I’ve been feeling down lately and I started re-watching futurama for some good nostalgia, but it keeps making transphobic jokes which is kind of just making me feel worse. Anyone have any suggestions for comfort shows to watch?
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The Owl House
Adventure Time
Tuca & Bertie
Over The Garden Wall
Steven Universe
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Owl House, yes!
Sold!
holy , i gotta rewatch over the garden walll. that was so good
Bluey!
It’s cute, it’s short, and it’s great for de-stressing! I put it on almost any time I’m feeling anxious or depressed
It’s written so wonderfully, and can be fully enjoyed by adults just as well as kids
Came here to say Bluey!! My partner and I (both grown ass adults) watch it together and cry tears of joy as we let it re-parent us!! Such a wonderful show!
To tack on “kids shows that are just fine thank you very much” I really enjoy “Tinga Tinga Tales” The animation is crazy, music beautiful, the stories interesting (folk tales) and the characters fun. Great way to wind down for 20 minutes, finding out Why Frog Croaks.
Ted Lasso
Adventure time
Steven Universe
Out Flag Means Death
The Good Place
What We Do In The Shadows
To add what has already been mentioned: She-Ra and Steven Universe.
Steven, especially the first few seasons is super feel good low impact chill show.
Gravity falls is also pretty great for this.
Our flag means death - comedy about an english lord becoming a pirate, their crew and adventures. It’s funny, cute and often heartfelt.
They’re not fiction, but two that work for me are Great British Bake-Off and Taskmaster. The people on GBBO are so positive and helpful, it’s a welcome change from American cooking competitions. Taskmaster is creative and silly, always good for a laugh.
Second the recommendation of Ted Lasso. Ted is a wonderful example of a person who doesn’t understand something, knows he doesn’t understand, but his heart is in the right place and he wants to learn.
Series 15 of Taskmaster featured Mae Martin, a nonbinary comedian
They were fantastic as well!
The series with Mike Wozniak should be avoided unless you’re okay with passing out laughing.
The New Zealand version has a different dynamic, but I enjoy it as least as much as the OG.
Great Canadian Baking Show is similarly positive. Everyone is so nice it hurts! They often help each other finish challenges and it’s a competition show :)
Bake Off is pretty much pure comfort. It’s just perfect in every way.
The American version isn’t bad either. It avoids the worst of reality show tropes, and it still has Paul Hollywood, so not bad at all.
I don’t remember there being transphobic jokes in The Golden Girls, so maybe that?
Just the opposite! There’s an episode with a trans man, and it’s (according to one trans person on youtube) a really good portrayal. It might be both the most progressive and least problematic sitcom out there
There aren’t transphobic jokes as far as I remember but it does become mentioned as a plot point a few times, that for the time was pretty good but now it would be dated.
The example that comes to mind is (relatively mild but be wary) >! an episode where Sophia tells Dorothy about a guy that she insists “used to be a girl”, and Dorothy doesn’t believes her. Later in the episode the guy, in fact, comes out that “I used to be a girl” to a group of people, Dorothy surprised about that. !<
EDIT: found this https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/friends-of-dorothy-was-the-golden-girls-really-as-queer-friendly-as-its-reputation-suggests-213923/
Honestly groundbreaking for its time
My ultimate comfort show is Star Trek: the Next Generation. If it’s just me in the house and nothing good in my video queue that’s what I’ll turn on for noise.
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I’ll be the one to spoil IT Crowd, it has at least one poor portrayal of a trans woman. Avoid anything associated with Graham Linehan.
Agreed about IT Crowd. I watched it for the first time like 2 years ago and there was a whole episode that was awful.
Drawn Together
No, oh definitely not. It’s funny but it has anti-everything jokes, including anti trans. They’re an equal opportunity offender against all groups.
I mean that’s the beauty, no limits! Easy Zander, EASY!
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It Crowd (comedy)
except for that joke in s3e4 that led to graham going all terf central
Mash and Allo Allo both have no shortage of jokes about cross-dressing and plenty of casual sexism. Fawlty Towers … is also a product of it’s time, any good parts get outweighed by the bad parts.
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Klinger wants to get classified as crazy by wearing dresses, which implies that wearing different clothes is a sign of mental illness. Herr Flick gets sexual gratification from wearing women’s clothes, thus implying that wearing different clothes is something only a sexual deviant would do. Both of these stereotypes continue to be used to harm Trans women.
Klinger wants to get classified as crazy by wearing dresses, which implies that wearing different clothes is a sign of mental illness
Until very recently you’d be kicked out of the army for being gay or trans. Klinger was simply taking advantage of a broken system, we have no idea what his personal beliefs on crossdressing were.
That’s the motivations of the character, he was in a dress in a comedy so that people could laugh at him.
To be clear, having seen M.A.S.H, this is correct. And you’re right about the way that the narratives it plays into continue to be used to harm trans women.
That’s why I take the opportunity to litter any chance I get. /s
Though seriously, if they want to trans ban me from WW3 with China, Russia, and North Korea I really don’t mind at all. Go send all the cis-hets to die in countries they can’t point to without a labeled map to spite me.
Wonka “No, Stop, Don’t” intensifies
Luckily they realized after Vietnam that draftees who don’t want to be there don’t really give it their all. You bring up an interesting point though, all men in the country have to register for selective service at 18, I wonder if that still applies to trans women who haven’t updated their paperwork yet
Anyway, hypotheticals aside, I think it’s good that gay or trans people who want to serve in the armed forces have that option now
Absolutely, there shouldn’t be anything to stop those individuals from serving on their own volition.
luckily they realized after Vietnam that… (conscripts) … who don’t want to be there don’t really give it their all.
It was 2006-2007 I was a really big 9/11 truther, any time people would talk about a draft I used to rebut “I don’t want to go there, and I want to die anyways, go ahead and give me a gun and force me to go, let’s see how many Americans I can kill with sabotage and a rampage.”
It blows my mind that we still have people who think a conscription effort would be anything but detrimental.
Speaking of, anyone else notice the semantic propaganda that is the word draft/ conscript? Our enemies are evil and they conscript their men to fight in pointless wars, but we on the other hand draft our young heroes to selflessly serve their country.
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They were both in their respective shows so that people could laugh at them, not with them.
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DS9
Unless you count the gender bending jokes surrounding Trill issues that have been made once or twice. Or the time Kira ruined a deal Quark was trying to make by editing his hologram program of her to have his head on a female body to disgust his buyer.
Actually curious what people think about those, along with Drew’s brother on the Drew Carry show.
I also think there was gender swap in 3rd rock played for laughs, but I might be misremembering gender differences for an alien. I also don’t recall the episodes so not sure if it was just poking fun at gender as a whole.
Similarly, I think scrubs has some references that may be unpleasant but on the whole they tend to be good or thoughtful when dealing with subjects that at the time weren’t always represented well.
Unfortunately, a lot of older shows have unpleasant jokes. We just have to realize that jokes were a way to discuss the taboo and if we didn’t have those jokes back then, we might not have the progress to today. That’s not to say we want them now but we should judge the media on the knowledge and morals of the time.
There’s also an episode where Quark undergoes gender reassignment in order to close a deal, which is played for laughs and includes lines about women being sensitive because of their hormones. It sticks out because it’s just horrible, while she show is generally good.
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I’m sorry you assume I have any issues with them when I literally stated I was curious what others thought about them.
Sorry, was generalizing didn’t mean you specifically
The Venture Bros does have a couple of borderline transphobic jokes about Dr. Mrs. The Monarch in one episode
Fuckin hell can we hang out? What’s your discord or something?
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My partner and I have been really enjoying Spy X Family. Its a nice little found family/comedy series with very wholesome content.
The premise is that the titular Spy has an assignment to make contact with a total shut-in who only appears in public for events at his son’s school. So the Spy adopts a child from a shady orphanage and meets a woman who is willing to fake being his wife to get his child into the elite school. Of course, the child he adopted can read minds and the woman he fake married is secretly an assassin. No one but the child knows the truth about everyone and they’re each so focused on hiding their own secrets they don’t catch on to the others. The series isn’t complete yet, but so far the major theme is them coming to genuinely value their little family as more than a convenient facade.
Its just such a cute show, and I go back and forth between cackling and tearing up at how cute they all are. The only thing I think is particularly off about the show is the assassins brother. He’s a secret police officer and also incestuously obsessed with his sister. Its a weird inclusion, but he is made fun of by the narrative for his behavior and that is enough for me to still enjoy how good the rest of the show is
Bee and Puppycat is my comfort show
Agreed. I havent watched season 2 yet and I really have to.
Fun fact, I watched the entirety of Bee and Puppycat without subtitles for puppycat and was very confused the entire time lol
Like @Froyn said, Bob’s Burgers is super cozy.
pushing daisies!! ❤️❤️
also my so called life
oh and schmigadoon if you have apple tv :)
It’s always a good choice to watch Avatar
My partner and I were going to rewatch Futurama soon, since we wanted to watch the old ones before getting into the reboot. I’m not going to enjoy that as much as I thought I would, am I?
As for recommendations, I don’t know if I would call it a comfort show since it can get really disturbing at times, but Doom Patrol is a great show, lots of fun and super queer.
There are a few episodes where being trans is almost the entire premise.
There are two different “Gender Bender” episodes where Bender is either cross dressing to act as a heel in pro wrestling, or surgically altered to become a fembot and compete in sports.
There is another episode where an alien removes the gender differences for the crew, and then changes the gender of the crew. They shoot a saucy pin-up calendar.
And then there’s the Dungeons and Dragons episodes where Hermes is a hermaphrodite centaur.
Oh, and the mind swapping episode where everybody changes brains, but that’s more Freaky Friday than gender swapping.
Pardon me if it’s rude to ask but do you mind explaining why those episodes are transphobic? Specifically the Bender gender swaps, I don’t remember the other examples you mentioned.
The wrestling one is just somewhat off kilter? It’s not outright transphobic, more just kinda silly. It doesn’t reference gender as an identity as much. More so gender as performance I’d say. It’s a comparatively brief portion of the episode compared with the Olympics based one. The rest of the episode is pretty great tho and is all about a misogynistic asshole getting his comeuppance from a downtrodden woman who’s always been told that fighting is for boy’s. It’s actually a great episode.
The Olympics one is self evidently transphobic. The premise is he’s not actually a woman, he’s doing it to beat fembots at the olympics. In the episode he undergoes hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery… well the robot versions of those things. He is portrayed as having done this purely to win at sports. There has long been an established hate conspiracy narrative about trans women transitioning to beat women at sports. It was around back then, and this episode plays into the narrative quite a lot.
Futurama is my favorite animated show of all time. I love it with all my heart and for literally about a decade I skipped the gender bender Olympics episode every single time it came up. But I’ve come to appreciate some aspects of its very transphobic very misogynistic narratives. It’s not something I’d sit and watch for fun, but as time as passed some small moments have stood out to me as being kinda interesting deconstructions of what gender is and the complexities of personal identity. Like when bender struggles with the idea of “detransitioning”, even if it’s for the wrong reasons and doesn’t accurately portray any kind of transfeminine struggle in a genuine light. You can tell they sorta had half an idea what gender identity was and the ways in which trans people struggle with it. But the motives are never gender in and of itself, it’s never about who bender is but always what he gets from gender performances.
Make no mistake though. It’s among the worst. Not because it’s the most hateful vile episode of any animated show ever, but because it’s Futurama. I hold that show to a very high standard, as do a lot of people. They punched down on trans and gender diverse people there. They had no reason to do that. They played into a frankly insane amount of misogyny to make it all fit together too, in a way they hadn’t done as much with other episodes. Look at Kif, look at all his episodes and the many ways his character deconstructs gender and sex in positive ways that show tolerant and informed viewpoints. It’s not like they didn’t know how to handle gender complex characters.
But with that one episode they just really gave a big fuck you to gender diversity, to gender diverse people, to trans women, and broadly to gender and sexual minorities as a whole. The whole thing is profoundly disappointing to me to this day. It’s not enough to ruin the show for me, I love the show way too much for that. But it’s embarrassingly bad and dishearteningly bigoted from a show that I expect so much more from.
Well, I still don’t entirely understand what specifically about the episode makes it transphobic but I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
This is a weird grey area for me. I see it as a silly episode where bender does some reprehensible shit, sort of learns his lesson but than continues being a shitty person. I don’t remember anything about the episode that makes it stand out from other episodes where he similarly exploits some facet of society (foster kids, soup kitchen, pimp are a few that come to mind). However, given my perspective it’s very likely I’ve overlooked aspects of it and I am not trying to defend the episode just understand what I’m missing.
Again, I’m sorry if I’m being rude or this is not the place to discuss something like this. Feel free to ignore me or tell me to go away.
This is a weird grey area for me. I see it as a silly episode where bender does some reprehensible shit, sort of learns his lesson but than continues being a shitty person.
That episode really bothered me – decades before I realized I was trans it was my least favorite episode of the entire run. It just came off as too mean spirited, and relied too heavily on the man-in-a-dress “joke”.
Core egg memory unlocked, I was obsessed with the Freaky Friday remake with Lindsay Lohan And Jamie Lee Curtis and would watch it again and again wishing I could wake up and be a girl in about 7th grade.
I’m sure most guys spend this amount of time and energy on that thought hehehehe
Oh my…
Is that why I enjoyed this movie so much??
Maybe? What were your thoughts on the movie The hot chick? It was another one of those movies from that time in my life. I liked that Rachel’s kid brother would crossdress and when the parents found out, all dad had to say was “If you’re gonna wear heels, you gotta learn to walk in them”.
Also, obvious “wake up a woman “ theme aside.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Hot Chick
But yeah, something about swapping bodies has always kinda fascinated me, now that I think back
I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Hot Chick
Dear God, It’s a Rob Schneider Adam Sandler flick. Sure it was during their golden years, but even their good stuff is pretty middle of the road garbage. Not that it’s a bad thing, you should just know when you’re gonna go dumpster diving to have a fun time.
I like shit fest movies like the Room and the weird B movie Lloyd Kaufman films like Poultry-geist from time to time, but rewatching some of those is hard.
Yeaaah, okay. I’m not gonna bother warching it then, that’s not the kind of movies I’m after rn
Hearing Brendan Fraser swear kills me every time
