Last night, I watched ‘The Conners’ (it’s on after Jeopardy here, and it’s not so bad now that Barr is gone), and I can’t stop thinking about it. Hopefully, you saw it, too, but it was bothersome. It started with a 90+ YO woman getting her identity stolen. Fair enough. Then, the family thought that debit would be their issue and staged an “intervention.” This is where I think TV needs to be more educational and should have explained that no, they were not going to “be left with a mountain of debt.” Instead, they find out she wasn’t being defrauded and had made the purchases herself. Here is where it jumped the shark. This gave them the idea, from experience with Rosanne’s death, that credit card debt usually gets wiped when someone dies. They go on a fraudulent spending spree, and near the end of the episode, they find out the credit company will investigate the issue.
I guess my point for the conversation is that there are so many tucking crazy loopholes in this episode it was almost anti-educational and pushed an agenda with no reason. I understand a lot of scripted shows are like this, such as Law and Order (except the original, sort of), but this seemed over the top.
I’m not the best at understanding economics or economic law and I myself couldn’t tell if legitimate concepts were going over my head or if they weren’t all that well-standing. What struck me the most is they couldn’t just talk with her normally about it if there was an issue. All of Chuck Lorre’s characters these days feel like they try too hard to be eventful.
Last night, I watched ‘The Conners’
There’s yer problem right there, buddy.
More seriously though, I don’t think any sitcom is obliged to be “educational.” If most of the audience laughed and didn’t find the narrative out of step with the tone of the show or the characterizations to be distractingly broad compared to earlier seasons/episodes, then it was a “good” episode of The Connors.
Now you tell me, do the Connors usually try to do the right thing and learn lessons, or are they kind of a bowdlerized “Shameless” now? I do not plan to watch enough to find out for myself.
A bowdlerized, stupid, and low-budget shameless is an excellent explanation of how it felt! I’ve only seen maybe 8-9 episodes, and they didn’t seem that way before, but that’s how it may be going.
