When shows get too preachy

Have you ever been really annoyed or stopped watching a show altogether because you thought it had become too preachy?
If so, which one. Thanks.

The first one that comes to my mind is 7th Heaven. I also felt that many episodes of 90210 and Degrassi were like public service announcements.

 

I find lately, the more characters who are flawed and making mistakes in various "family dramas" on network TV, the more equally-flawed people there are in the cast available to yell at them for it. So, first the audience gets to have their opinion about them, then their peers get to start in later...which is intended, I suppose, to make you feel sorry for the doofus, and like them better.

Or buy Kimberly-Clark/Johnson-&-Johnson/Palmolive/whatever products, whatever works.

 

Every sitcom from the 1970's through 1990's featured at least one "very special episode" in their tenure. The only thing worse (or equally bad), the mandatory "clip show" episode.

 

Last Man Standing. Basically it's a half hour of Tim Allen playing himself and sharing his political views.

 

I find most religious shows preachy by definition, including Touched by an Angel and Highway to Heaven.

 

7th Heaven too

 

The 700 Club has gotten WAY too preachy for me in recent years.

 

But that's its attraction.

 

Good one!

 

DeGrassi always went overboard with pushing the liberal social issues. It never stopped me from watching, and it had enough realism and characters to care about.

 

Sure, Hollywood’s and television’s stock in trade is agitprop and obliteration. A Wrinkle in Time is one example and Watchmen (HBO) another. Another example is a recent SNL opening skit - something ridiculous about jobs for terrorists while in the real world actual spec ops were neutralizing the world’s most wanted terrorist and his second in command almost at the same time as SNL was live with the skit. It’s psychotic.

 

New Amsterdam on NBC gets so moralizing that it's getting in the way of what could be a good show.

 

Satire, how does it work?

 

This why I hate network tv always shoving there views on people.
I watch tv to escape the worlds problems not sit in classroom being
taught social political views.

 

Was that Series cancelled, as I did not see it listed yet this Fall? I do not share any of of Mike Baxter's(is that his Character's Name?) Political Views, as I am Progressive on Social Issues and Moderate on Economic Issues, but the Show is Funny and was worth watching, as most current sitcoms are not Funny-IMO. Although 'Sunny in Philly' is still Funny, and 'Blackish' is usually good, especially Charlie, who cracks me up, but I share that same bizarre sense of humor. Actually, Dre is Preachy(Preach-ish?), but I think that is the point of the Show Creator, Kenya Barris, which is to educate White America on issues facing the Black Community that a lot of People either do not care or choose to bury their heads in the sand about it(I have had Black Friends pulled over for DWB and issues renting apartments that all of the sudden were not available when they showed up to view them, among other issues that I realize do not affect me as a White Person).

I do not have a clue on Tim Allen's Real Life Politics, but I watch Shows that entertain me and 'Last Man Standing' was funny. There are also characters on the show to offset Mike's Ultra Right Conservative Views, like guy married to his Oldest Daughter.

 

You want "preachy"? Go back to the days when Norman Lear's accidental sensation All In The Family, turned him into the Dick Wolf of CBS for a time. Now there was some 21 minutes of laffs with 2 minutes of "preach" to it...

 

I am Liberal Person myself on Social Issues and Moderate on Economic Issues yet SOA(My Avatar) is one of my Top 4 Favorite TV Dramas of All Time(even though there was a decline in quality in the 6th and most of the 7th Seasons-IMO) despite according to the Washington Post during the Show's Airing, the top scripted show for Republicans is FXs Sons of Anarchy, a Hamlet based drama about an outlaw biker gang.

I never saw the Series as Preachy, although is thought provoking for the Right(Conservative) and the Left(Progressive).

How can it be that that so many conservatives want to spend their free time watching a lawless biker gang flaunt the values of traditional society? The show succeeds by making heroes out of characters who their Conservative viewers would otherwise almost certainly see as villains. But SOA also provides small, closed society that is a laboratory for the most basic foundational concepts of both Left and Right.

In Charming, CA the fictional small town setting for Sons of Anarchy, we find a test case for small government. The police are essentially controlled (or at least constrained) by the biker gang, and even local politics revolves around their preferences. In return, for a generation SAMCRO as the gang is known, has kept drugs out of Charming and increasingly fought to keep out big yuppie development projects that would change the face of the town. Although their criminal enterprises are sometimes lucrative, the setting for SOA is decidedly middle class. Though sometimes intellectual, the characters are not well educated, they look, in large part (criminal activity aside) like the model for the modern Republican, a working class white guy who wants the government to stay away from his money and guns and is engaged in a battle with working class brown and black guys for a slice of the economic pie.

Interestingly, the racial divisions which separate the rival Motorcycle Clubs are not imbued with any particular “cultural” significance. The black “Niners” and the Mexican “Mayans” are not given any moral passes or magical insights, they are simply the other gang, no better, no worse. Likewise the Sons do not enjoy any particular white privilege in the world of Motorcycle Clubs. This fits nicely with a recent ABC/Fusion poll that shows that while 62 percent of liberal Democrats believe non whites have less opportunity in society, only 25 of Republicans do. The show confirms the conservative belief that equality is enhanced by allowing groups to secure their own future, rather than letting government interfere on the basis of perceived discrimination. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out in the National Review Online, the basic theme of the show ends up being tribalism. It’s a fair and balanced tribalism, but nonetheless one that is remarkably violent, destructive and ultimately poisonous to the social values held by many in the GOP.

Sons of Anarchy provides its partisan devotees with the opportunity to doubt some of their deepest held beliefs. What conservative can watch the brutal crimes of the Sons of Anarchy without questioning whether the invisible hand really does enough to arrest the baser impulses of self interest? Like all great storytellers, the creator of SOA challenges our most basic beliefs and leave us to sort out the aftermath.

 

I never could get into Last Man Standing. I will always see Tim Allen as the goofy guy from Home Improvement.

I watched all 7 seasons of Sons of Anarchy. I never thought of it as preachy either, just a little bit over the top as far as the violence was concerned.
I read an article about what real bikers thought of SOA and most of them agreed that the police would've stepped in long before the carnage in the final season.

 

I loved the series except when it turned into a PSA, which was almost every other episode. I get it. They're trying to promote positive values for all the teenagers who watch it.
Aaron Spelling wanted to purchase the rights to Degrassi, but they wouldn't let him. That's why 90210 was invented-- as an American Degrassi.

 

The eighth season starts in January on FOX. I used to be a big fan, but I’ve stopped watching now that Molly Ephraim and the late Robert Forster are no longer on it, and Kaytlin Dever makes only sporadic appearances. I was never a Home Improvement fan, btw.

 

The first season of Treme - I nearly stopped watching because of it. Nearly every episode was 'David Simon get on a soap box.' The twist at the end of the first season and the music kept me watching into the second and it matured into a very fine show eventually, but main that first season was rough. I'd been a big fan of everything Simon had done up until that point.

 

More’s Utopia is my favorite !! Satire, to be effective, needs to be subtle (at least relative to subject matter and context). This is one of the reasons The Death of Stalin fails whereas Moore’s Watchmen (the original 12 issue comic run) works.

 

One of the best shows ever to be on TV. I miss the days where you could make fun of something or a person and people laughed, not get offended and tweet a boycott.

 

I think a lot of screenwriters have an agenda of some sort, which depends in large part on their background and their values. Their scripts are a product of whatever they believe to be right or just.

 

They did the same with The Next Generation, and occasionally kicked it into overdrive. It's one thing to present issues, offer different perspectives, and allow viewers to make their own decisions. The producers of all versions of DeGrassi were a little too obvious about where they stood and how they felt people were supposed to think.

A little didn't bother me, but it got too absurd. Trans girl-to-boy, who is smarter than all, begins to date the best-looking girl in the school, whose family is evangelical Christian. They were from Florida, and the brother played junior hockey, as so many hockey players come from Florida and their whole families relocate to the metro Toronto region in support.