Few things for the family
- Malcolm gets called out by EVERYONE of the main characters and major side characters at one point or another in the series for his crappy attitude… It’s a running joke by the end of it…
- This is one of those fox “see! the poor don’t have to be poor, they just need gumption and having less kids” shows… (Bones is another ex.)
- Malcolm’s always whining and it causes him to lose out on many major opportunities (both relationship-wise and career-wise)
- Hal says they have sex several times a day, even when they’re camping with another family. Thus he’s always tired and can’t concentrate
- In one episode, Lois and Hal have to stop having sex for a week because of some medical issues, the grass gets attention and turns green, hal gets a promotion, and they stop being so trashy. All in one week. Once the issue is gone and they can have sex, everything goes back the way it was, grass looks like shit, house is a wreck.
- In one episode they show how each time they have a kid, the parents lives get progressively worse.
One of the running themes on the show is basically “work sucks but there’s nothing you can do about it”.
There’s an episode where Francis has to work at Lois’ job to help with inventory and Craig is in charge and is being extra incompetent. You’d figure with all of the opposition Francis organizes at military school that he’d be able to easily handle Craig and start a union or something. Instead, when everyone else decides to just give up and go home after they lose the competition to get it done before another store in the area, Francis is fighting to get everyone to finish what they started.
I don’t think any of the times when the show has a “character vs their employer” conflict works out in a way where the character wins. The closest I can think of is when Lois has a conflict with a manager that fired her wrongly, but even that one isn’t resolved in a great way because his downfall comes from Lois telling him she has dirt on him but would never tell anyone about it and the rest of the staff overhears and does tell. So it’s got a bit of “Lois is good because she keeps her boss’ secrets” mixed in with the messaging.
It sucks because it’s otherwise such a well made show. Every character on the show sucks for some reason, but it doesn’t just let them get away with it. Unless it’s an employer or cop, at which point the message pivots to “it sucks but there’s nothing anyone can do about it other than bitch”.
I’m not sure if this is supposed to support or counter my point.
It sounds like you’re supporting it because it’s brainwashing you to think, “meh. Work sucks. Just deal with it and don’t try to improve it”
It reminded me of another point that in one episode when Hals company is trying to frame him for something the big wigs did… you find out that he’s never worked a friday in years. So him lacking commitment to try his hardest actually works in his favor. … As well as the fact that he matters so little that nobody noticed.
Yeah it was meant to go along with your point as a “I noticed it had this similar propaganda”.
Wait really Bones did this? I thought I remember an episode where Bones says “you just need to work hard, my life was hard too but I didn’t end up like that” and learned by the end that wasn’t a fair judgment. Maybe I’m misremembering?
Bones had a lot of subtle things … Each character has some weird quirks that almost always has the future conservatives would tell them.
(Spoilers for a 10 year show)
If the top of my head …
- Both of the women (bones and the hot girl intern) who were proud of having a lot of premarital sex end up accidentally getting preggo and don’t even think of not keeping it
- The super duper rich guy, although he loses all his money due to outside circumstances, he works his ass off all the time, and becomes super duper rich again
- The only “poor” later season intern is a southern guy (ya know, from “real America”) who works hard and gets rich by capitalizing on his family stuff
- The sexy “free spirit” artsy girl is an airhead in most areas of life.
- Forgets she was actually married, (and secretly wants the black guy more than the rich white guy)
- She’s a programming genius, but her program gets hacked in the stupidest way possible
- Of course she has an out of control hard rocking dad, who ends up getting drunk with her fiance and getting him tattooed (because you can’t trust drifter dads)
- The og intern is also poor, also works hard, but is not rich for two reasons >!He’s obviously on the autism spectrum and also turns into one of the multi-episode killers also showing to not trust people with mental issues!<
Hmm I may actually re-watch it and keep an eye out for these but you are more correct than I remember. I would say Bones does seem a little bit autistic, and some of the people in power are women, but it’s in a little bit of a hamfisted way (look at these badass women!).
I think the episode where one woman got pregnant with someone else’s kid she was thinking of not keeping it but got convinced to keep it by her husband (fiance?), the message still being “them keeping it obviously good.”
Seems like the writing was mostly fine but sometimes very conservative-coded when the director wanted to insert some spiel about life values. I appreciate the examples, I think I immediately forgot about those episodes specifically because of the weird messaging.