For the second time in two nights, I was innocently watching bad TV when a green theme popped up. A gal can't get a break from her day job these days with so many producers rushing to prove their eco-cred. So how far-reaching is this trend?
Figuring that out will either require me to watch way too much TV or it will require your help. Loyal Grist readers, I ask ye: please think of Grist each time green creeps into one of your favorite shows, and report it here.
I'll get our little wiki started, though my colleagues will soon lose faith in whatever intellect they might once have thought I possessed:
Two and a Half Men. Oh yes, that's right, I'm a sucker for this raunchy "comedy," and only partly because I have a tenuous connection to one of the bit players. Aaaanyhoo, on Tuesday Charlie Sheen's character kicked off the show by saying he hated electric cars. Seems his date that night had been disrupted by the woman's husband arriving home in his all-too-silent Prius! "If he hadn't stepped on the cat, I'd be dead." Har Har! (Not laughing: advocates for the blind who are asking that hybrids be louder.)
Later on, I swear I saw two (count 'em) bottles of green-branded dish detergent on Charlie's kitchen sink.
Boston Legal. Last night this show -- which has dipped its toes in green waters before -- pulled out all the green stops, with a plot revolving around William Shatner getting sued for selling body fat to make biofuels. Not only did James Spader's closing argument -- about the foolishness of relying on oil and spurning alternative energy sources including biodiesel, ethanol, and methanol, with a nod to the demise of the electric car -- last a full three minutes, but the two returned to the topic in the closing moments of the show. During their weekly bonding session, they discussed our planetary plight and agreed that they should eat more and get fatter, all for the cause of fighting climate change.
Don't even get me started on the cringeworthy eco-Earl episode a few months back ... any other examples? You think about it while I go read War and Peace.
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Comments
View as Flat
David Roberts Posted 2:14 am
14 Feb 2007
www.grist.org
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birdboy Posted 4:59 am
14 Feb 2007
The Simpsons, amazingly a FOX network show, hits a true note on current politics (ugly Americans seeking world domination) or environmental issues, nearly every episode. Yes, they absolve Americans for ignorance, greed, and violence, as if it were just cute and normal, but it helps me to laugh about things that would otherwise give me nightmares, and my (nearly adult) kids seem to 'get it'. I conclude that the network exec's just don't watch it (see no liberal, hear no liberal, do no liberal)- it brings in money, which trumps their values.
a liberal in redsville
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Roz Cummins Posted 5:44 am
14 Feb 2007
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TubbyC Posted 5:29 pm
14 Feb 2007
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Katharine Wroth Posted 12:11 am
16 Feb 2007
The Office. Last night, Michael gave a presentation to a grad-school economics class. While defending Dunder-Mifflin's David vs. Goliath odds, he railed about the "five goliaths" the U.S. faces: "al Qaeda, global warming, sexual predators, mercury poisoning ..."
Not one but two green nods. And he didn't even make it to five.
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SMLowry Posted 5:59 am
16 Feb 2007
Katherine, I'm a sucker for Two and a Half Men, too. It makes me laugh for some strange, perverted reason . . .
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Katharine Wroth Posted 6:30 am
16 Feb 2007
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