Hate Jessie

[Drtooth]

They took a real pounding after a while. I remember Christmas Clearances that had nothing but HM and HSM stuff on the shelves after 90% off. And 90% off is where you'd find damaged tinsel, broken and open packages of generic candy canes and other small food items, broken glass ornaments, and other items in various levels of smashed to pieces and abandoned during the Christmas rush. And ALL perfectly in tact among the rubble.

 

[beatnikchick300]

I don't have a problem with nonwhite characters on TV shows (in fact, I'd like to see more of them; even more shows starring them [after all, I'm nonwhite myself ]). What I do have a problem with is every single nonwhite character having some grating stereotypical quality (the "sassy" black girl [that one especially gets on my nerves], the brainy Asian kid, etc.). Yeah, I'm aware that most characters on TV (both white and nonwhite) are stereotypes of some kind, but how about some subversions of the more common ones? Like, how about a nerdy black girl (we are sooo underrepresented!) or an Asian guy who's a stoner?

 

[Drtooth]

The true problem is Hollywood being Hollywood. You either wind up getting mild stereotypes or bland, personality devoid tokens that do nothing but exist to be the "one black friend they never actually hang out with." And the sad part is, that's almost more offensive than the mild stereotype. There is the fear of various uptight groups sending letters... I mean, look what happened with Princess and the Frog. The reason why they choose Caucasians as characters is that you can do anything you want to them and no one will complain. No one's saying Homer Simpson is a negative stereotype of white guys, and he's all about bad personality traits. But a lot of it stems from Hollywood barely understanding its own audience.

Some people are really good at adding ethnicity to a show organically, King of Queens for example. That was an organic friendship between Doug and Deacon. Why the heck is that so hard? Deek wasn't a stereotype, nor was he a personality devoid cardboard cut out. His character had problems. Again, why is that so incredibly hard?

But the thing that really bugs me? When they finally answer the call of giving an ethnic group representation with their own show. Yet, they wind up making it on the grounds that they want a white audience too (again, that's what killed Cedric the Entertainer's Fox show). And then they get cancelled fairly quickly. It's maddening. yet, I look at the ethnicity in most kid's cartoons, and they actually nail it half the time.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

Like, how about a nerdy black girl (we are sooo underrepresented!)

I'd count Chyna from Ant Farm as one

 

[Drtooth]

Actually... that hits another thing. We can't have nerdy girls unless they're near model looking, but when it comes to guy nerds, cast of Big Bang theory aside (the actor who plays Raj is like married to Miss India), male nerds are all gonks in their 40's who live in their parents basement and like every sci-fi and fantasy thing ever. Double freaking Standard! Seriously, you have that hot Abby from NCIS, and every male nerd is supposed to look like Brian Poston or worse.

 

[D'Snowth]

I haven't ever really seen nerdy girl characters that are "near model looking"... if anything, it seems like your stereotypical nerd girl is bespectacled, buck-toothed, squeaky voice (sometimes a lisp), freckles, sloppy mismatched clothes, and they're usually depicted just as socially awkward as nerd guys are.

But then again, like I've complained about before, nerds anymore, male or female, are almost always depicted anymore as these nut job mental cases who come off as genuinely crazy rather than mildly eccentric, and sometimes tend to be sexual deviants rather than being so socially awkward that they are of no interest to the opposite gender, and have no interest in them themselves.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

Tucker from Danny Phantom liked to think he was a stud but he was so socially awkward girls avoided him. But he was also one of those geeky nerds obsessed with technology and sci-fi. But he was too funny to be insulting.

 

[Drtooth]

I haven't ever really seen nerdy girl characters that are "near model looking"... if anything, it seems like your stereotypical nerd girl is bespectacled, buck-toothed, squeaky voice (sometimes a lisp), freckles, sloppy mismatched clothes, and they're usually depicted just as socially awkward as nerd guys are.

They really stopped that as of late. At the very worst, nerd girls are adorkable and have fashionable glasses. Now, I'm not saying there aren't any like that, nor am I saying that every male nerd doesn't look like somewhere between Curtis Armstrong, Brian Poston (if I got the name of that one right, he's a tall, gangly guy with a large nose and has a whiny sounding voice. He was in Just Shoot Me among other things), and George Costanza (no. Not Jason Alexander... I mean George Costanza at his most unkempt)... some do, and I know people that fit that description... it just seems that nerd girl went from rare weird thing to "all girls in their late teens and up to mid 20's are nerds." And of course, that's the poor definition of the word, too. Too broad and meaningless. Like, if you watch exactly 2 anime and have played Halo on one occasion you're classified as one.

Me, I prefer the term Hipster Doofus. Too bad that never caught on, despite the fact that it comes from such a popular sitcom. Sigh... Seinfeld is starting to become Monty Python. They'll quote the famous lines ("No Soup for You") but everyone's all thumbs about the other episodes (especially the one about Drake's Coffee Cakes and "Nude [smack] backgammon [smack] with [smack] Swimsuit [smack] models!!")

 

[D'Snowth]

Come to think of it now, I take part of my observation back somewhat, because I just remembered: Irma from the 80s TMNT cartoon was kind of like a borderline case of a sexually deprived nerd... or, at the very least, was like a female equivalent of Johnny Bravo - chasing after guys, and repulsing them in the process (though the love potion episode where a group of drunken, yet married, sailors are all throwing wolf whistles at her is pretty funny).

And I even forgot about Jeanette of The Chipettes for a minute, who kind of falls somewhere in the middle of the scale: not quite near model looking either, but definitely fits in the adorkable category. TV Tropes actually has her being a "rare example" of something within the nerd category, I can't remember without looking it up though.

 

[Drtooth]

It's a cultural shift. Nerd girls are considered cute, and kinda Moe. We still have all the other classic female stereotypes, but there's such an increase of nerdy girls in television... again with television producers failing to see what the heck nerds are really about. I give Big Bang Theory credit for getting it half right. How many "ComicCon" episodes of popular TV shows (mainly crime dramas) have we seen recently that barely understand the concept? It's a sad day when the Cleveland Show has it more accurate than anyone else.

And with that, I completely forgot what we were talking about.

Ah... yes... we were hating on some dumb Disney Tweencom, right?