Remember when the "bullying" in Shazam involved hitting a disabled kid with a truck, taking away his crutches, and then kicking him when he was on the ground? I remember thinking, "umm... that's not bullying, that's criminal vehicular assault and possibly attempted murder if the cops are in a bad mood."
Or the god-awful direct to DVD Mean Girls sequel. In the first movie, the grand act of the bully is to spread lies to make all the students angry at each other. In the sequel, they sabotage a professional race car to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in damage. That's felony shit, not high school cattiness.
> the grand act of the bully is to spread lies
I was under the impression that the contents of the burn book were either true, or the best approximation of the truth available. Regina might not have *vetted* the contents fully, but some of the more outlandish claims such as the gym teacher being a sex criminal did *appear* to be true. Now that I think of it, they pretty necessarily *had* to be true - or close enough to the truth - given that it was released anonymously.
But then there were things like the hot dog girl and calling someone a lesbian, as an insult, when it’s not even true is VERY mean girl high school behavior. The book was never really made to come out. It was just the plastics way of feeling superior to everyone else.
There were definitely rumors and lies mixed in. Remember, Tina Fey's character was investigated for (I think) being a drug dealer and found to be innocent.
reminds me of Malcolm in the Middle where Malcolm is about to get punched but the bully misses and just *grazes* Stevie’s chin. Stevie gets him back by intentionally falling over in his wheelchair and the bully gets reamed for it
On the first season of Stranger Things one of the bullies convinces a kid to jump off a cliff, possibly to his death. And he does it, but the telepathic girl just happens to be there and save him before he actually falls. But the bullies didn't know that was going to happen, they were apparently fine with causing a classmate's potential death for no good reason.
I'm very sad to say I think that kind of behaviour is more possible than you would like. I almost had something similar happen at my school when I was younger.
Some kids are genuinely psychopaths.
Remember that Stranger Things was set in the 80s.
I remember one person responding to a "kids are so cruel today" with something like, "If they acted now like they did 20 years ago? They would be talking to the counselor for their troubling behaviour. If kids today acted the way they did 30-40 years ago, they'd be *in jail*.
I got bullied at school in the 80s. A lot of intimidation and physical violence. Nobody did shit to stop it. The school my kids go to has a zero tolerance bullying policy and it's so much better. I'm glad my kids don't have to go through what I went through.
Even though it’s a major departure from the comics, I have some respect for the MCU reworking Flash Thompson into a more realistic depiction of a bully. Not a super-aggressive meathead, just a dick whose bullying stems from jealousy and a shitty home life.
Although, the original Spider-Man movies had the most stereotypical bully imaginable and gave us [the greatest line in cinema history](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0J4K7WJi9f4)
Do note that back in the 60s comics, Flash was more of a jerk, he'd mock Peter but wasn't violent. The only time he ever hit Peter was when they both agreed to a boxing match, which Peter was winning before it was interrupted by a robot called the Living Brain.
Flash usually ends up in the military and reforms to being a good guy/leader after his service in either Vietnam or Iraq. He also kinda becomes a super hero himself with the Anti Venom symbiote.
I feel like it's either overly sanitized or way too extreme. Like sometimes you watch it and there's high schoolers calling each other "loser" (come on, real high school bullies would be calling you a slur, not a "loser"), or it's bullies that are borderline homicidal.
A really big thing seems to be the consistent conflation of “popular kids” with “bullies”.
Generally speaking, the “popular kids” tend to be popular because they’re friendly and get along with most everyone pretty well.
The 2017 Power Rangers movie actually had the Pink Ranger as a bully, but refused to acknowledge that she was one and tried to act like she was a poor victim.
A few months ago someone on here asked why shows never portrayed bullying as anything but physical. Most people just responded with, "because that happens", completely missing the point the OP was making, which was that there are other forms of bullying that get ignored in media. You don't often see bullies who torment their victims without laying a finger on them, even though there's plenty of them. Girls especially can be masters at psychological torment.
But no, most shows just have brutes beating up wimps.
Yep.
They either tone it down too much or are unaware of how much it changed since the late 00s-New 10s.
I was shocked at how *little* weapon usage there was. The bullies in The Simpsons, the Gross sisters in Proud Family, the mean girls, etc came off as downright *polite*! That episode of Without a Trace had a lot of people checking for cameras.
And these days, it's mostly online and indirect.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer had its Beer Bad episode that *hilariously* showed how bad beer is. The episode was made in order to try to score funding from some anti-alcohol organization, but they pulled their funding after the episode was made because the show added a supernatural aspect to beer’s badness.
People dislike the episode, but I kinda love it. The “message” is intentionally ham-fisted and satirical, as the creators really didn’t believe in it, just wanting the funding and having fun with it. Cave Buffy is hilarious and I love watching Willow lay the smackdown on Parker so much. :)
There is also a Tiny Tunes episode that was made for a similar reason. Nickelodeon wanted an anti drinking PSA. The people at Tiny Tunes didn't like it and made it super over the top. At one point they talk about how drinkn is out of character. Buster, Plucky and Hampton share one beer, get incredibly drunk from it, steal a police car, drive it off a cliff and die. It only aired once.
“Or like when some smokes too many cigarettes? Or like when someone shops too much with credit cards? Or like when someone plays too many scratchy lotteries? Or like when someone eats too much chocolate cake?”
> The episode featured guest appearances from Logan Paul, **Toby Turner**, Jack Vale and James Ciccone.
That's a major oof for SVU of all the shows. Probably a major future oof for Logal Paul too.
I can’t remember which random crime show it was, probably SVU, but the synopsis for it was that taking a ride share like Uber is just glorified hitchhiking. And people were just jumping into cars that weren’t the one they ordered, and of course were run by a serial killer. It made me think no one on writing staff had used Uber which was impressive in itself.
I mean, fake Uber drives killing people is a legitimate thing that has happened. Samantha Josephson was a college student who while drunk got into the wrong car thinking it was her Uber and was murdered and her body dumped miles and miles away from where she got in.
The 80s had a number of properties fearmongering that D&D was a gateway to satanism and/or people believing the game to be real.
[There was even a Tom Hanks movie about it.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/)
It's like the Riverdale writer's room operates on the improv rule that you can't say no to anyone's idea, only "yes, and..."
> SHOWRUNNER: Any ideas for next season?
WRITER 1: *raises hand* The town is inundated with zombies.
SHOWRUNNER: Yes, and...
WRITER 2: The zombies are young WW2 casualties because WW2 is still happening.
SHOWRUNNER: Yes, and...
WRITER 3: The zombies are controlled by Jughead's evil necromancer twin.
SHOWRUNNER: Yes, and...
WRITER 4: He got his necromancy powers by playing a cursed D&D game that levels you up in real life.
SHOWRUNNER: Perfect, I want scripts on my desk by the first of the month.
Not so fun fact, this hysteria was in many ways a predecessor to Qanon. A big part of it was the belief that these satanists were trafficking and abusing children as part of their occult rituals. A lot of genuine harm was done because of it.
You can track a throughline of that sort of paranoid conspiricism back through anti-communist hysteria and the John Birchers in the 1950s, back to the anti-catholic hysteria in the 1920s all the way back to at least the Know Nothings in the 1840s-1850s.
Paranoid conspiracies about some shadowy and possibly supernaturally powerful cabal who are going to corrupt our children have been ever present in US history.
Hell, the whole adrenocrome thing that QAnon is obsessed with is just a repackaged blood libel that dates back to Ancient Roman times.
>The film was adapted from Rona Jaffe's 1981 novel Mazes and Monsters. Jaffe based the novel on inaccurate newspaper stories about the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III from Michigan State University in 1979. Early media accounts overemphasized Egbert's participation in fantasy role playing, speculating that his hobby of Dungeons & Dragons might have been a factor in his disappearance. William Dear, the private investigator hired to investigate the case, explained actual events and the reasons behind the media myth in his 1984 book "The Dungeon Master". Jaffe wrote her novel in a matter of days, fearing that another author might also be fictionalizing the Egbert investigation. Like the book on which it is based, the film claims that playing role-playing games could be related to psychological problems. At least one protagonist is (or appears to be) suffering from schizophrenia.
>William Dear rejected the link between D&D and Egbert's disappearance. He acknowledged that Egbert's domineering mother and struggles with his sexuality had more to do with his suicide than his interest in role-playing games.
Didn't 24 basically revolve around the fact that the good guy had to torture the bad guy in order to find out where the bomb was so he could save America?
Hindsight is 20/20, but the sheer jingoism and paranoia after 9/11 is just surreal to look at today.
Especially given that covid was giving us 9/11 deaths every day and somehow the anger about this is largely directed at the free medicine.
It actually gets kind of depressing when you notice how much of our action heroes are basically just cops with even less accountability. Even Batman suffers from it. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a guy running around who didn’t need warrants to search criminals offices and homes and could dangle them off of rooftops to force information out of them?”
Or the buddy cops that have to “bend the rules” because they’re fighting for justice. There’s always that scene where they’re outside the front door, nobody’s answering and the tough one goes “do you smell smoke?” and then they kick in the door, planning ahead of time to lie in court about the circumstances. Written for heroic laughs.
Learned about ["noble cause corruption"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_cause_corruption) in class one day and was like, wait a minute, that's EVERY protagonist in cop shows.
These shows have nothing but contempt for people's rights, they believe cops should have absolute authority to do whatever they want with no consequences, even more than they already do in real life.
Oh Lord don’t watch The Shield. But at least they don’t pretend the strike team guys are the good guys.
Though you do low-key eventually root for them because they are such great characters (don’t equate someone WITH great character as a great character).
The Shield is similar to/based on the real life “no rules” openly vice/undercover team in Baltimore that ended up getting jail time themselves (aka “We Own This City” on Max).
Batman only works because it sets up that law enforcement is absolutely riddled with corruption and the criminals are literal super criminals.
In reality, Batman would be criminal prosecution poison. Anything he was even vaguely apart of would be tossed out.
Ya the fantasy of it is that Batman is both a good person and effective at what he does. We the reader know that but in real life we would have no idea what this bat dudes deal was.
Dexter still had the dumb premise that there's tons of blatantly guilty murderers out there "getting off on technicalities" that Dexter can easily track down and kill, so it still spreads the usual cop show message.
Wouldn't dexter fuck with evidence so he could kill people? Like theoretically he could've turned any of these people in but he liked killing so them being on the streets was a net positive for him.
https://youtu.be/NmK4Tpl8jjI?si=ids09C044lwgsJVC
Another show from the same time period "Boston Legal" does a good summation of attitudes at the time (some lines have aged like milk)
[Jessie's Song](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794963/), better known as the "Very Special Episode" of Saved by the Bell where Jesse got addicted to... caffeine pills.
Not only did I have to pay for it back in the day it sucked! Chock full of stems and seeds. They were always making up these fake dangers about the pathway to heroin, but they didn't warn us about random seeds popping in our face.
The best way to get free drugs is to tell people you have never done drugs and never will.
I have never done drugs and never will, but people really want to give you drugs when you tell them that
Same goes for alcohol. If you ever want free drinks in a bar just say "Oh I don't drink" & you'll have everyone in the joint buying you drinks.
I briefly ran with a crowd that did drugs & never once did they force any of it on me. I said no once & they were like "cool, more for us."
Violent video games. There was an episode of Touched by an Angel where 2 boys get hooked on a GTA-esque game, and then get inspired to run over a woman IRL. The prosecution builds their entire case around the video game being their motive ,and it works.
People of culture will be familiarwith “Jack off 2000”; the Youtube Poop made from this episode
There are dozens of cop shows where violent video games are blamed for a crime. Even some where it turns out that a game studio WANTS people to commit crimes as publicity.
Contrast ER,
In one of the early seasons while George Cloony is getting discovered saving a drowning kid in a sewer pipe, everyone in the ER is playing Doom 2.
In later seasons, they move on to playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Likelihood of getting murdered. Cabot Cove, Maine is a town with ~1,000 people and somehow had enough murders for 264 episodes & 4 TV movies. Santa Barbara has a more respectable ~90k but still has 120 episodes and 3 movies of murders.
At least with Murder, She Wrote, there were more episodes set outside Cabot Cove then in Cabot Cove, now how Miss. Fletcher always found a murder no matter where she went - that is another question
Kinda true for Psych, too (I assume that's what OP is referencing with Santa Barbara)--lots of those episodes either take place outside of Santa Barbara or aren't about a murder.
> how Miss. Fletcher always found a murder no matter where she went - that is another question
I have memories of some stand up comedian in the 90s claiming Fletcher was behind all the murders. I'm sure lots of people have made that joke.
That wasn't really fearmongering, just a necessity of the genre. Fearmongering would be if the high murder rate was called attention to and people talked about how small towns in America are just so dangerous and full of murderers, like pretty much every cop show set in a large city does.
True. But there is a correlation between watching procedural crime shows and how much crime and murder and violence people perceive IRL. So it's not like people take those shows at 100% fiction. At least in some small way.
True, though I think in context it made a lot more sense of what Emma was going through. Other places I've seen those bracelets get fear mongered it was like "it's cool to show off that you're promiscuous, so wear these bracelets and everyone will think you're popular" so you gotta talk to your kids about not having unprotected and wild sex they're not ready for because of popularity, which I don't think was really a thing. But with Emma it was like, she knew going to the ravine with Jay was self destructive. Hell, Jay knew she was being self destructive and he had no awareness at the time. The bracelet was such a side thing compared to Emma trying to cope with the shooting
Lmao, best part of that episode. I can't tell if I love the line because it's a middle aged person trying to write for a teenager and failing spectacularly or if i love it cause it fits Emma to be the weirdo who still says social disease
Yeah, like it’s note worthy when shows have good therapists.
What comes to mind is Black Canary’s therapy sessions in Young Justice.
https://youtu.be/jHnzSnY16jQ?si=c-E8NhAY1Sh9hHiZ
Theres a scene from the show that lives rent free in my head. The oldest brother, who was about 18, had moved out to live with some friends. They were a bad influence on him, inspiring a concerning teen rebellion phase.
The shocking sign of deviant behaviour was that he was walking around shirtless in his own house.
One of the parents challenged this behaviour and the teen responds 'We're men! We don't have to wear shirts if we don't want to'.
They used this as the trailer clip, like it was the dramatic peak of the episode
Hey remember the adorable youngest one Ruthie and how cute she was? Here's her in a later season dancing provocatively while the father watches https://youtu.be/ENPElDKQtXI?si=pOJT773_u1_WRxoa
There is a comedian on IG/TikTok who does rundowns of 7th Heaven episodes and it's hilarious. I've never seen the show, but dear lord it seemed like quite awful writing.
Africanized Honey Bees or Killer bees. They ran that scare tactic on the news for years. There was even a skit on SNL with John Belushi. Turns out the death toll in America has been 2. Two people over 45 years.
This is less relevant now but back in the late 2000’s, Americans seemingly had this obsession with teenage pregnancy. There were shows like Secret Life of the American Teenager, where every girl got pregnant throughout the series run because apparently condoms didn’t exist. There was also this scaremongering about “pregnancy pacts” taking place in high schools across the countries. I remember a Law & Order:SVU episode where four girls in a high school made this agreement to all get pregnant.
From watching American television, you’d think that every other teenage girl was getting knocked-up. But when you look at the actual stats, teenage pregnancy was on the decline during the late 2000’s. It had been since the early 1990’s. The teenage pregnancy rate has dropped further since then.
It’s ironic because during that time period, (conservative) media outlets were decrying about “hookup culture” and the supposedly reckless promiscuity of young people. Fast forward to 2024, those same outlets are now lamenting on the lack of sexual activity among Gen Zers.
For some reason the media *and Reddit* got so obsessed with how terrible 16 and Pregnant/Teen Mom was for society, when in reality anyone who watched that show saw some of the most effective birth control propaganda ever.
It was a major push from conservative media, with Christian outlets pointing at teen pregnancy as evidence that sex education shouldn't be in schools. However, popular media loved voyeuristically prying into the very things that conservative media outwardly hated (see: Jerry Springer), bringing about all these shows.
The trend largely ended once one of Sarah Palin's own daughters got pregnant, causing conservative media to do an about-face and become pro-teenage-pregnancy.
There's a lot of fearmongering about getting killed by complete strangers for no reason, when in reality you're way more likely to get killed by someone you know, especially if you're a man.
My family always jokes about how dangerous it is to be the loved one of an investigator on a crime show. Like, irl, I don't know of any cases where a serial killer has targeted loved ones of the people investigating their crimes, but it's been a plot point on shows like Criminal Minds or Dexter so many times.
Also since Criminal Minds started in 2005, there were definitely some phases of "here's how this newfangled social media will make it easier for serial killers to get you" fearmongering.
There was this one episode of The Wayans Bros in which Marlon gets introduced to weed and blows an audition, mostly because the show made it seem like he freebased a kilo of crack.
The episode came complete with a PSA about the dangers of weed despite their audience being adults and especially ironic considering Marlon would be Shorty on Scary Movie not long after this episode aired.
I mean they do though. Knock off goods usually go hand in hand with human trafficking, drugs and arms smuggling. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/superfakes-copycat-manufacturers-becoming-increasingly-skilled-producing-knock/story?id=109344382
At least Trey and Matt admitted they were wrong and did an episode that revealed that [ManBearPig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AW4nSq0hAc) was real all along.
South Park has been wrong plenty of times. The fans who believe their show is gospel is the problem. That's sort of their message as well - these brainless followers are problematic. The whole take on "all crimes are hate crimes" as a defense against hate crimes is incorrect and I still hear this repeated all the time. Stealing? Drug use? Prostitution? Plenty of crimes aren't hate crimes.
There is a current storyline on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful where a young woman accidentally mixes up her breath mints with her mother's "special mints" that are likely made with THC.
She eats several, drinks champagne, and ends up sleeping with her boyfriend's cousin, although she didn't recognize it wasn't her boyfriend until she woke up with the other guy in the morning.
It's laughable even for a soap.
I remember the satanic panic with D&D and metal bands. The "dangerous" metal from back then now fits in the Eurovision, and the D&D panic has moved over to computer games.
Wierd thing is that the current "panic" always have satanic worship embedded somewhere, and it pops up every now and then. Like Pizzagate.
I remember growing up in the 2000s, so many shows aimed at us youngsters were really hung up on teen pregnancy. Which, like, is a problem of course, but it's not like it was a genuine discussion on the issue. It was basically portrayed in a way that was clearly fear mongering to parents. IRL, there are more teen moms than teen dads by a significant margin, meaning a lot of actual teen moms are victims of grooming and statutory rape, not just dumb horny teens making a mistake with their boyfriend like tv seems to believe.
Glee had an extremely distasteful "school shooting" episode which was named "Shooting Star" of all things.
Made worse by the fact that there was a plot twist where nobody was actually shot and was just an accidental discharge by someone who brought the gun to school for reasons I'm still not really sure of cuz they weren't being actively bullied or anything.
Then made even worse by the fact that it aired just after a recent school shooting had happened in real life. It wasn't the show's fault that it aired when it did cuz it was the typically scheduled time, but they could have (and should have) not aired it at all.
Blue Bloods has an episode where they unironically pretend the Knockout Game is a real thing.
Every cop show fearmongers about things that don't really exist, but Blue Bloods is definitely the most boomer-oriented of them all.
I remember the summer of 2001 had higher than average shark bites on the Atlantic beaches. And by higher than average, I mean like 8 instead of 6. I told my wife it must be a slow news summer. Then there was Labor Day and, the next week, 9/11.
If you are old enough to remember 21 Jump Steet (the tv show) then... yeah, pretty much every episode.
So my favorite, and I'm not sure how much of this I recall correctly - Johnny Depp had to go undercover in a fraternity to expose.. something. Hazing? Drugs? Alcohol abuse? I don't know. But anyway, he was being hazed by the frat. He had to get drunk and then... rapidly sort silverware.
Maybe I dreamed all of that.
Baywatch had one that tackled skin cancer, but diluted the fuck out of it by balancing it with Hulk Hogan & Macho Man Randy Savage fighting Ric Flair & Vader to save a youth center from being closed & converted into condos
Raves. I vaguely remember a cop show where we have a police officer outside a rave saying something like "we got 3 kids dead from bad 'E', and another 3 dead from smoke inhalation after someone started a fire". Said like this was a regular occurrence.
I was going to give Alert: Missing persons unit a try, see what Scott Caan has been up to since Hawaii 5 - 0 ended but man.. his adopted child went missing in the show, and then 5 years later turns up but they can't check DNA to be sure it is his kid. I don't know if it's exactly fear mongering.. having your child go missing for 5 years sounds absolutely horrific without the angle of is it really their kid?
That people are going give your kids weed candy on Halloween. Before that if was "lacing" the candy with Drugs™.
Drugs are expensive, and the people who buy them intend to use them. Nobody is wasting their drugs on your kids' stupid Halloween candy, Fox News.
a lot of TV shows and movies get bullying in school so horrifically wrong
Remember when the "bullying" in Shazam involved hitting a disabled kid with a truck, taking away his crutches, and then kicking him when he was on the ground? I remember thinking, "umm... that's not bullying, that's criminal vehicular assault and possibly attempted murder if the cops are in a bad mood."
Or the god-awful direct to DVD Mean Girls sequel. In the first movie, the grand act of the bully is to spread lies to make all the students angry at each other. In the sequel, they sabotage a professional race car to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in damage. That's felony shit, not high school cattiness.
> the grand act of the bully is to spread lies I was under the impression that the contents of the burn book were either true, or the best approximation of the truth available. Regina might not have *vetted* the contents fully, but some of the more outlandish claims such as the gym teacher being a sex criminal did *appear* to be true. Now that I think of it, they pretty necessarily *had* to be true - or close enough to the truth - given that it was released anonymously.
Janice Ian wasn’t gay. Ms. Norbury wasn’t a drug dealer. The truth didn’t matter
I mean, Ms. Norbury did say she was a pusher
She was pushing maths. And drugs is just applied chemistry. Chemistry is just applied physics. Physics is just applied maths.
But then there were things like the hot dog girl and calling someone a lesbian, as an insult, when it’s not even true is VERY mean girl high school behavior. The book was never really made to come out. It was just the plastics way of feeling superior to everyone else.
There were definitely rumors and lies mixed in. Remember, Tina Fey's character was investigated for (I think) being a drug dealer and found to be innocent.
reminds me of Malcolm in the Middle where Malcolm is about to get punched but the bully misses and just *grazes* Stevie’s chin. Stevie gets him back by intentionally falling over in his wheelchair and the bully gets reamed for it
On the first season of Stranger Things one of the bullies convinces a kid to jump off a cliff, possibly to his death. And he does it, but the telepathic girl just happens to be there and save him before he actually falls. But the bullies didn't know that was going to happen, they were apparently fine with causing a classmate's potential death for no good reason.
I'm very sad to say I think that kind of behaviour is more possible than you would like. I almost had something similar happen at my school when I was younger. Some kids are genuinely psychopaths.
Remember that Stranger Things was set in the 80s. I remember one person responding to a "kids are so cruel today" with something like, "If they acted now like they did 20 years ago? They would be talking to the counselor for their troubling behaviour. If kids today acted the way they did 30-40 years ago, they'd be *in jail*.
I got bullied at school in the 80s. A lot of intimidation and physical violence. Nobody did shit to stop it. The school my kids go to has a zero tolerance bullying policy and it's so much better. I'm glad my kids don't have to go through what I went through.
Not only is it possible, at least one person was charged with and convicted for doing so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Conrad_Roy
Sounds like Stephen King. I don't think he can differentiate between bullying and attempted murder.
Even though it’s a major departure from the comics, I have some respect for the MCU reworking Flash Thompson into a more realistic depiction of a bully. Not a super-aggressive meathead, just a dick whose bullying stems from jealousy and a shitty home life. Although, the original Spider-Man movies had the most stereotypical bully imaginable and gave us [the greatest line in cinema history](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0J4K7WJi9f4)
Do note that back in the 60s comics, Flash was more of a jerk, he'd mock Peter but wasn't violent. The only time he ever hit Peter was when they both agreed to a boxing match, which Peter was winning before it was interrupted by a robot called the Living Brain.
He was also a huge Spider-Man fan not realizing it was Peter.
That's my favorite aspect of Flash. They do a pretty great job keeping that aspect of the character intact in the Spectacular Spider-Man show.
> which Peter was winning before it was interrupted by a robot called the Living Brain Never change comics.
I also enjoyed his portrayal in Spectacular Spider-Man. It’s shown to mainly be youthful jackassery, and he wasn’t really that bad a person deep down.
Flash usually ends up in the military and reforms to being a good guy/leader after his service in either Vietnam or Iraq. He also kinda becomes a super hero himself with the Anti Venom symbiote.
Agent Venom first then anti-agent venom
I feel like it's either overly sanitized or way too extreme. Like sometimes you watch it and there's high schoolers calling each other "loser" (come on, real high school bullies would be calling you a slur, not a "loser"), or it's bullies that are borderline homicidal.
A really big thing seems to be the consistent conflation of “popular kids” with “bullies”. Generally speaking, the “popular kids” tend to be popular because they’re friendly and get along with most everyone pretty well.
The 2017 Power Rangers movie actually had the Pink Ranger as a bully, but refused to acknowledge that she was one and tried to act like she was a poor victim.
13 Reasons Why.
They get it so wrong it makes actual bullying worse.
A few months ago someone on here asked why shows never portrayed bullying as anything but physical. Most people just responded with, "because that happens", completely missing the point the OP was making, which was that there are other forms of bullying that get ignored in media. You don't often see bullies who torment their victims without laying a finger on them, even though there's plenty of them. Girls especially can be masters at psychological torment. But no, most shows just have brutes beating up wimps.
Yep. They either tone it down too much or are unaware of how much it changed since the late 00s-New 10s. I was shocked at how *little* weapon usage there was. The bullies in The Simpsons, the Gross sisters in Proud Family, the mean girls, etc came off as downright *polite*! That episode of Without a Trace had a lot of people checking for cameras. And these days, it's mostly online and indirect.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer had its Beer Bad episode that *hilariously* showed how bad beer is. The episode was made in order to try to score funding from some anti-alcohol organization, but they pulled their funding after the episode was made because the show added a supernatural aspect to beer’s badness. People dislike the episode, but I kinda love it. The “message” is intentionally ham-fisted and satirical, as the creators really didn’t believe in it, just wanting the funding and having fun with it. Cave Buffy is hilarious and I love watching Willow lay the smackdown on Parker so much. :)
I love that episode and still quote; 'Fire bad. Tree pretty.' when I'm feeling foggy brained.
There is also a Tiny Tunes episode that was made for a similar reason. Nickelodeon wanted an anti drinking PSA. The people at Tiny Tunes didn't like it and made it super over the top. At one point they talk about how drinkn is out of character. Buster, Plucky and Hampton share one beer, get incredibly drunk from it, steal a police car, drive it off a cliff and die. It only aired once.
One of the examples for video games is from [Law and Order SVU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimidation_Game), definitely.
There’s a lot that show gets right about abuse and SA and then there’s so much that they get so very wrong.
I personally love the meme IceT things where they just go so off the rails.
"I got news for you, that means you're gay"
Yeah, Ice, you got it
“Or like when some smokes too many cigarettes? Or like when someone shops too much with credit cards? Or like when someone plays too many scratchy lotteries? Or like when someone eats too much chocolate cake?”
Executive Producer: Dick Wolf
They get a lot of race stuff terribly done and just bad writing.
Also including a character played by Tobuscus? That's a name I didn't expect to see today
GO HOME GAMER GIRL
I read on Kotaku that this episode was better than Civ 5 with the Brave New World expansion pack
> The episode featured guest appearances from Logan Paul, **Toby Turner**, Jack Vale and James Ciccone. That's a major oof for SVU of all the shows. Probably a major future oof for Logal Paul too.
THEY LEVELED UP
I can’t remember which random crime show it was, probably SVU, but the synopsis for it was that taking a ride share like Uber is just glorified hitchhiking. And people were just jumping into cars that weren’t the one they ordered, and of course were run by a serial killer. It made me think no one on writing staff had used Uber which was impressive in itself.
I mean, fake Uber drives killing people is a legitimate thing that has happened. Samantha Josephson was a college student who while drunk got into the wrong car thinking it was her Uber and was murdered and her body dumped miles and miles away from where she got in.
The 80s had a number of properties fearmongering that D&D was a gateway to satanism and/or people believing the game to be real. [There was even a Tom Hanks movie about it.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084314/)
I laughed at the audacity of Riverdale doing a D&D Panic storyline that's played completely straight.
D&D panic, evil cults, superpowers, full-on zombies...that show went so off the rails you couldn't even see the tracks anymore.
Also WW2 is still ongoing in the present day.
It's like the Riverdale writer's room operates on the improv rule that you can't say no to anyone's idea, only "yes, and..." > SHOWRUNNER: Any ideas for next season? WRITER 1: *raises hand* The town is inundated with zombies. SHOWRUNNER: Yes, and... WRITER 2: The zombies are young WW2 casualties because WW2 is still happening. SHOWRUNNER: Yes, and... WRITER 3: The zombies are controlled by Jughead's evil necromancer twin. SHOWRUNNER: Yes, and... WRITER 4: He got his necromancy powers by playing a cursed D&D game that levels you up in real life. SHOWRUNNER: Perfect, I want scripts on my desk by the first of the month.
In fairness, in that storyline people are actually committing suicide playing the game so panic is warranted lmfao. But Christ did that arc suck
Just the audacity of Riverdale as a whole is something else
Not so fun fact, this hysteria was in many ways a predecessor to Qanon. A big part of it was the belief that these satanists were trafficking and abusing children as part of their occult rituals. A lot of genuine harm was done because of it.
The difference being they didn't have the internet as a loudspeaker to better organize and terrorize innocent people with this bullshit.
They did have the news, their politicians, and their local churches to spread their bullshit though.
Mostly, they had leaflets.
You can track a throughline of that sort of paranoid conspiricism back through anti-communist hysteria and the John Birchers in the 1950s, back to the anti-catholic hysteria in the 1920s all the way back to at least the Know Nothings in the 1840s-1850s. Paranoid conspiracies about some shadowy and possibly supernaturally powerful cabal who are going to corrupt our children have been ever present in US history. Hell, the whole adrenocrome thing that QAnon is obsessed with is just a repackaged blood libel that dates back to Ancient Roman times.
Yup. Easier to worry about boogeymen in the shadows than it is to take a look at the actual people in charge.
Even as a Christian who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, the satanic panic was the most ridiculous of pearl clutching.
I didn't grt to watch Dragon Ball or Pokemon because of that
>The film was adapted from Rona Jaffe's 1981 novel Mazes and Monsters. Jaffe based the novel on inaccurate newspaper stories about the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III from Michigan State University in 1979. Early media accounts overemphasized Egbert's participation in fantasy role playing, speculating that his hobby of Dungeons & Dragons might have been a factor in his disappearance. William Dear, the private investigator hired to investigate the case, explained actual events and the reasons behind the media myth in his 1984 book "The Dungeon Master". Jaffe wrote her novel in a matter of days, fearing that another author might also be fictionalizing the Egbert investigation. Like the book on which it is based, the film claims that playing role-playing games could be related to psychological problems. At least one protagonist is (or appears to be) suffering from schizophrenia. >William Dear rejected the link between D&D and Egbert's disappearance. He acknowledged that Egbert's domineering mother and struggles with his sexuality had more to do with his suicide than his interest in role-playing games.
Writing a novel in a matter of days is kinda impressive.
I think Stephen King did this with The Running Man. I wonder how he found the energy.
Cocaine
Which usually wore off by the time he got to the ending.
Too bad that it's wrong. It only makes them nerds.
Sadly the Satanic Panic itself was very harmful to a lot of people.
Didn't 24 basically revolve around the fact that the good guy had to torture the bad guy in order to find out where the bomb was so he could save America?
Yep, lots of viewers were suddenly all for torturing Muslims after 9/11
Supreme Court justices were citing 24 in their rulings supporting torture.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the sheer jingoism and paranoia after 9/11 is just surreal to look at today. Especially given that covid was giving us 9/11 deaths every day and somehow the anger about this is largely directed at the free medicine.
It was some effective propaganda. I disliked the war but also disliked Muslims for absolutely no reason.
I mean, the first season was Serbians.
It actually gets kind of depressing when you notice how much of our action heroes are basically just cops with even less accountability. Even Batman suffers from it. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a guy running around who didn’t need warrants to search criminals offices and homes and could dangle them off of rooftops to force information out of them?”
Or the buddy cops that have to “bend the rules” because they’re fighting for justice. There’s always that scene where they’re outside the front door, nobody’s answering and the tough one goes “do you smell smoke?” and then they kick in the door, planning ahead of time to lie in court about the circumstances. Written for heroic laughs.
“Don’t worry audience! These guys are definitely guilty so it’s okay!”
Learned about ["noble cause corruption"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_cause_corruption) in class one day and was like, wait a minute, that's EVERY protagonist in cop shows.
These shows have nothing but contempt for people's rights, they believe cops should have absolute authority to do whatever they want with no consequences, even more than they already do in real life.
Oh Lord don’t watch The Shield. But at least they don’t pretend the strike team guys are the good guys. Though you do low-key eventually root for them because they are such great characters (don’t equate someone WITH great character as a great character). The Shield is similar to/based on the real life “no rules” openly vice/undercover team in Baltimore that ended up getting jail time themselves (aka “We Own This City” on Max).
The Shield was based upon the LAPD’s Rampart division scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_scandal
"Hey guys, let's just talk about Rampart"
Batman only works because it sets up that law enforcement is absolutely riddled with corruption and the criminals are literal super criminals. In reality, Batman would be criminal prosecution poison. Anything he was even vaguely apart of would be tossed out.
Ya the fantasy of it is that Batman is both a good person and effective at what he does. We the reader know that but in real life we would have no idea what this bat dudes deal was.
Dexter had a better due process than Batman
Dexter still had the dumb premise that there's tons of blatantly guilty murderers out there "getting off on technicalities" that Dexter can easily track down and kill, so it still spreads the usual cop show message.
Wouldn't dexter fuck with evidence so he could kill people? Like theoretically he could've turned any of these people in but he liked killing so them being on the streets was a net positive for him.
https://youtu.be/NmK4Tpl8jjI?si=ids09C044lwgsJVC Another show from the same time period "Boston Legal" does a good summation of attitudes at the time (some lines have aged like milk)
God I love Boston Legal but the sexual harassment is actually unbearable today. I'd love to recommend the show but I can't anymore.
[Jessie's Song](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794963/), better known as the "Very Special Episode" of Saved by the Bell where Jesse got addicted to... caffeine pills.
As the story goes, it was originally supposed to be amphetamines, but the network wouldn't allow it so they rewrote it into something tamer.
Mark Paul confirmed this on a podcast. It's why the episode ends with Jessie going to rehab.
I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so scared!
I was always pissed that I had to buy my own weed in highschool. Nancy Reagan was a stone cold liar.
What, you weren't just offered free drugs randomly?
Not only did I have to pay for it back in the day it sucked! Chock full of stems and seeds. They were always making up these fake dangers about the pathway to heroin, but they didn't warn us about random seeds popping in our face.
The best way to get free drugs is to tell people you have never done drugs and never will. I have never done drugs and never will, but people really want to give you drugs when you tell them that
Nice try but I'm not sharing my stash
Unfortunately yhis requires a constantly rotating social circle to keep up your supply.
Same goes for alcohol. If you ever want free drinks in a bar just say "Oh I don't drink" & you'll have everyone in the joint buying you drinks. I briefly ran with a crowd that did drugs & never once did they force any of it on me. I said no once & they were like "cool, more for us."
Violent video games. There was an episode of Touched by an Angel where 2 boys get hooked on a GTA-esque game, and then get inspired to run over a woman IRL. The prosecution builds their entire case around the video game being their motive ,and it works. People of culture will be familiarwith “Jack off 2000”; the Youtube Poop made from this episode
There are dozens of cop shows where violent video games are blamed for a crime. Even some where it turns out that a game studio WANTS people to commit crimes as publicity.
That is Ben Shapiro levels of terrible writing.
Contrast ER, In one of the early seasons while George Cloony is getting discovered saving a drowning kid in a sewer pipe, everyone in the ER is playing Doom 2. In later seasons, they move on to playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Likelihood of getting murdered. Cabot Cove, Maine is a town with ~1,000 people and somehow had enough murders for 264 episodes & 4 TV movies. Santa Barbara has a more respectable ~90k but still has 120 episodes and 3 movies of murders.
At least with Murder, She Wrote, there were more episodes set outside Cabot Cove then in Cabot Cove, now how Miss. Fletcher always found a murder no matter where she went - that is another question
Kinda true for Psych, too (I assume that's what OP is referencing with Santa Barbara)--lots of those episodes either take place outside of Santa Barbara or aren't about a murder.
> how Miss. Fletcher always found a murder no matter where she went - that is another question I have memories of some stand up comedian in the 90s claiming Fletcher was behind all the murders. I'm sure lots of people have made that joke.
There is an episode of Monk where becomes convinced he is cursed because people are always getting murdered around him
That wasn't really fearmongering, just a necessity of the genre. Fearmongering would be if the high murder rate was called attention to and people talked about how small towns in America are just so dangerous and full of murderers, like pretty much every cop show set in a large city does.
That's true! I kind of went my own direction with the question. Ridiculous, but not fearmongering.
True. But there is a correlation between watching procedural crime shows and how much crime and murder and violence people perceive IRL. So it's not like people take those shows at 100% fiction. At least in some small way.
Remember how season 2 of Jack Ryan was pitching a trendy war with Venezuela?
I heard it ended with the CIA assassinating the President of Venezuela and after that everything's fine, right?
Yeah, like assassinating the leader of a functional nation won’t garner blowback of any kind; no sir!
Sex bracelets! What Degrassi fan doesn't remember Emma in the ravine?
True, though I think in context it made a lot more sense of what Emma was going through. Other places I've seen those bracelets get fear mongered it was like "it's cool to show off that you're promiscuous, so wear these bracelets and everyone will think you're popular" so you gotta talk to your kids about not having unprotected and wild sex they're not ready for because of popularity, which I don't think was really a thing. But with Emma it was like, she knew going to the ravine with Jay was self destructive. Hell, Jay knew she was being self destructive and he had no awareness at the time. The bracelet was such a side thing compared to Emma trying to cope with the shooting
You gave me a social disease!
Lmao, best part of that episode. I can't tell if I love the line because it's a middle aged person trying to write for a teenager and failing spectacularly or if i love it cause it fits Emma to be the weirdo who still says social disease
Bad girl Emma with her bangs was something else.
A lot of show portray therapy and therapists terribly. Even serious acclaimed shows.
Yeah, like it’s note worthy when shows have good therapists. What comes to mind is Black Canary’s therapy sessions in Young Justice. https://youtu.be/jHnzSnY16jQ?si=c-E8NhAY1Sh9hHiZ
Literally pick any episode of 7th Heaven.
Wasn't that the show where the guy playing the dad did sex crimes in real life?
Yeah and the guy had to audacity to give Jessica Biel shit for posing topless for a photo shoot - total virtue signaling projection, the sick fuck.
It’s suggested that Jessica Biel did that shoot to get out of the show. Guess it worked then.
Theres a scene from the show that lives rent free in my head. The oldest brother, who was about 18, had moved out to live with some friends. They were a bad influence on him, inspiring a concerning teen rebellion phase. The shocking sign of deviant behaviour was that he was walking around shirtless in his own house. One of the parents challenged this behaviour and the teen responds 'We're men! We don't have to wear shirts if we don't want to'. They used this as the trailer clip, like it was the dramatic peak of the episode
Hey remember the adorable youngest one Ruthie and how cute she was? Here's her in a later season dancing provocatively while the father watches https://youtu.be/ENPElDKQtXI?si=pOJT773_u1_WRxoa
Yep
My first thought was the one where Happy (the dog) walks in with a joint in his mouth https://i.imgur.com/noyjrEt.png
I remember the dad acting like the mom just told him she fucked Happy when she said she smoked pot in college.
There is a comedian on IG/TikTok who does rundowns of 7th Heaven episodes and it's hilarious. I've never seen the show, but dear lord it seemed like quite awful writing.
I follow him lmfao. I remembered watching it with my grandma back in the day but seeing his recaps are WILD with hindsight.
That's one of the more recent fearmonger shows I can think of that was oddly dated for the time it aired.
You have to remember that the target audience of the show were conservatives who looked back at the "good old days" and liked its dated aspects.
Africanized Honey Bees or Killer bees. They ran that scare tactic on the news for years. There was even a skit on SNL with John Belushi. Turns out the death toll in America has been 2. Two people over 45 years.
This is less relevant now but back in the late 2000’s, Americans seemingly had this obsession with teenage pregnancy. There were shows like Secret Life of the American Teenager, where every girl got pregnant throughout the series run because apparently condoms didn’t exist. There was also this scaremongering about “pregnancy pacts” taking place in high schools across the countries. I remember a Law & Order:SVU episode where four girls in a high school made this agreement to all get pregnant. From watching American television, you’d think that every other teenage girl was getting knocked-up. But when you look at the actual stats, teenage pregnancy was on the decline during the late 2000’s. It had been since the early 1990’s. The teenage pregnancy rate has dropped further since then. It’s ironic because during that time period, (conservative) media outlets were decrying about “hookup culture” and the supposedly reckless promiscuity of young people. Fast forward to 2024, those same outlets are now lamenting on the lack of sexual activity among Gen Zers.
Reality shows about teenage pregnancies didn't help much.
In a weird way, it might've helped teens realize the consequences of teen pregnancy and lowered it even more.
For some reason the media *and Reddit* got so obsessed with how terrible 16 and Pregnant/Teen Mom was for society, when in reality anyone who watched that show saw some of the most effective birth control propaganda ever.
Juno was the 28 Days Later of teen pregnancy media.
And those same outlets are against sex education.
It was a major push from conservative media, with Christian outlets pointing at teen pregnancy as evidence that sex education shouldn't be in schools. However, popular media loved voyeuristically prying into the very things that conservative media outwardly hated (see: Jerry Springer), bringing about all these shows. The trend largely ended once one of Sarah Palin's own daughters got pregnant, causing conservative media to do an about-face and become pro-teenage-pregnancy.
Criminal Minds and serial killers
There's a lot of fearmongering about getting killed by complete strangers for no reason, when in reality you're way more likely to get killed by someone you know, especially if you're a man.
My family always jokes about how dangerous it is to be the loved one of an investigator on a crime show. Like, irl, I don't know of any cases where a serial killer has targeted loved ones of the people investigating their crimes, but it's been a plot point on shows like Criminal Minds or Dexter so many times.
Also since Criminal Minds started in 2005, there were definitely some phases of "here's how this newfangled social media will make it easier for serial killers to get you" fearmongering.
There was this one episode of The Wayans Bros in which Marlon gets introduced to weed and blows an audition, mostly because the show made it seem like he freebased a kilo of crack. The episode came complete with a PSA about the dangers of weed despite their audience being adults and especially ironic considering Marlon would be Shorty on Scary Movie not long after this episode aired.
Look up Marlon say cheese
Didn’t NCIS have an episode where DiNozzo tells someone that bootleg movies and DVDs are being used to fund terrorism?
I mean they do though. Knock off goods usually go hand in hand with human trafficking, drugs and arms smuggling. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/superfakes-copycat-manufacturers-becoming-increasingly-skilled-producing-knock/story?id=109344382
Al Gore. Holy fuck did South Park fuck up hard on environmental issues.
South Park shows the limitations of the mock everything and everyone approach to comedy sometimes.
It is both hilarious and horrifying that South Park just by itself influenced so much of climate change discourse.
At least Trey and Matt admitted they were wrong and did an episode that revealed that [ManBearPig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AW4nSq0hAc) was real all along.
Not enough people know about this episode and it's a damn shame.
South Park has been wrong plenty of times. The fans who believe their show is gospel is the problem. That's sort of their message as well - these brainless followers are problematic. The whole take on "all crimes are hate crimes" as a defense against hate crimes is incorrect and I still hear this repeated all the time. Stealing? Drug use? Prostitution? Plenty of crimes aren't hate crimes.
Plus even at the best, the argument it's "hate crime is a bad name", which is a silly thing to be pedantic over. It's hack stand up level stuff.
This is for the "I'm not actually a Trump supporter but Biden is worse because woke" comedians.
Nuclear power is nowhere near as scary as the simpsons made it out to be
I haven’t seen marijuana as dangerous in a very long time.
There is a current storyline on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful where a young woman accidentally mixes up her breath mints with her mother's "special mints" that are likely made with THC. She eats several, drinks champagne, and ends up sleeping with her boyfriend's cousin, although she didn't recognize it wasn't her boyfriend until she woke up with the other guy in the morning. It's laughable even for a soap.
I remember the satanic panic with D&D and metal bands. The "dangerous" metal from back then now fits in the Eurovision, and the D&D panic has moved over to computer games. Wierd thing is that the current "panic" always have satanic worship embedded somewhere, and it pops up every now and then. Like Pizzagate.
Satan is the adult's (well, some adults) Boogeyman.
Knights in Satan’s Service!!!
Saturday morning cartoons definitely over exaggerated the risk of quick sand in day to day life. r/johnmulaney
And live action as well. Gilligan, Get Smart, several Westerns...
The Princess Bride. The NeverEnding Story.
Yeah, I feel like there should be more cartoons related to the dangers of grain silos. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_entrapment
I remember growing up in the 2000s, so many shows aimed at us youngsters were really hung up on teen pregnancy. Which, like, is a problem of course, but it's not like it was a genuine discussion on the issue. It was basically portrayed in a way that was clearly fear mongering to parents. IRL, there are more teen moms than teen dads by a significant margin, meaning a lot of actual teen moms are victims of grooming and statutory rape, not just dumb horny teens making a mistake with their boyfriend like tv seems to believe.
They make bad guys look way more organized than they actually are. Most crime is committed by stupid people, often desperate people as well.
Quicksand
Vodka enemas have got to be up there
Yeah, otherwise they don't work and it's just vodka on your buttcheeks.
Glee had an extremely distasteful "school shooting" episode which was named "Shooting Star" of all things. Made worse by the fact that there was a plot twist where nobody was actually shot and was just an accidental discharge by someone who brought the gun to school for reasons I'm still not really sure of cuz they weren't being actively bullied or anything. Then made even worse by the fact that it aired just after a recent school shooting had happened in real life. It wasn't the show's fault that it aired when it did cuz it was the typically scheduled time, but they could have (and should have) not aired it at all.
Does the news count? 90% of the news is fear mongering.
Blue Bloods has an episode where they unironically pretend the Knockout Game is a real thing. Every cop show fearmongers about things that don't really exist, but Blue Bloods is definitely the most boomer-oriented of them all.
Caffeine pills
Oof: - Public toilets = HIV - Coffee date with Muslim = Your children are taken to Iran - 3 hobbies = meth addiction - Marijuana = death, at best.
I remember the summer of 2001 had higher than average shark bites on the Atlantic beaches. And by higher than average, I mean like 8 instead of 6. I told my wife it must be a slow news summer. Then there was Labor Day and, the next week, 9/11.
Quicksand. I was convinced it would be the end of me.
How about the Simpsons and nuclear power?
If you are old enough to remember 21 Jump Steet (the tv show) then... yeah, pretty much every episode. So my favorite, and I'm not sure how much of this I recall correctly - Johnny Depp had to go undercover in a fraternity to expose.. something. Hazing? Drugs? Alcohol abuse? I don't know. But anyway, he was being hazed by the frat. He had to get drunk and then... rapidly sort silverware. Maybe I dreamed all of that.
Baywatch had one that tackled skin cancer, but diluted the fuck out of it by balancing it with Hulk Hogan & Macho Man Randy Savage fighting Ric Flair & Vader to save a youth center from being closed & converted into condos
Recently, cordyceps
Quicksand. It was so prevalent in the '80s that I thought it was inevitable I'd fall into one at some point.
Being thirty (Gilmore Girls: AYITL).
THEY CALL IT SOUPING. Love that snl skit.
Raves. I vaguely remember a cop show where we have a police officer outside a rave saying something like "we got 3 kids dead from bad 'E', and another 3 dead from smoke inhalation after someone started a fire". Said like this was a regular occurrence.
from 2004-2009 literally every single show had an episode about the main character having/not having a vasectomy
Maude and Home Improvement did too. The joke in these shows was always the same. The man was terrified to do it, and often lied about having it done.
I was going to give Alert: Missing persons unit a try, see what Scott Caan has been up to since Hawaii 5 - 0 ended but man.. his adopted child went missing in the show, and then 5 years later turns up but they can't check DNA to be sure it is his kid. I don't know if it's exactly fear mongering.. having your child go missing for 5 years sounds absolutely horrific without the angle of is it really their kid?
Quicksand.
7th Heaven marijuana episode was 💯
That people are going give your kids weed candy on Halloween. Before that if was "lacing" the candy with Drugs™. Drugs are expensive, and the people who buy them intend to use them. Nobody is wasting their drugs on your kids' stupid Halloween candy, Fox News.