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?
If you’re of OG Futurama age, King of the Hill is pretty good about not being transphobic. I will always love Hank refusing to speak to Peggy’s friend Caroline when she answered the phone in boy mode. No, he’s looking for his wife’s friend Caroline. Please don’t try to confuse him with stories about who she used to be. He used to sell jeans, and only people close to him know that.
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
I was waiting to see, because my nostalgia probably blinds me, but I know it’s 80’s Star Trek. If I had to guess in the misogyny, it would probably be that the outfits for women are completely different than the standard issue uniform everyone else wears. In the first episode they had one guy wearing a Skant, then you basically only see them on women a couple times, then the women lose their brains because they gained cleavage, and lose cleavage to gain brains.
I really don’t have a guess on racism though. As far as I knew, Star Trek was always ahead of the curve on the round of race. William Shatner for all his problems intentionally botched every alternate take of the scene where he kissed Uhara to force them to include the first televised interracial kiss. They even had one episode in OG Star Trek where a race of half back half white people were fighting with the half white half black folks pointing out the absurdity.
Yeah… I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve watched them with my eyes instead of my ears, so I just queued it up. Why did they decide to cast the ligonians like that 👀? I knew it wasn’t a good one, but jeez. Anyway, it’s like the 4th episode of the whole series, and considered the 2nd worst piece of Star Trek in total.
I read that when the episode was pitched, it was going to be lizard aliens with a society similar to feudal Japan. Somewhere along the line, it turned into… that.
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.
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 :)
Even Sillier than that is a British comedy called “Red Dwarf” and as far as I recall there is no transphobia. The closest I remember is an episode where the main character ends up in an alternate dimension with the female version of himself. They hit it off and the male main character of the series ends up pregnant, to his distress. At the time I remember it being a really interesting way to bring up gender dynamics without being too laboring, though it’s been a while, and I also haven’t seen the new seasons they apparently made after the show got cult status.
Edit to add: a Reddit thread has this to say about Red Dwarf and being trans
In series 8, Kryten is assigned to women’s prison wing, just because he doesn’t have a penis when he clearly resembles a male, sounds like a male and acts like a male. That’s regardless of the fact that he has no chromosomes because he’s an android (not even gynoid, so another good point). The show makes it out as ridiculous that the only reason why he’s treated as female only because of his lack of penis.
Also, in the episode DNA, it’s shown that when he’s turned into human male, he’s still an android on the inside because he clearly feels discomfort from certain dysphoria, where he finds appliances sexually attractive and inability to adjust to human biology lacking robotic features.
Edit to add to the edit, I forgot the ships on board computer actually does upgrade themselves to present female
I joke. But Farscape got me through more than one breakup. Very queer friendly. It didn’t shy away from being fetish friendly as well. Rigel in a dominatrix suit still delights me. Described by one critic as, “One American’s introduction to the Australian S&M scene.”
Since most of the effects were practical, they aged far better than my other faves, DS9 and Babylon 5.
The Expanse is the best television I have ever seen and is extremely queer friendly. It’s dark, but so was Farscape.
Eh I'd quite confidently say Farscape is far less problematic than any other show of it's era and a great many after it.
And humans are not superior in that universe, they once believed they were and evolved into universally hated (but really hot) hyperfascists. Bringing them down was one of the biggest eventual arcs in the show and it wasn't done by Chriton being superior, he just had wormhole weapon tech in his head that he didn't want and believed nobody should have.
Chriton is one of the most basic life forms in that part of the galaxy too, he's barely more sentient than food and it's mentioned almost once an episode. He gets by by the skin of his teeth and his only real skills are maths and making friends/pissing people off.
(I do like that he also looks like a bit of a gormless idiot too, and testament to the writing and actor as he never comes across as an entitled white boy either.)
Babylon 5 has held up better than DS9 in my opinion, like both are good but B5 is just very clearly much better. The Expanse is fantastic though I agree with you fully there.
(Btw I'm not really arguing with you about anything here, I just wanted to rant about Farscape a little as I love it dearly.)
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