I still love Robot Chicken as well as Seth MacFarlane's other projects but I have recently made a decision to stop watching Family Guy after I stumbled upon a very disturbing and potentially dangerous skit.
The scene was where Peter Griffin came into the room holding a knife and asked Lois
"If I was gonna kill myself, should I slit my wrist this way or this way?" as he spoke he demonstrated by using accompanying hand gestures and everything.
Meg then shouted from the other room,
"Sideways for attention, long ways for results!". Lois confirmed that her daughter was correct and Peter ran off to presumably kill himself.
I was shocked at what I had heard. They literally just gave their audience ACTUAL SUICIDE TIPS! To make matters even worse, earlier on in the same exact episode Peter had broken the fourth wall and addressed the audience by saying,
"You don't know who Joe Pesci is because your fourteen. Well, in the '90s that was a tough guy!".
It's common knowledge that teenagers have very high suicide rates. So they basically just told their audience, that they are fully aware is mostly made up of teenagers, the correct way to kill oneself. That is just downright unforgivable. What if some depressed teenager who loved Family Guy heard that joke and actually took Meg's suicide advice? That's not funny at all. That scene is by far the most insensitive and downright cruel thing I've ever heard on a TV show.
I had previously ranted about Robot Chicken stealing Homestar Runner characters for the sake of insulting them not too long ago and while that is certainly cruel, it is NOTHING compared to possibly contributing to the already high suicide rate among teenagers.
After seeing Family Guy guide their audience into suicide, I no longer want to associate with such trash. I don't care how many of their other episodes are funny, that wrist slitting scene can't possibly be defended. Words can not describe how furious and disappointed I am at FOX and Fuzzy Door Productions for allowing such a "joke" to even see the light of day. I mean, Family Guy is on regular TV for crying out loud. It's not even on cable much less some paid channel like HBO. Literally anyone who owns a television could see that disgusting sketch. I don't want to support any show that directly explains the proper way to slight one's own wrists to the audience.
It also makes me feel angry about the hypocrisy of censorship. Dropping the F-bomb and showing full frontal nudity is seen as horrible, but possibly guiding young people into suicide is okay. Something about that just seems very backwards to me. Because at the end of the day the F-word is just a word and nudity is just a picture, but there is no denying that suicide guides are a horrible thing that should be censored.
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