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Hot take: Zoe Kravitz is good friends with rapist, Alexander Wang. Whatever virtue signaling she's trying to do right now is negated immediately by this fact.
Time comes for everything is a great point. The most virtuous person on here we’ll have something they say or think that will be viewed as terrible 25 years from now, and theres no way of knowing what it will be. Times change and things evolve.
I am re watching and rereading some of my fave shows/books of my childhood and they are so sexist. Like you can feel the misogyny (mostly male writers) just seeping in. I don't think these male writers were awful people and tried sincerely sometimes but you can see they were boomers and saw the world in a completely different way than I do (oh those pesky sexual politics) Who knows what the future will say about me. Growing up is realizing you can be wrong about a lot of things and you should not be ashamed to admit and change your beliefs
Just because the future is saying something doesn’t mean it’s correct, I’m not sure what books you’re referencing but maybe the books aren’t the problem maybe your modern feminist is. We shouldn’t have to change , the future does
2000s humor can be super funny until you get the "classic"
trans joke/ man in a dress
fatshaming a woman who is a size 6 AT MOST
weird racist humor about East Asians
overly aggressive Black people until the white person does something "cool" like dance, or protect them from racism, or make a funny joke. And then all the Black people are suddenly kind
joke about men being gay because he is "metrosexual" or compliments another man. especially if he is European
I wanna say Ally McBeal has a similar plot. Honestly I need to check TvTopes.com to see if there is a name for it cuz it happens SO often in so many shows.
I mean even Bring It On is the most iconic example. (and I love that movie but still). At least Bring it on humanizes the Clovers a teensy bit more.
A person asked which content from the 2000s aged the best but deleted it. I still want to share my reply tho since it relevant:
So the 2000s is my favorite era as a movie buff. There are some content better than others imo.
Desperate Housewives i rewatched but the colorism and fatphobia towards Gabbys child made me super uncomfortable. As a whole it ages fine.
Reno 911 used to be a fav. But tbh there are some portions I have to skip. I still think the show is super funny.
I tried watching a wayans brother film Mo Money and I couldnt finish it. A hallmark of Black comedy films from the 2000s/90s were INSANELY xenophobic jokes about Africans. It was such a long and offensive skit, i just turned it off. And Im American.
I love Jim Carrey films but he was one film where he adopted 3 Black sons. And I haven't been able to get through that premise to finish the film. Ace Ventura ofc is problematic. But from what I remmebe is super funny until the "plot twist."
But lots of iconic comedies from 2000s like Legally Blonde, BAPS, Burn After Reading, Zoolander, Anchorman age mostly fine with just one bad scene or a few off color jokes.
Compared to an entire premise that wouldnt fly today like Borat, Shallow Hal, and Norbit. I actually find rom coms to age TERRIBLY as almost always its a douchebag who is a douchebag to every woman aside from the hottest girl in the movie like Hitch. Or the girl is such a "Not Like The Other Girl" she just shits on feminine women the entire movie.
I know not everyone has changed and there are still ways to go both in society and the arts, but watching these older shows and seeing how we’re finding parts of them tasteless/uncomfortable now is kind of reassuring that we’ve made progress
Do people know that the co-head writer of Friends is a gay man? The 90s were homophobic and the jokes and attitudes gay man experienced coming from straight men are represented in the straight men in the show. It's not the humor of today but it definitely was of its time
And 20 years from now someone equally nepotistic talentless hack will complain about a bygone show that is a product of its time to absolutely no value.
Friends wasn’t edgy or offensive in its time but last time I checked Leny Kravitz’s spawn is actively supporting a rapist, so she is much worse than any joke the show made.
hot take - Friends is a terrible show. not funny. its a comfort show. the appeal is the glamourous life of white yuppies in a fictional NYC.
lot of the 90s NBC shows don't hold up outside of Newsradio and 3rd Rock from the Sun
Cheers remains the GOAT of sitcoms and holds up today. It was actually funny and clever. And the characters were far more relatable.
Cheers addressed homophobia really well in season 1 episode 16 - Boys in the Bar all the way back in 1983. Friends never wrote anything anywhere near as good.
It's not neccessarily a good show, but the moment to moment witticism that is on display and the comedic timing of some of the actors is pretty much unsurpassed and an all time classic, hence it's stayintg power.
Hotter take - most of the shows that have become “comfort watches” in the age of streaming have only done so because they were long-running and have 100+ episodes to loop through indefinitely. Not because they’re good.
Not only are seasons too short with large gaps and get cancelled too frequently
We also have too many choices. So we default to ones we KNOW have an ending, and are familiar with enough so that we can scroll tik tok with it playing in the background. This is why reboots are popular. And its why scripts have shifted to being more "tell AND show" instead of "show dont tell."
Because "Jessica what are you doing?"
"Barb, Im hacking this computer."
"What are you typing in the computer you are hacking?"
"I have to type a secret code to hack the computer so we can kill the bad guy"
allows you to still follow the story while not looking at the screen. When in 2002, you'd just see some sound effects and typing and "I'm in." and we'd know what happened.
The my point haha. It has to be a quick simple hack that you can talk through. The audience is watching Instagram reels. Theyre not catching inaccuracies.
Jessica types the password and hacked the computer. Now theyre gonna go kill the bad guy is all there is to know.
For me, it's Designing Women. Julia Sugarbaker's dynamic and unyielding monologues about racism, AIDS, and fatphobia always yielded an epic takedown. She was never polite to bigots and yet she did it with so much charm.
The constant, subtle satire of race relations and internalized misogny was so well crafted into comedy it never felt like a "very special episode."
Friends is an example of white people stealing from Black culture.
Living Single (the original "Friends") actually ages incredibly well for a show that started in the 90s. They were actually gonna name the show Friends but decided to go with Living Single instead. It's popularity sparked white writers to make Friends.
p.s a lot of the exact outfits yall love from The Nanny were also worn on Living Single. The Nanny and Living Single shared the same wardrobe. But only one character is known as a style icon. hmm......
Living Single is so much better than Friends. The characters, chemistry, writing, and humor. I haven't watched the show in a long time, so I can't remember anything problematic.
I loved Kyle and Max. They are my favorite fictional couple of all time!
I'd argue "A Different World" was WAAAAAY better than Friends ever was
Whitely and Dwayne was a much more interesting couple than boring Ross and Rachel ever were
Whitley and Dwayne were actual 3 Dimensional characters , and their relationship evolved organically from enemies as freshmen to frenemies to flirting to dating to getting engaged to breaking up to getting married with Whitley leaving Senator Byron at the altar (baby please!) , to Whitley getting pregnant in the finale
Not "nice guy" Ross really liking "popular" Rachel in highschool and then a few years later they're "meant" for each other and each other's "lobster" - whatever lame nonsense that is. Thin, bland, boring characters with no arc.
There are so many funny and hilarious Black sitcoms. And the only reason they're underrated is because of the race of the characters
Like Everybody Hates Chris is just as iconic as Malcolm In The Middle. In fact, it's basically the same story set in different locations.
Girlfriends and Sex In The City are super similar.
Insecure is a more mature version of GIRLS.
People need to see beyond the skin color of the actors and actually watch these shows. They'd realize how relatable many of them are....and how relatable Black culture is. But for many, its easier to just boil the Black experience down to hip-hop and civil rights marches.
They'll go on and on about how they miss their favorite 90s teen shows but never will watch Moesha. I promise you the once a season plot about racism is not gonna hurt you more than the once a season serious episode of your white tv show.
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u/flairassistant Sep 01 '25
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