I am not real fond of Flanderization.
Often it’s the supporting characters. They get clownish and dumber. Lewis and Oswald on the Drew Carey Show are a good example.
JD managed to do it as a lead on Scrubs.
But I still watched a lot of those shows, if less enthusiastically.
No, not really.
I dropped Six Feet Under because I could not stand Billy. Picked it up again, and made it through his arc, but still never liked him.
I would argue that the character of Mose Manuel on Deadwood - who was played by the same actor (Pruitt Taylor Vince) who played Otis (and who was clearly just trying to earn a half decent paycheck by appearing on the shitshow that is The Walking Dead) - bucks the fat character trend, at least in the long run. (SPOILERS AHOY!) True, he starts out dirty, shifty, and slovenly, but after he gets shot, he reveals himself as yet another lost soul who longs for any kind of redemption, however small, and pretty well attains it.
Just to ask, how much physical activity do Walking Dead characters undertake, and for how long? Enough that an overweight character would realistically have to lose weight? Forcing an overweight actor to gradually lose weight for a role may or may not be something they want to do (although plenty of normal weight actresses have been forced to do the same).
Phrases like this always ends with something offensive, and this is no exception.
I’ll probably lose a lot of credit for admitting to watching the show, but he also played a very competent and decent recurring character on* the Mentalist.*
…I drop in and out of Walking Dead: I skipped most of Season two and three, dropped in for the last half of Season four and the first half of Season Five. And I have to say: the descriptions you’ve given of the characters sounds like characters from another programme. I won’t spoil things: but literally every issue you’ve bought up gets addressed (IMHO): I think you would enjoy the direction the series has taken now.
Sorry you’re offended, but nothing I said is false.
The same could be said of smokers, yet in TV and movies the fact they smoke is often used to make them undesirable characters.
I have to say im enjoying the criticism the show is getting here. I thought I was alnone with my dislike. Just about every character is little more than one dimensional. At least this was the case until early in season 3 when I stopped watching.
While Whedon is great and everything, I had to check out of Buffy a few times when watching it. While I “get” the first Slayer and making an early human non-black would have been worse, the tribal, primal nature of one of the only black characters on the show late season 4 (when she was briefly introduced) was kind of offputting. Especially after the Thanksgiving episode which was edging pretty close to “noble savage” territory with American Indians.
I also wasn’t always fond of Whedon’s “this is what guys are like, right!?” stuff with Xander. It reminds me of the creepy apologetics I’ve seen men do when topics like date rape and male gaze come up. “We’re just like that! Us menfolk just can’t help staring at boobs and we think about sex every 7 seconds!” bullshit. To be perfectly fair, there were male characters like Giles to offer a counterpoint, but Xander made me cringe and uncomfortable a lot. (Though overall I still like Xander as a character)
It wasn’t enough to make me give up on the show, and on balance Whedon is pretty good about equality, but sometimes I did have to take a break due to the characterization. In some ways, Whedon is portraying character archetypes that very accurately represent actual people. I could totally buy Xander as someone from an abusive blue collar family. A lot of those mannerisms are totally right for that, but sometimes it was a bit exhausting.
(There is also, of course, the unfortunate overloaded metaphor of magic as lesbianism/drugs, but that was so obviously unintentional I couldn’t really be put off by it)
Try playing or watching the game* by Telltale, the protagonist of the first season is a black man and the protagonist of the second season is a tween-ish black girl. Now that I think about it (I didn’t really notice before), they even have a decent balance of overweight characters, albeit this is more true come Season 2. It even considers (but doesn’t focus or linger on) how issues like racism and misogyny can impact a society in the post-apocalypse. Though be warned that the first two episodes are bit rough and play some of the standard tired zombie apocalypse tropes (spoiler: Episode 2 has cannibals. Again)
I got fed up with *MASH *when Hawkeye got all preachy and self-righteous.
I agree about Marie and Debra in Everybody Loves Raymond. In fact, the entire family was pretty irritating, altho Frank did crack me up - probably because he was so like some of my older male relatives.
In general, I’m immediately turned off by a show when the male lead is portrayed as a bumbling idiot who is incapable of functioning without his long-suffering wife there to fix his mistakes and forgive his idiocy. I never understood why Jill stayed with Tim on Home Improvement. He may have learned a lesson at the end of each episode, but he’d forgotten it when the next show rolled around.
Pretty much any over-the-top stereotype gets on my nerves. I know, it’s TV, it’s not real, blah blah, but I can only suspend so much disbelief before I change channels.
What are you talking about? That sentence really doesn’t make sense. Smoking in scripted entertainment is usually engaged in by characters that are in some respect willing to live their lives on the edge, in any number of ways. But the smoking itself does not “make them undesirable characters”. Smoking is something a person does, being fat is something a person is. Huge difference.
Ummm…seriously, Rik, please either bail on this discussion or open a thread for it. It really isn’t fair to Monstro to be throwing out assertions like this, which cries out for a response, but not here.
What movies or TV shows are you watching that show that? Because it’s nothing I’ve seen in the last ten years. Maybe in the 80s.
I asked a question in response to replies in this thread. It wasn’t out of left field, it was the topic brought up by the people who made those replies. And nothing I’ve said is a baseless assertion, it’s pretty commonly-known fact that extra weight will shorten your life. That’s not an “offensive stereotype” or any such thing, or something I pulled out of my ass. I said nothing about the character or willpower or any personal characteristics of obese people, I simply said it’s an unhealthy lifestyle and I was honestly asking why some people here wanted to see it promoted via positive portrayals of obese people who are not trying to solve their health issue.
I’m not sure what your problem with that question is.
I’d say that fat is what a person looks like, while smoking is a habit.
Going back to “The Walking Dead”, any number of the main characters might be smokers. Or drinkers. Or gamblers. If these behaviors are relevant to the storyline, they will be mentioned (There is a scene where T-Dog savors a cigarrete from a pack he finds on the road, for instance.) If they aren’t relevant, why would they be mentioned? I’m sure all the characters also poop and pee, but I don’t need to see them squatting. Not all behaviors need to be given screen time.
Fatness, on the other hand, is a common physical attribute. It doesn’t matter that people can “help” being fat. The reality is that most Americans are overweight, just like half are men, and most are Christian. If all the characters in “The Walking Dead” were Muslim or Hindu (or frequently made Muslim or Hindu references), I’d also be annoyed. I can buy a zombie apocalypse, but characters that are skewed in a direction that goes very much counter to reality is distracting, at the very least.
I’m not going to “should” art. Art can be whatever the creator wants it to be. But the consumer has a right to complain when entertainment is used as a vehicle for someone’s stupid biases and politics. Excluding fat people from a show because you don’t want to encourage obesity is just as stupid as not showing zombies chowing down on bodies so as not to encourage meat consumption. I don’t want such ham-handed nannyism in my TV shows, thankyouverymuch.
Same. Which is sad because I love Hepburn.
Me, I have trouble with overly misognystic characters. I tried to watch Lost but I didn’t even make it past the season opening. In the season opening, when the plane crashes, the men all band together to help the wounded and take care of things, especially the WHITE MALE, but all of the women just scream and cry and act hysterical. Not one woman does anything useful. I couldn’t even get past that scene.
I also am having more and more trouble with older movies. It’s all “white person, preferably white male, saves the day”. Even when there’s non-whites they are all relegated to secondary roles. And forget women. We’re not even a minority but we can never be the hero. Not that it’s much better nowadays.
ETA: Fatness should be incorporated into shows, and not make it about the person’s fatness. Just like more women should be given leading roles without making any reference to the fact that they are women. Honestly, you would think fat people weren’t even people, just blobs of fat, just like you would think women aren’t people, just walking vaginas. We exist too!
I never got the hate for Debra, myself. Sure, she could be harsh at times, but that whiny putz of a man-child she was married to would test the patience of a saint.