The Dumbing Down of Disability on Glee

“Hairography” was pretty typical of Glee for me– lots of awesomeness, like Quinn singing “Papa don’t preach,” no matter how inappropriate for baby-sitting that would actually be, and Kurt’s manipulative makeover and then some really heavy-handed embarrassing stuff.

I think this show has a real problem with the way it deals with disability. I didn’t write about it at the time because there are other people who wrote everything I wanted to say, and better. I realize that many people thought the episode “Wheels” was a step up for the show, but on the whole disability activists and writers disagree– and I see their point. Glee seems to view disability as inherently about clumsiness and tragedy and incompetence. When you live with a disability you become competent at your life. That’s why the wheelchair experiment is offensive: in real life it would just make Rachel think “Poor Artie! Always dropping food all over himself… his arms sure must hurt!”

Likewise this episode had the “hilarious” Glee coach from the school for the Deaf who HAHA doesn’t even know how Deaf he is. So what’s the message here? Deaf people are stupid? The fact the the only “real” singing had to come from the McKinley kids was patronizing. Why did the show treat sign language as if it’s equivalent to choreography when really it’s equivalent to talking? ASL *can* be used in choreography, but there’s more traditional dance involved as well.

It reminded me of the pathetic wheelchair choreography in “Wheels” which was basically “sweat ‘n push ‘n JAZZ HANDS!” Competitive wheelchair dancing is a real thing and it’s a lot more interesting than what Glee showed us.

Really, if you can’t do it right, PLEASE don’t do it.

It can’t be *that* hard to find people with real disabilities to act as advisers to the show, even Private Practice, a show I think is MUCH worse found a real wheelchair user to play their disabled character. Some professional and personal advice would help to avoid some ridiculous, embarrassing errors.

I really like Glee and I want it to succeed. I love that there’s a musical show on tv, I have an enormous crush on Puck and I love Kurt and Rachel’s rivalry. Last week doostyn made a list of things Glee has to lose in order to become the excellent show we both want it to be. To that I have to add: No more very special episodes about disability.

Underpants, Ejaculating!

Excerpts from this week’s Nip/Tuck.  Enjoy.

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“You look like you’ve aged 10 years in the past month.” (Totally rude, totally unsolicited commentary from Sean and Julia’s lawyer, directed at Julia. It’s patently false, but a hilariously bitchy statement nonetheless.)

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Julia reciting her ‘mantra’ while Sean injects her with Botox: “Whatever it takes!”

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Sean to Julia after sex: “Well we had to get that out of the way sooner or later.  You’re not gonna get all weird on me now are you?”

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“Oh really, you were thinking of me while you were masturbating into my granddaughter’s panties?”  Not only funny at pure face value as a line, but also hilares because Erica is clearly upset that her Italian stud Renaldo is not masturbating into her panties, and not at all disturbed by how gross and pedophile-y this behavior is nor displaying any kind of human inclination to protect her granddaughter.

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Renaldo the (potential?) pederast to Erica: “My fantasy, it’s still in my head; your fantasy, it’s standing before you.  Who’s sick now, huh?”  (Um, what that does that even mean?  No one thinks boning a young dude when you’re an old lady is as sick as masturbating into a child’s panties dude.  Point not made.  Also, once you ejaculate all over a kid’s undies, the fantasy, it’s no longer safely in your head, it’s a gross physicality now.  The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.)

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“I found him with her underpants ejaculating.”  There should be a comma in there but it’s funnier like this.  Ejaculating underpants!  Heeee.

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Matt to prison rapist with whom he shares a special power top/bottom bitch relationship:  “Do you want a Ho-Ho?  That always makes you feel better.”

Turkey Time

Oh man. Remember how I said Mrs. Shaw was not a well woman? Well, awesomely, she comes to town and decides to “scare” Michael but ends up shooting at him, and then she hands off the gun to Cooper, who intends to fly her back to Ohio and put her under psychiatric care.

But…. even weather is a schemer! It colludes with Mrs. Shaw to ground her plane in Chicago. And… somehow she ends up back in LA? I guess she took another plane, but I like to think she hitch-hiked. “What brought you out to LA, lady?”

“Murdering my ex-son-in-law. Why, do you have family out this way?”

My joy at Sam’s departure was premature.. she went back to MD and Billy followed her and proposed enthusiastically, yet annoyingly. But it’s sort of okay because Sam’s maid of honor is her art school friend Connie who is AMAZING. She has this creepy scrapbook full of pictures of herself and Sam, it rivals Dr. Horrible’s photo collection of Penny pictures. Sam’s all “It’s going to be a great wedding!”

And Connie Manson lamps: “Over my dead body!” which is such an on the nose soap opera thing to say. Nobody SAYS “over my dead body” any more than people say “Oh burrito!” Annoyingly, her scheming seems to consist of throwing herself at Billy which is nine kinds of repulsive. Billy’s success with the ladies is such a mystery to me. I mean, idiots like Allison and Sam, sure, but our cunning Amanda Woodward?

Anyway, Mrs. Shaw disguises herself in scrubs, breaks into the OR to stab Michael, Megan comes in to warn him and gets stabbed causing Mrs. Shaw to yell: “Just as well! You took my Kimberly I’ll take your whoooooore!”

Really, sentence structure matters. Mrs. Shaw is unwittingly, but slightly accurately implying that Kimberly is a whore. Really more of a pimp, I guess.

Amanda has to save her new ad agency by sleeping with her old boss, Eric Banes, and, weirdly, she has qualms. This isn’t the Amanda I know! Amanda slept with Billy for no other reason that mysterious non-specific advancement right after he gave his big Greed is Good speech. Whence this sudden conscience? I guess she looooves Kyle, but I can’t, for the life of me, fathom why.

In 6×10, the delightfully titled “My Little Coma Girl,” Amanda regains some of her moxie when she pulls a gun on Taylor who is there to gloat after Kyle caught Amanda circa flagrante delicto. She’s all: “I’m going to miss having him around here. You know he always made me feel so safe. I guess from now on I’m going to have to fend for myself. But luckily, before I met Kyle I took lessons. Filled out the registration forms because you never know when someone might break into your apartment or be a general nuisance…. I bought it a long time ago, I don’t even know if it works, but… I’m willing to give it a try.” And she takes the safety off and points it at Taylor and it’s AWESOME. “Get the HELL out of my apartment before I blow that smirk off your face. AND DON’T COME BACK!”

To compound things, Kyle pushes Taylor in the pool (that NEVER gets old!) and then creeps out all “I could soooo easily jump in there and hold your head under….” Dial it back!

Lexi spills the beans that Cooper fell for Kimberly when she was in her coma because he’s doing the saaame thing with Megan, including not let anyone else in the ICU (including Michael) and holding her hand and singing to her. It’s totes creepy, but everyone is acting like it’s just a nuisance! It’s so weird. Michael is like, “I don’t know, keeping that perv off my comatose wife will be a problem for my career… better just stay and have a drink and dessert!” I am barely paraphrasing that, by the way. CREEPY.

Cooper’s sputtering indignation is amazing: “Oh, is it WEIRD to be compassionate? About wanting to give LIFE back to a patient? WHAT?”

Yeah it IS weird if you think they NEEEEED your sperm. Christ, who needs that explained to them?

So Cooper sneaks back in and he’s all “I’m sorry.. I wanted to be here for you.. you know what? I’m sorry, no one’s been playing your favorite music for you…” and so he puts on Pachelbel’s Canon. Oh I’m SO sure a classic wedding processional is Megan’s favorite song. “I’m the one who knows what’s best for you…”

Disgustingly, this ends up waking Megan up. Gross.

Meanwhile, back in bland love, Billy’s mom offers her hideous brooch to Sam for her wedding day, but she turns it down, and Mrs. Billy’s mom is all “Allison always loved this brooch.” And Sam get’s all pissy about it. Pin on the damn brooch, you ingrate! Mrs. Campbell complains to Billy who has a big fight with Sam, and they end up getting hitched mid-fight. Awk.ward. Jennifer Mancini is like me, she’s all “Don’t make a scene, just go get married.” So they do. Lexi gets trashed and is grinding with everyone on the dance floor and it’s hilarious. She’s all tugging on dude’s ties, patting her weave, then she goes home with Peter and he’s all, you barely drank, why are you so fucked up? And she’s practically falling over all, “I guess I’m hiiiiiigh on youuuuu…” Yeah, or on the delightful combination of benzos and champagne.

Mrs. Campbell also gets trashed and is all, “You’d better keep your eye on him… You’re not the first love of his life. And you won’t be the last. How bout a toast: Here’s to my current daughter-in-law– may your marriage to Billy last longer than the first one. Or… am I not allowed to mention Brooke either? Just don’t wear your high heels around the pool.”

DAMN Mrs Campbell! Point and Match! THAT is how you give a toast!

This episode is also nominally a Thanksgiving episode, so everyone is making turkeys and yams between comas and weddings. Melrose is just like life that way.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Booze Tube! May your holiday be coma and scheme-free but still retain its alcohol and prescription pills. Or the reverse if that’s really what you’re into.

ETA: Just drunk kidding. All that stuff I said happened in 6×10? That was really 6×11 “Everybody Come to Kyle’s!”

I need your sperm!

There are so many amazing classic Melrose moments that this whole blog could be about them. Sometimes I feel like the writers room is just a deck of cards with the male characters and deck of cards with the female characters and they draw one from each and get them together.

How else can you explain 6×03’s Kyle and Amanda and Taylor and Michael? The ostensible reason for the latter pairing is that Taylor needs to get pregnant to scheme Kyle back into their marriage (apparently she’s over Peter Burns, suddenly), and she needs it done now since she’s already told Kyle she’s pregnant. I guess she’s never heard of a paternity test? Pretty odd since Amanda keeps demanding one.

Anyway, Taylor corners Michael in his office and yells “I gotta get pregnant tonight… Have sex with me!… I neeeed your sperm!!” Because it’s Michael as soon as Taylor flashes some flesh and pouts those radiant lips at him he is overcome, as if against his will. By the end of the episode he succumbs a second time on the desk at work all the while moaning “No no nooooo.” Lips aside, Taylor is pretty tiny. If he really didn’t want to I’m fairly certain he could have gotten away.

6×04 continues this ridick storyline, with Michael at a medical conference and Megan turning up while he’s boning Taylor in the shower. But more importantly! It introduces a new character. I don’t remember mentioning yet that Matt’s apartment has been taken over by a scheming Dr. Cooper who wants to avenge Kimberly’s death, but there is more to the story! His exwife Lexi is introduced, and she looks and sounds a lot like Allison, but is MUCH more awesome. She’s a schemer and a pill popper and it turns out that Dr. Cooper fell in love with Kimberly when she was in her coma. That is some creepy Talk to Her shit, especially when he falls in love with Megan while she’s in a coma. I guess he’s lucky he’s a doctor, or this would be a very difficult fetish to maintain.

Apparently Cooper is friends with Kimberly’s mom. Let’s just say… the nut does not fall far from the nut. This woman is carrying quite a grudge, and she has like 9000 headshots of Kimberly around her living room. It seems a bit over the top.

And the best thing about this episode? Sam proposes to Billy… and he says NO!!! And then she leaves him! Christmas came early this year!

And then he’ll be crying into my shoulder pads…

Glee is infuriating.  I want to like it so much , and it tries really hard, it reeeeaally does.  Maybe it, like its theatrical assemblage of characters, can come on too strong and therefore be rendered unattractive.  Maybe it’s like how I feel about meeting my high school self, which I’m pretty sure would be sorta cringe-y.   Oh but I bet high school me would love Glee without abandon.

It does have occasional flashes of brilliance (Kurt’s “Single Ladies” punt routine coupled with touching storyline about his dad, Rachel singing anything, also Kurt doing pretty much anything) and I feel like the necessary ingredients for an amazing show exist, but it’s just not quite coming into its own, and this early stage is a critical period for a tv show.  The foundations are being laid, and it can get really bad from here.  Which is why: no more fake pregnancy storyline please (although the actual teen one with the ever more likable Quinn and dopefuck boyfriend Finn, who sang to a sonogram this episode while I shat myself, is bearable), and also no more Mr. Schuster until he becomes less of a total jackoff weenie dickbrain — same goes for his lame scrawny porcelain doll love interest counselor and their will they or won’t they blahfest.

On last week’s, which I’m just now watching, it at least leaned more toward brilliant for the first time in what seems like a long time.  Last week I mostly remember the plot that resulted in wheelchair dancing to the “roooolling, roooolling, rooooolling on the river…” part of “Proud Mary” and teens learning a valuable lesson about diversity and struggle and sticking together and me throwing up in my mouth a little bit, but then this week Rachel, who as previously stated, is amazing, gets a crush on Mr. Schuster (gross, right, but remember who your stupid high school self had crushes on…some of them were totes gross, be honest) and sings the song of the very name of her diseeeease from the late 90s called “Crush” (my stupid high school self liked this song…turns out I’m still moved to the native rhythms of pop music that my people have been crafting and celebrating proudly for generations, current self also likes it) hilariously to a freaked out Mr. Schuster in his car, and before than there was sonogram singing (“I’ll Stand by You” by The Pretenders…heeeeeeee), and before that Kurt was discussing his plan to seduce Finn and was all “…and then he’ll be crying into my shoulder pads” which is funny because it’s true, Finn tends to get weepy and Kurt wears things that must contain shoulder pads, oh and then Finn sings “You’re Having My Baby” (interwebs tell me Paul Anka wrote and sang, in duet with someone I don’t know, this cheezy 70s jewel) to Quinn at a veeeery stupid, inopportune time (dinner with Quinn’s ‘rents, who love Glenn Beck, might not take the news so well dumbass).  Also the series had a rare moment of dramatic umph when Quinn delivered a kind of devastating speech to her parents about her pregnancy, and the actress who plays her, Dianna Argon, actually had me believing this was a real person and what she said was meaningful and sad, which is just something Glee usually doesn’t get entirely right when it tries.

Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch, so we already know worlds ahead of the others in comic consistency) wasn’t part of this, and this bodes even better for this episode’s standing, because I still liked it.  The show needs to figure out how to integrate her character better, because she is starting to get stale and not grow with the others and becoming a little one-note, and I don’t want to see that happen to Sue, because she’s great and so is Jane Lynch and they, character and actress, deserve better.

Ugh the show did get pretty cheeseball bad at the end when they sang “Lean on Me” to Quinn and Finn — but Quinn and Puck made sex eyes at each other and I love this love triangle so much more than any other featured on the show, and Kurt made phone fingers and batted his eyes at Finn, so it wasn’t all a travesty.  I just know you can do it again in upcoming episodes Glee!  I outgrew my awkwardness (nod in agreement) and you can too!  I believe in you!  Now put on some pimple cream and let it bake under those floodlights!

I’m All Out of Love

This week’s Park and Recreation was AWESOME.

Once again, Leslie infiltrates a boys’ club: the annual hunting trip. On the course of the hunt someone shoots Ron in the head, Dick Cheney-style, and Leslie confesses to the ranger that it was her in the greatest confession ever:

Leslie: “Okay. Fine. I got that tunnel-vision that girls get. That’s what happened. End of story… Ummm.. I let my emotions get the best of me. I just I guess… cared too much I guess. I was thinking with my lady parts. I was walking and I felt something icky. I thought there was going to be chocolate… (valley girl voice) I don’t even remember! I’m wearing a new um. bra, and it closes in the front so it popped open and it threw me off. All I want to do is have babies! Are you single? I’m just like, going through a thing right now. I guess my life isn’t complete and I just want to shoot someone! This would not happen if I had a penis! What? Bitches be crazy… I’m good at tolerating pain, I’m bad at math… and.. I’m stupid…”

But, aha! It wasn’t ever Leslie! She covered for Tom because he didn’t have a hunting license!

I think Leslie’s hero Hillary Clinton would be proud of this subversion.

But! Also! April and Andy bond over the sublime Muzak semicroonings of one Air Supply! I’m not ashamed to admit, All out of Love is one of my karaoke songs. But I’ve never given anyone a hickey to it.

ETA: In my drunken review here (only one typo, (that I caught) good for me! Or disturbing for me. Whatever, don’t judge.) I forgot to mention the amazing line: “Guys love it when you can show them you’re better than they are at something they love.”

Long has this been my misguided romantic strategy. A few years ago I had a crush on this one dude, and he was all “Let’s play Horse” and I was all okay, but I don’t really know anything about basketball… And I kicked his ASS and was totally ungracious about it. There may have been dancing around and shouts of “In your FACE!”

My lady friends were all, “Haven’t you seen tv or movies? You should have let him show you how.”

But fuck that noise. Future gentleman callers: If you want to be better than me at something you’re just going to have to be better than me at it. And if you’re not attracted to excellence then… you’re the weird one!

What now, was the Cylon plan?

I just watched “The Plan” the BSG extra movie that purported to tell us what the Cylon plan was. Except two hours later I’m as baffled as ever and continue to regard the Cylons as mind-blowingly incompetent.

Oh I get that they were tripped up by love which ruined their initial plot, except… what WAS that, exactly? Crazy Cavil wanted the final five to detach from humanity by watching them die, but he couldn’t wait one more day for the Battlestar to be retired? He, for some reason needed to place the five with humanity in order to… what? Strengthen their connection that he wanted to break?

It was somewhat enjoyable to see familiar events from the Cylon side, but I expected a lot more from something called The Plan.

Castrated Queers

Tonight’s Gossip Girl, anticipated in the media for its much-hyped threesome storyline, let me down on a note surprisingly unrelated to the players in the threesome (more on that later though): it reinforced the fact that a gay character has been sidelined from the moment they called themselves gay.  I call it castrated queer syndrome.

As with characters ranging from (the original) Melrose Place‘s Matt, to even the recent fairly risque True Blood‘s Lafayette (neither of whom ever came out because they were gay from the start of their respective series, but had or have had no on-screen romantic life or displays of affection) , Gossip Girl‘s Erik pretty much stopped having a life (more specifically a romantic one, but this is a soap, so that’s pretty much all of life for one of these characters) from his first moment of gayness.  They tossed him a boyfriend in an off-camera way that we don’t even know the details of, proceeded to never let them be romantic in any way on screen, and never gave them a storyline until it recently served the purposes of another character.  And in this episode, that lame relationship came to its conclusion (Jenny and friends were mean to Erik and his boyfriend Jonathan, Erik was mean back, Jonathan thought this made Erik a “changed” person for some reason, Jonathan broke up with him), and now Erik is boyfriend-less, yet poised to be in more episodes as Jenny’s foil in her rise from Brooklyn obscurity to Upper East Side queen-dom.  Hmmm…strange coincidence?  I think not.  Erik is suddenly going to be in more episodes, and his sudden singlehood makes it less scary for network television.  Boooooo Gossip Girl!  Booooooo!

You may have tossed us gays a meaty, delicious, sexy bone when Chuck kissed a dude and proclaimed, when asked if it was a big deal, “What, you think I’ve never kissed a guy before?”  But our Pavlovian drooling instincts have subsided and our brains are no longer so clouded (mine always gets a little fuzzy whenever Chuck just appears on camera).  Stop being fucking weenies and give Erik a fucking boyfriend who he fucking fucks, or at least dry humps or makes out with.  I mean, really, it’s not like you can seriously be trying to court conservative parents who decry your poisoning of American youth, right?  May I point again to your November sweeps threesome?

And, as promised, about that:  disgusting!  Gnatalby predicted the mysteriously sexed-up Dan Humphrey would be involved, and she just had to be right, didn’t she?  Hilary Duff’s character Olivia kissed a girl and she liked it (even though it was Vanessa…more disgustitude), but apparently it’s not her boyfriend (who was in the room, hence the three of the -some) she has to worry about minding it; in the promo for next week it appears she minds it once she realizes she’s not leaving for filming a movie like she thought at the commencement of the menage a trois.  This looks to be a dull plot, like most involving Dan and Vanessa, and I hate that the writers played it safe by having a girl threesome with a guy planted firmly in the middle.  I hope we don’t learn the details of the threesome because Dan is gross, but I’m betting he was the beneficiary of the whole thing, and that the kiss we saw between the ladies was as far as anything between them went.  That’s not shaking things up, Gossip Girl, that’s a mainstream, heterocentric fallacy that needs to die.  For the sake of my continued viewership and your continued exisitence, kill these impulses to write stories like these in the future, and resist the urge to continue the castration of the one true queer you have.  You don’t want to piss the gays off, and if you haven’t already castrated the off-camera, behind-the-scenes queers to the point of not caring, you might wake up one day to no wardrobe department (in addition to the approximate brillion percent of the rest of your creative force…there’s got to be at least one gay writer in the room who is sick of this shit too) if you continue down this dark, gay-sexless path.

The Abriged Edition

If only we could all have so much exposition, too bad it had to happen on the second episode of the season rather than the first.

Megan: Okay, here’s the abridged edition: Craig just lost his wife, Sidney, in a terrible accident on their wedding day and Craig blames Samantha because she was in the car that ran Sidney down. Now, Billy works with Craig, so he’s caught right in the middle, and, Sam, oh she’s a terrible wreck and understandably, because her father was in the car with her and he died too.. in the same accident…

Later Megan exposition fairies some more to two people who were direct participants in the actions she describes, Peter and Michael:

Megan: First of all, I’m the one who canceled the meeting. Look, the board still has no idea about the feud that is going on between the two of you and I’ve decided it’s going to stay that way for your welfare and the welfare of Burns-Mancini a medical corporation. [That’s some oddly formal phrasing.] … Let’s review the facts: Fact number one, you both have acted like insane egocentric overly ambitious idiots…. Fact two, through a nefarious plot worthy of Satan, Michael stole your job, Peter. Fact three, rather than go through the proper authorities, you, Peter, tossed Michael through a window. [In Peter’s defense, you don’t call the cops on Melrose to get people arrested for things they actually did. Prison is for the unjustly accused, duh.] Now the purpose of my being here today is to negotiate a peace treaty.

Oh Megan, you make it all seem so exciting, when we all know if hasn’t been exciting since Brooke got killed in the Melrose Pool. Awesomely.

The show’s greatest asset, Amanda Woodward, is presently paired with Kyle, who is not only boring, but manages to infect potentially interesting storylines with his dullness, he’s like the Dan Humphrey of Melrose Place.

Anyhoodle, Amanda goes to confront Peter about his alleged sterility which would mean that Taylor is pregnant by Kyle (but who knows if she’s even pregnant, on tv it seems like 95% of pregnancies are faked, when this seems like the most idiotic plot a woman could hatch, as proof is expected on a pretty strict timeline). Anyway, she tells Peter that being with Kyle is nice and uncomplicated, and it’s the first time she’s ever felt that. And Peter is all, “The second time, you mean.”

Oh I LOLed and LOLed. Peter… you tried to MURDER her! Most normal people consider that a complication.

Private Practice Takes a Bold Stand Against Decent Behavior

Ookay. This week’s Private Practice was a fairly uncomfortable watch, and there was nothing outlandish enough to make it fun.

There’s a new doctor at Naomi’s practice, Dr. Fife, a genetic engineer who uses a wheelchair who pressures Naomi into agreeing to select for an embryo for two patients with dwarfism to allow them to created a baby who also has dwarfism. Naomi is reluctant but agrees until she learns that these embryos will also give the future baby a 40% chance of developing some kind of cancer (which Lauredhel over on FWD points out, is the baseline cancer risk for the US population).

The couple is upset and accuses Naomi of prejudice and she reveals that she was fat growing up, so she knows all about prejudice. She slams PC attempts to clean up language as unrealistic, and concludes that everyone has experience with prejudice. The couple agrees to have a tall baby.

Naomi also yells at the geneticist, who congratulates her for getting over her inhibitions about the wheelchair, and says he feels better knowing she used to be hugely fat.

Sooo… obviously this was problematic in a number of ways. Firstly, I don’t know if this is realistic controversy for people with dwarfism, but it reminded me of the controversies for Deaf parents who don’t want their kids to get cochlear implants (as seen on Scrubs). TV morals seem to come down on the side that you should make your child as “normal” as possible, but I think that’s pretty problematic. As the parents say, is it that far of a reach to designing your kid to not be black or gay? In a way this is different because it’s selecting *for* a trait, not against one, but I think the difference is mainly semantic.

Naomi’s treatment of Dr. Fine (played by Michael Thornton, who apparently is actually a real wheelchair user, one in the plus column) was pretty uncomfortable to watch, and I’m probably being naive to hope that a doctor would behave more naturally toward people with disabilities.

Naomi’s speech about PC language was really problematic, especially since so much of the episode she was “ironically” ranting about how Dr. Fife was a “little, little man” which was, I think, intended to indicate that any slight was obviously unintentional, but which really just highlighted the awkwardness. I don’t know where I come down in the PC debates. On the one hand, I’m certainly very uncomfortable with n-words and f-words and using “retarded” as a slur, but when it comes to more archaic words like “lame” I’m on the fence.

But I think no matter where you come down on the PC language debates, we can ALL agree that context is important, yes? So if you have two patients with dwarfism sitting in your office, even if you normally don’t avoid such words, it *might* be a good idea not to run around your office yelling “You’re a little, little man!” at a disliked co-worker.

I don’t like it when tv shows decide that formerly smart characters have to suddenly act really really stupid for plot purposes. It’s insulting to the audience and terribly awkward.