“I got a lotta problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about it!"
-Frank Costanza, Seinfeld
On December 23, we’re pulling out the ol’ aluminum pole to celebrate Festivus, a holiday made up by a TV sitcom. In that spirit, we have once again gathered a list of TV grievances to air as well as a feat of strength and a few Festivus miracles. Join us as we recount all the ways Hollywood has disappointed us this past year.
Airing of Grievances
1. We get it, Hollywood, you hate Christians and Christianity. This year, there were characters shouting, “Fuck you, God!” and “Fuck the resurrection!” and referring to God as a “sick son of a bitch,” along with ones calling the Bible an “insane” “magic book” and “a bizarre book of stories filled with contradictions, with outdated beliefs, with outright absurdities.”
But the worst was the sexual perversion, like high school teens having a threesome in front of a chapel crucifix on The CW's Gossip Girl, the Last Supper reimagined as a homoerotic makeout scene on Showtime’s Black Monday, and an animated “parable” about a man who put opium on his penis to sleep with many women on FX on Hulu's The Premise.
What Hollywood thinks of those on the right is perfectly epitomized in a cartoon of Jesus coming down from the Cross to kill his persecutors with machine guns then have sex with two women at the end of this clip bashing the NRA from Netflix’s Paradise P.D.:
2. Enough with the BLM propaganda! After there were 127 TV episodes pushing Black Lives Matter in the year since George Floyd’s death, there’ve been another 36 since then. The lovable cop comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine marred its final season by claiming that even “good” cops are “part of the problem.” The Fox drama The Resident had a black doctor save the life of the racist cop who pulled him over and harassed him, The CW’s Batwoman had racist law enforcement fake bodycam footage, and CBS’s The Equalizer lectured that cops think “whiteness [i]s synonymous with truth.” Not to mention all the shows bemoaning everything from “America’s racist past” to “modern-day forms of slavery” while maintaining, “It’s fun for [white police officers] to kill us.”
Somehow, in August 2021, there was still a show (Freeform’s grown-ish) not only defending the looting and rioting that broke out from BLM protests, but also claiming that “choosing to focus on the looting and rioting is a part of a longstanding history of racist thinking”:
3. The love for leftists went overboard this year. Characters gushed over Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), obsessed over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and sang, “Stacey Abrams is so dope.” Disney+’s High School Musical TV series had a teen create a vision board with Michelle Obama, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Greta Thunberg as inspirational figures. HBO Max’s new streaming comedy The Sex Lives of College Girls took the name-dropping to extreme lengths mentioning six different prominent liberals in the first two episodes.
The CW’s All American had characters absurdly claiming Democrats Vice President Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms are “out here saving the country from itself”:
On the other hand, there was plenty of hate for conservatives and “blood red” America, with Trump supporters in particular being smeared. Seventeen years after his death and TV shows are still bashing President Ronald Reagan. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was also singled out to be trashed and Sean Hannity took a hit.
4. Stop sexualizing minors! This seems to be an especially big problem when it comes to pushing the LGBTQ agenda on youth. NBC’s This Is Us had two 13-year-old girls kissing on a bed, Hulu's Love, Victor had a sophomore’s mom walk in on him having gay sex in his room, and HBO Max’s Gossip Girl had a gay 17-year-old giving his male teacher oral sex.
Showtime's L Word: Generation Q pushed trans hormones for kids against their parents’ wishes while old favorites like The Baby-Sitters Club, Punky Brewster, and Saved by the Bell got woke reboots that included all this nonsense. Disney+ was a repeat offender, constantly inserting the LGBTQ agenda into its supposedly kid and family-friendly shows, like celebrating their first gay love song, having underage lesbians kiss, and attacking “heteronormative ritual[s]."
Queer-friendly Netflix's Sex Education taught teens to have “loads” of sex and “feel no shame” with this scene of the students hijacking a presentation with a video of them dressed as genitalia and talking about sex:
Feats of Strength
In October, after most of the media had moved on, the CBS sitcom United States of Al brought the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan back to the fore. The show is about an Afghan interpreter who goes to live in the U.S. with a Marine he worked with in Afghanistan, so the situation hit home. The biggest shame on the Biden administration is not getting the people who helped our soldiers out safely and instead leaving them to the Taliban.
The devastation was made clear in this scene where Al talks to his sister, still trapped in Afghanistan:
Festivus Miracles
It was a Festivus miracle that this year there were several shows that shared a pro-life message. Some were subtle, like CBS's The Neighborhood, ABC's Queens, and Hulu's The Great rejecting pro-abortion language like "clump of cells" or "products of conception" and instead recognizing the humanity of babies in the womb.
But two shows had couples with abortion appointments choose life in the end. In Fox’s 9-1-1: Lone Star, a couple in their 40s wedre surprised to be pregnant and decide to do the “logical thing” and schedule an abortion, but ended up confessing to each other that they did want the baby and cancel the appointment.
On ABC’s The Good Doctor, a young couple seemingly reluctantly decided to get an abortion, but when her name was called, the mother said, “I spent all day reminding myself of all the reasons why this was a good idea. But now that it's actually happening, it...doesn't make me feel any better. It just makes me feel really sad. Maybe it's not the right time, but will it ever be?” And they chose life!
Happy Festivus and Merry Christmas!
