Three pages in, and nobody’s mentioned Bosom Buddies?
Whaddaya expect? The kids viewing are seeing exactly the lives to which the advertisers want them to aspire.
As opposed to adult shows where they’re always at work and grocery shopping and paying bills, right?
Beg to differ. I mean, Nelson has this beautiful woman who can literally do anything, and all she wants is to be his slave! (Sorry, I can’t help taking the male POV here. 
) But he’s so uptight he can’t ask for wishes as freely as Aladdin did. It’s so pathetic, it’s sweet. Believe me, I would abuse that power in ways you could never . . . I’ll be in my bunk . . .
What’s creepy? The crossdressing thing? They never played that up the way I expected. The show was really about two young guys trying to make it in the big city.
What treatment? I used to have a crush on the lady who played Carol, and I don’t ever remember her looking hefty on that show.
Marc
Not creepy, but I always thought the idea of an all female apartment building was a little weird.
That’s one interpretation. However, as I pointed out in this post and in this thread, a more accurate comparison would be money and class. Once you take away the magical trappings, “Bewitched” is basically a show about a marriage between two people from very different socio-economic backgrounds. Darrin is middle class (perhaps one generation removed from working class) while Samantha comes from an aristocratic family of idle rich. Using magic to get or accomplish something on the show is the same as using unearned wealth and privilege. In a supposedly classless society like America that emphasizes social advancement by way of one’s merits (at least in principle), doing this is like cheating. 
New York used to have a few well known female-only hotels/apartment buildings. There is at least one left. http://www.websterapartments.org/
It always amused me to see Larry Hagman playing Major Nelson like that because I grew up seeing him as J.R. Ewing. Imagine how J.R. would have dealt with Jeannie!
In another example of “rape can be funny,” the episode of Futurama titled “Amazon Women in the Mood,” features many, many, women raping Fry, Zapp, and Kiff. It could be argued that it might not have been rape in the case of Fry and Zapp, since they did genuinely seem happy to be getting Snu-Snu, if not for the fact that they’d die from it, but Kiff clearly did NOT want Snu-Snu and was making pretty good efforts to avoid it (walking on the ceiling.)
The spirit is willing but the flesh is bruised and spongy.
A woman being raped by a man = tragedy, a man being raped by a woman = comedy :rolleyes: .
I agree, both Major Nelson and and Darren strike me as pathetic, unable to deal with the powerful, sexy women who love them without first depriving them of their powers. I wrote an essay about it, linking them to the male lead in a little-known episode of a Skinamax TV show called “Thrills” who is so low that he’s unworthy of his sex toy. Here’s the link:
http://www.bondagerotica.com/articles/sexyrobotbabe/sexyrobotbabe.html
Nah, your analysis is off. Suppose that Samantha and/or Jeannie’s big deal is that they had inherited millions of dollars, and Darren/Major Tony had forbidden them to use the money, instead living on their salaries? Everyone would think they were just idiots. It was the fact that Samantha and Jeannie had powers that made them threatening to Tony and Darren.
That’s part of the problem. Carol (Tracy Gold) was never fat, but her brother Mike (Kirk Cameron) constantly made fat jokes about her. In one scene, they even had her fall through the floor when she tried exercising in her room. Not too surprisingly, the actress developed anorexia.
There were issues with step-parenting, in the first season. There was the episode where Bobby was going to run away because he was afraid Carol would start acting like a wicked stepmother, and the one where the advice column in the local paper had a letter about someone who didn’t care for their stepchildren (each of the Bradys thought one of either Mike or Carol had written it, but in fact, neither had), and the one where Alice was going to leave because she thought Carol’s presence made her superfluous, and the one where Marcia nominated Mike for Dad of the Year, and made note of the fact that his being a step made no difference to her, and plenty of episodes about the kids adjusting to having opposite-gender siblings. Granted, the matter was dropped after the first season, but that’s still not “never”.
As for why the previous parents were never mentioned, I got the idea that Mike’s kids had already processed their mother’s death because it had happened several years earlier. As for Carol’s kids, it was never explicitly stated that their dad was dead. It could have been that he was absent due to divorce, not death. And if he’d been distant, physically or emotionally, beforehand, the girls might not have missed him much.
I always thought that the characters on Fresh Prince, Will especially, but all of them in general, were too mean to Carlton, who did not deserve it. He was pompous, but not a jerk, and what bothered me was that Will openly scorned him for not being “down”, while Carlton only made comments about Will’s boorishness when provoked. Carlton was in a perfect position to lord it over Will, but he actually wanted to be friends. And the minute Will moved in, he started pushing Carlton around in his own home! Plus, Carlton was nowhere near as unattractive as Will claimed.
Likewise, I thought the characters on Mary Tyler Moore were too mean to Ted. Especially Murray. Ted was dumb, but it was hardly his fault that Murray was in a job he thought was beneath him. Why didn’t he find opportunities for himself, if he was so smart? And while Ted did think highly of himself, I don’t recall him treating others poorly. The worst thing Murray did, IMO, was at Ted and Georgette’s wedding. The 1970s were the heyday of write-your-own-vows, but because the ceremony took place at a moment’s notice, Ted had to ask Murray to supply vows for him. So Murray relayed the vows to him in a whisper, which Ted immediately repeated without processing: “…never make you regret…Having married…Such a cluck.” What an absolutely cock thing to do to someone at their wedding.
(There was one instance of the tables being turned, though. I forget the circumstances, but Sue Ann somehow got Murray to wear a wedding gown. Ted walked in to see this, and absolutely went to town on him. It was his one shot at some getback, and boy did he take advantage of it. Good for him!)
Since non-sitcoms seem to qualify, I’ll observe that it often seemed to me that domestic violence was a subtext (beneath the lesbian subtext, of course) on Xena–at least for the first half of the series. Gabrielle said more than once that she was afraid of Xena, and Xena more than once physically hurt her–usually only a tap, it’s true, but on at least one occasions she was clearly trying to call the bard.
I forgot all about that show! I used to watch the show and think the only funny thing about it was Carlton. I kind of took it as a show about a funny nice guy who’s asshole cousin moves in for you to hate. Because of that show, every time I see Will Smith I think he’s just a smug goof. Even during Ali I was thinking, “what a smug goof.”
Jeepers, we just had a David Cassidy thread and no one has mentioned the innapropriate sexual chemistry between siblings Keith and Laurie Partridge? Even as a twelve year old I felt a little dirty watching their furtive glances at each other while they entertained the audience in song. I always assumed the big smile on Shirley Jones’ face was masking a big old “What the hell are these two heathens doing?” voice in her head.