Pretty much the only show Miranda ever watches (she's 3 1/2) is Signing Time, which is a tiny jewel of a show on PBS (at 5:30am, but I TiVo it) where a family (a real family) with one deaf daughter sing and sign, with a different theme every week. We sit and watch a half hour episode together about once every week or three, usually while I'm folding laundry and after a tiring day. I am so grateful that so far she isn't interested in watching TV any more than that.
Hey, I watched that episode of Studio 60 that started this thread and caught the jokes you mentioned, Barb. I had a different response, and wanted to share it here:
The three gay jokes near the beginning of Studio 60's episode "The Cold Open"
1) Someone says to Matt and Danny (the two partner guys now running the show) something about them liking Barbra Streisand. One then turns to the other and says, "Is she implying that we're liberals or that we're gay?" The other replies something like, "Not sure there is a difference to her" or something like that.
2) One guy, to imply that someone else has job power over him, says something like, "I am SO his buttboy."
3) One of the same partner guys, in the press conference, when asked about the difficulty they will have working with the uptight, cranky boss guy played by Steven Weber, jokes something like, "Nah, from the first time we made love it was wonderful."
The main thing to me about these three jokes is that they are gay-related, but they are not put downs of being gay. The first one is based on a stereotype that gay people like Barbra Streisand - or for that matter that liberal people like Barbra Streisand, yes, so doesn't get many points from me, but the other two don't seem pejorative at all. That second remark is crude, but it's not the gayness of it that is shocking, it's the violation implied. Anyway, I thought that they NORMALIZED gayness, not the other way around. (I also am guessing that as we get to know the characters, that the Steven Weber character is going to turn out to be gay, but that isn't based on much evidence.)
Thank you for listening. BTW, I loved the first two episodes, and am excited that for the first time in years I "have" a TV show, and that I'm getting in at the beginning.
Clarissa