> live in a big house
> three teenage boys crammed into one small bedroom
Nah I think they were definitely struggling a bit.
His mother is fucking abusive, that’s why.
And completely unhinged. One child joined the military to escape her. She tracked him down, charmed military personnel, and went to drag him home
That is TERRIFYING! And the family starts to dig themselves out of a hole when Hal can’t have sex, but oh no! That means he’s happy and she’s DENIED! She seduces him until he caves. She’d rather have power than stability for her and her family
There was an episode where Lois got orthotics for her shoes and became a whole new person, nicer, happier. Hal couldn’t stand that she didn’t need foot rubs anymore and sabotaged them, condemning her to a life of pain so his codependent ass could feel needed. That whole family was fucked up.
Cripes, doomed by foot fetish
And his dad is a meth dealer
Isn’t that Breaking Bad?
Few things for the family
- Malcolm gets called out by EVERYONE of the main characters and major side characters at one point or another in the series for his crappy attitude… It’s a running joke by the end of it…
- This is one of those fox “see! the poor don’t have to be poor, they just need gumption and having less kids” shows… (Bones is another ex.)
- Malcolm’s always whining and it causes him to lose out on many major opportunities (both relationship-wise and career-wise)
- Hal says they have sex several times a day, even when they’re camping with another family. Thus he’s always tired and can’t concentrate
- In one episode, Lois and Hal have to stop having sex for a week because of some medical issues, the grass gets attention and turns green, hal gets a promotion, and they stop being so trashy. All in one week. Once the issue is gone and they can have sex, everything goes back the way it was, grass looks like shit, house is a wreck.
- In one episode they show how each time they have a kid, the parents lives get progressively worse.
Wait really Bones did this? I thought I remember an episode where Bones says “you just need to work hard, my life was hard too but I didn’t end up like that” and learned by the end that wasn’t a fair judgment. Maybe I’m misremembering?
Bones had a lot of subtle things … Each character has some weird quirks that almost always has the future conservatives would tell them.
(Spoilers for a 10 year show)
If the top of my head …
- Both of the women (bones and the hot girl intern) who were proud of having a lot of premarital sex end up accidentally getting preggo and don’t even think of not keeping it
- The super duper rich guy, although he loses all his money due to outside circumstances, he works his ass off all the time, and becomes super duper rich again
- The only “poor” later season intern is a southern guy (ya know, from “real America”) who works hard and gets rich by capitalizing on his family stuff
- The sexy “free spirit” artsy girl is an airhead in most areas of life.
- Forgets she was actually married, (and secretly wants the black guy more than the rich white guy)
- She’s a programming genius, but her program gets hacked in the stupidest way possible
- Of course she has an out of control hard rocking dad, who ends up getting drunk with her fiance and getting him tattooed (because you can’t trust drifter dads)
- The og intern is also poor, also works hard, but is not rich for two reasons >!He’s obviously on the autism spectrum and also turns into one of the multi-episode killers also showing to not trust people with mental issues!<
Hmm I may actually re-watch it and keep an eye out for these but you are more correct than I remember. I would say Bones does seem a little bit autistic, and some of the people in power are women, but it’s in a little bit of a hamfisted way (look at these badass women!).
I think the episode where one woman got pregnant with someone else’s kid she was thinking of not keeping it but got convinced to keep it by her husband (fiance?), the message still being “them keeping it obviously good.”
Seems like the writing was mostly fine but sometimes very conservative-coded when the director wanted to insert some spiel about life values. I appreciate the examples, I think I immediately forgot about those episodes specifically because of the weird messaging.
Oh, bones is def ok the spectrum, but that’s explained away by being caused by her upbringing… Since she was in the adoption system due to her dad iirc.
She’s also rich due to her stubbornness and “pulling herself up by her own bootstraps”.
She also is drawn to Booth, a childish man who constantly makes fun of her peers, and has a derogatory nickname for people in her profession (squints), but he’s an old values man (reads the paper with his coffee and prefers it to bones’ iPad, sleeps around pre-bones but loves every woman he does sleep with, he basically rebuilds their house himself, is a company man who regards the bureau above all else, and he likes guns but keeps his safe like a model citizen should)… and is hot.
There’s also an embarrassing amount of obvious product placement in the show (the cars, the diff apple products they use and comment on throughout the show) that I’m pretty sure they were self aware of it and making fun of it later on. …
The woman who is in charge s2 and later is not nearly as smart as any of her subordinates, meanwhile the guy who is in charge during season 1 always seems to have more respect given to him than his successor. Other women who are in charge also usually turn out to be the big bad at the time.
I don’t remember the woman deciding to keep her baby. Was that one of the one-episode people who are adjacent to a victim?
Sorry. Went down a rabbit hole here. But yeah, as a kid I was always curious how such a conservative leaning news channel like Fox could have such shows that are either super liberal or super raunchy… Turns out a lot of them have a lot of conservative coded messages. The writing was pretty standard for a crime procedural.
Still trying to figure out how such a gay friendly show like X-Men got made…
I think the reason I didn’t see booth as conservative-coded, is because he seemed to be portrayed (or maybe just regarded by bones) as foolish and outdated (and usually also wrong) for basically every reason you said, but he was a good guy who always showed up and did the right thing. Though I definitely remember some times where he was doing some “hard working man protects the woman” stuff and that was seen as “good” which I thought was very out of place, especially bones reacting to it positively… Maybe the times he looked foolish were meant to be serious and they just couldn’t make it not sound ridiculous lol
Hearing this makes me really want to re-watch it as I wasn’t thinking about any of this… hmm…
https://bones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Proof_in_the_Pudding here’s the episode, Angela is pregnant (thinks she is pregnant) with Wendell, but is dating (?) hodgins, who tells her to keep it. I guess maybe this is still a bit conservative coded? Hard to say maybe it’s pretty neutral
Right. And he’s a man’s man. Does things because he has an internal code he ascribes to vs makes him feel cool. He doesn’t have to play at being a man because he’s the epitome of a conservative coded man. He also was very cut and dry, and knows the limit of his power/his strengths. Every time it’s a science or medical thing he puts all the weight on bones and never tries to influence her or tell her she’s wrong about science.
When it comes to his domain, the interpersonal/political/legal stuff he knows his area of expertise and takes over. In every episode, when bones says “this is a murder” or “we need this stuff at the Jeffersonian” he instantly kicks into gear and gets his people to scoop everything up and GTFO. Him and the new orleanian DA lady come to blows every so often, but that’s expected for cops vs lawyers.
The Angela thing was a similar way when it comes to code. iirc she chooses hodgins at the end because while they’d both do the same thing (take care of her and the baby to the best of their ability) hodgins did it because he loved angela, his internal code, and that’s “just what guys do” Whereas Wendell said “I’d do the right thing” and she wanted someone who did things because he wanted to. Not to have her as a burden. Again coding IMHO that you don’t just need to know societal values, they need to be second nature.
In the whole show, when pretty much all the women either have a scare or get preggo. The topic of keeping it/not keeping it is never up for debate or takes on the Uber complicated topic of abortion. It’s just “they’re keeping it”
That being said. This is not meant as a “this show is bad” comment thread. Enjoy what you want. I just would’ve loved to hear from the writers/producers of the show to see how much weight Fox put on them or on any other show they make/produce/etc. to be more pro-conservative.
