Fox Slammed For Family-Unfriendly Shows

Well, Family Guy is definitely one of the dirtiest shows on tv, ever, but I doubt that it's being "marketed as family friendly," as critics claim.

The CSI shows are also cited as family un-friendly. Well, yeah, no arguments on that. When I first began watching CSI, every other episode I'd say "I cannot believe they just showed that on TV." The gore and macabre tone of the show would get it an R-rating in theaters. Nevermind the frequent plotlines involving deviant sex.

Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing. Hey, it's on at 9pm.

But can anyone imagine CSI being made six years ago? How did it come to be that CBS -- formerly the channel for Murder, She Wrote and Matlock -- just decided that it would put on a show regularly featuring severed limbs, decapitations, and CGI depictions of bullets tearing through brain-matter as they ricochet inside a skull?

And then there was that whole "Plushy" fetish episode.

I'm not sure why the other two CSI shows so completely fail to capture the giddily-macabre magic of the original. I guess the main problem with CSI: Miami is that David Caruso seems hellbent to convince me every episode he's gay, what with the queeny line-deliveries, "vogue-ing" body language, and constantly putting on and taking off his $800 sunglasses.

The guy cannot interrogate a witness without foppishly snapping off those stupid sunglassess. "Ricky," he will say to a perp as he snaps off the sunglasses, "these pictures show you entering the scene of the crime three minutes before Maria Santos was murdered." Then he'll get kissably close to Ricky and say "I'm going to nail you hard," and then snap on the sunglasses again.

He's got a whole thing with the sunglasses. They come off to talk about evidence and come back on for his exit-line. A man could make a whole drinking game out of the sunglasses on, sunglasses off thing, if one was determined to become a degenerate alcoholic within the span of a 60 minute crime drama.

Oh-- and also, the show just sucks, generally. I blame Caruso. The show is all about him, his heroics, his conflicted soul, his... indeterminate sexual orientation. And of course his fucking sunglasses.

posted by Ace at 02:20 PM

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