While watching the Tim Burton flick Dark Shadows (it’s very Tim Burton), I was able to witness advertisements for new TV shows, because God forbid we have a single second in the theater where we’re not dying of advertisements. These included the sitcoms Men at Work and Baby Daddy. Were they incredibly sexist? Of COURSE they were incredibly sexist! This is TV we’re talking about!
Men at Work, tragically, is not even remotely about coming from a land down under or being able to hear, hear the thunder. It is instead a comedy from TBS! The website includes a board that gives you your “daily dose of Menspiration” (am I the only person who reads that as inspiration for getting through your period?) including such words of wisdom as “mend your broken heart with thongs from beautiful unfamiliar asses” and “smiley emoticons are conversational condoms: they make even the riskiest texts safe. You whore. 🙂 See?” Just so you know the caliber of comedic mind we’re dealing with here.
Our characters encompass all of the wide diversity of possible men! There’s Gibbs, the man of color who’s a playa! There’s Milo, the cute funny guy, recently dumped by his girlfriend, who doesn’t want to grow up and is inexplicably not played by Seth Rogen! There’s Neal, the nerd, you can tell because he wears glasses and isn’t good at dirty talk and has a girlfriend instead of trying to hook up with girls at clubs! There’s Tyler, who is pretty and says stupid things, which is kind of refreshing to have as a male personality instead of a female, but I think they just did it because they ran out of potential dudesonalities!
Every dude is defined in terms of his pussy-getting ability. Gets pussy a lot, got dumped by the girl who gave him pussy, in monogamous relationship and probably didn’t get much pussy outside of it, is pretty and so gets pussy. Because pussy is the only thing that matters apparently!
And then there’s Baby Daddy, a name which comes from the hilarious and vaguely racist “it’s black slang, but said by white people!” type of show-naming also practiced by Baby Mama.
Look, I should be the easiest fucking person to sell on this show. I love Children Raised By Inappropriate But Well-Meaning People stories! Especially if, as in Baby Daddy, there is a chosen family that comes together to raise the kid! I’ve probably wasted several weeks of my life, all told, reading kidfic! All I ask is that my Children Raised By Inappropriate But Well-Meaning People stories not be horrifically sexist. Is that so much to ask, Hollywood?
Apparently so, because the only two available subtypes are Women Learn That Family Is More Important Than Career and Men Can’t Do Ladythings, This Is Hilarious.
Baby Daddy, as you can probably guess by the title, is a version of the second type. They literally duct tape the kid’s diaper on. Because men can’t figure out how to work basic things like diapers! That’d be ridiculous! Next thing you know they’d be capable of doing the laundry and cooking dinner and being vaguely competent parents and then where would we be? Anarchy! Chaos! Cats and dogs living together!
aliarasthedaydreamer
Ami Angelwings
Hershele Ostropoler
Cheradenine
jlandrith
kaija24
2020
noahbrand
Cliff Pervocracy
ozymandias
Shora
sirgabe
figleaf
John Hawkins
No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? 
Ozy, I was wondering what you thought of this:
I stopped watching TV a long time ago because most shows are somehow both ridiculously predictable and bad at making sense.
My father was almost never cooked, cleaned, changed diapers, etc., preferring to leave that to my mother (as well as the kids, especially after the divorce), but on the rare occasions that he had to do those things, he still wasn’t anywhere near as bad as those buffoonish comedy dads. (Actually, he wasn’t bad at all, just a bit subpar compared to the rest of the family.) Maybe the humor comes in part from the fact that the concept is a ridiculous over-exaggeration of the fact that fathers tend to be worse on the average. But this is because they’re usually not the primary caretakers, not because of inherent male incompetence. I never found that kind of thing funny.
“My father was almost never cooked, cleaned, changed diapers, etc.”
I hope that was a typo.
“My father was almost never cooked, cleaned, changed diapers, etc.”
Uhh… yeah. I think I meant to write “has” in place of “was”, but that’s still a bit grammatically awkward… you can probably figure out what I was trying to say.
@Not Me:
Yes, and I agree with you all the way down to the “not funny” part.
As a baby I regularly slept on my dad’s chest, wet diaper and all.
Also, he showed my mom how to cook.
What do you mean men can’t be caretakers?
By “you” I meant mainstream media, in case that wasn’t clear.
I think this supports the toxic but all-too-common marriage dynamic of one partner feigning stupidity to get out of doing something and the other playing along so that they have ammunition to use against them later. Why contradict such a popular and convenient lie?
Or it’s one person getting the other to shulder more than their share through flattering their ego by saying that only they can do it. For a fictional, non marrige, example that’s how Ron and Harry get Hermoine to do so much of their school work in the Harry Potter books
Duct-taping diapers can be a good idea.
Otherwise, uuuughh, television, why you so hateful?
I’ve always liked the term “Baby Daddy,” since it can accurately and without awkwardness describe a relationship which might be complicated on many levels. The show sounds terrible, and I have never understood how two ladies as funny as Amy Poehler and Tina Fey did Baby Mama, but I’ve no trouble with the term. I don’t really think of it as inherently racist, though it could of course be used in a racist way.
As for Men at Work: when you have to steal your jokes from The Oatmeal (except with sex lol!), maybe just stop and consider whether that show really needs to happen.
>> am I the only person who reads that as inspiration for getting through your period?
I dunno, I read it as “men’s perspiration”
I’ curious now to know if “Baby Daddy” was sponsored in any way by Huggies.
Mr Daisy is obsessed with the fact that DARK SHADOWS is set in 1972 but the songs (featured in the commercials) are all older.
Now that he has repeatedly mentioned it, I find it annoying as hell too.