I’m curious to know what you think about it. I’ve never made it past the first couple of minutes of an episode, or most recently past the ad for the next episode.
The first time I tried to watch it I was repulsed by the waiter in a cafe telling Mike that if he wanted to lose weight he should move to ‘his [unspecified] country’ (actor was of African heritage) because everyone was starving there so he would get thin quickly. So I flicked channels at that point. It could have been a point about over consumption in the west compared to subsistence living, but it just came across as fat hate.
Then I started to wonder why Mike had to be so much bigger than Molly. It would seem that in order for a woman of Molly’s size to be attractive to someone in TV land that man has to be much bigger than her cause there is no way a woman Molly’s size is getting a ‘regular’ size man. What I’m trying to get at here is that to me it seemed like the size a woman can be and still be deemed attractive was a lot smaller than the size a man can be and still be attractive in TV land. Except that in reality you see people of all shapes and sizes and genders living happily together and in TV land it is really unusual to see a fat person at all unless they are the victim of something or in an obesity scare news story. So I didn’t watch for a while because that was bugging me too.
Then last week I saw an ad for the show where someone’s Mother(?) was asking if ‘a real man tucks his business between his legs and dances around in front of a mirror?’. Um, if he wants to? Needless to say I didn’t watch this episode either.
So am I missing something and it’s a really good show, really? Or is it one of those we put fat people on TV, shut up and like it shows?
I have also never watched Drop Dead Diva. I like that a curvy woman can have her own TV show, but again she was curvy in a, well, drop dead gorgeous, allowable by the patriarchy kind of way too. Large boobs, check, nipped in waist, check, shapely calves in high heels check.
Ugly Betty – attractive woman dressed down to look dowdy and ‘ugly’.
Are we ever going to have TV shows where people are just people?
See also: Ben Pobjie satirical take on A fat girl’s fit in nature’s order.
Categories: arts & entertainment, media, relationships
Quick Hit: I’m not sexist says Bob Ellis 
Are princesses bad for girls? 
Why I will go easy on the ‘save yourself’ rhetoric with my daughter 
BFTP: This is what we use it for 
Hoyden About Town 
I tried M&M for half an episode because I loved that actress in Gilmore Girls (where, incidentally, she was loved by a regular-sized dude), but gave up when it became obvious that fat was not primarily a plot device (which I was braced for), but merely a gag.
I have always loathed that business of putting glasses on a stunner so she can play the homely one.
I watch both shows. Drop Dead Diva has grown on me. It has a few problems, but the conflict the main character experiences is mainly due to her old life and the life of Jane, the woman whose life she is now living – there have been a few “surprise! I’m your ____, Jane! Aren’t you going to let me in?” moments. And I’m always happy to see Margaret Cho pop up on anything. I think the series has definitely improved over time.
Mike and Molly is far more trope and fat-joke heavy, but the characters do grow on you. Its cons can be best summed up by noting that it is far more clearly related to Two and A Half Men than The Big Bang Theory (all Chuck Lorre productions).
I don’t care for M&M or Ugly Betty for the reasons you listed, but I do enjoy Drop Dead Diva a lot. Granted, I would probably watch ‘how to paint your white wall with eggshell coloured paint’ if Margaret Cho was on it, but the rest of the show is pretty good too. And unlike what I have seen of M&M, her physical attributes are much less a ‘ha ha’ thing than they are just someone being thrust suddenly into a much different physicality than they were, and how they cope with it.
Also I think it helps against fat hate because it really does come across as sympathetic and showing some of what ‘large’ people are thought of by ‘small’ people, quite directly as the character has to reassases her own views as she realises how petty and small they were. Rather than M&M which just laughs at the fatties, DDD seems to be more of (And, admittedly, sometimes preachy about) ‘This is what a lot of people think about large people, but THIS is what reality is like FOR those people’.
Ugly Betty was just meh for me because while I like the concept of ‘unattractive woman succeeding in attractiveness based society’, it fails by taking an attractive woman and putting ugly clothes and glasses and braces on her.
someone’s Mother(?) was asking if ‘a real man tucks his business between his legs and dances around in front of a mirror?’
No, because the keeping your legs pressed together while dancing would be logistically impossible. Unless the person in question were actually an insectoid or other multi-jointed being in a human suit, i.e. not “real”.
Why yes, I do have assignments due, how did you guess?
i’m afraid i can’t offer any insight since i was put off watching the show when i read a blurb about that said mike and molly meet at an overeater’s anonymous meeting. because, of course, where else do fat people hang out and meet other fat people?
also, yes to orlando’s point that melissa mccarthy’s character on gilmore girls, sookie, falls in love, marries, and has children with “a regular-sized dude”.
I cannot effing stand M&M. Load of complete fat-hating, woman hating bollocks. Molly becomes nothing more than Mike’s mother-in-place-of and the fat jokes keep rolling out…
Because, yannow, fat people are fat and that’s hilarious, or something…
I have no idea about these shows, but I do remember really enjoying ‘Roseanne’ as a show. As far as I remember they were just people trying to get by and being snarky.