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.

Diving Into the Deep or Shallow End of 10 Iconic Comedies - Part 4

 Do you remember where you were at the turn of the millennium? You were probably awaiting the new music video that the Backstreet Boys dropped that night, weren't you, or was I the only cool one. Anyway, it's time for our chronological journey of TV comedies, explained in part 1, to cross over from the 90's to the 00's.

Anyway, what better way to celebrate the 2000's than a show that features a guy who is all set to celebrate Y2K, only to get cryogenically frozen and wake up just in time for Y3K?

7. Futurama (1999 - present)

But M, you say. does Futurama count as iconic? Well, in certain circles, yeah. Mainly nerdy guys about my age. When Futurama was pulled from streaming, the office where I worked had a collective mourning session. But, I don't know if too many people paid attention when the show came back after a long hiatus.

I watched the premier of Futurama with my family when it first came out, but I never really latched on to this show. You'll probably think I hate Futurama after reading this blog, and I don't. There are lots of good episodes of this show. Unfortunately, the two episodes that IMDB had me watch are NOT good.

Maybe part of the reason I never latched on to Futurama is that I felt like it was taking attention and resources away from my beloved Simpsons, but part of it also was its inability to write female characters. Our female protagonist is Leela, who is generally feisty, has an unachievably perfect body, and is the love interest of multiple male characters, including Fry, our male protagonist, and Zapp Brannigan, a character written for Phil Hartman that had to be recast after he passed away. 

In an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the gang gets invited to watch a test screening of an action movie, and Dee does not like the female protagonist. She goes on to say that she wishes the woman had had less agency. "You see, I feel bad enough about myself, I don't want to watch this woman who's smoking hot, an astrophysicist, and delivering roundhouse kicks." That's kind of what Leela is. She's perfect, but, don't worry, she's attainable. If you hang around long enough and are a NICE GUY, she will ultimately be yours, as she rightfully was from the beginning. I hate "nice guy" storylines and that's the main thing that turns me off about Futurama. If you question how toxic the "nice guy" trope is, check out the "nice guys" subreddit. Fry is nice, sometimes creepy and stalkerish but he's stupid so it's okay, and he eventually gets Leela.

I guess adult animation is full of couples where the woman is vastly superior to the man but enjoys being with him because she knows she is superior. In an episode of Family Guy, Lois loves Peter more than ever after realizing that she is the alpha in the relationship and he is useless. We also have Hayley and Jeff in American Dad, Cleveland and Donna in The Cleveland Show, Lisa and Millhouse in some future episodes in The Simpsons ... this could be a future blog, couldn't it. But, back to Futurama. 

IMDB's Top: Jurassic Bark (IMDB 9.5, M 3.9)

Fry discovers the pizza place where he worked 1000 years ago has been unearthed, and there's a fossilized version of his dog, Seymour. The professor has a way to bring Seymour back to life, but when it's discovered that Seymour died of natural causes at the age of 15, Fry decides not to bring him back to life, because he's probably lived a long and happy life without him. Also, for an extended period, Leela and Amy are practicing "combat" while wearing stripper outfits. WHY? I guess I am aware that there is live-action Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad porn (don't look at me like that, I learned this from an innocent YouTube video), so there's probably Futurama porn as well.

But, then, guess what, after Fry decides not to bring Seymour back to life, we get a flashback to the 2000's and see that Seymour faithfully waited outside the pizza place for over a decade before passing away.

The sappy episodes of Futurama are my least favorites, and this episode goes out of its way to be sappy. It will hit people's triggers like, "oh my God I love dogs," but, I love dogs, and this did nothing for me. Fry was a terrible dog owner, if he was even its owner, it seems more like Seymour was a stray that he fed that hung out at the pizza place (I have been to a pizza place where random stray cats walked in and out of the kitchen, so this is not outside the realm of possibility). But to refuse to bring a dog back to life just because you think you wouldn't be the center of its world anymore, and that's the only reason you wanted to have a pet anyway? That's despicable. He decides to let "his" dog (who we haven't heard of before and won't again) stay dead because he's afraid it might have gotten a new owner that it loves more than him. This is worse than what Ross did to the monkey, and the only reason I'm rating it higher than that Friends episode is it's slightly, only slightly, funnier. I mean, Bender is always great.

IMDB's Bottom: The Futurama Holiday Spectacular (IMDB 6.4, M 3.8)

Well, they did an episode worse than "Jurassic Bark." I don't even know what to say about this episode. It was supposed to be a musical, I guess, and it manages to insult Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. It makes no sense, the songs are awful, none of the jokes land, and it doesn't even really have a storyline, it's just a random series of events. I don't think they even bother to explain how they got from the very robot Hanukkah to the very racist Kwanzaa, and you know what, I don't care.

Again, I don't hate Futurama. I'm actually thinking, as a result of my work on this blog, I might someday do a watch-through of both Futurama and South Park, solidifying my position as the queen of adult animation. These were bad episodes, but I don't hate Futurama. You know what I do think I might hate, though? The next two shows I'm going to talk about. Change my mind, shows.

8. The Office (2005 - 2013)

I take back what I said about hate. Let's face it, I don't hate any of these ten shows. I like some of them more than others, but these are all sitcoms. They're the comfort food of TV. They give you a place to go every week where you know what to expect, where you have a funny bunch of characters that are bonded together because they are family, because they live in the same building, because they work together, or because they're aliens from the same planet, but regardless, they're always going to be there for each other. As the fictional sitcom Old Lady House tells us, you'll never be alone.

What is my background with The Office? Well, when I was working multiple retail/fast food jobs to finish up grad school, some people who I rung up at the cash register told me that I looked like Pam Beasley, and I went online and figured out who that was, and decided, ok, I guess that's a compliment. My boyfriend was a big Office fan and one Christmas bought me season 1 and we watched it with my entire family in one sitting. I didn't really like it, a) because I don't like cringe humor, and b)

Oh, I have to go back on the hate thing. Sorry.

I hate Pam. A lot.

I had an internship at a publishing house, which was my intended career, that did not lead to a job, so I interviewed for a secretary position at the publishing house. I didn't get it. My career aspirations quickly fell from book publisher to "anything where I don't have to work with food" and I interviewed for dozens of secretary/receptionist positions with no success. Either I didn't have the charisma, I didn't have the experience, or I was overqualified. That was the reason I was turned down by a law firm I interviewed with. I didn't tell them that I'd interviewed with Bed Bath and Beyond earlier and they'd told me the same thing.

So here I am, working three jobs and going to school, and Pam has the job of my DREAMS and gets to wear her own clothes and not go home smelling like onions, and we are supposed to feel SO SO SORRY FOR HER. Because she sits there and eats yogurt all day and maybe like three times a day her boss asks her to do something. And she, especially in the early seasons, has all the charisma of a limp, overcooked noodle that someone accidentally dropped into a toilet where it stewed for several years and then was thrown out onto the sidewalk and now has ants crawling all over it. But, oh my, her job is just SO HARD and she DESERVES BETTER and she wanted to DRAW PICTURES or something. Someone save this poor woman from her horrible fate, and also her fiance, which is another thing she has.

When the Oscars aired this year, I was texting with my aunt beforehand because she, like me, had watched most of the nominees. When giving me her reviews of the nominated movies, she said, "I liked Wicked, but I don't like Ariana Grande in real life. She just always has this put-on fretful look and it makes me want to slap her."

Right after my aunt sent that text, Ariana made her entrance on the red carpet and was making a face like she was being hunted by wolves and stabbed with red hot pokers and is very terrified but please feel sorry for her because she's being so brave right now but also could someone come rescue her. My aunt texted me, "slap."

(If my aunt had actually been at the Oscars, which she was not, this would have been the SECOND Oscar slap in history.)

Pam makes that same face ALL THE TIME. So, there might be a trope I hate more than the superwoman-who-is-attainable-if-you're-just-nice-enough trope. It's the wide-eyed, pretty-much-an-adult-infant damsel in distress who needs you to rescue her so she can be your adorkable beta partner. I don't want to slap Pam, though. I just want to remotely vaporize her so that she ceases to exist but I don't have to actually see it happen or feel any guilt. And, well, the show isn't on anymore, so I guess someone else took care of that for me.

IMDB's Top: The Finale (IMDB 9.9 (holy ****), M 4.2)

This is a complete game changer. The finale was the top rated episode of the show?

I watched this episode having watched the entire first season and then scattered episodes after that but nothing in the last few seasons, and, like the Seinfeld series finale, this was complete fan service. I have to put it above Jackovasaurs, but I'm docking it a lot because it makes no sense and has no entertainment value if you are not familiar with the show and the characters. 

The premise is that all the past and present cast members are getting together for Dwight and Angela's wedding and the finale of the documentary that was being filmed about Dunder-Mifflin this whole time (a plot point we often forget about). And of course Dwight is just the worst and he doesn't want a lap dance at his bachelor party, he is just upset that he's hungry and no one has served him bread. And of course Jim, his best man, plays pranks on him as he is wont to do. And of course Steve Carell, I mean Michael, shows up randomly and says "That's what she said." And of course Pam still is a human-shaped thing that occasionally reacts to stimuli when someone delivers a shock to her electric collar and then gives her a treat afterwards and I can only assume that otherwise she is in sleep mode.

Anyway, I can see how if you have followed this show for years, this would be a big cathartic moment. All the characters who have been mad at each other make amends, Jim and Pam leave the company on good terms, and Dwight, who seems to exist to be miserable, is happily married. But, this is a friggin' 9.9 on IMDB, meaning it's a durn near perfect episode. And, in my opinion, a perfect episode would be one that you could watch free of any context and still enjoy, and this IS NOT THAT.

I'm going to bring up the Simpsons masterpiece "Cape Feare," which rates a 9.2 on IMDB. I saw this episode as a child and I LOVED it for 20 years before realizing it was a parody of anything. It's an exact parody of a movie, but it doesn't need any context because it's just so good it can stand alone even if you've never heard of the movie. This episode of The Office cannot stand alone. It is the Return of the King of sitcoms. It is just, 51 minutes (!) of shoving these characters in your face and giving you 10 million endings and reminding you how much you love The Office, and, I don't love The Office, but by the end of the episode even I was a little bit touched. As (ugh) Pam says, life is short, so we might as well try to enjoy the times that we have, even if they aren't ideal. 

I remember one really slow summer afternoon in college when I was working at the movie theater with my best friend, Naomi. She randomly said, "You know what I'm most afraid of? I'm afraid I'll look back on my days working at the movie theater someday, and think, 'those were the good times.'"

That's kind of what this episode is. These people all thought their job was just THE WORST, but when they get together for a reunion of sorts, they realize that they really had it good and should have appreciated it more.

And guess who gets the last line in the series?

Friggin

Pam

Ends the series by saying that it made sense for a documentary to be made about a run-of-the-mill paper company, because sometimes we can find beauty in the ordinary. Or something like that. I'm never watching this episode again, so don't drill me for an exact quote.

IMDB's Bottom: Get the Girl (IMDB 6.3, M 3.7)

I have to rate this one pretty low for a few reasons. It's not as bad as "The One with the Fake Monica," but was it worse than "Futurama Holiday Spectacular?" Ultimately, I decided, maybe, yeah. Mostly because this is an episode where you really need context. Should I not have included The Office in this blog adventure for the same reason I did not include Arrested Development? Maybe. But it's too late now.

The premise is that Andy goes to Florida to try to get Erin back. If you're not an avid watcher of the show, you don't understand the history of their relationship, and they do very little to try to explain that, you're just tossed right in. And meanwhile, back in Scranton, Nellie showed up! Who's Nellie? Well, apparently she is the new boss at Dunder-Mifflin, and we don't know why, and we don't know who she is except apparently she showed up at some point in the previous season. There are a couple throwaway lines like "Nellie, how did you end up being our boss, you should be in jail after what you did in Florida" but no actual flashbacks or explanations.

There are episodes that are just for the fans, and episodes for everyone. Both of the episodes I've covered of The Office are just for the fans. Like any Always Sunny episode where they bring back all of the minor characters (see: "Dee Gives Birth," "The Gang Wins the Big Game"). I know pretty much every line in that show so I like those episodes, but I would not recommend them to newcomers.

It's also quite painful seeing a character that the writers didn't really know what to do with, other than just having them be generally awful, or latching on to a shtick that didn't really work. From my limited experience with later-season The Office, that is what Nellie seems like. Michael Scott left the show, and they tried to come up with a new incompetent, outrageous boss, and they failed.

Not the only time this has happened. When Carrie Fisher passed away, Family Guy seemed to really struggle with determining who Peter's new boss was going to be, and what was going to be their "thing." At first, it was Burt and Sheila, voiced by the incredibly talented Bryan Cranston and Niecy Nash. But, the writers couldn't really figure out a "thing" for those characters, so they were just kind of, there, for two seasons saying things like "Griffin, you're fired" or "Griffin, you're hired again" before disappearing. And now Peter's boss is Preston, who was also painfully unfunny at first but they've kind of leaned into the OCD  thing with him and that occasionally makes for a good joke.

Wait, this isn't what we were talking about. We're talking about Nellie in The Office. She basically seems like she's trying to do the same schtick as Steve Carell, where the joke is just supposed to be that she's uncomfortably incompetent with an over-inflated ego, but it just seems, really uncomfortable. If they were going to make her a recurring character, which I don't know if they did, and I don't care enough to look that up, she should have had her own thing, not just been female Michael.

There is one funny line in this episode. The grandma that Erin was working as a housekeeper for informs her that her grandson is suing Home Depot after getting his foreskin tangled in some lawn furniture and I was like LOL WUT.

Anyway, that is my very cerebral and not rage-fueled review of The Office. In the final installment of this blog series, we will visit two shows parodied in the Family Guy episode "Emmy-Winning Episode" so you know these will be very prestigious shows, and I will release the ultimate rankings I know you've been drooling for of IMDB vs. M.

Diving Into the Deep or Shallow End of 10 Iconic Comedies - Part 3

 And we're back! We've covered the juggernauts of the 90's, and in this post we're going to cover a couple of late 90's debuts that definitely broke the mold.

In case you're wondering what you're doing here, a) you're reading my blog, meaning you are my best friend and also you are imaginary, and b) I explained the premise of this five-part blog series in part 1. The short version is, we're doing a deep-dive exploration of ten iconic comedies from the 1990's and 2000's, and by deep dive I mean we're discussing IMDB's best rated and worst rated episodes of each show.

5. Third Rock From the Sun (1996 - 2001)

Third Rock played in reruns pretty late at night when I was in high school, meaning this was the show a bleary-eyed M collapsed onto the couch to watch when she was done with her six straight hours of playing The Sims. (I was a very popular and exciting teenager.) And I really liked this show. A show featuring four aliens masquerading as humans and trying, wide-eyed and innocent, to navigate Earth culture can't help but be irresistibly charming. This is literally the only thing I've EVER liked John Lithgow in. (I mean, leave me alone, I liked Conclave, I just had to imagine a giant animatronic red panda singing Green Day lyrics in John Lithgow's place whenever he was onscreen. Conclave. Great movie!)

This show is not streaming anywhere, and that makes me sad, like I've lost a piece of my childhood that will never return. I try not to collect physical media, but I would buy this show on DVD if I ever found it at a thrift store or pawn shop. It would be fun to revisit. As it is, I had to buy the highest-rated and lowest-rated episodes, for $2 a piece, to be able to watch this show at all. But I'm just that dedicated to this blog, and also didn't feel like picking a different show.

IMDB's Top: Dial M for Dick (IMDB 8.5, M 7.1)

The Solomons are invited to a murder mystery dinner theater. The problem is, they ... don't really seem to realize that it's fake.

This episode really showcases the unique dynamic that the Solomons have, as they are masquerading as a family but age and gender assignments are merely roles; they're all on equal footing. Tommy, for example, is the oldest of the aliens but accepted the role of teenager, and Sally accepted the role of being "the woman." 

Seeing the four fish-out-of-water aliens start to unravel as they believe people are actually being murdered all around them is a lot of fun. And that's what this show is in general. It's not cerebral, but it sure is fun. And this episode made me miss those late summer nights in high school watching reruns and being so brain fried from The Sims that I wondered how Sally was able to talk to Harry without clicking on him first.

IMDB's Bottom: My Mother, My Dick (IMDB 7.3, M 5.5)

This sure is a mess of an episode, but it's still kind of fun.

Sally and Harry accidentally teleport another alien to Earth. He's in the body of an adult man, but they decide to raise him as their child. Meanwhile, Dick is kind of in the opposite situation when he tries to kill his girlfriend Mary's sour, critical mother, only to bond with her and accept her as his new mommy.

One of Dick's better qualities is that he is actually a good boyfriend. He cares about Mary and you can see why she would want to date him, despite all his eccentricities. When he first stands up to Mary's mother, it comes from a place of caring and realizing that Mary's mother is making her miserable. However, he is a wide-eyed innocent alien who is easily led down the wrong path and distracted by shiny things. Hence, in the last episode we discussed, he actually believes at one point that Mary is the murderer, and in this episode, he takes Mary's mother's side when she manages to sway him.

The B-plot with Sally and Harry and their man-child is just abysmal. I don't really like cringe humor, and everything the new alien does is ... so cringe. And, what the ... he speaks perfect English, he just makes ridiculous faces, randomly falls down, and is baffled that this new body has "a hole in the back." I just feel so embarrassed for the actor playing this role that it makes the episode almost painful to watch. Sally and Harry also seem to be just phoning it in playing their roles as parents forced to be parents in a subplot where I think the first draft is what we ultimately get because none of the writers have any better ideas.

And where was Tommy in this episode? I mean, I guess Joseph Gordon-Levitt had a successful movie career and might have had to duck out of a few Third Rock episodes, but this is a perfect example of how when a show's premise rests on the shenanigans of a core group of characters, it gets much weaker when one of those characters is removed. See: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia season 13, when Dennis was present for less than half of the episodes because he was filming AP Bio. The show runners later agreed that this was the messiest season of Always Sunny they'd ever done, and the show only works when the core five are together. 

Man, I sure am talking a lot about this show I said I was not going to cover, so let's get back to Third Rock. Great show. I'm sorry you can't really watch it anymore unless you find DVDs at a yard sale or are willing to spend a lot of money on Amazon Prime Video, but, there is another show that you can watch about four aliens on a mission masquerading as an Earth family. It also has the leader trying to maintain some semblance of control, the rage-powered but ineffective militant, the sex-positive total moron, and the "youngest" member of the team, who is just trying to embrace teenage life and fit in. That's right, I'm talking about Solar Opposites, a show that I recently learned is working on its final season. Let's hope their series finale isn't as much of a bummer as Third Rock's was.

6. South Park (1997 - present)

Oh, South Park, what a land of contrasts you are. There are a trillion episodes of this show, and it can be really funny and it can be really bad. That's why if you love this show, you need to be really careful in recommending episodes to your friends. Let's hope IMDB can help us!

What is my background with this show? Well, as I grew up without cable, my introduction to the show was one of my male friends showing me all the Christmas episodes. Come to think of it, everyone I know who likes this show is male. But, you see, I am what Gillian Flynn would call a "cool girl" and I can hang. I like beer, I ... okay, that may be the only thing that makes me a cool girl. I like beer, and I like South Park. I mean, it's not one of the adult animation shows that I credit with raising me and forming my personality, but, it's quite enjoyable. Sometimes, it crosses a line or is just too sophomoric and stupid. For example, I overall really liked the feature length South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut but there were some scenes where I just wanted to bury my head in the couch cushions.

Most of the people I have met who love South Park were male, and only a handful have been pretentious jerks who think this is the only real comedy on TV and shows like Family Guy are garbage. My best female friend came around to liking South Park after seeing the semi-musical episode about Mormonism, which might be my favorite episode by default because it was the spiritual predecessor of The Book of Mormon, THE BEST MUSICAL OF ALL TIME AND THE REASON I GET UP EVERY MORNING. And that just goes to show, when recommending South Park, you need to be careful what episodes you do and don't recommend. So, please guide us, IMDB.

IMDB's Top: Scott Tenorman Must Die (IMDB 9.6, M 7.7)

That's right. South Park just took my top spot so far. And might take the bottom spot, I'm still deciding.

How far we've come. When giving synopses of episodes for prior entries, it's been like, "DJ has two dates for the big dance" or "Frasier and Niles can't decide what kind of wine to serve at their dinner party" and now we are kicking it up to Cartman is tricked into buying some pubic hair from an older boy because he believes "having" pubes makes him an adult, and it results in a war of public humiliation that involves a fake pube fest, a fake Radiohead concert, a very ... specially trained pony, and the culmination is ... I'm not going to ruin it for you, but if you've ever watched one of those most outrageous TV episodes listicle videos, you know how this episode ends. 

So, yes, the premise of this episode is that Cartman has a handful of pubes that he has realized is useless and he wants his money back. And, as is the South Park way, it escalates insanely. It's a funny episode, and it's also a sneakily clever episode, with all the plot points aligning for the shocking finale. 

I had another guy friend (most of my guy friends like South Park) point out to me that this show's strength is that it makes fun of everyone equally. It doesn't take a stance, it's just comedy, and no one is safe. I would argue that they took a pretty strong and unearned stance against Family Guy, but, for the most part, yeah. This show is not afraid to pull any punches, but they mask anything that could be perceived as social or political commentary by burying it in simplistic animation and poop jokes. It's a sneakily smart show, except when it's not, and that brings me to

IMDB's Bottom: Jakovasaurs (IMDB 3.9, M 4)

This episode is a mess.

Cartman stumbles across a Jakovasaur, a creature believed to be extinct that is basically a human except they are naked and slightly hairier and slightly dumber than the rest of the residents of South Park. I guess a bigfoot thing, I don't know, I really don't know what this episode was trying to parody, if anything. So, then they find out the Jakovasaur is female, and there is one living male Jakovasaur, and they are the last hope for the species. But eventually everyone finds the Jakovasaurs and their offspring just obnoxious, like, they don't pick up on any social cues, dude.

Don't watch this episode. I mean, there are worse things on TV. This is not actively offensive (see how high I set the bar) and Cartman is always a funny character, but you'll spend most of the duration cringing and wondering how they could possibly criticize Family Guy for lazy writing when this is like someone got incredibly high and then fell asleep on their computer and their drool wrote an episode of South Park.

Anyway, this was the stupidest but surprisingly not the worst episode I've watched during my journey. Where is my journey taking me next? Well, in part 4, we will explore two prime examples of will-they-or-won't-they-but-we-know-they-will entertainment GOLD! It will be fun. (I actively dislike one of the shows I'm covering in part 4.) (It's fine.) (Go in with an open mind, M.) (It's fine.) (I'm fine.)