Television has Crossed an Abortion Line

If you couldn’t tell by the name of this post, then I might as well do a warning of this post’s content. I am talking about the very serious topic of abortion and how it relates to the world of TV today. It does seem very strange just how normal this topic has become and also how one sided the issue always seems to be portrayed in the news or TV shows. I don’t like this one bit. You are going to get a lot of my thoughts on this issue and hear (or read) some of the other side of this issue.

 

Starting back a long ways ago, television would never cover this issue. It wasn’t something that TV would ever cover. And when it did cover it, it didn’t side with those in favor of abortion. Back when Law and Order first aired, an earlier episode on the bombing of an abortion clinic lead to most advertisers pulling out. The same was true with other shows that covered it way back when at the time, such as a really old show called The Defenders.

 

Even covering the topic of pregnancy after the Roe versus Wade decision was made, you would NEVER have a character on any show that I ever watch even consider getting an abortion. They would just live with their decision and have the baby. While the world of television sadly became more and more immoral, it would never be so immoral that characters on shows would have abortions. And yes, abortion is immoral. It never was the case, that is, until it was.

 

I’ll have no way of knowing for sure when it changed or which show ushered in the change. What I do know is that the show of Parenthood was among the first things that I watched that showed a character getting an abortion. It wasn’t focused on too much, but it was clearly in there. Another shows that I like, Jane the Virgin, also had it happen to a character and it was also a fairly minor plot point and detail with the show hardly focusing on it that much. I doubt that these were the only ones that covered it. And Jane the Virgin was a show that made it clear in another part that abortion was the wrong choice and idea to do for that character. But that same character was the one that later got an abortion.

 

But some shows went much further than this in the end. In Grey’s Anatomy, a person was shown at one point taking abortion pills. But the part of that franchise that made me want to write this post was in the show Station 19. A character is shown taking the pills and then her abortion is shown a lot in whole and gruesome detail, but with some implications that this could be a happy choice. She was clearly in a whole lot of pain through this, but we still see it and it was so wrong, this episode may wind up on my list of worst episodes of the year should I do something like that in the future.

 

The fact that abortion is now constantly being seen as the correct choice is all kinds of wrong. Even the people who are against abortion are now labeled anti-choice. But abortion is a choice that one does not have to make. And I despise the fact that many pro-choice people are labeled baby killers when a lot of them don’t actually perform or get abortions. And the idea that people don’t ever regret abortions is just false. While it may happen from time to time, there are people who feel that way. And there is such a thing as abortion survivors. You can’t deny the existence of something you don’t like just because you don’t like such a thing in the end. That’s not how facts work. And only if someone could convincingly make the case that a fetus isn’t life would I ever support abortion. You’ll never make that case, but you are more than free to try.

 

While the abortion line has already been crossed, it could get even worse in the future. What it could be is that if the Supreme Court decision on abortion does overturn its legality in all cases, that we will see a whole lot more of its support in the future. We’ll see episodes of shows devoted to why women should have abortions and why it is somehow ridiculous to want an unborn child to live. Normally, wanting a person to live in any situation is a good thing, unless, of course, it is an unborn baby, in which case, it only seems that one is wrong in some way for thinking such a thing. I’m not looking forward to this and some shows may piss me off so much that I could stop watching them.

 

I can’t think of anything else worth exploring in this blog post. I wish that the abortion issue wasn’t so one sided with the pro-lifers made out as horrible people all the time. But that’s the sad way that the world has come to be nowadays. I can only hope that it changes. But with the way that Hollywood is always attacking Christians, then I doubt such a thing will ever happen in the end.

Back to School Commercials 2021

You might have been wondering why this post is so late as it has been delayed for a very long time. There was one simple reason why: being behind on things that I was watching. As soon as I was caught up on all the shows before September which I felt I had to do before Independence Day of this year even if some back to school commercials have aired in June in the past (it has been a while as there use to be a shit ton of them). Anyways, here is the post with a few other notes.

 

I also felt like including a note as to why the numbers are different from year to year. Basically, the number may have remained the highest in years before 2018 is because of all the time that I had at the time to watch shows that I didn’t have in the past. I couldn’t watch as much relating to late night shows from some years earlier. I am hoping that some where I use this sign ~ are beaten by official higher numbers that I might never be able to get so I can stop posting some of the older numbers in all of the newer posts about this.

 

In 2014, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 1. The official count before August is 48. The official count before September is 158. The official total of the whole year is 170. In 2015, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 0. The official count before August is 44. The official count before September is 125. The official total of the whole year is 136.

 

In 2016, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 1. The official count before August is ~61. The official count before September is ~261. The official total of the whole year is 286. In 2017, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 0. The official count before August is ~68. The official count before September is 219. The official total of the whole year is 234.

 

In 2018, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 0. The official count before August is ~20. The official count before September is 110. The official total of the whole year is 115. In 2019, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 0. The official count before August is ~52. The official count before September is 159. The official total of the whole year is 165.

 

In 2020, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 0. The official count before August is 48. The official count before September is 162. The official total of the whole year is 188.

 

In 2021, the official count of back to school commercials before Independence Day is 0. The official count before August is 40. The official count before September is 170. The official total of the whole year is 188.

 

There is another long delayed post where I have only just the title written so far in addition to a whole lot of other ones as well. I might even mention some on the political commercial numbers and thoughts on them in one of my blogs, but probably not this one. I might save that for my blog on The Good Fight or another blog like that.

A Longer and Longer Hiatus

When covid hit, a lot of shows were delayed a lot in their production leading to a long hiatus. Now while there have been times when it was just shows on streaming or cable that had long gap between the seasons, it now seems to be a network TV thing as well. It was rare before the pandemic, but now seems quite a common a thing depending on what the show is. A lot of shows, some of them that were even meant to start a new season sometime during the normal time frame, are taking a longer break than they ever seemed possible or would have before. This is getting normal for some shows to effectively skip a season (much like how Survivor didn’t air during the 2020-2021 season) before returning for a new season after a long hiatus.

How Women’s Creditability Was Hurt Before and After Me Too

I’ve thought of this post a while ago. I could have done it sooner when I first thought of it, but I now have a reason regarding more recent events that make this relevant still. It is long overdue for me to do updates on the Me Too movement, so I might as well get started. Note that some of this will cover more movie stars than TV stars, but this is still a post worthy of this blog.

 

It seems to have started with a woman named Gwyneth Paltrow. Long an eccentric throughout the whole Hollywood community, she’s not so much known for her strangeness as her reputation for being hard to work with. While I have never met her and am not sure if I ever will, I feel that there is a very good reason not to believe the rumors that she’s not actually hard to work with: Harvey Weinstein was the one who gave her that reputation.

 

As we all know by now, Harvey Weinstein is a horrible person who did horrible things to a lot of people. He had the power to ruin people before he himself was ruined. The stigma against Gwyneth exists still. She may not be difficult to work with. He just may not have liked being rejected by her or the fact that she didn’t become one of his many victims.

 

Me too should have been a turning point against this type of thing, but it wasn’t. Sadly, the stigma that exists against women still exist where the person that they accused presents himself as the victim of a smear campaign and she is seen as a liar still works. This is a classic gaslighting technique. And it sadly works. Plus, you have to keep track of who controls the narrative.

 

Case in point: it seemed to me at first that the allegations involving Eliza Dushku against Michael Weatherly were convenient. It seems that it was one offhand comment that he made that got her so outraged that she refused to work on his show, Bull, but still got the pay she would have gotten if she had worked at least one full season under the show. But it was CBS that partly controlled the narrative and they made it seem like Michael was sorry for this one thing without even painting Eliza in that bad of a light. But this was only part of the story.

 

Eliza came out and made it clear that Michael had done a whole lot more than just the one comment and she was the one who was effectively blacklisted from the Hollywood community for what he had done wrong. She’s also under one of those infamous NDAs where she can’t even discuss things as much or as well as she would have liked to or been able to otherwise.

 

That’s not the only case. It would seem that Ruby Rose might have had to deal with a lot of problems with the production of Batwoman. Some suggest that she was the problem herself. She gave a lot of different proof to back up her side of the allegations. But it was still her getting fired from a show that she was even the star of when she was more likely to be a whistleblower than the one causing issues herself. I don’t even know the full story and need to check out more of it myself sometime.

 

And now we get to the media circus regarding Johnny Depp and Amanda Heard. For those who aren’t aware of this, Johnny Depp is a wife beater and will sue anyone who calls him that. I have no issues calling him that because that is what he is. Go ahead, Johnny. Sue me. I’m not worth being sued. Hardly anyone reads this blog outside of two regular readers most of the time. I endorse fully the cancelling of Johnny Depp as he shouldn’t have the types of fans that he does now.

 

Why am I convinced of the allegations against Johnny being true? Because the UK has already proved this in a defamation case that you can read about here. The UK has to prove the burden of proof in their cases. That’s why one famous case of theirs had a person proving the Holocaust had happened in order to win their case. They proved quite clearly that Johnny is a wife beater.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depp_v_News_Group_Newspapers_Ltd

 

But the case didn’t end here, which is sad for the betterment of society. When his ex-wife, Amanda Heard, wrote an op-ed, Johnny sued again since there was a new person to sue. Something that I did not understand about the UK case was that it said that Amanda was negatively affected by this. I still don’t understand as she is seen in a negative light. You can read more about this other case here.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depp_v._Heard

 

Johnny knows how to play to the audience. He’s a very capable actor after all. I’m shocked that he still has fans in all of this with people thinking that he’s the victim. The whole point of this blog post that I’m writing is that sometimes men are able to flip the script: claim that they are the victim and that it is the woman who is really the abusive one out to ruin them. What evidence even exists that he’s the victim here? I don’t even know if he is treating the case seriously.

 

It’s sad that so many people are seeking to defend Johnny still and destroy Amanda. There are over 4 million signatures seeking to remove her from Aquaman 2. They better not work. She better be in that film in the end. I may arrange a boycott of it if she isn’t. I hate the fact that YouTube suggested one of these videos in my feed from the trial, I clicked not interested, and the video still loaded anyways. What’s the point of having a not interested option anyways? And why did you start the annoying autoplay option in the first place?

 

A co-worker of mine was talking to me about the case. He may not know this, but he was royally pissing me off about it. He thinks that she was lying and negatively affected women who actually do have real cases to make. I don’t think that either of us could see the other side of this. But while I’m not against watching parts of the trial online, it would have to be unedited live feeds. I’m not going to watch any of the videos called Johnny Depp being hilarious in court since they would only show one side, especially since Amanda’s side was not even brought forth in court yet at that time.

 

I’m at least glad that there are people supporting Amanda in all this, but there are far more people on the side of Johnny and I just don’t get it. I know that a criminal case was settled out of court, but that does not mean that Johnny is innocent. (To be fair, though, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty either.) I really hope that Johnny loses this case as well as he should. I can only hope that this would be the victory for women’s rights that it should be.

 

This all ties into the final point of this blog post: me too was a much needed thing, but it still did not bring forth what it meant to for the movement. People still aren’t believing women all of the time. And while not every story or allegation will be true in the end, we should make more of an effort to believe them than we are. While there are some cases where it is true that the woman is lying for whatever reason, it is so rarely the case that we should assume that it isn’t before we assume that it is. It needs to be taken on a case by case basis in the end. We can only hope that it works and that women still have the credibility that they should have.

My Planned Viewing Habits: Summer of 2022

I don’t think that I’ll do this post normally. I’m going to mention some of what I could do versus what I will do and I will mention more of a week by week schedule. I don’t even know what all will air. Plans can change so I don’t know what mentioned I’ll do more than check out just the once if it is new. So let’s get to this post and what I plan to watch over the summer.

 

If you read my Survivor blog and actually read the movie updates that are largely in there for no good reason, then you’ll know that I started a list of movies for Sunday night. That means that I won’t be watching much, if any, of primetime on Sundays this time around. The only things that I might have otherwise cared about and watched are Celebrity Family Feud and The $100,000 Pyramid. Besides, ABC is notorious around where I live for not coming in, especially during the summer.

 

As for the other days of the week, it seems that the only Monday show that I’m currently interested in is Roswell, New Mexico. I will also want to keep this day of the week open for nighttime movie watching most of the time throughout the summer.

 

Tuesday has the shows of Superman & Lois in addition to Tom Swift. Only, I’m pretty sure that the first show should be finishing its airing at some point earlier than not. Also regarding scheduling that still has to finish airing, Wednesdays has The Flash and Kung Fu for a while. It will also be airing Wellington Paranormal at some point in time.

 

Thursdays won’t have much for me to check out until July. When I am able to check things out then, I’ll be watching Press Your Luck and Generation Gap. Fridays still have Charmed and Dynasty for now. I’ll have to get caught up on them. I am planning on sticking with the Saturday show Would I Lie to You?

 

It seems that nothing much new is airing during the summer this time around. There must still be a whole lot still unknown with the schedule. All I know is that if the CW shows of Bump and Leonardo still air this summer, I plan to watch them. If they don’t air until later, I’ll watch them then. If they don’t air at all, then, obviously, I won’t be able to watch them at all. And that’s honestly all for this post as there doesn’t seem to be much else worth including this time around.

Regular Problems of my blogs

Once again, I’m going to have to cancel any planned posts because they aren’t done yet. I hope that you understand that sometimes I need to publish some content in my mind. And that is what this post is about. I am often writing entire posts the day of. And today’s post has one of themes where I don’t have anything actually relating to TV in this blog. I don’t do this much, but where I want to do meta content where I blog about blogging. I might as well do it somewhere and this is the blog that makes the most sense. And let’s get to things that do make sense.

 

You see, when I don’t have enough time to publish a blog and have to because I’m on a self imposed deadline, I may publish an incomplete version of it. I’ve done it in this blog. All of my blogs in the cast update stage outside of maybe the one on Elementary had posts where I wasn’t able to check on everyone that month or when the update had to be scheduled and then I got really behind. I was not able to keep track of all of the projects and a lot of it was harder to catch up on when I could.

 

Other times, I had to pull content out of my ass in order to ensure that something would be there in all of the blog. I had to do this way more than I have to now, although there are still issues with this in my OCD mind. And the thing is, I blog for myself.

 

I have no idea who regularly comes to my blogs meaning that I don’t know who, if anyone, I’m doing this for. This blog, for instance, always has 2 regular readers and some content has higher view counts than usual. Indeed, the post of this blog called cursed timeslots which was unintentional clickbait on my part remains the highest read post of this blog.

 

View counts in my blog don’t matter as once my Survivor blog had view counts of over a thousand and that was several years ago. But shouldn’t they? While all of my blogs never get 0 views, the most common number in any blog that’s not this one is typically just one. And my blogs are often way off topic. My blog on The Good Fight has continued to be updated about politics for a long time. I don’t even do some posts on time or possibly even at all. I shouldn’t blog and I keep doing them. I don’t know if I ever will have to sense to give them up. I can only hope that I will.

Why Renewals and Cancellations Don’t Always Stick

I’m hoping that this won’t be the first post of May since that would mean that I once again won’t be able to do a fantasy schedule in advance of the upcoming season. But that might be for the best anyways since it is becoming harder to predict that sort of thing, especially with the CW and its craziness. But let’s get to this post to ensure that I have one done.

 

With fan campaigns to save shows largely ineffective and meaningless, they still happen because there are a few times when they do work. It remains very rare. And while cancellations and renewals are getting reversed more and more, it is almost never a fan campaign that makes the difference.

 

Still, what’s up with the changes? It used to be rare for shows to have its fate reversed. Now, it is getting more and more common for this to happen. And the gap between its original fate and things changing is getting longer and longer.

 

It was originally a plan for Killer Camp to last just one season. But the decision was reversed by bringing it back a long while later. This was later met by a real cancellation that did stick. Then we have a show like Manifest which was cancelled for months until Netflix brought it back for a real final season.

 

Of course, there’s the reverse of this too. Stumptown was renewed for a while until pandemic related production problems brought forth its real end after what was already filmed after all. The reboot of The Arsenio Hall Show was renewed for a season 2 at first, but it was unrenewed, as it is now know. The show Clarice was going to continue on streaming, but that didn’t happen after all.

 

Why do these changes happen? Well, it varies a whole lot. It was high streaming numbers that had made saving Manifest worthwhile. Networks may have sudden changes that result in something that was renewed now being cancelled or vice versa. There’s always going to be changes and it happens a whole lot more than ever before. It will still happen maybe less than 10% of the time. But it used to be less than 5% or almost never at all.