The “incest” episode: a murdered girl was pregnant by a male relative; who turned out to be her boyfriend, who was unknowingly her half-brother due to their father’s philandering.
When he finds out she was his half-sister, he’s so traumatized that he vomits.
Now maybe I’m a deve, but this struck me as way too over the top. This girl was someone he didn’t grow up with, who he was in love with, and for what it counts was only his half-sister. I can see extreme embarrassment, or “aw, F****K!”. But to react like he’d just been told his last Big Mac was made of ground-up illegal aliens? He did everything but pour battery acid on his genitals in shame and disgust.
I just thought they overplayed the “OHMYGAWD, INCEST!!! GUH-ROOOOOOOOOSSSE!!!” thing way too far.
I didn’t see that episode, but your post cracked me up.
Reminds me of a movie from a long time ago with the same scenerio of half-siblings who don’t know and fall in love. Liar’s Moon, I think it was called. It was set in the 30s, IIRC, and it had the same unbelievable plot contortions in reaction to the incest. The father just wouldn’t come out and tell them they were related, he just tried to stop them from hooking up, so naturally they elope and she gets pregnant. Then when they find out- she gets a back alley abortion! :eek: :rolleyes: Did they really think the child would be born with two heads, and flippers? :dubious: Then, it got better, turns out they weren’t related at all. Or some such silliness. Even better, in the original ending she died from abortion complications, but audiences hated it so they changed it.
I feel sad that I remember so much about that movie. I think it tramatized me. Well, that and Flowers in the Attic…
It sounds like an overreaction to me. For what it’s worth.
Compare that reaction to the reaction in the classic My Chauffeur (1986), in which Deborah Foreman is (mistakenly, as it turns out) informed that she has slept with a close relative. Her response: A giggly sort of embarrassed look, and the response, “Uh-oh! We’ve been baaaaaad!”
I remember thinking that as well when I watched the episode.
They should have saved that scene for the end, after his father is killed by his mother and his mother is sentenced to life in prison! :eek:
O shit. My girlfriend, who it turns out is my half-sister, is accidentally killed by my father! My father is murdered by my mother!! My mother is going to prison for life!!! And I just found out that I have a 12 year old half brother, who I have never met!!!
The mystery novelist Ross McDonald often had a number of those things in his novels and about half the time his characters end up killing themselves over it.
I think the point is, considering the situation, would there really be that much emotional stress? Afterall, the girl was only his sister in the strictest genetic sense: he didn’t know they were related, had never met her before highschool (IIR the episode C) and had no filial emotional attachment to her. I could understand that reaction if, say, they’d grown up together as siblings, and they woke up in bed together, hung-over and naked, but in this context, it seems excessive.
The flip side of this, which I’ve seen a couple times, is when to characters think they’re siblings, and struggle nobly against their impure feelings, only to find out at the denouement that one or the other was adopted, so it’s okay for them to boff. Er, no it isn’t. It’s still gross. It’s way grosser than two characters who really are siblings but don’t know it having sex.
Did he have any other sisters in that episode? I could maybe understand if he compared sexing her up to sexing up an actual sister of his and was sickened by it. The hurling is still a bit much, though, even with that.
On the other side of the coin, sometimes only children don’t consider it as awful because they haven’t been exposed to the day to day life with a brother or sister that usually keeps incest out. So if he was an only child, I’d expect a little less of a violent reaction.
I agree with you, Miller, being unrelated but raised as siblings doesn’t make it any less icky.
Uh, yeah. Having your girlfriend brutally murdered is a significant stressor. Having people close to you (or yourself) scrutinized as suspects would be additional stress. Finding out your girlfriend was your half-sister in the middle of that might easily push you over the edge.
Anecdotally, I yakked up my guts the night an ex-girlfriend did herself in. It was really strange, and unlike the usual puke from illness or intemperance. No warning, (in the middle of commiserating with friends) no heaving, just a sudden high pressure gastric contraction and the contents of my stomach (mainly coffee, as it happened) shot through clenched teeth and hands as I dashed for the bathroom. It happened coincident with someone saying something that put the finger exactly on my feelings of culpability – like pressing a button marked “purge.”
As Larry Mudd mentioned, it wasn’t just sleeping with his sister. It’s finding out the girl he loved was dead, that she was his sister, and that she was pregnant. All at the same time. It was just too much. I could see it happening.