Comic Strips

I groan a lot rewatching old shows, or don't find the jokes funny anymore in 2026, but I think people forget that society progresses.

Take the Seinfeld episode where a reporter thinks George and Jerry are partners and they freak out about it but say "not that theres anything wrong with that." The joke isn't them being called gay but their immature reaction.

A lot of younger modern viewers don't like it, and I get it. The scenes do play on a lot of stereotypes but they fail to realize in the mid 90s homosexuality was almost never mentioned on tv and when it was its was a slur. Just the act of making an episode that featured a discussion on homosexuality and didn't use it as an insult ever was progress. Yes by todays standards a lot of the sterotypical behavior George and Jerry present throughout the episode is in poor taste but it wasn't made with todays standards.

Can't speak to sitcoms, but I'm watching ER (1994) and it gave two excellent examples

In season one, where it was more prestigious and Michael Crichton was more directly involved, there's an episode where a trans women comes in and the doctors are uncomfortable treating her - which eventually leads to the patient's suicide. The moral being that even this person who is strange deserves compassion from us.

In season three, where it has become more of a formulaic tv drama, there's an episode where a trans woman comes in and it's played entirely for laughs, including the trans woman insisting that she gets bad PMS when on her period.

I present Exhibit A.

How thin the skin? I've noticed stuff like that my whole life. You can't pretend it all away. No matter how much you want it to not exist it will. It moves and changes but the inherent human tendency to take a dig at someone or something you don't like will always be with us. Its the slurs you use personally without thought that you should worry about. Don't think you have never done it.

I had a similar reaction to seeing brown face in Ben Hur (1959). The character itself was a positive depiction, so there's that I guess. It could have easily ruined the whole movie.

Currently rewatching Gilmore Girls with my fiancée and we have the same reaction when there's a hint of homophobia or fat jokes in some of the jokes. We usually just give each other a look and roll our eyes but yea, it was just a different time

I'm surprised how many people seem offended by this comic. I found it pretty relatable. That doesn't mean I "don't understand context", or think the writers were bad people, or that the shows aren't worth watching. It just means I find it personally unpleasant to find these jokes in a work I'm otherwise enjoying.

When kids study older literature and media in school, generally when there's a slur or racist reference or joke, the teacher will stop and explain the context and get the kids to reflect on it and why it's probably not acceptable today. Even though I understand this and know it going in, I'm still kind of doing an abridged version of that in my head when something like this comes up in a show -- I've been following along, laughing with the writers, and then suddenly I'm backing up and distancing myself from one joke or idea. It's jarring, it pulls me out of the show, and it's just not fun.

In some cases it also comes across as incredibly lazy and unoriginal. So many sitcoms from that era have "the trans episode", "the gay episode", "the lecherous character" -- and they all make the same unfunny jokes, and it's a reminder than a lot of these shows, even in their time, were just not that creative. Plenty of modern shows have the same problem, but they don't draw attention to it by having large classes of "stock jokes" that simply do not land today.