History BrokenAesop / LiveActionTv

* In an episode of ''Series/TheThinBlueLine'', Goody punches a handcuffed 15 year-old Nazi for racially abusing Habib. Fowler is furious at Goody and then at Fowler when she talks back, saying that he can't choose when and when not to enforce the law, and that it's entirely out of his hands now that the boy's mother is pressing charges. Then the boy's mother hits him in front of Fowler and Habib, and Fowler offers to forgo arresting her if she drops the charges against Goody. In the space of about a minute, Fowler has gone from saying he can't choose when and when not to enforce the law and then done just that, and dealt with an abuse of police power by committing one of his own.

* In the ''Series/{{Amen}}'' episode "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste", Reuben, Rolly, and Ernie try to convince a young man to attend college, offering up WhatIf scenarios if they hadn't gone--Reuben's an incompetent waiter, while Rolly and Ernie are equally hapless at their respective jobs of cab driver and handyman. When the young man still isn't convinced, a fed-up Reuben gives him a stern warning that he'll end up in ''prison'' if he doesn't go to college and he's finally persuaded.
** First of all, there are plenty of people with college and graduate school degrees working as waiters/cabbies/handymen, etc., or people working those jobs in order to pay for college or graduate school. It's insulting to suggest he could never be more than these without a college degree.
** Secondly, even if he couldn't be anything more than a waiter/cabbie/handyman, etc., why would a lack of a college degree make him incompetent at any of these?
** Lastly, why would not going to college mean that he'd end up in prison? Even in the alternate universe, the three men weren't. While there's no denying the value/importance of a college degree, there are still plenty of good jobs he could get without one. The overall message just ends up being preachy, sanctimonious, and elitist.

** In addition to being heavily outgunned by the supes, EvilInc Vought itself is simply too big to fail as it's a MegaCorp that owns in-universe equivalents of everything you can think of (CNN, FOX, Disney, Amazon, Spotify, Lifetime, every streaming service & every other form of media down to Telemundo) while in the comic it was much more limited. In the comic, The Boys may have been outgunned and outnumbered but the message was that despite their brutality and horrible news, they were getting somewhere and accomplishing something even if they hated themselves for it and were ultimately just lashing out like "angry boys." In the show, Hughie, Butcher, and Mother's Milk are still lashing out but the anger is not only petulant, but it's also impotent. Not only are they getting nowhere, [[ShaggyDogStory they're effectively right back where they start at the end of every season with next to nothing to show]].

* Towards the end of the second arc of ''Series/KamenRiderGeats'', Keiwa [[ShutUpHannibal chews out]] Girori for not only failing to understand Ace's desire (and the seemingly frivolous wishes he makes in order to get closer to achieving it), but the desires of the other Riders as well, saying that if someone is willing to risk their life for a dream, no matter how insignificant it may appear to be, you shouldn't think less of them. The {{Flashback}} accompanying Keiwa's speech displays ''all'' of the previous Riders, not only the ones with simple wishes like [[HealthcareMotivation Taira]], [[WeightWoe Yukie]], or [[FountainOfYouth Ittetsu]], but also Riders with more destructive wishes like [[HeroKiller Michinaga]] and even [[KillAllHumans Kanato]], who obviously will have others object to their wish. It also displays [[OpportunisticBastard Morio]]; while his wish was [[TheUnreveal unrevealed]], he was the one who pointed out that the DGP's sheer power of granting seemingly any wish was worth risking his life in #4, but not long after the other Riders object to his pursuit of his desire due to his double-crossing and underhanded tactics to get a leg up in the DGP when his true nature was revealed.

** The central plot of one episode has all the nurses going on a sex strike until one of the men finally agrees to go out with their [[HollywoodHomely cute but supposedly unattractively clumsy colleague]]. The lesson, I suppose, is that everybody should have a chance at love, but then a few episodes later, those same nurses hypocritically sneer at the very idea of any of them going on a date with Radar.

** The central plot of one episode has all the nurses going on a sex strike until one of the men finally agrees to go out with their cute but supposedly unattractively clumsy colleague. The lesson, I suppose, is that everybody should have a chance at love, but then a few episodes later, those same nurses hypocritically sneer at the very idea of any of them going on a date with Radar!

** The central plot of one episode has all the nurses going on a sex strike until one of the men finally agrees to go out with their cute but supposedly unattractively clumsy colleague; however, a later episode depicts them all as hypocrites when these same nurses sneer at the very idea of any of them going on a date with Radar.

** The central plot of one episode has all the nurses going on a sex strike until one of the men finally agrees to go out with their cute but clumsy colleague; however, a later episode depicts them all as hypocrites when these same nurses sneer at the very idea of any of them going on a date with Radar.

* ''Series/SherlockHolmes'': Lead actor Jeremy Brett received permission from the Doyle estate to show Sherlock Holmes beating his drug habit in the episode "The Devil's Foot" because he feared that young fans would find Holmes' drug use appealing, but he apparently had no such misgivings about Holmes' (and Brett's own) prolific on-screen smoking.

* ''Series/SherlockHolmes'': Lead actor Jeremy Brett received permission from the Doyle estate to show Sherlock Holmes beating his drug habit in the episode "The Devil's Foot" because he feared that young fans would find Holmes' drug use appealing, but he apparently had no such misgivings about Holmes' (and Brett's own) prolific on-screen smoking.

** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E20InTheHandsOfTheProphets In the Hands of the Prophets]]" is an {{Allegory}} for how creationists try to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools, with the episode coming down firmly on the side of teaching scientific fact despite religious objections. Except the series has established that the Bajoran religion ''is'' scientific fact: the Bajoran Prophets and their powers have been empirically proven to be real. So Winn isn't disputing the actual science being taught in Keiko's classroom; their only objections is over the terminology used, with Keiko refusing to use the word "Prophets", instead referring to them as "wormhole aliens".

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': The episode "Judgment Day" revolves around a murderer being hunted down on national television as part of an ImmoralRealityShow. They make a point about condemning sensationalization of violence in the media and people who would watch it, before revealing that the target was actually framed by the show's producer. In the end the former target hunts down and murders the producer with just as much glee as he had previously been pursued, turning the intended message "killing people for public entertainment is wrong" into "killing people for public entertainment is wrong only if they didn't do it".

** In addition to being heavily outgunned by the supes, EvilInc Vought itself is simply too big to fail as it's a MegaCorp that owns in-universe equivalents of everything you can think of (CNN, FOX, Disney, Spotify, Lifetime, every streaming service & every other form of media down to Telemundo) while in the comic it was much more limited. In the comic, The Boys may have been outgunned and outnumbered but the message was that despite their brutality and horrible news, they were getting somewhere and accomplishing something even if they hated themselves for it and were ultimately just lashing out like "angry boys." In the show, Hughie, Butcher, and Mother's Milk are still lashing out but the anger is not only petulant, but it's also impotent. Not only are they getting nowhere, [[ShaggyDogStory they're effectively right back where they start at the end of every season with next to nothing to show]].

* One way that the characters in ''Series/{{Salem}}'' were supposed to be seen as morally grey is that the witchhunters often employ some very mean ways to identify and catch witches. Unfortunately, witches are ''real'' in-universe, and identifying them stops them from killing people and summoning Satan. In real life, Witch trials were bad because they targeted ''innocent people''. While the methods may seem barbaric, they absolutely ''need'' to catch witches because Witches can cause mroe harm.

** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E19InThePaleMoonlight In the Pale Moonlight]]" breaks the aesop of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E19TheFirstDuty “The First Duty”]], which stated that an officer's first duty is to the truth, instead giving the message that the truth is second to security.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS07E15BaddaBingBaddaBang Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang]]", Sisko complains about the racism present during the time period of the holodeck program (the 1960s), but says nothing about the sexism also present in that time, made worse by how the team's BatmanGambit uses its three female members in mostly passive roles (e.g. DistractedByTheSexy), rather than taking a fully active part in the casino heist like the men.

** ''Series/PowerRangersNinjaStorm'' Dustin uses his powers to stop vandalism, but Sensei tells him not to use his abilities for trivial matters. In other words, "Don't use your abilities to stop crime," an {{invoked}} example of ReedRichardsIsUseless.

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* ''Series/SeventhHeaven'': Many, ''many'' times, though the episode "Tunes" stands out as the most glaring example. In the episode, the show attempts to have a pro-woman equality message, though in the process, the message itself becomes muddled because the show also intermixes a "rap music causes misogyny" message in the same episode. In short (for full details, see YMMV page under "Designated Hero"), 7th Heaven states that women should be equal to men, which in itself is a great message, and that hip hop shouldn't be listened because of its treatment of women. However, while an equality message would work if the episode were written better, the message becomes broken ''twice'' over because of the way female characters were written in the past, as well as its rap message. In earlier seasons, Lucy and Mary were depicted as boy crazy, and later became shrill stereotypes of female characters in later seasons (though both were exalted because they were great mothers and wives), while many career women were frequently depicted as selfish, rude, uncaring, and often in the wrong. Additionally, John Hamilton (Matt's then-roommate/friend) calls out a doctor after the latter asked him to simply put rap music on during a surgery, calling it "prejudicial" that the doctor would assume him, being black, would be all for it; Matt also states that people shouldn't listen to hip hop because it causes more ignorance about the plights of women (to be specific, he says "Ignorance is the enemy"). However, that statement becomes cracked because the whole episode is basically an excuse to rip on rap listeners, thus the show becoming prejudicial towards them, and if the writers did their homework, they would know that there are numerous ''female'' rappers (e.g. Music/MissyElliott) and tons of ''women'' who listen to rap music themselves. As a result, the writers come off as both ignorant and prejudicial towards both women and rap listeners; though in the case of women, this was likely unintentional (considering that the episode's writer was show creator Brenda Hampton).
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** ''Series/PowerRangersNinjaStorm'' when Sensei told Dustin not to use his abilities for trivial matters. Said trivial matter involved protecting a business that was basically being vandalised. In other words, "Don't use your abilities to stop crime." Or in other words, an {{invoked}} example of ReedRichardsIsUseless.

* ''Series/DocMartin'':
** In the final episode of season 1, a nine-year old boy who's kind of a loner is told by Louisa that, if you allow people to make fun of you and don't react, then [[BlatantLies they'll accept you because "they'll see you're okay"]]. Even worse, this {{Aesop}} is repeated by the boy to Martin... who in the same episode had been the victim of a practical joke that wasn't strictly a DeadlyPrank, but was still pretty cruel and quickly made him [[AcceptableTargets a laughing stock]] by pretty much everybody in the village, to the point where he was being discussed on local radio. Notably this was {{Lampshaded}} and {{Deconstructed}} in the same episode, as Louisa's advice ends up getting said boy a ruptured spleen for his trouble and rushed into emergency surgery. In the end, she amends her advice to "Some people won't ever fit in, but we should appreciate their uniqueness".
** There's another one played for laughs in an episode where the school's caretaker is kicked out and is sleeping in the school shed. He's delirious from carbon monoxide from a gas heater in a closed area, and has been putting fertilizer on the floors and floor cleaner on the vegetables. One of the teachers is trying to teach the kids the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, when Martin bursts into the room and shouts "Don't eat those! Destroy them immediately!"

** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E20InTheHandsOfTheProphets In the Hands of the Prophets]]" is an {{Allegory}} for how creationists try to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools, with the episode coming down firmly on the side of teaching scientific fact despite religious objections. Except the series has established that the Bajoran religion ''is'' scientific fact: the Bajoran Prophets and their powers have been empirically proven to be real. So Winn isn't disputing the actual science being taught in Keiko's classroom; their only objections is over the terminology used, with Keiko refusing to use the word "Prophets", instead referring to said entities as "wormhole aliens".

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': The episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E6TheGame The Game]]" attempted to make an aesop that [[NewMediaAreEvil video games are EVIL]]. However, the game in question (a weird "put disc into bad CGI tubes" game) was actively programmed to brainwash whoever plays it. Also, holodecks are the final form of video games (they can simulate ANY scenario imaginable, and stimulate all the senses while doing it), and nobody had a problem with them (at least, the fact that certain personality types had a tendency to find them addictive didn't lead to demands that they be banned).

** Because of course the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E23ProfitAndLace Profit and Lace]]" didn't have enough problems, it had to undercut not just one, but two different morals! First was the lesson about female equality, carried out through a display by a sex-changed Quark that was agonizingly sexist ''even after'' Armin Shimerman insisted the script be toned down to be less misogynistic. Then came everything dealing with Quark's relationship with his mother, where the effects of their mutual loathing for each other is portrayed as entirely his fault; sadly for its attempt to portray Quark as in the wrong and badly in need of a lesson, Ishka consistently treats him like shit throughout the episode, either ignoring or forgetting the time Quark risked his own life to save her from the Dominion, even ''after'' he undergoes extensive surgery, flirts with another man, endures Zek hitting on him and pisses off the Acting Grand Nagus in order to bring about a social change ''he doesn't even want'' in order to help Ishka get the reform she was pushing for.