From victim blaming to downplaying a serious disorder, these ‘90s shows are
proof that trauma can’t be fixed with a heart to heart and a half hour of comedy.
The sixth episode of Seinfeld season 9, called "The Merv Griffin Show,"
finds one funny subplot counteracted by the distastefulness of another.
When Kramer discovers the discarded set from Griffin's long-running talk show in the trash,
he brings it home and turns his apartment into a temporary studio. The gags that result are good,
as Kramer interviews his friends and cracks jokes. The rest of the episode, however,
centers around Jerry and his girlfriend Celia, who has a priceless collection of
vintage toys in her living room. Their storyline quickly takes a dark and uncomfortable turn.
When they return to her apartment after a date,
Jerry drools over her Superball and original G.I. Joe action figure with
the frogman suit. Celia won't let him touch the collection and asks for a pain reliever.
"will not cause drowsiness…. MAY CAUSE drowsiness"
Jerry purposely gives her a drowsy tablet so he can play with the toys
while she sleeps on the couch. George and Elaine eventually want in on it,
so they treat Celia to a turkey and red wine dinner, hoping the combination of tryptophan,
alcohol, and a dull home movie marathon will knock her out.
The bright spot of the episode comes when Kramer is horrified by Jerry's actions,
but the entire runtime is plagued by allusions to date rape and sexual assault. Shots of Celia
unconscious and sprawled across her couch fell flat then and still do now. The joke is that
Jerry is drugging her to take advantage of her toy collection, not her, but there's no punchline
here. The bit is in incredibly poor taste, and casts an unfortunate shadow on the show's legacy.
Dawson's Creek had a lot of dangerous, misogynistic attitudes toward women and sex
throughout its six seasons, but no character suffered more than Jen. Not only does she
suffer a lame, offscreen death, Jen's motive throughout the show was, in her own words,
to allow Dawson to figure out who he really loved. The writers tried their hardest to portray her as
needy, promiscuous and one-dimensional — which opened her up to unnecessary peril,
like the time she and Pacey wind up stranded in the ocean during a huge storm.
But Jen's lowest moment on the show came in Season 2, when she was victim-shamed
by her own family. In "Full Moon Rising," Vincent tries taking things too far with Jen,
who objects to his advances. When her grandmother gets home before things can get worse, rather than
offering affirmation or support, she chastises and shames Jen for her promiscuous behavior.
"I will not allow you to slide back into your reprehensible New York behavior,
not while you're under my care."
Jen being humiliated and blamed by a loved one punctuates the show's
hotbed of misconceptions about sex and rape culture, and perpetuates victim silence.
When Dawson's Creek arrived on Netflix, longtime fans began changing their opinions of Jen,
finally seeing her as a character with poise and grace. It's a mindset they should have
had 20 years ago. Though Jen's story has aged better than some others on the show,
the victim-shaming scene in Season 2 was bad when it aired and is even worse through a modern lens.
In the third season of Full House, middle child Stephanie developed PTSD after an earthquake,
and was "cured" within minutes of speaking to a child psychologist. In the next season,
her older sister D.J. develops an eating disorder, which is handled similarly.
"There is no way I'm wearing a swimsuit in front of everyone until I look like one of these models"
The portrayal of D.J.'s anorexia stigmatizes serious conditions, employing harmful stereotypes
of people being overly dramatic, uninterested in getting help and immediately curable.The episode
does handle anorexia gently and empathetically: no character shames D.J. for her actions, and they're
all genuinely concerned for her. But the show's short, open-and-shut structure doesn't line up
with the disorder's months or years-long effects in real life. D.J.'s onscreen anorexia is hard to
watch, especially since actor Candace Cameron Bure later revealed she developed an eating disorder
after the show ended, but the "inspirational lecture from dad" bit at the end of the episode
undercuts the progress that people with eating disorders are continuously striving to make.