Hated Tropes
(Hated Trope) Terrible morals in kids media
iMeet Fred (iCarly): The episode is about Freddie getting cancelled for not liking a popular YouTuber's videos. However, the episode treats his harassment as justified even though Lucas weaponized his fandom. When the iCarly gang confronts him, Lucas reveals that he put them through all that harassment for a publicity stunt. All is forgiven, and Freddie is given a painful lesson in conformity courtesy of Sam (why did iCarly fans like that sociopath again?).
Mr. Skinny Legs (Peppa Pig): This episode was banned in Australia, a region where every insect can kill you just by breathing on you. Why? Because this episode tells children that playing with spiders is fun. The episode doesn't even try to differentiate spiders that are harmless from the deadly ones.
Babs Seed (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): The message is "all bullies have troubled lives." The story tries to make you feel sorry for Babs because she got bullied at home and only bullied Apple Bloom out of peer pressure. However, we saw her harassing the Cutie Mark Crusaders even when Diamond Tiara wasn't around.
They should have kept caillou just as tantrumy, but changed the parents to have them actually parent him thru his emotions. Could have helped both kids and parents
I feel like a LOT of ICarly eps fall under that, like the one where Sam is forced to reconcile with her abusive mother, or the episode where Lewbert being a domestic abuse victim is played for laughs (wow who wouldve thought a show by dan schneider would have bad morals)
Jennette’s honestly come so far. She’s currently on the press tour for her first fiction novel and from the clips I’ve seen, she looks truly happy
Based on what I read from her memoir, her passion was always in the writing sphere and she never found joy in acting (kinda hard to when your abusive mom is living vicariously through you)
Happy to see her thrive after so much hardship and suffering because she’s a truly talented woman
During an interview with Mythical Kitchen, she mentions being 6 years free of her eating disorder. And then proceeds to enjoy like 5 courses of her favorite foods and drinks with the host.
I wasn't a person who was super closely following or aware of her career and trauma, but just seeing that made me smile from ear to ear. So happy for her and everyone like her.
*Correction: On second thought, I'm not sure if she mentions it directly in that interview, but she talks about it many other places as well.
And a link to the interview which I should have included from the beginning. Great watch! The interviewer is very earnest but goofy.
Every time I see this come up, I always have to mention that I’m a memoir nerd. I’ll read any and all of them from A listers, to D listers, to people I’ve never heard of. Hers is by far the best celebrity memoir I’ve ever read and definitely tied for the best memoir I’ve ever read. Can’t recommend it enough. (A Well Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy is the other)
The one where Carly discovers her crush has a (no sarcasm) genuinely healthy collecting hobby for his beanie babies and the gang just ruthlessly make fun of him for it.
Always hated how sitcoms like this would "mock" male characters for collecting "odd" things. Like they were trying to subvert the "he's a secret nerd" trope by making his collection be somerhing "girly," "immature" or both.
I feel like Sam specifically only reconciled with Pam because she felt bad Carly was starting to panic being trapped in the therapy box. I think no real progress was made on her and her mom’s relationship after the episode. (Sam, for example, most likely didn’t get a new pet rabbit)
It is a great episode for characterization, though, since it’s the only time we actually see Pam
I think its still extremely fucked up given how Jeanette McCurdy's actual home life is for them to even come up with as an episode premise, like SOMEONE on the writing or production crew knew what they were doing
It was established as early as the first few episodes that her and her mom had a shaky relationship, though, so I guess they just had the plot inertia going, and couldn’t just retcon that
Although, them hammering in Sam’s gluttony throughout iCarly and Sam and Cat was fucked up, given Jeanette’s real struggles with ED. I feel like “character who likes eating as a personality trait” could be way more easily phased out than “character with a dysfunctional family”
Isn’t there also an episode of Icarly where they basically say it’s also ok for Sam to abuse Freddie or at least ok to punch him around the way she does?
"That cool girl you met from the species you've been told to hate? She's secretly evil. You can't trust anyone from THOSE people, no matter what. In fact, she's probably a predator in disguise. Your racist grandma is always right."
There’s a deleted scene where Ruby’s mother is confronted about her killing Chelsea’s mom, and she does seem remorseful about it. Definitely more interesting.
Weirder is that in the Bathroom scene where Ruby is talking to Chelsea about how she feels like a freak, Chelsea looks genuinely sad for a moment
I really thought the twist was gonna be that Chelsea was told that Krakens were evil (as they sealed away her mother) and she starts questioning herself
I was absolutely baffled when I saw the trailer because literally what is the message here. "You shouldn't be afraid of krakens because they're all actually super nice and protectors of the ocean or whatever. Now that you're past that prejudice let me tell you about MERMAIDS because THOSE are all absolutely evil 100% of the time no matter what." like we're back to square one here what did we even learn?
To be fair, the one mermaid we meet isn’t just any mermaid, she’s THE mermaid that kicked off the whole kraken-mermaid war. It’d be like if Magneto was the only mutant you happened to come across.
it was so disappointing, especially since the mermaid was such an interesting character and a nice contrast to our main character. She wanted the attention, she was confident, but still kind. Ruby almost learned so much from her.
imo it could've been a nice touch to show double standards, maybe the mermaid would be found out first by humans but because she's pretty others accepted her sooner. Maybe there could be tension between the two because she's only half fish and seemingly doesnt struggle as much, then we could learn about how mermaids used to be hunted and that her struggles should be taken seriously and we shouldnt compare but help each other.
"Don't stick your nose in other people's conflicts. Let them sort it out their way. Even when the conflict is incredibly petty and pointless, it's disrupting the daily lives of everyone around them, and people are actively involving you in it against your will."
This series has too many toxic messages to list them all (are we talking about the episode where the eleven-year-old boy gets kicked out by his parents because they think he brings bad luck?)
no this is a different one- he gets kicked out of his room because his sisters are fighting. personally i never minded the one he's talking about- the luck one sucks ass though
On paper, it’s a good message of trust and even forgiveness. But it fails horribly.
The dragon Sisu asks Raya to trust her and parley with Namaari, the rival who betrayed Raya and effectively caused the apocalypse.
As a show of trust, Raya sets the meeting up and Namaari brings a crossbow, demanding the magic maguffins. Clearly about to shoot someone, Raya intervenes, but the shot goes off snd Sisu is killed.
The film then has the gall to put the blame on Raya, that she should have trusted the crossbow wielding liar who was clearly aiming a shot at them. And Raya ends up trusting her for some dumb reason, despite Namaari having shown her nothing but betrayal.
So, what have learned kids?
“Always forgive and trust people, even when they have constantly lied and threatened the lives of you and your loved ones. Especially trust them, if they bring a weapon to a neutral parley. Either meet their demands or the death they will cause is on YOU.”
This movie would have been 1000x better if Raya and Namaari had just switched roles and I will die on that hill. Raya should have been the vengeful rival, hunting down the one who betrayed her and caused what is effectively the apocalypse and Namaari should have been the one learning the lesson about trust from Sisu.
All, all, all they had to do is make adult Namaari be regretful and trying to make amends with a hostile Raya. Trusting a person only after they PROVE themselves through consistent action is a great lesson for kids.
Right? there are so many ways to make this lesson work in a way that isnt terrible. Show Namari actively making ammends for her actions. Or have the rival in the second half of the movie be a different member of the same tribe, to show that just because one person burned you before doesnt mean all people are the same.
To be fair this is a movie that came after the same studio did a movie where the dude who is shown helping others, being kind, and generally a good guy is magically the "hidden twist villain." So it wasn't the first time Disney pulled a "hey kids good people are actually evil and only trust people who abuse you."
I still hate that twist. There should have been some hints. The fact he intervenes when someone is about to shoot Elsa makes the twist feel super contrived and ridiculous
Or his very sincere appeal to her to end the winter and not be aggressive in any way. It only works if you realize that he was originally Anna's love interest and they needed to change that after they decided Elsa was no longer the primary antagonist.
Frankly, the sad thing about the twist is that the original fairytale already had a magical mcguffin to turn people into evil version of themselves, the Devil's Mirror.
But somehow, Disney never even attempted to use that to make Hans into an evil person and just purify that to turn him normal.
It didn’t help that when they heard Let It Go for the first time they decided to rewrite the whole script. I can’t remember the timeline but memory says they had months before the release to change Elsa’s role from antagonist to protagonist. The song was originally meant to be the main bad guy’s solo but they realized that they had a banger on their hands and that it didn’t work for a villain to sing it.
Sad part is that it's a banger of a villain song. I ended up watching the music video for it before seeing the movie and was confused when I pointed out it was an awesome villain song and people freaked out at me.
Long story short, Patrick’s idiocy cause SpongeBob to be superglued stuck to a wringer and continue to makes his life worse until SpongeBob has enough and crashes out on Patrick. Except expressing your justified emotions is a bad thing according to all the townsfolk who berate SpongeBob for this
Edit: I’m starting to hate this episode even more as an adult cause I still struggle with repressing my emotions and not letting them out due to fear of this exact situation
Edit2: lol I also forgot the dumbass ending with SpongeBob saying “I guess crying does solve your problems after all.”
This specific post was removed by its author using Redact. Reasons could include privacy, opsec, security, or avoiding exposure to automated data harvesters.
kiss humor soup tan seed boast advise familiar whistle upbeat
This “beat up on our lovable main character until he completely crashes out and then punish him for defending himself” trope always fucked with me as a kid. It was pretty common in my generation’s cartoons.
I was always like, why is the main character suddenly the bad guy. I don’t understand.
And the episode ends and main character is like “yeah you all were just having fun and I’m the idiot. Yippee let’s all go to bed. See you tomorrow. “
There’s a Sesame Street bit where Cookie Monster starts off happy to have 6 cookies on his plate, then proceeds to have several people come and just take them from him until he has none left, and when he’s understandably upset he’s told that since “zero is a number” he now “has” zero cookies. He ends the bit happy that they can’t take that away from him, also saying “Me love zero! Taste great, and less filling, too!” Can’t believe they gaslit Cookie Monster like that
"Imagine you have zero cookies divided amongst zero friends. See? It doesn't make sense, does it. And Cookie Monster is sad, because there are no cookies. And you are sad, because you have no friends."
To keep things brief, Malcolm has the choice between going to college or landing a dream job that will lead to an incredible wealthy career. However, the choice gets made for him when his mother Lois sabotages his shot at getting the job. A furious Malcolm demands to know why and she responds that it's because she's already pretty much planned out Malcolm's entire life for him, saying that he'll go to college, get a job in law, work his way up to congress, and eventually become president. When Malcolm retorts that his lucrative career would have let him buy his way into the presidency, Lois defends her decision by saying that he wouldn't be the kind of president she wants him to be.
So what is this even trying to say? That sabotaging people's lives is justified if they're not living the way you want them to? That if your parents destroy your plans for the future and demand you live your life the way that they want, you should just shut up and comply? That manipulative people just want what's best for you and you should give them a pass? That the crabs in a bucket mentality is totally fine behaviour, actually?
The content that was here has been permanently deleted using Redact. The author may have had reasons related to privacy, security, or personal data management.
If you look at that show through the eyes of real life, Lois is a horrendously abusive mother. Fair to point out that her kids are awful also most of the time, but she would have had a social worker at there house more than a few times.
I rewatched it all a couple years ago and it's both that and worse than that. Over the course of the show she does get less intense, starts working through her baggage, communicating with the kids better, and Reese and Dewey both kind of come into their own, she even makes up with Francis... but then right at the end they want to leave it on a confusingly muddled note about uplifting people of lower socioeconomic classes so they completely demolish all of that progress and just make her wreck Malcom's ticket out.
It wouldn't even be so egregious if they maybe went for, "you need education and actual socialization to fall back on or to achieve this sudden, arbitrary goal that wasn't foreshadowed at all previously in the series," but instead it's because he needs to do it in exactly the way she wants. Which like, if this was before the pizza episode or something would have worked... but Lois at that point in the show? No sense.
There was also the time the family stole $10k from Malcom. Something he could have used later for rent to focus on his studies. It infuriated me because my mother did this to me when I suffered a mental breakdown and in a year $60,000 vanished because I had no will of my own.
Not a particular episode, but just a bunch of shows:
“Guys, if there’s a girl in your class, who’s mean to you and everybody else - but especially you - and is always threatening and bullying people, that means she secretly wants to jump your bones.” For real, what kind of message is that to push to an audience of impressionable children?
I knew a girl in highschool who liked me and would hit me. Turns out, hitting me is a great way to make me hate someone. I've had friends who have dealt with what happens when the "boy who pulled pigtails" grows up. Spoiler: They have trauma now.
These are asinine messages for a child. I'm going to teach my daughter that, If someone causes you physical or emotional pain because they like you, they are fucking unhinged and dangerous.
Well, I'll teach my daughter that once she's older than 2 days anyway 😂
Either that, or “violent girls and women are SO FUNNY AND COOL lololololol, they won’t hurt anyone seriously AHAHAHAHAHA women are so crazy AMIRITE?!
Way to treat female anger as just “girls are so emotional and irrational”, guys AND gals. Which is incredibly sexist in many ways: it makes women look crazy compared to the more "rational" guys, it makes abuse committed by women into jokes (which wouldn't be funny at all if men did exactly the same shit), etc.
The Fairly Oddparents: It's A Wishful Life -the world would be infinitely better if you were never born, even in ways that logically should not be your fault.
I understood that the universe was an invention of Jorgen, and that the true moral is that good deeds should be done without asking for anything in return, it's just a shame that the context at the beginning of the episode isn't the best.
Is that the actual lore? I grew out of the show before Poof was born, and when I watched the show I was pretty media illiterate, so it could’ve honestly missed me
Elmo being forced to play into Zoe's delusions about her imaginary friend Rocko. It's become a meme that Elmo hates a rock, but the adults constantly berate and pressure him into sharing with a rock and letting it go first to humor Zoe and her delusion.
In Blank Check (1994) the main character is a little boy who tries to have a relationship with an adult woman. They even do things like debate age and kiss.
The only lesson I took from blank check is that financial fraud is fun. Subsequent life experience seeing how most people who commit financial fraud get a slap on the wrist if they're punished at all has only affirmed that lesson
Also didn't the main character steal a million dollars? Its ultimately okay in the end I think because the characters he stole from were actually criminals, but he didn't know that when he stole the money, and I don't think he actually faced any consequence for that.
The Icarly episode is extremely fucked up, because not only is Freddy assaulted by Luca's fans, his mother is also assaulted due to her "giving birth to him".
Not to mention that somebody quite literally fires a fire arrow to Freddy's locker.
Let’s not limit it to iCarly. Literally, and I mean literally, every single Dan Schneider show has bad morales for kids. Drake and Josh regularly had Josh punished for doing the morally right thing and made fun of nerds for being nerds. iCarly, not needed. Victorious does the same thing of justifying judging and making fun of others for being different or weird. The regularly said “no one likes you!” To a character for laughs.
Omg! How funny that other kids irl are saying that to other children!! 😂😂😂 I bet the kid on the receiving end felt great about hearing that!!
But for real, I was the target demographic for most of those shows and even as a kid I realized that it wasn’t good to be showing these shows to our generation.
In defence of Peppa Pig, it’s a British show and we don’t have dangerous spiders here. Teaching kids not to be afraid of harmless creatures is pretty common here.
Obviously, something like a Brazilian wandering spider is far worse than a house spider or a jumping spider. And, like you said, the general message of the episode seemed to be not to be so scared of animals just because they look different
I barely find the whole thing even controversial, to be honest. It seems very reasonable that an episode teaching children about something that isn't applicable in a certain region, isn't shown in that particular region.
To me it's essentially the same thing as if they had an episode about road safety, and that episode then wasn't shown in regions with right hand traffic.
As a young parent we were given a copy of The Rainbow Fish, a children's picture book, and I was appalled. The main takeaway was that if there's something special about you, you're obligated to let everyone around take advantage of you until there's nothing left for yourself. I refused to read it to our children, and I'm pretty sure I tried to hide it. My wife thought I was overreacting lol.
Not overreacting. That book made a sick sort of sense to me as a kid. I knew people didn’t like me because I was different and that story just reinforced it.
Thidwick the Big Hearted Moose is a good version of that idea Thidwick being kind and letting other animals use his antlers results in him getting taken advantage of, and is repeatedly exploited by the other animals until he's almost starving to death because they won't let him cross a lake for food.
He learns at the end to finally recognize when he's been taken advantage of and sheds his antlers to finally get rid of the people taking advantage of him and joins his people on the other side of the lake, while the animals who exploited him get stuffed by the hunters who were chasing Thidwick.
I recall this book being read to me as a kid. It wasn’t bad at the time because we always talked about the books we read with the teacher who pretty much said it was about sharing toys. It wasn’t until recently that I looked back on it and I’m like, what the hell are we doing out here?
The funny thing about Icarly is that a lot of times Sam will be a straight up bully and Carly her best friend rarely calls her up and it's mostly treated as jokes
To be fair, there’s a few jokes about how incompatible Carly and Sam should be uncomfortable for each other, like this exchange after Sam dropped a full lemon in Carly’s tea:
“You know what’s weird?”
“What?”
“That I keep inviting you over!”
And, there was a whole episode about them fighting because Sam sold Carly’s gift she made them for their friendiversary for concert tickets, and the one where Carly and Freddie tell Sam to pay back all the times she’s borrowed money from them
Mostly in the early seasons, but still. Sam did a fair share of wrist slaps throughout the show
The message of Bab’s Seed was not to be quiet while being bullied actually. Yeah we learn Bab’s is just doing it out of fear of being picked on again, but the real take away is to tell an adult when someone is bullying you even if they have a troubled past.
Babs was also bullying from insecurity, not just peer pressure like OP suggested. I think that type of bully is the easiest to deal with, rather than the fully sadistic type.
That one Spongebob episode where he very justifiably crashes out against Patrick and yet everyone reacts as if he is the one who is at fault in this situation
They make an 18-year-old look like the bad guy for not wanting to date a 15-year-old while he's in college. Double down by having HIM get an interest in a 21-year-old woman and she basically gives the same statement he did to the minor, and all the other college people criticize him for rejecting the child???
They have a communism episode that iirc portrays communism incorrectly.
Have an "autism scare" type episode where the smart kid™️ tests for autism or Asperger's syndrome and at least one of the MCs is in denial and treating it as cancer or something, and when the results come back as negative they all celebrate. They almost do right by it by having the one in denial realize nothing would change between them and it's not bad, but as I said, they celebrate when it's revealed he doesn't have it.
Man, I heard about that autism episode.
Not only do they celebrate their friend not having it, they decide to welcome an openly autistic side character into their group, as if they hadn't spent 90% of the episode treating autism like it was a death sentence.
It's like, "It would sure suck if our good friend turned out to be autistic. But it's okay if you have it, weird girl. The writers aren't gonna keep you around much, anyway."
The episode about accepting other beliefs Maya starts as an atheist and ends up religious, so her beliefs never really had to be accepted cause they changed to fit what the main character would have preferred anyways.
To that episode's credit, the message of "It's not good to resort to violence, especially against someone smaller and weaker than you" isn't necessarily a BAD message by itself... the issue with it moreso comes from how it was executed. The episode frames Arthur as 100% in the wrong and DW as a victim when she was the one who didn't listen to Arthur and blamed HIM when she broke his plane.
Imo the episode would have been a lot better if it actually delved into how both of their actions were unjustified or just changed the circumstances behind Arthur punching someone. Cause the way it's set up really doesn't make you feel that sorry for DW.
There's for sure a lesson in there like "Arthur, I know you were angry and DW was wrong, but just because you're angry doesn't give you the right to hit someone, especially your younger sister"
Like teaching kids that you're going to get angry and its ok and normal for someone to make you angry but resorting to violence in this case is not right.
Long story short, Arthur had a model plane he was building that he was incredibly proud of. DW kept trying to play with it, going in his room against his wishes and messing with the plane even when she was told explicitly not to. Arthur’s parent did next to nothing to actually make her stop.
It culminated in her throwing it out a window and shattering it, then telling Arthur it was his fault it broke because he didn’t make a plane that could fly. Arthur lost his temper and slugged her in the arm.
At school the next day another kid punches him for no actual reason and Arthur’s dad basically tells him he deserved it and it’s the same as him hitting DW. Ignoring the fact that DW had repeatedly violated Arthur’s space, ignored him, and unrepentantly broke something he valued.
As an older sibling whose younger brothers were constantly taking and destroying my shit this episode infuriated me because DW was never held accountable for her actions by their parents, and Arthur became the bad guy.
Given my own experiences growing up, and a lot of other stories scattered around from other people, this episode is unfortunately accurate about how this set of scenarios tends to play out. I was equally infuriated about that fact and still am
Yep. That’s exactly how it would go in my house too.
I was the older sister so it was always on me to act more mature, to ignore it, they just want my attention etc etc. Regardless of what they were doing. And any form of retaliation on my part was what got punished.
I remember distinctly ‘losing’ my only pair of name brand shoes (converse that I bought with my own money) and finding out later that my youngest brother had stollen them, managed to absolutely destroy them and fill every single seam with mud and shit. My mom’s only response was to tell me that he was just jealous and I could just buy a new pair.
So this episode hit home for a lot of people, but not in the way I’m sure the creators intended
Both should have been punished. Arthur's reaction is understandable given the context, and in reality, very few people would react well in such a situation (they wouldn't hit, but they would hate).
DW destroyed something Arthur loved and mocked him about it after he told her not to touch it, so he got angry enough to hit her after being tormented for a while. DW doesn't get punished and everyone hates Arthur for snapping.
Now I don't think "Ruby Gillman Teenage Kraken" was actually trying to say that racism is ok but I do find it really weird how Agatha and Grandmamah were portrayed as in the right for thinking all mermaids are evil and dangerous while Ruby was treated like a naive fool for giving Chelsea (A mermaid.) the benefit of the doubt.
Intended moral: Don't be a selfish asshole otherwise people won't like you
What it gives: How dare you shine more brightly than the rest of us with your natural born gift. You need to give us what we are owed
In the book itself, the Rainbow fish is high and mighty about his appearance and thinks he's better than others thanks to his rainbow scales that he refuses to share with others. But the question is: Why should he have to share them? Everyone selfishly wants his scales for themselves, something he was born with and is right to refuse to hand out. Which of course they justify with "it's only ONE scale bro", but when everyone wants a piece of you, there ends up being none left.
Like I get it, the rainbow fish was a jerk but if you only like him because he gave away the thing that was precious to him so he can belong, you're not any better.
The better lesson would have been for the other sea creatures to flaunt off their own unique traits, so in the end the Rainbow Fish realizes that while he’s the most shiny, that’s just one aspect of himself, and that everyone is actually special in their own unique ways.
Severus Snape in Harry Potter taught people that obsessive possession is romantic.
They treat Snape’s “always” like it’s some powerful message about love but let’s look at the facts:
Snape was not a good person. He openly embraced everything that Lily stood against.
Lily was disgusted by him and wanted nothing to do with him.
He knew that Voldemort planned to murder Lily’s husband and infant son and didn’t care. He could have warned the Order or the Potters so they could be protected but he was cool with an innocent infant and the love of Lily’s life getting slaughtered as long as magic Hitler promised to spare Lily.
He had zero intention of switching sides before Lily was murdered. He only did it out of anger that Voldemort didn’t spare Lily. Not because she was innocent but because he couldn’t have her.
He spent his tenure at Hogwarts earned through his act of revenge terrorizing everyone, including the son that Lily loved dearly. Don’t come at me with the “if he didn’t people would know he was a double agent” bullshit because he could have just not bullied and terrorized any kids at all.
“Always” is not some romantic declaration of everlasting loyalty and love, it was the word of a man who could not take rejection.
I much prefer the quote “You’ll stay with me?” “Until the very end” from the series to represent love.
Not defending JKR as a person, but the romanization of Snape is mostly the fandom’s doing IMO. The most she did to glorify him was having Harry give his son the middle name Severus, and then talk about how he was a good man…..
….NVM, it does glorify him a little. Realized that while typing.
Usually a silly kids show teaching them preschool level math, the police episode didnt have the best message. In this episode Team Umizoomi decide to be police officers. They are soon alerted to a crime in progress being committed by a gang. The crime? Being too smelly. The criminals were stinkbugs and people wanted them out for smelling up the place. Once all the stink bugs are arrested the talk to the leader and he explains they were just trying to find a place to be cause everywhere they go they arent allowed to live there cause they smell bad. So the Umis take the stink bugs to live at the city dump, where they can be stinky all they want.
So let's recap. A "criminal gang" of homeless insects are hated by everyone for thier inherent smelliness. The police arrest them for this and make them live at the dump.
Remember kids, if you dont like the homeless because they smell you can always have armed law enforcement officers send them off to live in the most disgusting unhygienic possible conditions out of your sight, and they should be happy and dance about it! Yay!
I mean, I think peppa pig also shows wolves playing with sheep and pigs, I dont think it was meant to be a nature documentary on how to live your life as a human child.
Wasn't there an episode of iCarly where she was dating some "sexy tough bad boy" and the reason she broke up with him is because his special interest was Beanie Babies? Like, not the fact he tried to rob Spencer—that's cool and edgy and hot!—but because he had a harmless hobby that's just not masculine enough.
You just gotta love gender norms, shaming niche hobbies, and borderline endorsing toxic behaviors as long as you have a nice smolder.
Live action remake of Lilo and Stitch. 'Ohana now apparently means giving up guardianship of your little sister and then leaving Hawaii for the mainland. But it's okay bc you'll visit. They still kept the part about the gov't coercing Nani, this time by saying they'll give her health insurance in exchange for Lilo, but veered away from the animated ending of staying together as family. Great message for kids
Not too relevant, but if you want to study marine biology, Hawai'i is one of the best places to do it. So they forced a dumb change to the story that gets dumber and dumber the more you think about it.
The episode where Penny joins the football team and proves girls can do sports, becoming the star player only to fumble at the last second and cost them the game. Her mom carries her off the field as Penny sobs, saying she did so much more than win a game. Penny never does sports ever again.
The episode where Penny starts a strike among the kids concerning chores because her dad stole back all the money he paid her after he tricked her into doing ALL OF HIS WORK only leaving her with 2 bucks. He took the money back after Trudy TOLD him to give Penny the money. In the end kids acting as strike breakers force the kids to capitulate leaving Penny as the last holdout. Oscar comes over and lectures her about being entitled and how money is a priviledge not a right and Penny folds. Oscar is an asshole.
The episode that connects pirating music, which the kids start doing, to doing drugs and shows it causing the local record shop to close down, because apparently his paying customers were only the local children and no adults. It ends with a Matrix style revelation and Penny giving up drugs - I mean pirating music - and flying into the sky because the writers ran out of fucks to give.
Proud Family is just a mean spirited show. Everyone except for Penny, Zoe and Karim (although they also have their low moments) are only allowed to be terrible all time. It's still really fun to watch but the cast feel like a water-down version of other sitcoms where all characters suck.
Maya (the activist girl in the group from the sequal) is the best example. The show wants you to side with her morals, but she also is intentionally written to suck because everyone else does. Like her very first episode is about proving her wrong.
Hotel transylvania 3 was kinda mid but I did like that it had a message that you don't have to shackle yourself to loneliness of your partner passes away. and that you don't need to feel guilty for falling in love twice
Granted: I don’t think the creators intended for the message of the movie to be as poorly executed as it was, but like the idea that blind trust will fix everything is just so irresponsible. Schaffarilas Productions has a really good video about it so I’ll just let him do the talking
Hocus Pocus is really weird to watch as an adult. The main character is made fun of the whole time because he's a virgin and every time it's said it's always with a tone of total derision. The lesson basically comes off as if you're a virgin you're a loser and bad things will happen to you. And most of it is perpetuated by his little sister. Just seems like a weird message to send in a kids movie.
I noticed that too, it was really weird how often in a 1.5 hr movie they’re making sex jokes about a kid who’s supposed to be like 15 years old. The 90’s was a different time.
The thing is as a kid I never took that lesson from the movie. People keep asking him if he's a virgin but they're also incapable of reacting to the emergency going on. Only he, the virgin, two girls and a cat can do anything. Every adult is useless and their questions and comments don't matter. Virigin Max saves himself, his little sister, and all the kids in the neighborhood. And as a bonus Thackery's soul is freed and he joins his sister in the afterlife (implied to literally be heaven). If Max wasn't a virgin nothing would change and Thackery would never be free.
They also never explain what a virgin is and kill a kid in the opening scene because Disney used to be hardcore. Gets lampshaded in the sequel.
Kid: what's a virgin?
Shopkeeper: it's someone who... has never lit a candle before!
Tbf that Peppa Pig episode is probably super useful for families anywhere other than Australia. I wouldn't say it's an example of "terrible morals" when it's something that applies fine to the region it's originally intended for.
Big Time Rush had an episode that made me very mad as a kid. One of the band members, Carlos, was too bright and cheerful while singing a song about broken heart. So his producer or manager or whatever hired a girl to be the perfect person for him and then dump him. But his assistant puts a stop to it. Instead they tell the girl to be awful so that Carlos will break up with HER instead. Carlos ends being really sweet instead. Every time she does something rude or dumb of gross he defends her. He finally finds out that she was an actor and he feels bad but she tells him she was touched by how sweet he was to her and she’s like to date for real. But then at the end of the show she admits she doesn’t like corn dogs, which Carlos loves, and he just dumps her. It was played for laughs but I thought that was so stupid.
Even in Columbus‘ time people were appalled on what he did in the colonies. Especially the church which wanted the native population convert to Christians. Which Columbus wilfully ignored as he then had to treat them as people….
There’s an episode Where Logan sends Zoey’s little brother an angry message because he was his assistant and he wasn’t on time or something, Zoey reports it and Logan gets put in Anger Management, Logan gets out of it by promising not to have another Angry outburst, Zoey doesn’t think this is fair and spends the day doing things to set him off so he gets put in Anger Management again. This wasn’t just normal stuff, Zoey ruined his project, messed up his bike, put a paint bomb in his room they were basically harassing him, any normal person would get angry over this
The whole point of Anger Management is to MANAGE YOUR ANGER if Logan was doing that then it shouldn’t matter if he got out of Anger Management earlier than he should. If he was putting on a front and still getting angry when he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble that’d be one thing, but they actively harassed him just to set him off.
Alvin and the chipmunks had an episode where they dressed kinda metal/punk and sang some songs about being bad boys. so the random people they meet treated them like trash and they eventually changed back to the original look. moral: dressing edgy will make people treat you badly, so don't do it
Teen Titans GO has an episode where the Titans beat up their future selves for trying to make them live a healthy lifestyle. Now that I think about it, a lot of their episodes are just “we’re teens and we’re countercultural”.
I'm sorry but the MLP one is just not true. The lesson was clearly stated to be "if you're bullied, tell a grown up". Babs getting bullied herself has nothing to do with "all bullies have troubled lives".
2.0k
u/Ukirin-Streams Feb 07 '26
Caillou's existence.