TVSquad

The Parents Television Council has added FOX's Family Guy to the list of shows it's going after.

They are filing another complaint with the FCC, this time over last Sunday's episode of the cartoon that featured (from the PTC complaint) "bestiality, orgies, and babies eating sperm." By sheer coincidence, this was the same plot as the latest episode of The Hills.

Actually, I was kinda shocked by the episode myself, but I'm always shocked by episodes of Family Guy. That's what makes it funny.

According to a study conducted by the Parents Television Council, marital sex is portrayed as boring on television while extra-marital sex is portrayed as "glamorous" and "exciting". The study then goes on to say that those portrayals are wrong, if not downright inaccurate.

"Everybody is having sex on TV except for married couples," PTC president Tim Winter said.

Perhaps television could satisfy the PTC's claims if married couples are shown having wild, animal sex on prime-time. They also seem to forgot that in certain states, gay couples can marry. If gay, married couples are having sex on prime-time television, would that alleviate the concerns of the PTC? I suspect not.

I find any study by the PTC to be somewhat suspect (I recall their rather skewed attack against pro-wrestling a few years ago). While their obvious agenda is to protect children from smut, I believe that their more subtle and honest agenda is to create a social pyramid with the PTC on top.

That's the NBC show, not the city.

The Parents Television Council has filed a complaint with the FCC about the February 15 episode of Las Vegas that showed "shadowy naked women" streaking through the casino. Here's the video and the complaint filed by the PTC. You really can't see much in the video. It seems to be blurred a bit here and there. Is that the way it was shown on the network or is the video edited? This particular episode of the show ran Friday at 9pm and not usual 10pm slot. The show has recently been canceled by NBC, so this is probably going to be one of those times where we here about the ruling five years after the show is off the air (a la NYPD Blue). The PTC has also filed a complaint against CBS about Dexter.

I have no idea if the PTC has a legit beef here (though I see nothing wrong), but I do know that Shadowy Naked Women would make a great TV show.

For a group that has the word "television" in their name, they sure do seem to have a lot of problems with it.

The Parents Television Council is calling for advertisers to boycott Dexter, saying that CBS didn't do enough editing of the show when they broadcast the Showtime drama on its own network last Sunday night. The PTC says that CBS broke their promise when they said they were going to edit the show to network standards and that "depictions of violence were barely altered from the Showtime network original format."

(S05E15) After better than a month off, finally a new episode of Family Guy. I'm not sure I understand the thinking behind the scheduling of the show this year, but the list of behaviors from the networks that I don't understand is a long one. So, we'll take what we can get. Whatever the reasoning, it was nice to have the Griffins back with a fresh adventure.

I think I probably came into this one with my expectations set a little high. Those previews that revealed the family packing up and taking a trip put the thought in the back of my mind that this could be one of those classic episodes. It called to mind the season three episode "To Love and Die in Dixie." Unfortunately, now having seen it, it wasn't a classic.

Wow, that might be the oddest sentence I've ever written.

A while back it was reported that NBC was editing out the religious aspects of the Veggie Tales cartoons they were airing on Saturday mornings. But now, Time's James Poniewozik reports that the network has had a change of heart and will actually put the religious themes back into the shows. The Parents Television Council broke the news earlier this week.

Like Poniewozik, I'm not a fan of the PTC (I think some of their ideas are dangerous), but I agree that NBC is doing the right thing here. I mean, I'm not a big fan of editing or censorship, no matter what side of the political or social spectrum you fall on, and I thought it was bizarre when it was revealed that NBC was taking out the religious aspects of the episodes. I've never seen the show, but when they took the religion out, what was left? Was it just a bunch of vegetables running around?

Oh, puh-lease. The Parent Television Council, a group that has a stick up its collective ass, has made a formal complaint to the FCC about last week's Emmy telecast. It wasn't the plane crash skit that ignited their anger, it was a comment by winner Helen Mirren as she accepted her Emmy for Best Actress in HBO's Elizabeth I. You may recall, Helen worried about taking a tumble on her way up to the stage. She mentioned falling "tits over ass", a common British phrase. Calista Flockhart later presented with Mirren and said the phrase again in playful banter. NBC did air the show on a delay but chose not to censor the comment. The PTC released this statement, "It is utterly irresponsible and atrocious for NBC to air this vulgar language during the safe harbor time when millions of children were in the viewing audience." The FCC is reportedly trying to decifer its own rules to determine whether the offense is worthy of a fine.