Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Family-Unfriendly Aesops in Live-Action TV include:

Degrassi,

Degrassi, despite its heavy-handedness, frequently has morals that are widely believed by teenagers but are unusual for adults. This may be a huge part of the show's appeal to teens.

  • Emma is still hurting after being dumped by her boyfriend Sean, so she starts purposely getting him in trouble—from ratting him and his friends out when they steal from a diner, to ratting to the principal that he stole her dad's laptop (an accusation later proved to be correct). Later, Emma learns that she should just move on and leave Sean alone, despite his misdeeds so the moral is "no matter how horrible somebody is to you, tattling on them is worse."
    • Or maybe it's just "revenge is a dish best served never"
    • This one is actually getting more and more into the public consciousness. Many recent Law and Order episodes hinge on someone (usually black) with a healthy hatred of cops deciding whether to "snitch" or whether to take critical information that would either exonerate them or get justice for a murdered family member to the grave.
  • Bitter Goth girl Ellie has to learn to trust people again after her boyfriend abandons her and sticks her with the rent. Specifically, she learns to trust both her new roommate—a recently reformed schoolyard bully who wants to gamble with their rent money—and her mother, a recovering alcoholic who once burned their house down in a drunken stupor. Both of them turn out to be completely trustworthy. This is on the extreme idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, so idealistic that it can feel like "take candy from strangers."
  • Paige has a completely horrendous experience at Banting University. The next season, she's dropped out and despite working a high intensity fashion industry job, she's a lot happier. In season 9, Emma drops out of Smithdale due to the same issues Paige was facing. Spinner never goes to college and basically works a standard 9 to 5 restaurant job and couldn't be more content. The lesson of "College isn't for everyone/you can be successful and happy without going to college" pretty much flies in the face of almost every show aimed towards young audiences.
    • This is likely due to the difference between American and Canadian attitudes towards college. In Canada, high school is more comprehensive and involves (optional) job training; it's much easier to be middle class in Canada with a high school diploma than in the US.
  • Alli is constantly being rebuked by her boyfriend Johnny for not respecting their relationship boundaries - he wants to keep his reputation as a tough guy. So in order to get him to open up and show affection, she starts "sexting" him nude pics. However, whenever she embarrasses him in front of the whole school by showing off a lovey-dovey cute photograph of him, he sends her nude pics to his friend. At the end of the episode, the lesson presented appears to be that Alli was in the wrong, and it didn't matter that he sent those nude pics because she broke her promise in regards to their relationship rules and that was worse. Wow.
  • Jane is being harassed by the new Degrassi football team since she's the only female player. The coach (who is also the principal) is turning a blind eye. She does the "right thing" - she tells another adult about the harassment but bullying worsens and she's actually assaulted in the hallway. It isn't until she makes a stand for herself (along with a handful of teammates behind her) that bullying goes away. This episode actually makes the case it's better to stand up against bullies yourself and that telling about an adult could make the bullying intensify.
    • This is unfortunately often true, as the response of school authorities is to try and stop the complaining student since it is easier to oppress a student until they stop reporting the problems than it is to deal with the issue of students bullying, which usually involves parents, ironically complaining that the complainer is "overly sensitive" or "has issues," which leads to intensified bullying because the bullies know that they will not be punished. This is just the general rule of thumb that it is easier to ignore a problem than deal with it.
  • Some people might think episode 3 of season 10 had the message "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": Declan is trying to reunite with Holly J (they're on a break after disagreement on money issues) and he pulls off all the stops trying to get her alone. They end up having sex—but Holly J at first verbally says "No" and "No, we shouldn't be doing this" but then later ends up kissing him and they initiate sex. At the end of the episode, Holly J clearly says to Declan (who is utterly disgusted with himself and nearly flees Toronto after finding out Holly J felt pressured to have sex) "I don't think you raped me." There is already a Broken Base on how the show handled this topic, some saying it Degrassi basically excused rape and others sayings they accurately portrayed the blurred lines in between date rape and regretted sex. Degrassi always tried to look at controversial topics in a realistic way. Compare this with the Paige storyline, wherein she's date-raped at a party, presses charges, and the guy is acquitted due to "lack of evidence," despite the judge's commendation of Paige's bravery in taking the case to trial. It's supposed to be open for debate and dialogue.

Everybody Loves Raymond

  • If you want to support your wife after a sudden, unexpected change to herself, don't, because she'll just call you a pig.
  • Your wife is better and smarter than everybody else you know, and if you try to argue with it, you're just proving her point.
  • Don't ever try to do anything if you're a man. You'll just screw it up and your wife will have to fix your messes. (Although, this one applies to a huge percentage of shows and commercials involving a husband and wife nowadays).
  • If your wife is angry, it's always your fault. If it's not your fault she's angry, it's your fault for not calming her down.
  • Bullying is OK, as long as your daughter is on the giving end of it.
  • If your wife thinks you're an idiot, she's probably right and you should just take it.

Full House

  • For a show that could get outright Anvilicious at times, Full House tended to fall into this trope frequently in plots involving Michelle getting away with just about anything, especially in the later seasons.
  • The Disney episode was particularly egregious; after half an episode of being a horrible brat and getting everything she wants, Michelle deliberately runs off in Disney World after overhearing her sisters (rightfully) complain about how she always gets her way. Then, she's found and the older girls apologize for being mean to her! Never mind that she's old enough to know better, still runs off on a tantrum, and gets to ride in the parade (and is in no way punished) in the end regardless.
    • She is reprimanded for running off, however.
    • Also, I think the scriptwriters wanted us to understand that, in Michelle's mind, her sisters' disdain for her is her punishment. And Michelle might have believed that she was doing the right thing in leaving her family, since it would make Deej and Stephanie happy if she were gone. (Yes, that's an incredibly naive attitude, but for a child it counts.) Interestingly, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen also played characters who followed this line of reasoning in the TV movie To Grandmother's House We Go: they run away to Grandma's house not because they hate their mother, but because they felt that they have made their mother frustrated and want her to be happy again.
  • An earlier episode involved Deej and Stephanie going unpunished. They had gone into Danny's closet against his wishes and accidentally put a hole in the wall of his bedroom. The episode ends with the sisters making nice after their previous fight, but as the credits roll, we're left to believe Danny will never discover the damage.
  • One season earlier, Steph had a mess in the kitchen that Danny cared more about a clean kitchen that he just waxed more than what had happened with the car.
  • Season 6's "I'm Not DJ" had sent the wrong message for some girls rather than every one of them due to the fact that Stephanie was the only girl in her fifth grade class to be too young for ear piercings since she was treated like another DJ Tanner. To prove that Stephanie was not to base her life on what was on television, or what was popular, or what her female friends were doing, he would have to dislike her friends and so would DJ (despite that neither one had actually said it to Stephanie).
  • Two episodes later, DJ was not invited as no one cared if she had to miss her Uncle Jesse's high school graduation due to a ski trip.
  • It happened when DJ was to be extra generous as ordered by her father (who unknowingly let the younger siblings do whatever they want to bully her) before he busts those two girls for taking advantage of DJ, and DJ was grounded for the ticket, despite Kimmy airing out her socks, and cannot take the girls wherever they want to go. Off-camera, Danny tells DJ that she would need to cut her hair short, but no viewer heard that at all!

House

  • Common ones are "Everybody lies," "Nobody ever changes," and "You can't always get what you want." [1]".
  • A big and often used is if you are a genius who other people have to depend on, you can basically be a dick to everyone without many consequences. Though this is more of a Truth in Television variety because often those who don't have to deal with you constantly will let you get away with being an ass if you are good for the bottom line.
    • This particular trope is often subverted too though; House will often intentionally behave like even more of a complete and utter dick than his own natural personality would be, simply because he can. While often it's played for laughs, his cavalier/antisocial/sociopathic tendencies have more than once lead to a patient ending up with lifelong injuries that wouldn't have happened if everyone had just done their job right the first time, at which points he usually feels legitimate remorse and sometimes contemplates (however briefly) if he should really keep doing things that way.
    • Also, a nod to realism early on, when Cuddy mentions that she got him for a steal, salary-wise, because his rampant Jerkass tendencies meant that no one else would even hire him.
  • Patient rights are basically hindrances that prevent doctors from doing their jobs correctly. Every time a patient is shown refusing treatment, the team finds some way to either bully, trick, or otherwise manipulate them into conceding. In nearly every episode, the team is shown breaking into the patient's home in order to find out what the patient is hiding from them.
    • The crowning example of this has to be in "Last Temptation": Martha Masters puts a girl with bone cancer into false cardiac arrest with a chemical in order to manipulate her parents into agreeing to let the doctors amputate the girl's arm because she wanted to postpone the surgery and Masters felt that was unreasonably life-threatening. The girl wakes up without her arm and is understandably horrified, but the audience is meant to agree with Masters' actions, judging by the way she leaves content with herself to the strains of "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Wow.
  • The entire Martha Masters arc, which was basically a Filler Arc for Olivia Wilde to leave and shoot Tron: Legacy, is rife with the common tropes from the series along with things like "Being idealistic and hopeful is just something for the immature and you have to be forced to grow up."

Other works

  • Similarly, almost every episode of Radio Free Roscoe has the moral that Adults Are Useless, so teens should defy and disobey them whenever possible. What makes it even more interesting is that it's always played as an idealistic moral—not "adults will always screw you over," but "disobey adults and everything will turn out happy." An example: In "The Boxer," the Jerkass principal is serving as a substitute history teacher on the Boxer Rebellion, which he knows nothing about. So his lectures are biased, inaccurate, and a bit racist... and in response, one of his students corrects every one of his errors, out loud, in front of the class. By the end of the episode, the principal and the student are teaming up to teach a better lesson. In a less idealistic show, the principal would have arbitrarily slapped the kid down with his authority.
  • On Barney and Friends, there are some instances which may give the false impression that cheating is okay. In "A Splash Party, Please," when Barney and the kids are having a tug o' war, Min helps the other kids win by tickling Barney. Later, in "Falling In Autumn," Shawn participates in a relay race with a peanut stuck to his spoon with peanut butter. Proponents states that it's safe to assume that these "cheating" ways were just thrown in as jokes, while opponents state that children of the target demographic pick up from mimicking and may copy the action because they do not understand that it's supposed to be a joke.
  • 24 has been criticized by some circles who interpret it as justifying torture as a tool of war by the U.S. Government, due to over-representing its effectiveness and repeated use of the "ticking-clock scenario" of an imminent terrorist attack that can't be prevented without Jack Bauer doing the interrogation. There's quite a bit of debate on that. It also seems to suggest that, even for the good guys, tasering your own employees to ensure their loyalty is good policy, and that you should expect them to go back to their cubicles immediately afterward without so much as a complaint. The writers toned this down in later seasons in response to unrealistic perceptions about how torture works in the real world but it still gets results almost every time its used and anybody who calls Jack out on his human-rights abuses is made into a strawman with a point.
  • An episode of Touched By an Angel had the moral that, no matter how nice they are, atheists are fundamentally bad people with whom believers should not associate. The episode is also a sequel episode to a season finale that dealt with accepting the death of a child. The death episode is much better in its message, though it borders on Family Unfriendly for the crowd who do not believe in an afterlife. What that vast crowd of non-afterlife-believing people is doing watching a show about angels? Don't ask us.
    • Like how people who don't believe in elves would never watch Lord of the Rings?
    • The message was not that one should not associate with atheists, it was that one should not be willing to compromise one's faith and convictions out of desperation to find love and marriage. In this episode, the atheist in question was insisting that his intended give up her faith, and accept a definition of marriage that went against her convictions (As long as we both shall love, rather than as long as we both shall live.) Although, this portrayal of atheists could have Unfortunate Implications.
  • Boston Public has characters acting erratically fairly often but they are saved because their intentions are good. In the pilot episode alone, Harry Senate fires a gun and Assistant Principal Guber slams a kid against a locker.
  • The Battlestar Galactica remake: Sometimes you have to Shoot the Dog, you can't always Take a Third Option, and you have to Know When to Fold'Em.
  • The season one Veronica Mars episode Drinking the Kool-Aid seemed to preach the moral that freaky cults are actually filled with nice people. It might be family unfriendly to say so, but it's absolutely and without question Truth in Television, and an anvil that needs to be dropped on a regular basis. Too many young people think that niceness equals goodness or trustworthiness. But anyone can be nice; all niceness requires is outward inoffensiveness. What's more, cults go out of their way to recruit nice people (or to teach their members how to be nice) for the sole purpose of recruiting new members who are too innocent to see beyond the superficial inoffensiveness.
    • The whole underlying theme of this series seems to be to not trust law enforcement and take justice into your own hands -- especially in Season Two. The biggest examples of this are when Veronica helps Duncan kidnap his illegitimate daughter to avoid any chance of her ultra-fundamentalist and abusive grandparents gaining custody of her, then when Duncan has his family's security chief Clarence Wiedman kill Aaron Echols because he killed his sister Lily but was acquitted. Of course, it was a noir show.
      • Both those examples were also treated with a lot of emphasis on the fact that what was happening was illegal, and the guilty parties were often treated with great disappointment by authority figures after it happened. As for the rest of the show...
      • Not to mention that a number of times, taking the law into your own hands actually has real consequences, like when Weevil arranges for his cousin's murderer to be killed by his drug dealers, and is then arrested and sent to prison for connection to his disappearance on the day of his graduation. That this happens to the poorest, most disenfranchised character rather than any of the richer, more connected ones like Veronica or Duncan makes it even more Truth in Television.
  • Oh, Grey's Anatomy... Shonda must have some warped morals! What with the "Marriage is nothing important," or the "no matter how awful you behave, everybody will love you and your punishment will be nothing more than a slap on the wrist"?
    • To be fair, this is heavily lampshaded, usually by Erica Hahn. Various characters hate each other for actions they took part in several seasons earlier and never fail to namedrop their particular flavor of irresponsibility and failure. Just ask Yang.
  • Probably lifting Ms. Rand above advice to the letter, the famous "backwards" Seinfeld episode, "The Betrayal," showed Jerry and Kramer's first meeting, with Jerry insisting to Kramer that "what's mine is yours."
    • It's not that family-unfriendly; Kramer just took Jerry's friendly offer too literally and too far.
    • And of course, looking for any aesop in the "No hugging, no learning" world of Seinfeld is barking up the wrong tree.
  • One episode of the short-lived anthology series Night Visions told the story of a Town with a Dark Secret where music is banned and anyone who breaks the rules is swiftly and brutally dealt with. A drifter comes into town, realizes something is wrong and starts investigating: it turns out that the townspeople are all convinced that they're under a curse, and playing or creating any kind of music within the town will summon some sort of monster to kill them all. Of course, the drifter thinks they're all nuts, and in the inevitable climactic confrontation he delivers a heroic speech about how they have no proof that the monster actually exists, and they've been committing horrific acts in the name of blind superstition. The townspeople realize he's right, and he leads them all in a rousing rendition of "Amazing Grace." ... And then the monster comes to kill them all. Moral of the story: committing horrific acts in the name of blind superstition is a really good idea! For the record, Night Visions was chock full of family unfriendly or outright broken aesops. It's the sort of show you watch expecting a story about an abused wife to end with her being beaten to death by her husband, followed by host Henry Rollins delivering An Aesop along the lines of "Next time your husband tells you to shut up, you should do it."
    • The fact that a monster killed them makes the claims true, and thus, not "blind superstition." This post implies that, as long as you're intentionally or unintentionally unaware of the validity of a claim, it's A-OK to act as though it isn't true. If that's the case, most children shouldn't listen to their parents as they most likely won't understand why they're being told to do something at the time of instruction
      • The fact that they unquestionably accepted it for at least a hundred years despite no indication or evidence of it does make it one. That the townspeople seem incapable of moving makes it even more. And that headphones are forbidden. But what puts icing on the cake is that the monster isn't coherent: music disturbs it but yelling your head off won't; it doesn't attack only the source of the music; it has slept for hundreds of years on nothing but birds; and that's just the overt problems. Also until the person was eaten the acceptance was in fact blind superstition. And, fyi, there's a vast difference between believing in Santa Clause when a kid and still believing in Santa Clause when you grow up.
      • Alternately, if we're to accept the "respect the beliefs of others" bit Henry Rollins says at the end, the episode's Family-Unfriendly Aesop simply becomes the following: "Even if a person's beliefs are patently ridiculous by any rational standards whatsoever, even if those beliefs prompt that person to murder her child to uphold them, you should respect those beliefs -- because they're beliefs, and sometimes those can be true whether the believer knows it or not." Yeah, Night Visions doesn't allow itself much wiggle room on the unfriendliness factor of its aesops.
  • Basically anytime a police procedural uses wanting a lawyer as evidence of guilt. No matter how innocent you are, always get a lawyer.
    • This message is prevalent enough to have earned a trope of its own, "Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers."
      • Subverted, surprisingly, by the show Dexter, where an innocent man is suspected of murder, and when he realizes that it looks like he's going to be arrested for it (there was some very compelling evidence that linked him to the murder scene), he asks to speak with his lawyer before answering any questions. Many of the other characters take this as a sign of guilt, but he ends up proving his innocence, and everyone else wrong. Kind of odd for a show with a serial killer as a protagonist.
  • Two and A Half Men owes its very existence to this trope. A man can only adopt one of two possible approaches to women, Butt Monkey (Alan) or Casanova (Charlie).
  • iCarly is stock full of these Aesops. The show seems not to care about the victimization on Freddie, sometimes even seeming to encourage it i.e. iMeet Fred, with an aesop that basically boils down to "Unpopular opinions are bad" and "It's your own fault if you get beaten up for sticking by your own opinion."
    • Also the countless psuedo feminist aesops...
    • "Violence IS the answer to bully problems as long as it means being yourself." Good point.
    • If a boy likes you, don't bother putting him out of his misery by either dating him or breaking his heart, use his affection for your own purposes even if it conflicts with his. Also, get angry with him every single time he so much as looks at another girl. Laugh as your best friend repeatedly physically assaults him because he won't leave the pair of you alone due to being in love with you.
    • If you have to break up but both mutually agree to revisit that relationship in the future, don't bother telling him if your feelings have changed. Just keep dating random guys who cheat on you, leaving you crying on the original person's shoulder.
    • If you are physically violent, emotionally abusive, show zero respect and hurt someone so often that they eventually tell themselves that it would be 'weird' if you weren't doing things, they will turn around and give you a shot at dating them because you were only 'hiding your feelings' for them.
  • The whole Carrie/Big premise from Sex and the City. "It doesn't matter how many times a guy breaks your heart (or even marries someone else); if he's good-looking and the sex is great, keep going back to him." The same Aesop is applied with Grace/Leo on Will and Grace.
  • Lost has a rather unfriendly Aesop when Jack yells at Kate that she has no right to say that she shouldn't want Jack around Aaron while he's popping pills while home alone with him because she's "not even related to him." Despite having raised him for almost his whole life she's not his real family. Jack is, so he knows better than her. And Kate still ends up with Jack in the end.
    • It helps that Jack has been tremendously humbled from his experiences, wants to repent for his actions, and they only get back together in the Purgatory-esque afterlife specifically created for them for their help in protecting the Island.
  • Demitri Martin does this on a first season episode of Important Things with Demetri Martin. He mentions traditional "things your parents told you," like don't run with scissors, don't talk to strangers, or don't play with matches, then amends them (Don't run with scissors unless your house is being broken into while you are cutting something, in which case run and stab with scissors, don't play with matches unless you actually want to have fun, and don't talk to strangers unless you want to meet anyone ever).
  • Malcolm in the Middle. In "Malcolm's Job," Malcolm is written-up by his mother for not following a silly rule at his new job (the Lucky Aide grocery store where his mom Lois also works). He later discovers Lois smoking on a break (after supposedly quitting) and he's furious with her hypocrisy and yet promises to keep the secret from the family. Later, an accident (regarding the same silly rule) happens to Malcolm and Lois writes him up again, despite her asking him to keep her smoking a secret (the write-up is later revoked). He's again furious and confronts her and threatens to spill the smoking secret. Lois calmly tells him that he won't because she is his mother. She also tells him while the treatment is unfair, she is his mother and will always be no matter how old he gets and he doesn't get to ever challenge her authority. This also runs concurrent with the mindless Lucky Aide job and Lois and Malcolm's superiors plot so basically the moral is "No matter how right you are, no matter how unfair something is, if someone holds authority over you, you will not be able to do anything about it." Growing Up Sucks.
    • "Life is unfair" is the theme of the show, and it holds true to the finale. It is revealed that Lois and Hal have basically planned out Malcolm's life for him for him to become president of the United States and they never meant for him to be happy. The other kids knew about this and Lois even screws Malcolm out of a cushy job in order to make their plans come true. This seems infuriating, and yet it's one of the biggest heartwarming moments in the series' history because Malcolm in the end accepts their vision for him and goes off to Harvard getting through school as the janitor. His valedictorian speech addresses just how families make up your identity; and the big lesson is that sometimes you have to put aside your own happiness in order to please them. Though that can be quite disturbing, because Malcolm is sacrificing himself for a family that makes no bones telling him how they are willing to screw him over to make their lives better, even though the majority of their hardship is self-inflicted.
      • Everyone is a jerk, no matter how nice they look.
    • Spoofed in the episode "Lois Strikes Back" where four girls play a mean prank on Reese and the school does nothing to punish them for it, so Lois takes matters into her own hands and gets revenge on the girls. Malcolm attempts to deliver the Aesop that two wrongs don't make a right and Lois seems to accept this, only for her to sneak out the window to get revenge on the last girl. Interestingly enough, attempting to play the Aesop straight with Lois abandoning her revenge could have resulted in a Family Unfriendly Aesop as well since then it could have been "if a group of mean girls hurt a family member, standing up for them is wrong even if the girls get away with it."
  • Police, Camera, Action! (and its Companion Show Police Stop!) tend to have these.
    • However, the family unfriendly aesops are "don't drink and drive, unless it's a soft drink" or suchlike.
  • Almost every episode of Profit ended with the main character delivering a monologue on the life lesson the viewer should take from the preceding events. Given that the character in question was a Villain Protagonist, these were all Warped Aesops from most people's perspectives.
  • The Wizards of Waverly Place movie seems to says that hard work and discipline are useless, as the naturally gifted will effortlessly breeze past you.
    • Said powers were ultimately useless in preventing the Butterfly of Doom from taking her brothers away.
  • Star Trek turned the Prime Directive from the moral of "don't mess with cultures far less advanced than you" to "don't save less advanced people about to die even though we can."
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation started this with "Homeward," where Worf's brother was treated as in the wrong for saving a tribe of people whose home planet lost its atmosphere, and that he would only do such a thing because he knocked one of the natives up, not for simply humanitarian reasons.
    • Star Trek: Enterprise also did this with no prime directive in "Dear Doctor." SF Debris tore into the episode for not only the bad moral, but the completely wrong notion of evolution that justified it.
    • Star Trek DS9 also has an invoked and lampshaded example for The Boy Who Cried Wolf: Never tell the same lie twice.
  • An episode of Family Matters (a pretty ironic title, at least where this trope is concerned) that was apparently supposed to be pro-gun control. It implies that guns (and all other personal weapons, for that matter) are inherently evil: even if the only reason you purchase a gun is for self-defense, you'll end up abusing your privilege and getting shot anyway. This is especially egregious in that the father of Laura Winslow (the character who learns this lesson) is a police lieutenant!
  • One storyline in Coronation Street had mild-mannered cafe owner Roy Cropper bullied and intimidated by a builder who took a dislike to him because of the rules his customers had to follow. The climax saw one of the bullying sessions interrupted by the bully's boss, Charlie Stubbs, who threw him out of the cafe, punched him and fired him. This rather awkward The Answer Is Violence ending was made even worse by the fact Charlie Stubbs was a borderline Complete Monster who, at the time, was psychologically torturing his girlfriend. So... basically the moral is "The only way to deal with a bully is to get an even bigger bully to beat him up."
  • Lampshaded and inverted in the episode "What Fresh Hell" of Criminal Minds. Reid, Gideon and a cop are investigating a child abduction case and en route to a lead, and Gideon asks the cop if she knew what the most damaging public service announcement was for these kind of cases. The answer was "Stranger Danger" because, statistically speaking, a child is more likely to be abducted or abused by someone they know- family, friends, teachers, neighbours- with strangers making up just 1% of such cases. The effect therefore was merely to make parents more paranoid and police and social services to focus on the wrong people.
  • The Wire was a series that balanced a harsh look at Baltimore city life with a few comedic or lighter moments every now and then to break the tension. Still, the aesop of the final season rings through loud and clear - no matter how hard you try to break free, if you live in Baltimore, you may as well just kill yourself, because everyone in that city gets screwed in the end. Internal politics and incompetence reigns supreme. Illicit businesses are an implacable part of city life. None of the pieces matter, because the game stays the same - only the players change. If you're an elected official, you will be able to get away with anything. This message was so clear that real-life Baltimore city officials tried to critique the show, until creator David Simon (a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun) threw it back in their faces, acknowledging that his series was less' harsh about the city's problems that what he saw in Real Life.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Gift": the world needs good and pure heroes, but it also needs things done that aren't good and pure, so non-heroes should follow heroes around and shoot dogs for them.
  • The season premier of Bones has the moral that Status Quo Is God and that moving on with your life and doing something you really want is selfish and wrong.
  • While Babylon 5 ended up more idealistic than cynical, it still had a few sprinkled here and there. Stated outright at the end of "Believers," for example:

Sinclair: "Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't change anything."

  • An episode of Doc Martin involves a teacher telling one of her students that he has to let his classmates tease him, when he's hiding inside the hallway from gym class, and sooner or later, he might just fit in. As soon as he's about to take it, it's not just teasing anymore. Another boy grabs his ankle just before he's about to jump off a ladder during an obstacle race, and this causes him to fall and injure himself. At the end of the episode, the teacher admits to the titular doctor that she might have been wrong, and says that he'll probably never fit in, and maybe that's for the better. Err, what!?! Better for him, or better for everyone else? Yeah, it's no surprise to see that a lot of bullying doesn't get taken seriously like it should, just like in real life, but would you be saying something like that if he killed himself because he couldn't fit in anywhere? Or are you saying that that the world's better off with one less loser, and that castration is a good thing? You should be helping kids like Peter to get along with other students and making rules against castration, and that boy who grabbed his ankle should be punished for nearly getting him killed.
  • Pretty much the central question of Dexter is whether or not it's okay for Dexter to kill people who he knows are murderers, and the police can't prove. Part of his code is ensuring that these people are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, guilty, before he kills them. However, he has slipped up a few times and killed innocent people. It's also asking the question of just what Dexter is. Is he a good man doing good things for a bad reason? Is he a good man doing bad things for a good reason? A bad man doing good things for a bad reason? Or is he just a monster who has found a way to control himself as best he can? The view that Dexter himself holds is the last one. He believes himself to be an irredeemable monster without a shred of humanity, and that the only difference between himself and the people he kills is that he's found a way to control himself, and they haven't. And we're supposed to root for him, although the reasons are more to do with the character himself than what he does and why.
    • This issue is further complicated by the fact that, occasionally, Dexter will destroy or misrepresent evidence so that the police can't catch a criminal, solely so that he can kill them personally. This is often the case if the killer in question has hurt someone in Dexter's family (Deb or Rita and the kids) or if they have offended his delicate sensibilities somehow (crimes that traumatize children). Since blood spatter is such a specialized skill, he usually has no trouble faking the results of the blood spatter evidence the department finds.
      • The obfuscation of evidence has been taken to new heights in season six, where Dexter is trying to single-handedly catch the Doomsday Killer, even though his sister has recently become the youngest lieutenant ever and really needs to crack this (extremely high-profile) case or risk looking incompetent. He has ignored her pleas for his help at least four times, so far.
  • There's an old story about Sesame Street back when Snuffleupagus was portrayed as just Big Bird's imaginary friend that nobody ever believed him about. Apparently, there was some sort of Real Life scandal with a group of kids at a pre-school who tried to come forward about being abused (possibly sexually, IIRC) but weren't believed at first. When the Sesame Street writer's heard about the ordeal these kids had gone through trying to get someone to listen, they took a look at the potential Family-Unfriendly Aesop they had going with nobody ever believing Big Bird ("Don't bother trying to convince adults, they won't believe you") and decided to make Snuffy real and had the other characters meet him and apologize to Big Bird for doubting earlier.
    • Technically, Snuffy was always real, but every time Big Bird tried to introduce him to the others he would get scared and run away. What the writers decided to do was to prove to the adults that Snuffy was real.
  • The George Lopez Show One episode has George and Angie discovering that Carmen is on birth control. Carmen reveals she's not having sex but has it in case she starts, which they're reasonably concerned about. They're concerned that she's not emotionally ready for it, and there's the risk of her getting pregnant. Nothing wrong with that. However, first, they take away the birth control, which is kind of a bad thing to do if you're concerned about your kid getting pregnant. Second, it gets kind of ridiculous when they get so desperate to keep her from having sex that they bribe her with a new car, which they tell her she can only keep if she doesn't have sex before 18. They seem to be blind to the fact that not all sex is planned and think there's no risk of Carmen having spontaneous sex, as teenagers often do, as well as what will happen if she does it without birth control.
    • This is particularly frustrating because as Benny pointed out to them earlier, if Carmen starts having sex it will either be planned and protected or spontaneous and unprotected, and George, of all people, should be aware of this, seeing as Benny got pregnant with him as a teenager. Yet, the episode portrays George and Angie as being right.
      • This is even weirder because if Carmen has protected sex, they would probably never find out about it anyway, unless something goes wrong with it.
  • Lizzie McGuire There was an episode where our titular character discovers a natural talent for gymnastics despite her natural clumsiness and their imposing gym teacher encourages them to pursue further training in this field; of all the people you'd expect to give her support in this, her friend Miranda provides only scorn. This is made increasingly offputting when you consider this same friend accuses our titular character of not supporting her in return in other circumstances including a shoplifting accusation that Lizzie couldn't disprove and a poorly made attempt at acting in the drama program. By episode's end however, Lizzie learns the error of her way and chooses not to pursue her natural talents because they are sneared at by a friend. "Remember kids, always pass up a chance to fulfill your potential in order to avoid feeling the scorn of your fellow students."
    • Actually, when Kate tries to sabotage Lizzie's gymnastics competition at the end of the episode, Miranda and Gordo stop her and Lizzie quits the gymnastics because she hates doing it. And Lizzie didn't want to do the gymnastics at first but her friends talked her into it.
    • Another episode happened on Picture Day when Lizzie wore her ugly unicorn sweater that she was too pretty/mature for as no other student was allowed to. It was not cool out, but Sam and Jo said it as they were unaware that they had turned against their daughter. But they were to turn against her friends more, and Gordo has this "wrong" message that good looks would be a bad thing. (In reality, Lizzie would have not worn a unicorn sweater not a white blouse covered in green paint. She would have worn another shirt to set a mature standard, depending on how serious school photo day is.)
    • And so on so forth.
  • The infamous Sweethearts Day episode of My Wife and Kids, as explained in detail on the TV Wall Bangers page, effectively says "Your wife is always right even when she's being selfish, bratty, and ungrateful."
    • My Wife And Kids is pretty much Your Wife Is Always Right Even When She's Being Selfish, Bratty, And Ungrateful: The Series.
  • With shows like What Not to Wear, "If you don't dress the way we tell you, you'll look terrible, nobody will like you, you'll never get a good job, and we'll have to throw out all of your bought possessions."
  • There's an episode on The Bernie Mac Show where every member of the Mac family was guilty of some kind of dishonesty. Bernie fessed up to making Jordan fake an asthma attack, so they could go to an L.A. Clippers game one night. Jordan used that original lie as leverage against Bernie, and cut down a willow tree Wanda was trying to grow for no reason other than the plant being an eyesore. Vanessa lied about not going to an R-rated movie, but was exposed when she recited an iconic line from the movie, which Bernie recognized. And Wanda, despite chastising those three, was also exposed to lying about attending Brianna's play, because a salon appointment kept her away. Brianna was seen by the other four as the moral center of the situation, because of her incorruptible sweetness, but even that was subverted, because her sneaky bed jumping kept Bernie and Wanda from suspecting her at all of foul play (with a yellow arrow lampshading "best liar of them all"). The moral seems to be: honesty is the best policy, but only when lying doesn't benefit you anymore.
  • Penn and Teller are often prone to opposing mainstream aesops in Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Perhaps an especially memorable case is Holier Than Thou, wherein they had some memorably harsh criticisms of such popularly revered figures as Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama, but especially Mother Teresa.
  • You Can't Do That on Television, the show that popularized the Adults Are Useless trope in children's television, was conceived when Roger Price realized that damn near every family-friendly show on at the time depicted situations where there were always kind, reliable adults for kids to fall back on for help and advice. He wanted to teach kids that adults can be unreliable or even downright cruel and you need to be able to get along on your own in the world. Not an inherently bad message, but the complete and total absence of any decent adults on the series might've been taking it too far.
  • Future!Ted from How I Met Your Mother sometimes gives these out, but usually for laughs, e.g. "I won't bother telling you not to fight, because that's pointless, but don't fight Uncle Marshall." "And that's how we learned to forget what we had learned five seconds earlier." "Don't try to make your wife/husband jealous or he/she might beat the snot out of someone." etc., etc.
  • In the Mortal Kombat series, Liu Kang is the fated champion of the Earth Realm in the next tournament, and so must survive for our world to have any chance. In one episode, he sets off into an obvious trap to get the antidote his poisoned friends need to survive, despite their telling him not to do it. He succeeds, cures them, and then Raiden shows up, in his full godly fury, to tell him quite emphatically that yes, his friends were right, and Liu Kang really is more important than them.
  • From Merlin: After Guinevere is Mistaken for Cheating, Arthur banishes her from Camelot and becomes engaged to Princess Mithian on the rebound. The writers decided to subvert audience expectations by presenting Mithian not as an Alpha Bitch or a Spoiled Brat, but as lovely princess who impresses everyone with her beauty, immediately integrates herself into Camelot's court, effortlessly charms everyone she meets, enjoys hunting and shooting, becomes genuinely fond of Arthur, and even goes so far as to personally seek out Merlin's approval. The idea was presumably to present Arthur with a difficult Moral Dilemma between marrying Mithian (the perfect match) and seeking out Guinevere (his true love). The set-up worked a little too well considering many viewers ended up believing that Mithian would have made a much better wife and queen than Guinevere.[2] This led to Moral Dissonance, as Arthur eventually sends Mithian back to her own kingdom with a consolation prize of the disputed lands, a decision which could have easily led to war had Mithian not been gracious in defeat. The aesop was meant to be "follow your heart", but given the fact that Arthur was risking his kingdom by breaking the engagement and had essentially been stringing Mithian along for an extended period of time in an attempt to get over his feelings for Guinevere, it instead felt like "do whatever you have to do to be happy, regardless of any consequences and no matter how many people you have to hurt."
  • Law and Order Special Victims Unit had a rather bad one in the episode that introduced Dani Beck. The plot centered around the disappearance of a young woman who, due to a degenerative genetic disease, looked like a ten-year-old girl. It is mentioned that said disease will likely kill her before she turns thirty. It turns out she wasn't actually missing, she was trying to run off with her boyfriend, an older man who looked his age. Stabler arrests the boyfriend for... possibly being a pedophile? Unsurprisingly, the judge throws out the case immediately, but the way it's scripted makes it clear that we're meant to view this as a bad thing. So, the fun message of today's episode is "people who don't have long to live shouldn't try to find happiness in that time, and people with potentially-destructive urges should not try to find harmless outlets for them." That's not even getting into the whole "eccentric sexual practices, no matter how consensual, are evil" thing both this show and CSI have been repeatedly guilty of.
  1. ↑ But if you try sometimes, you get what you need
  2. ↑ Of course, it's hard to separate this from the Die for Our Ship mentality that surrounds Guinevere.
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