Um, to be fair, I don’t think the badguyness about the empires you name resides so much in the fact that they are composed of different species as the fact that those species aren’t given any choice about joining.
True enough, but it’s still interesting how under-represented most of the Federation’s members seem to be in Starfleet, which is a largely Earth-centric organization. The other members are shown or mentioned as having their own military forces (we see Vulcan star ships on a few rare occasions, and Betazed is mentioned as having an antiquated token defense force), so it’s possible that Starfleet IS an Earth organization, and ends up being the Federation’s de facto military force because of it’s highly expeditionary nature. But enough of that sidebar…
How about Maris Crane on Frasier? In a show centering around a pair of psychologists, a character shown as being one of the most in need of psychological help is the subject of an extensive number of gags and cheap jokes, without even being able to appear on the show to defend herself against the brothers Frasier.
Actually I think that was probably more accurate than the modern sitcom town where every race is represented in roughly the proportion of the population of the US. I am sure there are, and were in the fifties, innumerable small towns in America that only saw black people on TV.
For me I felt this way about Cheers. I loved Cheers, but Norm was a terribly pathetic figure. Even as a teenager I couldn’t help but think that if the bar closed he would probably kill himself. The other characters weren’t his friends, he was just the jovial fixture at the end of the bar. He hated his job, didn’t appear to have family, and avoided his wife. I felt like I was watching a PSA on alcoholism and depression.
Heh, it just goes along with what Quark said to Rom. “You don’t know these humans like I do. Take aware their comfort and root beer and they become just as mean and nasty as any Klingon.” Ok, so that’s a paraphrase.
Good observation, Matt, yet another reason for me to hate Star Trek.
Marc
Not a sitcom, but still kind of creepy…
Back in the early 1980’s, (I searched, but can not find a cite) the magazine “Psychology Today” featured an article which looked at soap opera stress. Not the stress of the veiwers, but the stress of the characters, if they were “real” people, in “real” life situations.
They noted that the average main character of a soap opera went through deaths, illicit/secret love affairs, miscarrages, and many other “plot twists” both personally and in intimately connected friends and family to such an extent that most of them would be gibbering maniacs (my paraphrase) within a year or two. To survive and keep functioning under such varied and ongoing duress and stress, they would all have to be psychopathic in the extreme.
Then again, such a diagnosis helps to explain why they have such dysfunctional lives…
regards
FML
If they had any guts, the producers of “Lost” would end the series by finding a bunch of abandoned huts, an old derelict ship with a 2 foot square hole in the side, and a skeleton in a threadbare red shirt and a floppy fishing hat.
Stranger
Because suggestion of men beating up their wives certainly isn’t unsettling or offensive.
It’s always a wild guess as to what Gene “There Is Nothing Military About Starfleet” Roddenberry was thinking at any one time, but I always thought that was a deliberate aspect of Starfleet’s behaviour, because I always thought that the Federation was supposed to be a metaphor of the United States - it’s a federal democracy with big white gunships. The Federation was always well-meaning and said all the right things but could be clumsy and clueless, and sometimes hurt people with a degree of sheer dumb strength.
And with the skeleton positioned such that it is evident that the last thing the fellow did before croaking was to etch a series of numbers in the sand with his bamboo stylus…
Mad About You. I liked the show the first time I watched it. But seeing it in reruns I noticed how self-centered everybody on the show was.
Sesame Street. Bert and Ernie. No, not that subtext. Just because Bert was boring, that didn’t give Ernie the right to harass his friend all the time.
As opposed to all the other countries which have always behaved perfectly.
They did eventually get off the island in the TV movies. Then they went back to the island and turned it into a resort. But they still wore the same clothes and Ginger had plastic surgery. 
Are you kidding? That would be the bestest sitcom ever! Jewish Samantha could save (but not eat!) Darrin’s bacon by cleverly offering usurious loans to his superiors, and then blackmailing them into treating him better.
Then, instead of replacing Darrin they could replace Samantha, with Black Samantha. Oh there’s no problem that can’t be fixed with a hearty helping of chitterlings and collard greens!
Hm… on second thought, you might be right.
Take a look at Christmas television cartoon specials from the 70’s and 80’s - lots of Christmas being cancelled, Santa being kidnapped, little kids losing their families. Ugh…
My brother and I got a collection together one Christmas and sat down to watch them all in a row. After about 4 of them we broke up the party - it was way too heartbreaking.
As a kid they always showed reruns of Happy Days every day and I was very bothered by Fonzie. I could never figure out if his getting caught with girls was supposed to imply that he had sex in these situations, or just kissed girls. If it was meant to imply that he was having sex, then that guy was doing things like having sex with two highschool girls in the bathroom stall and there was nary a girl in town he hadn’t fucked. Which I just found weird as hell. But the only other choice is to take the kissing scenes at face value. If you do that, then you have to conclude that he never has sex at all because he never has a girlfriend and he’s always got his stupid coat on. I probably saw every episode 3 or 4 times and I never was able to find a way to interpret it because he was either the most promiscuous he-slut fucker of underage girls you ever saw, or else he was a virgin til he met that single mom and ate liver.
It didn’t unsettle anyone else but me when they were 9 and Ralph Kramden threatened to punch his wife in the mouth? Maybe it was because at 9 I knew more than one man who meant what he said.
To this day I HATE The Honeymooners because Ralph was forever threatening to kick his wife’s ass. I mean, he’d ball up his fat fist and wave it right in her face and tell her he was gonna hit her so hard she’d fly.
OTOH, there was a short where a male cat gets the Pepe treatment, but I no longer remember which one it is.
And of course Pepe does get the tables turned on him a few times, but that hardly makes it less distrubing.
Well, it’s not taken real seriously on the show, since it’s played as “just a comedy.” But I’d say, split the difference. Lots of making out without going all the way.
The first PlP was definitely male. I think the second one was too. It was clear from the presentation I don’t know where to look for proof, however (yeah, yeah on the underside of the cat). I remember because when I watched a newer version a half dozen or so years later it was a female pussy (err…cat) and I was rather surprised.
I read somewhere that the original idea for Gilligan’s Island was to put a bunch of different types of people together, isolate them from the rest of humanity, and observe their interactions.
And it must be remembered that the camps housing USAAF and RAF prisoners were operated by the Luftwaffe, which usually followed the Geneva conventions on the treatment of POWs (were we so enlightened today) and included Stalag Luft III, which hosted the original “Great Escape,” and Colditz Castle, where at liberation prisoners were building a frickin’ SAILPLANE! to escape in. To say that the POWs were poorly supervised in an understatement.
drop, whose POW dad thought “Hogan’s Heroes” was hilarious.
I’m almost positive that’s a whoosh, and if it isn’t, I’d really appreciate not hearing about it.