that she doesn't believe in an afterlife, and Hal is horrified.

Hal is obviously of the "I'm normal, so I am going to heaven" mindset that has been so prevalent in all of these entries so far (he, after all, was unable to paint over the gory crucifixion mural the church people painted in Jamie's bedroom and said they had to find an atheist contractor to take care of this), and finding out Lois doesn't believe in an afterlife destroys him to the point that Lois has to lie (badly) and tell him, "I'm sorry, Hal, I just realized I do believe in an afterlife after all." Hal is ecstatic that he has his eternity with Lois back. This is very reminiscent of Lisa Simpson agreeing to pay lip service to Christianity and Marge being happy that now Lisa is going to go to heaven again.

If the parents couldn't even talk to each other about religious beliefs, how could they talk to their kids about it? I mean, to be fair, Lois and Hal are really terrible parents. But their kids are going to figure out their religious beliefs on their own. Reese is going to latch on to anything that seems badass. Malcolm is going to philosophically examine why his life is the way it is. And Dewey is going to imagine that God is, like his parents and his brothers kind of are, an authority figure standing over his anthill with a shovel that could drop at any minute, but that leads to a blissful "nothing really matters" (how many times am I going to mention Queen?) frame of mind.

What Is the Show's Stance?

It's hard to say, because this show rarely touches on religion. The creator of Malcolm in the Middle based this show on his own upbringing, with Malcolm based on himself, so some of this may have been based on personal experience, but I don't even know if it was. Religion doesn't even come into play until season 4 (unlike the last three shows, which jumped on it pretty quick). 

The biggest stance Malcolm takes on religion is depicting the churchgoers as being, well, kind of plastic and vapid, with plastered-on smiles, and the fact that the stupidest person in the family is the only one to really latch on to religion (for completely misguided reasons - he believes that he can also fly away in a flaming chariot).

But, Reese isn't alone in basing his religious faith on God being a total badass. More on that in part 3, when we will cover two grown men who deeply intertwine religion into their identities even though their faith is as stable as a house of cards. No, I'm not covering House of Cards. 

Crises of Faith in Comedy - Part 1

The crisis of faith, the discovering or loss of one's religion. There is perhaps nothing so profound, there is perhaps nothing so fitting to be tackled by sitcoms. 

This next four-part blog series is going to be very daring. No, I'm not venturing beyond TV comedy, I'm not that daring. But in this blog, we're going to tackle comedy's treatment of religion, specifically a chronological journey through eight characters who have gone through crises of faith. We'll also delve a little into the message these episodes delivered regarding faith and religion, and how well it was delivered.

As a disclaimer, this blog is written by someone who claims no religious stance and while my background and beliefs may influence my views, I'm approaching this with an open mind. This blog is not about my journey of faith, after all, it's about these eight fictional characters'. 

Okay, my personal experiences might come into play a little.

Prepare for tangents.

(And speaking of tangents: hi, there! I'm M's boyfriend S and I'll be chiming in periodically to pepper my two cents - sometimes more, sometimes less... but I feel like it'll all ultimately average out to $0.02 USD at the current exchange rate - into the conversation. I met M at the Christian college we both attended, where I majored in Philosophy and Religion. I also taught a class on World Religions once back when I taught Bible at a Christian high school in the Midwest, so I think she's under the impression I'll have something to add here. I guess we'll see how misguided this ultimately ends up being. -S.)

In our first installment, we're covering a cartoon that came out in the 80's (by a hair) and one that came out in the late 90's, and two precocious kids who ask questions their parents can't necessarily answer.

1. Lisa Simpson - The Simpsons (Faith Is Dependent Upon "The Church" and Yes, It Is a Building)

This is the oldest of the shows that I'm covering. While parents were horrified by the sassback of this show, oh my God, the sassback, the Simpson family were regular churchgoers. I don't think they thought too much about their faith, it was more of a tradition that needed to be observed, as it was by many standard middle-class Americans at this time. 

In The Simpsons, everyone in town goes to church. Everyone in town goes to the same church. As Grandpa Simpson might say, "It was the style of the times." And, maybe life used to be like that, but that shows you how much things have changed since The Simpsons came out. When Simpsons characters meet in church, it's a totally normal plot point. It's kind of like their town hall, if everyone actually went to town hall. Decades later, if the Bob's Burgers family went to church regularly, it would seem like some kind of stance. Because it's no longer a given that your typical relatable family goes to church every week.

I didn't grow up going to church, and have never been a member of a church. But I guess I was kind of a Christian by default, as there were Bibles in my house and I did go to the local youth group in junior high and then to a religious high school and a religious college. So I might have a different perspective from young Lisa Simpson, as my explorations of faith have never been tied to a certain practice or denomination.

In early episodes, Lisa is the most pious one in the family. When Homer is stealing cable, or when she sees Marge sneaking a grape at the grocery store, she's fearful for their souls. (She should be really worried about Bart's soul, but, based on how initially cruel she was to him in the episode "Bart Sells His Soul," maybe he's not that high on her prayer list.) But then, in season 13, we get to an episode that really unsettled me when it first came out.

Lisa Abandons Christianity for a Dumb Reason

Homer and Bart are playing around with a mail-order rocket and they end up destroying the church. And we realize that to the citizens of Springfield, being a Christian means going to this specific building for one hour every week, and without that building they are lost. They basically all have the mindset of a character I'll cover in part 3 who believes by going to church he has all his bases covered and doesn't have to think about anything or worry about being virtuous the rest of the week.

You know how people always harp on how The Simpsons predicts the future? Well, they kind of did in this episode. Seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the Springfieldians' faith, an extremely wealthy man decides to expand upon his wealth and power by affiliating himself with religion, and everyone in town accepts this because if this is what church is now, they'll follow, and if this means they need to vote for Mr. Burns for president, they will, it doesn't matter that he once tried to blot out the sun. Mr. Burns builds a megachurch that is basically an indoor amusement park spewing advertisements and propaganda. Lisa is appalled by the materialism and walks out.

This is where young me started to feel uneasy. This is obviously just one church in one town that is under the thumb of Mr. Burns, so maybe don't go to church anymore, I mean, I never really went to church, but the smartest character on the show just immediately turned her back on Christianity. This was a time in my life when I was doing a lot of soul searching, I was going to a Catholic school, I had a lot of religious friends, and I was trying to be a Christian. Why did Lisa not try to "fix" the church in her town? Why did she instantly abandon Christianity and start a quest to find a new religion? Was she not worried about her soul? Had she never actually had any personal faith, was just going through the motions of going to church like everyone else?

I always found these snap changes in religious beliefs kind of troubling in fiction, and buckle up because there are going to be a lot of those. But, hey, this happens in real life too. Remember when The Da Vinci Code took the world by storm? I was already struggling in my quest to find the religious security that my church-raised friends had, but now the whole world was embracing a new narrative as truth where Jesus did not die for our sins, because the book had short chapters with cliffhanger endings and Tom Hanks is going to be in the movie. More about The Da Vinci Code in my next entry.

Marge is horrified that Lisa isn't going to church anymore, because that means Lisa can't go to heaven. So, she tries to bribe Lisa into coming back, including a ruse to make Lisa think she will get a pony for Christmas if she goes back to celebrating the holiday. At the end of the episode, Lisa agrees to go pay lip service to Christianity every week, and that makes everyone happy. Except there's the detail that

Lisa Is Kind of a Jerk About Her New Faith

Remember when Lisa became a vegetarian and wasn't content to let other people continue to eat meat, so she sabotaged her dad's barbecue? She's kind of the same way when she converts to Buddhism. Lisa seems to thrive on feeling intellectually and morally superior, so just as vegetarians are morally superior and jazz is the only real music, Buddhism is the only right religion.

I was actually under the impression that you could be both Buddhist and Catholic because one of my high school friends was trying to do just that, but with Lisa it's a very either/or situation.

(S here! IIRC from the World Religions class I taught, Buddhism is fairly open and accepting regarding other religious beliefs - itself being an offshoot of Hinduism - concerning itself more with 'practice' than with things like 'dogma.' So this is probably why, despite both being practicing Buddhists, we still see Lenny and Carl at that one church in Springfield pretty consistently and why Richard Gere says Lisa can still go all-in on Christmas and still be Buddhist. I once knew someone who claimed to have met the Dalai Lama several times and he said that dude was pretty chill about everything. Guy apparently tried to convert His Holiness to Christianity too, but was predictably unsuccessful. Wild. Bottom line: I think Lisa's either/or on Buddhism mostly comes down to the writers on The Simpsons thinking of Buddhism like most think of Christianity, which is almost certainly the wrong way to look at it in the long run. -S.)

In a season 31 episode, Todd Flanders announces in church that he no longer believes in God because his mother died and she's never coming back. Lisa ... smiles and gives him a thumbs up. She is pouncing on him with a Buddha statue and a brochure the next day, trying to convert him. She cannot read the room when he is clearly not interested.

Todd has a much more rational approach to his crisis of faith (Todd Flanders is smarter than Lisa Simpson? In this episode, yes). He doesn't immediately feel the need to latch on to a new religion; he's ready to do some difficult soul-searching. Ned Flanders, who is having a hard time dealing with his son's separation from the church, gets drunk and gets hit by a car. In the hospital, Marge asks Todd if he'd like to pray for his dad.

Todd: I don't pray anymore. I don't know if anyone is listening.

Marge: You don't have to pray to God. Prayer can just be a conversation with yourself. Think about what you want, and listen to what your heart tells you.

So, Marge has come a long way since season 13, and Todd prays to ... anyone who's out there, the way a hopeful agnostic prays, and Ned pulls through. Todd is so happy that he believes again, and Lisa is peeved because she lost one (that she was never going to win anyway) for team Buddha.

The episode ends with Lisa being disappointed she couldn't win this one for Buddha, but hey, maybe she can convert Ralph Wiggum. Ralph has about half the IQ of a chipmunk, but she might be able to get him to pay lip service to Buddha like she is paying lip service to Christianity.

Lisa Returns to Christianity for a Dumb Reason

Lisa is open to being a Christian again when the church gets a hot new pastor.

Reverend Lovejoy's young, handsome replacement loves Jesus and Buddha, and pretty much everyone and everything, including vegetarianism and jazz. His sermons are all about celebrating life and loving each other. Church is fun now. And, just like when Burns took over the church, everyone just goes along with "this is what church is now" when Bode takes over the church. As Agnes Skinner says, "You gotta believe this stuff, that's how you go to heaven." Even Homer loves church now that Bode is the pastor, and Marge is thrilled she won't have to be single in heaven. The only people not happy are Reverend Lovejoy and Ned Flanders, but more about that in a little bit.

Lisa doesn't hide the fact she's enamored with Bode, and does a fairly painful musical number with lyrics like "He will sermonize, with those hazel eyes" and "I have science and Buddha and now Jesus makes three." Lisa even starts reading the Bible (though she's taking copious notes on racist and sexist content).

Her return to Christianity doesn't last very long. Reverend Lovejoy is determined to find some dirt on Bode, and it turns out the man Lisa has been swooning over burned a Bible in his youth. Lisa, like me, believes burning a Bible is an egregious act.

Lisa: Why did you do it?

Bode: I don't know, I was 19. I saw how people were using the Bible to divide and exclude. They were using it as a roadmap instead of trying to reach the destination.

Lisa: Then why didn't you just say that? That was fine! No fire.

Bode: I was 19.

Lisa and Bode agree that Springfield is not ready for his style of religion ("This town doesn't get subtext," Lisa advises), and it's time for him to move on. 

What Is the Show's Stance?

The Simpsons has been around for over 30 years. In the early seasons, all of the characters went to church because that's the norm, and it would have been just as big of a stance to have them stop going to church as it would be if a similar show debuted now and the characters going to church was a plot point. The Simpsons have always gone to church and always will.

I remember having a conversation with some of my more religious friends who were kind of scandalized that I watched The Simpsons. 

Me: The Simpsons go to church.

Friend: Well, they go to church, but they're not Christians. The Christian on the show is their neighbor, and they just make fun of him all the time.

The thing is, though, in the world of The Simpsons, going to church is what makes you a Christian. It's a relic of an era when everyone went to church but no one really thought about it too hard. I think that the general stance of the show is that they would side more with Bode. (Though, the episodes with Bode were written by the actor who voiced him, so there may be some bias there.) 

(FUN FACT: The actor who voices Bode is comedian Pete Holmes who at once time was, if I'm reading his Wikipedia page correctly, studying to be a youth pastor - that loftiest of clerical pursuits! I kid... though I myself was once a youth pastor in the Long, Long Ago. I feel like that factoid adds a bit of nuance to these proceedings, as it were. ALSO, if you will permit me the chance to offer some '90s church-kid context. There was a fairly popular saying amongst Christians in the late-'80s/early-'90s that was effectively a variation on "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonald's makes you a Big Mac." Exchange the fast food restaurant and signature sandwich of your choice, but that was the basic riff. It was an ideological shift from the prevailing attitudes of the previous decades, which is likely what M referenced in the previous paragraph. -S.)

Ned Flanders is upset with what happened to the church, so he has a scripture-off with Bode, with them hurling Bible verses at each other. Ned's verses are all about punishment and suffering, while Bode's are all about mercy and love for all. You get the feeling that Ned, Reverend Lovejoy, and the old-school Christians were brought up to believe that religion is all about penance and suffering and is not supposed to be fun, while Bode preaches that belief in a higher power should bring nothing but happiness.

(More '90s kid religious context/trauma with S! I recall a song I used to sing in children's church as a wee tot that taught the way to 'spell JOY' was 'Jesus, Others, and You' - the implication being that you and your needs were always to be subservient to both Jesus and Others. "Put yourself last and spell JOY," the song declared. It wasn't until I was already well into adulthood that I realized how damaging an outlook like that truly is. And if that's what we're feeding children, I'm sure you can only imagine what they're giving the adults! Anyway, I thought that fit in with the Flanders/Lovejoy focus on penance and suffering M mentioned above. -S.)

Overall, I feel like church was grandfathered into The Simpsons but it's not something any of the writers initially thought that hard about. Unlike the writers of our next show, who I think thought about it a lot...

2. Stan Marsh - South Park (Can't We All Just Get Along)

There is a ton of religious commentary on South Park. I unfortunately have probably seen only about 10 - 15% of the episodes of this show, since I didn't watch it growing up and have caught it only sporadically. But I think I've caught enough religion-themed episodes to write cromulently about this, and The Book of Mormon (brought to you by the creators of South Park) is my favorite musical of all time, and that has to count for something.

Let's just start out by talking about The Book of Mormon, shall we? It's a musical about a Mormon missionary who loses his faith while preaching in Africa and has to abandon the mission to his inept partner, who confuses Mormonism with Star Wars. (Look, they both involve different planets. Feels like an easy enough mistake to make, TBH. -S.) When the African people discover that what Elder Cunningham has been preaching is not necessarily true, the female protagonist is devastated, but everyone else in the tribe understood the whole time that this was a metaphor ("You don't think 'Salt Lake City' actually exists, do you?") and should just be used to find happiness in their earthly lives. This culminates in one of the most feel-good closing numbers ever.

"Who cares what happens when we're dead, we shouldn't think that far ahead! The only latter day that matters is tomorrow!"

South Park came out almost a decade after The Simpsons, and you get the feeling that the creators grew up going to church, but, unlike the citizens of Springfield, they actually thought about it pretty hard and they have some baggage.

This is a show about three boys (I'm not counting Kenny, because he exists merely to die a lot) in your typical American town. (This is Butters ERASURE and I will NOT stand for it! -S.) Cartman is occasionally a Christian but is mostly a sociopath, Kyle is Jewish, and Stan, the character I'm going to focus on, is "my family is like, Catholic, or something" (or so he says when Scientologists try to convert him).

There's really a whole lot to unpack with Stan. But let's start with...

What We Tell Our Children

Stan knows that he's "Catholic or something" but he's clearly conditioned by what his parents, who have never thought about this very seriously at all, have told him. And it's pretty hard to differentiate between truth and lies when you're in elementary school and your parents are telling tales of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy while also telling tales of Noah's Ark and the parting of the Red Sea. When Stan befriends a Mormon child and is told about the Book of Mormon, he goes home and demands from his family, "Why have you been keeping Joseph Smith a secret from me?"

This is a normal question for a child to ask. Some grown-ups just told you about their religion, and you believe what grown-ups say, but you're confused about why what these grown-ups said differs from what your parents have always told you. Stan's father, Randy, goes to confront the Mormon family and is promptly converted to Mormonism.

Stan is really never afraid to ask questions. At one point, while the family is coloring Easter eggs, he asks his parents what this has to do with Easter. "I mean, I think between Jesus dying on a cross and a giant bunny hiding eggs, there may be a huge gap in information."

I'm not a parent. Parents who have had your kids believe in the Easter bunny, how do you address this question when the kids try to connect the wildly disparate two components of Easter? Well, South Park handled this in the most insane way possible, as they are wont to do. It turns out, there is a very clear connection between Jesus and the Easter bunny. In a clear parody of The Da Vinci Code, Stan discovers that when you drill down to the original layer of paint in "The Last Supper," there is an egg on the table, and St. Peter is a rabbit. 

This, of course, leads to further insanity, including Jesus coming back to life and Kyle having to kill him because he only has super powers when he's dead ("I'm a Jew, I have serious hangups about killing Jesus"). In the end, Stan decides to stop asking questions and just go through the motions because life is too complicated otherwise. "I've learned to not ask questions, just dye the eggs and keep my mouth shut." 

Does It Have to Be One or the Other?

In one episode of South Park, teacher Mrs. Garrison is seduced by the incredibly sexy Richard Dawkins and starts teaching evolution in school. Stan raises his hand and asks, "Couldn't there still be a God? Can't evolution be a matter of how, not why?"

It's the smartest thing anyone in the room is saying, but Stan is forced to sit in the corner, wearing a dunce cap that says "I have faith."

I have always felt uncomfortable with the opposition of creationism and evolution, and Stan asked the question I think all of us should ask. I went to a Catholic high school that (sort of) taught both theories, and I don't see why they would need to be mutually exclusive unless you are adhering to a book that has been translated millions of times and assuming that the units of time at the beginning of the universe are exactly the same as the units of time today.

(S back again! The Christian high school I attended as a youth was pretty big on the whole Creationism/Evolution debate, to the point that Creationism was taught in our science classes to the exclusion of every other theory and likely why, upon reflection, no one in my AP Biology class passed that damn AP test at the end of the year. That said, the 'hand-holding' form of Creationism is what is called 'Old Earth Creationism' and essentially posits that evolution is the means by which "God created the heavens and the earth" [Gen. 1:1]. The Flanders crowd mentioned in the previous entry would likely have a problem with that, but this was effectively what was taught by the science department at the Christian college I attended and, honestly, makes more sense than a literal reading of Genesis 1... and this is coming from a guy who taught that text for almost a decade. -S.)

Another issue of duality, one that seems to be specific to this time period, is the trope that you're either a Christian or a Jew. The problem is that Jews are the minority while Christians are the majority, so if you're not Jewish, you are by default a Christian, even if you're like Stan, who thinks his family is "Catholic or something," even if you've never been to church in your life but you aren't specifically Jewish. You can count as a Christian even if all you do is sing "Silent Night" once a year and dye some eggs.

Fortunately I think our culture has generally shifted away from this, but this was apparently the mindset of the late 1990's. The next entry in my list came out just after South Park and really leaned into the Jewish stereotypes.

What Is the Show's Stance?

With South Park, it is really hard to tell. Is religion a good thing, or is it a bad thing? While the show brutally mocks pretty much every major religion, it seems to promote that religion can be a force for good, which is something I've always supported. As Bode said in The Simpsons, the backbone of religion is bringing people together. The characters in Book of Mormon decide that whether or not the Book of Mormon is literally true, it's a source of hope and joy, and why not derive as much joy as we can during our days on earth? Stan's Mormon friend states at the end of his episode, "I don't care if Joseph Smith made all of this up, I'm happy."

Organized religion is depicted in a dim light, but it seems like typically it is shown as somewhere between a source of comfort and a necessary evil (other than Scientology, they really hate Scientology). In one episode, Cartman accidentally travels 500 years into the future and religion has been obliterated, but people are still at war, even if everyone is required to be atheist. They now use swears like "science damn it" and, as one of the characters says, "Using logic isn't enough - you have to be a **** to anyone who doesn't believe the same way you do." This episode ends with the revelation that "maybe just believing in God makes God exist."

There's a lot to unpack as far as South Park's stance on religion, but ultimately I feel like it portrays the power any organized religion has to do good and also to do harm. Church can be inspirational and community-building, and it can also be a source of persecution and war. And, just like in The Simpsons, this show depicts how being loyal to a church can cause you to be very stuck in your ways and prefer to believe what is convenient now rather than examining the source material.

(I think what M says above about Matt & Trey's stances on religion is pretty accurate. I remember reading that they'd said that The Book of Mormon was "an athiest's love letter to religion" and that feels pretty in keeping with what they did on South Park as well. For all the shit religion has done over the centuries, it is ultimately something that helps people live as best as they can and provides hope for a better tomorrow. -S.)

When Jesus comes back to life in South Park, the heads of the Catholic church tell him, "Jesus, oh, we thought you died in Iraq" and blow him off. Likewise, when Jesus returns to earth in the surprise next show I'm going to be covering, he is introduced to George W. Bush and tells him, "You did not consult with me about this war. You know nothing of my teachings, and how you ever got to be president baffles me."

It seems that South Park wants you to believe whatever is right for you, if it's a higher power or no, but not to be a slave to organized religion. And you'd have to say Stan is more progressive than Lisa, who had the courage to leave her church when she no longer agreed with the sermons, but had to immediately latch on to another organized religion, which she could also be turned from in an instant if anyone complimented her saxophone playing or offered her a pony. Cut her some slack. She's eight. Stan is ten. She'll get there. No, she won't. Simpsons don't age.

Anyway, in my next installment I'm going to cover two turn-of-the-millennium shows and two characters who are the most neglected members of their respective families, and the very different ways they reacted when religion was presented to them as a potential solution. Get hyped!

Diving Into the Deep or Shallow End of 10 Iconic Comedies - Finale

As we move on to our final chapter of my chronological journey through the best and worst rated episodes of 10 iconic shows, a premise explained in part 1, let's see how far TV has come over the years.  We'll start by talking about a show where a group of guys are friends and then, oh no, who's this moving into the building? Well, she's a g-g-g-girl and she's pretty and stupid and adorkable! They don't understand her female whimsies and don't know how to react when she cries and when she gets her period they all have complete emotional meltdowns!

And no, I'm not talking about New Girl, I'm talking about a show with pretty much the same premise but that also is supposed to make you feel smart.

9. The Big Bang Theory (2007 - 2019)

I have some familiarity with this show because my brother dated a girl who was really into it and it was often on in our house. It rubbed me the wrong way a little bit because of the kind of hateful trope the you cannot simultaneously be both academically smart and socially smart, and you cannot be both academically smart and attractive. This is a trope that has always bugged me because in my youth I got very good grades but was not attractive, was shy, and had no social skills, and people always assumed things about me that turned me into a one-dimensional stereotype. Like that I was blissfully unaware of my lack of social skills, that I was kind of half computer, and that I would only have any kind of attraction to equally socially awkward, nerdy guys. None of those things were true.

There's also the "nice guy" trope as, as soon as Leonard sees how hot Penny is, he knows that she is destined to be his, if he just stays around and is nice long enough. It doesn't work the other way around in TV or movies, gender-wise. The nice, nerdy guy can ALWAYS have the hottest girl in school or at work or whatever, but the nerdy girl will NEVER get the guy unless she gets a makeover that proves she was smoking hot the entire time. (Oh, she just needed to take off her glasses and wear lower-cut shirts? You don't say! Well, now she's surely win Quarterback McGee's heart.)

Let's face it, this show is pretty consistently misogynistic, in addition to being fairly racist, occasionally homophobic, and being criticized for playing autism for laughs. The men start out the show as being incompetent, would-be womanizers, I think there's even some stalking going on for a while.

Another thing that bothers me about this show is that it is a very dumb run-of-the-mill sitcom that masquerades as a smart show. I remember people who were into this show bragging about how the thing that makes them feel best about watching it is there are all these smart jokes that go over "normal" people's heads. The thing is, while I haven't seen a LOT of this show, I don't recall any plots that were actually intelligent, and as for jokes, it's more like:

Sheldon: Penny, that is my chosen chair and I would like to sit in it

(laughter)

Penny: I'm kooky and I want to sit in this chair!

(laughter)

Sheldon: But that is the only chair in the room where based on the angle and the time of day the sunlight hits it in the exact manner that (says some big words)

(laughter)

Sheldon's "smart" jokes are just him rattling a lot of big words off, not saying anything clever, and even if you feel gratified by knowing what the big words mean, when you listen to what he's saying, it's not a joke, the joke is just that he is Sheldon and he talks different from how you talk.

I guess people could say the same thing about fans of Rick and Morty who pat themselves on the back for being smart. But the thing is, there's no real science in Rick and Morty, it's not trying to be smart as far as that goes. How Rick and Morty is smart is its actually smart humor and complex, intelligent plot lines. 

How do we know The Big Bang Theory is funny? Because it has a laugh track. Much like in the Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode where Dennis starts secretly videotaping Charlie and Mac's moms' interactions and putting a laugh track over it, they start commenting, "You see, nothing funny just happened, but there's a laugh track, so that lets me know I'm supposed to laugh."

Here is a scene from The Big Bang Theory with the laugh track removed.

But, as low as my opinion is of this show, I did once turn to it when I was in Europe for work and homesick for America. I wanted to watch a familiar, stupid sitcom even if I was expecting it to be bad. I was not let down. This was the episode where Penny gets drunk and gives Raj a hand job, and the rest of the episode is the remainder of the characters teasing them with sexist and racist jokes.

Ah, Big Bang Theory. Let's see the supposed best and worst you have to offer, shall we.

IMDB's Top: The Stockholm Syndrome (IMDB 9.5, M 5.1)

Second show in a row where the finale was the top-rated episode of the series.

So, a lot had apparently happened since the last time I saw Big Bang Theory. Sheldon and Amy are married, and the whole gang is getting ready to travel to Stockholm to see them accept a Nobel Prize in physics. Their first misadventure is they can't figure out how to fit all of them and their luggage on the elevator at the same time! So they humorously mash each other and the luggage into the elevator and after several tries they can't close the door. These are doctors of physics. They cannot come with the solution of making multiple elevator trips, so they just end up sending the luggage down by itself and they take the stairs.

This is already insulting my intelligence, but when they get on the plane the shenanigans really begin. Penny is pregnant but hasn't told anyone yet, and has morning sickness, leading Sheldon to believe she is sick and will destroy his big day by getting him sick. When he points at her screaming "unclean, unclean" and the only funny exchange in the episode happens.

Leonard: You can't catch what Penny has.

Penny: Should we just tell him?

Leonard: If we don't, he will jump off the plane.

Penny: That doesn't answer my question.

Leonard is upset when rather than congratulating them, Sheldon just responds, "Oh, good, I can't catch that." Sheldon has a similarly unsympathetic reaction when he finds out his other friend's kid is sick and they're thinking of going home. So everyone is bailing on the ceremony and even Sheldon's own wife is mad and calling him out on his selfishness.

But, then they randomly decide they're going to the ceremony after all, and when Sheldon gets up to give his acceptance speech, he has a change of heart and does a whole "My friends, you bow to no one" moment where he asks them to turn the spotlight on his friends in the audience and have them stand up so he can introduce them and ramble about stuff having nothing to do with the award, especially how he remembers when Leonard and Penny first started dating and now look, they're going to have a baby. Then we cut to a scene where they're all sitting around eating food as the theme song comes back on, except it's one of those hideously sloppy eating and talking scenes where no one actually says anything, like their mouths don't form words, its just a lot of pointing at each other and nodding and giving knowing smiles while enthusiastically chewing. It's a bad closing scene, but it's not as jarring as the junior high students having very awkward spasms at the end of "Is It True About Stephanie," so there's that.

Sheldon making the awards show about his friends is a total fan service ending, as the show's central conceit has always been Sheldon's selfishness and inability to read social cues. In this episode, his selfish responses seem to surprise everyone, even though the show has been on the air for 12 years. I'm guessing that because the show has been on for 12 years, Sheldon has learned this lesson, or something similar, a multitude of times. And I, for one, was just cringing through the whole Nobel Prize scene. I was like, "No, this is not something anyone would actually do, that's not how awards shows work." But, if Sheldon finally wins his Nobel Prize and decides to use the moment to apologize for being a jerk to his friends the past two days, that's totally on him, and I guess character growth etc.

IMDB's Bottom: The Athenaeum Allocation (IMDB 6.8, M 5.05)

This is another late-series episode, so rather than the guys running around doing their stalker antics that are ok because they don't know any better, the characters have largely settled down and it's more about caring about these characters' development and the new families they are building than being a hilarious "they're so different, but they're neighbors! Penny don't know none of them big words" ... wait, was that hilarious? I don't know, it was trying to be, but let's move on to this very boring episode.

Howard and Bernadette just had a baby and they are adjusting by having petty arguments about taking care of the baby like the kind of arguments two actual babies would have, not two adults in a mature relationship. And Sheldon and Amy are working on wedding planning.

Here's another issue I have with this show. While there's three pairings that happen over the course of the show, none of these relationships have ANY chemistry. This isn't like some kind of experiment where if you trap six people in the same room they'll eventually pair off. The stilted lines, bad acting, and really contrived storylines make it worse, and even in these happily-ever-after last couple seasons, it seems none of the women are really happy with their dorky husbands, but they put up with them because, oh, nerds, they just don't know any better. Amy, for example, tells Sheldon sometimes the only reason she tolerates him is that she knows he doesn't understand other people's emotions so when he ****s up it's just because he doesn't know any better. And here's part of the argument Howard and Bernadette have over their children:

Howard: Don't get me wrong, I will take a bullet for this baby, but I'd let myself get severely mutilated for you.

(laughter)

Bernadette: If you get severely mutilated, I'm leaving you

(laughter)

Howard:I don't blame you. I am no prize even when I'm unmutilated

(laughter)

But that's okay, because ultimately Penny, Amy, and Bernadette are happy to settle for their big ol' doofs of husbands, knowing they'll always have the upper hand, and at the end of the day/series, they're always going to get over their squabbles and enjoy smiling and nodding at each other while pretending to eat food. And that's all we need at the end of the day, right? A fictional loving home we know we can always return to and it will always be there for us. Or, a family spread out across multiple loving fictional homes, like in my final entry.

10. Modern Family (2009 - 2020)

We started with Full House, and now we're ending with another family comedy that premiered over two decades later. And, oh, what a journey it's been. I have the least familiarity with this show out of any of the list, so will probably have the least to say about it, but this was a refreshingly funny note to go out on. 

The premise of the show is that we have, well, a very modern family. The patriarch is the somewhat crotchety Jay, and then he has his two uptight, type-A grown children, Claire and Mitchell. And all three of them have partners who are so type B they might as well be type C. Jay's much-younger second wife is an over-the-top Colombian bombshell, Mitchell's partner is flamboyantly gay, and Claire's husband is the dorkiest beta dad this side of Jerry from Rick and Morty. And, they all have kids.

That's a lot to swallow, but I feel like for this show, it kind of works. I feel like you could dive in during the middle of the show's run and still get an idea of how all of the characters are related. Unlike a show I decided not to include, Arrested Development. That show also features a large three-generation family getting into shenanigans, but not only do you have to keep all the characters straight, you also have to remember everything that happened in the last episode and know every ongoing joke the show has ever had. I've tried to introduce people to Arrested Development and it hasn't gone well. Modern Family is much more accessible.

What makes this family so modern? Well, it's not like there's anything too shocking, unless you are offended by the fact that Jay and Gloria's son Manny (Gloria's child from her prior marriage) means we have a mixed-race family and Manny is the same age as his step-nieces and nephews, and Mitchell and Cam are a gay couple with an adopted Vietnamese daughter. I'd hope no one is scandalized by things like that, but I guess this shows how far we've come along between All In the Family and Modern Family. 

And we've also come a long way since Full House. This is not a show written for children, for one thing, it's a show for pretty much anyone. Its plots are clever, the characters are well-realized rather than being walking catch phrases waiting for laughs, and not every episode ends with a lesson sappily learned and everyone hugging. There are some huggy resolutions, but the show's sometimes cynical and sometimes just utterly ridiculous humor reminds me a little bit more of Seinfeld than Full House. I guess on the sap-meter it might fall somewhere between the two.

So, I guess the good news is ... TV has overall gotten BETTER over the past couple decades! (Come fight me.) Anyway, let's see how these two episodes rank.

IMDB's Top: Connection Lost (IMDB 9.5, M 7.6)

The entire episode takes place on Claire's iPad. She's at the airport coming home from a work trip, dropped her phone in a toilet, and is desperately trying to get hold of anyone who knows where her oldest daughter Haley is. Haley had stormed out of the house after having a fight with her mom about how she was trying to talk about something important and all Claire cared about was that Haley hadn't done the dishes, and Haley is just over this because she doesn't feel good and why don't they have any peanut butter or pickles.

The rest of the episode is Claire Facebook stalking and video chatting with all the other characters trying to track Haley down, and, there's the typical sitcom trope where a series of misunderstandings leads to Claire believing that Haley is pregnant and eloping in Vegas. Are some of the misunderstandings a little weak? Yes, but it's done at least 10 trillion times better than the same trope used in Full House's "Secret Admirer." Also, there are a lot of small jokes you might catch on the corner of Claire's screen, and all the actors really get to showcase their characters' individual quirks.

IMDB's Bottom: All Things Being Equal (IMDB 6.4, M 6.9)

Jay is attempting to get along as work partners with Claire's husband Phil, and, like so many a Rick-from-Rick-and-Morty after him, he doesn't have much respect for his son-in-law. Meanwhile, the girls (Gloria, Claire and her two daughters, and Mitchell's daughter Lily) are on their way to a women's rights march to give little Lily her first lesson in feminism. But, Gloria gets a flat tire on the way there.

The women are torn between whether to call for help or to try to fix the tire on their own. While, on the one hand, they're not setting a good example for Lily if women need to call for help, on the other hand, they don't know what they're doing. Gloria (played by Sofia Vergara) does not have a manual in her glove compartment because she needed the space for her emergency makeup. But when all seems lost, a beautiful, mysterious woman comes out of nowhere, says cars run in her blood because her grandmother was a mechanic, and offers to help them. They realize that they can all do this together as women. Haley initially doesn't want to get her hands dirty, but then becomes empowered when she realizes she can actually do this, and then it seems like it's going to be a ham-fisted special episode until

The woman who helped them promptly speeds off with Gloria's car right after fixing the tire. Gloria is not as upset about the car theft as about the fact that her makeup was not insured.

And that's the kind of stinger ending that you just gotta love, and makes me feel like this show might be way closer to Seinfeld than to Full House, vibe-wise.

I mean, does this episode have its flaws? You might say that the women's march plot trivializes female rights, but I feel like the show is pretty unapologetic about how non-progressive some of the female characters are. Gloria is practically a cartoon character.

Gloria: Usually when I have a car accident I just put on my emergency makeup and stare out the window and soon I have a whole crew coming to help me.

Claire: Okay. Well, let's just drop you off back in 1950 and then we can figure out what to do next.

And, there were some pretty funny jokes in this episode. Overall good show! I'll have to check out more of it.

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for:

Final Rankings

IMDB

1. The Finale (The Office) - 9.9
2. The One Where Everyone Finds Out (Friends) - 9.7
3. Scott Tenorman Must Die (South Park) - 9.6
4. The Contest (Seinfeld) - 9.5 TIED with Jurassic Bark (Futurama) - 9.5 TIED with The Stockholm Syndrome (The Big Bang Theory) - 9.5 TIED with Connection Lost (Modern Family) - 9.5
5. Ham Radio (Frasier) - 9.4
6. Secret Admirer (Full House) - 8.5 TIED with Dial M for Dick (3rd Rock from the Sun) - 8.5
7. The One with the Fake Monica (Friends) - 7.6
8. My Mother, My Dick (3rd Rock from the Sun) - 7.3
9. Some Assembly Required (Frasier) - 7.0
10. The Apology (Seinfeld) - 6.8 TIED with The Athenaeum Allocation (The Big Bang Theory) - 6.8
11. Futurama's Holiday Spectacular (Futurama) - 6.4 TIED with All Things Being Equal (Modern Family) - 6.4
12. Get the Girl (The Office) - 6.3
13. Is It True About Stephanie? (Full House) - 5.8
14. The Jackovasaurs (South Park) - 3.9

M

1. Scott Tenorman Must Die (South Park) - 7.7
2. Connection Lost (Modern Family) - 7.6
3. Ham Radio (Frasier) - 7.5
4. The One Where Everyone Finds Out (Friends) - 7.25
5. Dial M for Dick (3rd Rock from the Sun) - 7.1
6. The Contest (Seinfeld) - 7.0
7. All Things Being Equal (Modern Family) - 6.9
8. Some Assembly Required (Frasier) - 6.8
9. The Apology (Seinfeld) - 6.0
10. My Mother, My Dick (3rd Rock from the Sun) - 5.5
11. The Stockholm Syndrome (The Big Bang Theory) - 5.1
12. The Athenaeum Allocation (The Big Bang Theory) - 5.05
13. Is It True About Stephanie? (Full House) - 5.0
14. Secret Admirer (Full House) - 4.5
15. The Finale (The Office) - 4.2
16. The Jackovasaurs (South Park) - 4
17. Jurassic Bark (Futurama) - 3.9
18. The Futurama Holiday Spectacular (Futurama) - 3.8
19. Get the Girl (The Office) - 3.7
20. The One with the Fake Monica (Friends) - 3.5

Anyway, I've learned nothing from this, and I am not proud of myself, and I think I should probably go outside or something. And probably delete this blog.

Anyway, screw Flanders.