before my political awakening I just took them at face value. But now they're like time capsules of the fairly shallow and hardly biting political commentary of the era.
Specifically im talking about sitcoms that premiered in the late 90s (or early 2000s) and continued thru the 00s. Take Scrubs for example. There's a few episodes where the hospital workers break into camps discussing the Iraq war. Elliott, played by Sarah Chalke, is revealed as a republican. I suppose this mirrors how actual conversations at the time played out but its somewhat endearing how it all seems so quaint looking back. I know watching at the time I was like wow it's refreshing how they're being so political lmao.
I think the cringiest when it comes to this is will and grace. There's a few episodes with bush-targeted jokes delivered primarily by debra messing (yuck). And they all have to do with his intelligence.
I think the only exceptions are either the shows that did it smartly (for libs anyways) like the first three seasons of Arrested Development or ones that just focused on the domestic/life problems of the characters, like Malcolm in the middle (which is probably the last great working class sitcom) or everybody loves raymond.
It's crazy to me how prevalent "WIFE BAD" shit was in so many old shows. Not even in a "sexism bad" surprised way to me, but just how hack some of writing for some sitcoms was
That and man fails to perform masculinity a 100% he must be GAY!
The worst thing that could happen to a man in a 90s sitcom was someone thinking he was gay because of a wacky misunderstanding.
The only 90s sitcom that did that storyline right was Seinfeld and only because they turned it up to 11 instead of doing the casual homophobia every other sitcom was doing.
That was like the #1 joke of Everybody Loves Raymond, and most of the time his wife was totally reasonable, the times when she wasn't she was purposefully written as the most annoying character possible.