Hindsight Cleanup

Family Guy S 3 E 2 Brian Does Hollywood:

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Zack, the Hollywood producer who specializes in pornographic movies, is voiced by Ray Liotta, and Jenna Jameson guest starred as herself. More than a year after this episode originally premiered, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released, and features Liotta as the voice of the game's Villain Protagonist Tommy Vercetti, who later on in the story purchases (among other assets) a film studio that produces skin flicks. Bonus points for having Jenna Jameson voicing Candy Suxxx, a porn star that Tommy Vercetti hires during the film studio's missions. Actors were in one thing together before being in another thing together.
  • A porn producer asks Lois if she is interested in doing lesbian movies. When she angrily says no and asks Peter to defend her, he drunkenly says he's been "barking up that tree for 17 years." When Family Guy returned in 2005, as part of its Darker and Edgier content, frequent jokes would be made about Lois' open bisexuality. This might be valid, but as written it feels like it's complaining about "Modern Family Guy". I don't like the implication that a character being bisexual is because a show it trying to be "edgy".

IIRC aren't Peter and Lois both openly bisexual? If so then I don't think the connection is particularly meaningful.

I don't see why Peter also being bisexual wouldn't make it less amusing that the show made Lois bisexual later, since the joke is just that he wants her to be bisexual for his own amusement. As a bisexual woman, I don't read it as too complainy because bisexuality (in a sexual context especially, as implied) was "edgy" for a 2005 TV show.

Yeah, I guess that's fair. I just viewed it as general Characterization Marches On rather than hindsight.

I wanted to ask about this entry on Secret Admirer:

• Harsher in Hindsight: Lori Loughlin as a studious good girl while Kelly Preston plays a shallow bitch.. remember the 2019 college admissions scandal? Guess who wound up getting fired from When Calls the Heart, Fuller House AND The Garage Sale Mysteries because of her involvement? (making it not just a Role-Ending Misdemeanor but a Series-Ending Misdemeanor in the case of the latter.)

Does this count as "actor does bad things later shoehorn"? I guess it's tangibly related since the character in the movie is supposed to be smart and studious, but it feels like a big stetch since the movie is high school not college, doesn't involve any of the characters trying to attend college, and the Kelly Preston character doesn't try to cheat or lie about their grades (and neither does Lori's character)

It does feel very complain-y of Loughlin and Preston’s actions, and it does feel tangential. If I was you, I wouldn’t keep it.

The YMMV page for Dune has an awfully long Harsher in Hindsight page talking about the Unfortunate Implications of Baron Harkonnen being a Depraved Homosexual which (while I agree with) feels overlong and speculative about the relationship between Herbert and his son, while also going on a tangent about the David Lynch film adaptation:

* The Baron Harkonnen is a perfect example of the Depraved Homosexual trope (in a series otherwise almost completely devoid of any positive or neutral depiction of non-hetero people), which is difficult enough to swallow for a modern audience, but we can still remind ourselves that the first book was written in the early 1960s (i.e. before even just the 'counterculture' movement) and so the author probably didn't know any better and didn't do it intentionally to send a homophobic message. But then we find out via the author's bio that he had a son (Bruce Calvin Herbert, not Brian), who would have been 13-15 years old at the time the first Dune novel was written/published and who was thus the perfect age to test-read his father's writing, and in addition to painting a rather unfortunate picture of his father's opinion of gay men, the Baron Harkonnen would have almost certainly been the only queer male character this poor kid would have come across and until at least a decade later.^note  (When Marion Zimmer Bradley published The Heritage of Hastur, a novel in her sweeping Darkover series, which was similar to the Dune series at least in terms of belonging to the same genre of "soft sci-fi/fantasy revolving around feudal houses and psychic powers awakened by natural drugs". The Darkover novel also features a predatory homosexual adult male who abuses teenage boys, but in addition to that the teenage hero and his love interest in that story are also queer (bi and gay respectively) and this is treated with remarkably sensitivity for the time. Though of course that book has its own Harsher in Hindsight issues concerning parallels between the author's family life and how the villain avoids serious punishment for his sexual abuse of minors...)

Bruce Calvin Herbert later became a gay rights activist in the 1980s - just when the Lynch movie came out and doubled down on the Depraved Homosexual aspect of the villain, giving the Baron Harkonnen a diseased appearance with oozing sores and pustules, which wasn't just meant to make him even more repulsive but also to remind the audience of the time of the beginning "gay cancer" (HIV/AIDS) epidemic. Since Frank Herbert was still alive at this point and went on record saying how much he liked the movie, we can assume that he was okay with this depiction or at least didn't see this as something that should be prevented on the grounds that such depictions of homosexual characters as (exclusively) evil, disgusting and probable incestuous pedophiles would make it harder for society to have empathy for people like his gay son. (10 years later, the son died of AIDS, either because he already had HIV when the movie was filmed, or more likely, because he got infected in the decade when the US government couldn't be bothered to finance research of life-saving treatments or do much of anything to stop the epidemic, since it only killed 'undesirables' anyway...)

Oh, and if you don't think the author had anything to do with the exaggerated depiction in the Lynch movie: According to Brian Herbert, his father actually hated gay men so much that he disowned his brother when he came out of the closet. One can only hope that the Ho Yay example below (from one of Frank Herbert's last books in the series, which came out in 1984/85, shortly after the Lynch movie) was meant to be a very belated olive branch from father to son, even if it's still just a vague description of a safely platonic relationship where one man tragically dies before the other even realises his feelings.

I feel like it should be cut down or moved around.

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Mar 17th 2024 at 11:31:40 AM

That seems like an entry that boils down to "The actor is now Overshadowed by Controversy." If it's not tied to the role enough it can be cut.

..Good lord. I don't think the Baron belongs in Harsher in Hindsight, because he was still a homophobic portrayal when the books were written (I can see Values Dissonance because the books are so direct about it, I guess). All the stuff about Herbert and his son is waaaay too long-winded, and almost inappropriately speculative (especially the note about the "Ho Yay olive branch later in the page"), so I'd say to just cut it all. I don't know if the Baron's design in the 1984 film was SPECIFICALLY modeled after AIDS patients. If it is, or if it's commonly seen that way, that could have its own Harsher in Hindsight entry.

I looked into it, and yeah, there are writers online that feel Baron Harkonnen represents the AIDS crisis with his appearance.

I’m not a Dune fan, so I don’t know much of the details, but I added a small entry on the film adaptation for now.

Thank you.

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Mar 17th 2024 at 9:51:20 AM

great write-up ^_^

From YMMV.Thinner, this is under Harsher:

• Michael Constantine playing an 106-year-old character in the film becomes tragic irony in light of the actor's passing in 2021 at the age 94, never having actually to live up to that age as his character despite being just twelve years younger away from it.

Is this really that sad? It's not like he was only in his 30s when he died, 94 is a damn good age to reach! Even if he didn't reach 106 he came pretty close!

Sounds like simple actor mortality.

Not to mention that living to 106, while certainly not impossible, is fairly unlikely. From a quick Google search, I found that the oldest person in the world lived to 122.

That person is Jeanne Calment. The longest-living man however is Jiroemon Kimura, who passed away at the age of 116.

Regardless, 94 is still considered very impressive for a man.

Therefore, the entry should be cut.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Mar 18th 2024 at 6:18:45 AM

I wanted to ask about this entry on Stu's Show:

• Harsher in Hindsight: In one of Janet Waldo's appearances from 2008, writer Earl Kress was co-hosting from his bedroom as he was ill that day. At the end, Stu slipped up and said "Earl, thanks for hosting from your death bed, err I mean your sick bed! I'm sorry!" Funny then, but is pretty cringeworthy now as Earl passed away of cancer in September 2011.

Does this count as actor mortality?

If he didn't have the disease that killed him at the time I don't think the connection is strong enough.

Was it cancer that caused his illness? If so then it may count, if it was some other unrelated illness it's probably actor mortality.

As I was editing YMMV.HBomberguy, I found a rather lengthy Harsher entry related to the recent James Somerton controversy. Regardless of what we decide, it needs to be trimmed down. There were a few aspects I found problematic.

I really don't like the way this entry describes Somerton bringing up his suicide attempt as getting sympathy, or speculating that he made it up for attention. I do think Somerton is a horrible man, but suicide is a really touchy issue and I don't like speculating on other people's motives involving it, even if said people are shitty. Plus, not mentioned here is that after his second apology video, Somerton left a message claiming he was going to off himself, which many (including H Bomb and his editor, who called in a wellness check for him) took seriously until Nick (at least I think it was him) confirmed Somerton was alive.

Second, there is a video, listed under Hilarious in Hindsight, comparing James' apology to Filip's, with them almost being the same. This entry thus feels redundant. If one entry is to be kept, I propose keeping the Hilarious one, since the entry is shorter, more concise, and does not feature the problematic implications regarding James' suicide attempts.

Third, the third bullet in this list seems less to be about something in hindsight, and more just gossip about Somerton. At least the first bullet compares his apology to another one H Bomb talked about, and the second bullet is about him doing something H Bomb speculated he might. This last bullet is just "James made another apology and it's even shittier". And once again, it mentions "trauma-dumping" when there was legit concern not long after that James really had taken his own life. I feel like the whole paragraph can be deleted.

The entry seems to just be Real-life troping that is not needed when it’s reiterated. James Somerton is a misogynist and revisionist, but the entry just seems like it’s going extra lengths to complain about the man.

Plus, doesn’t recent drama like this have a "wait six months" or so policy attached to it?

Edited by CanuckMcDuck1 on Mar 18th 2024 at 6:01:43 AM

Yeah the illness was not cancer, it was just a mild sickness.

This whole entry stinks of ROCEJ violations. Given the situation with Somerton is so touchy, maybe the Hilarious entry would be better suited to Harsher, but either way I agree it's a much better entry than this one, which just reads like drama importation. (Even Hbomb and his colleagues seem to now dissuade people from going this hard on Somerton.)

(x6) I'm not sure if it's actor morality but I don't think the two instances are connected enough to count.

(x4) I feel you can cut it for violating ROCEJ and for being too recent.

this

It doesn’t seem harsh since the incidents aren’t that similar (besides both being famous reality shows). I agree with Mewtron in either cutting more moving to Hilarious in Hindsight.

To be fair, there is more connection between the shows than "famous reality shows" since Total Drama is directly inspired by Survivor.

Hi. May I know if this is a correct example for Harsher in Hindsight for an episode of Friends?

In "The One Hundredth", Phoebe scolds the first-year resident doctor whom Ross had enlisted to help with her delivery, because of his youth (she rejected her previous obstetrician because he was too obsessed with Fonzie from ''Happy Days), resulting in the doctor running away in tears. While supposed to be Played for Laughs, resident doctors or housemen (doctors who have just started working after graduating from medicine school) often have to face long working hours and low salaries, on top of dealing with difficult bosses and patients. As a result, many young doctors end up struggling with work-related depression, with some even being Driven to Suicide.

I'm pretty sure resident doctors were known to have very hard jobs in The '90s too. The severity of the depression may not have been discussed in the mainstream so maybe it's Values Dissonance but definitely not Hindsight. Unintentionally Sympathetic might work too.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 20th 2024 at 5:09:07 AM