I’ve been feeling down lately and I started re-watching futurama for some good nostalgia, but it keeps making transphobic jokes which is kind of just making me feel worse. Anyone have any suggestions for comfort shows to watch?
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Ted Lasso
Adventure time
Steven Universe
Out Flag Means Death
The Good Place
What We Do In The Shadows
They’re not fiction, but two that work for me are Great British Bake-Off and Taskmaster. The people on GBBO are so positive and helpful, it’s a welcome change from American cooking competitions. Taskmaster is creative and silly, always good for a laugh.
Second the recommendation of Ted Lasso. Ted is a wonderful example of a person who doesn’t understand something, knows he doesn’t understand, but his heart is in the right place and he wants to learn.
Series 15 of Taskmaster featured Mae Martin, a nonbinary comedian
They were fantastic as well!
The series with Mike Wozniak should be avoided unless you’re okay with passing out laughing.
The New Zealand version has a different dynamic, but I enjoy it as least as much as the OG.
Great Canadian Baking Show is similarly positive. Everyone is so nice it hurts! They often help each other finish challenges and it’s a competition show :)
Bake Off is pretty much pure comfort. It’s just perfect in every way.
The American version isn’t bad either. It avoids the worst of reality show tropes, and it still has Paul Hollywood, so not bad at all.
The Owl House
Adventure Time
Tuca & Bertie
Over The Garden Wall
holy , i gotta rewatch over the garden walll. that was so good
Bluey!
It’s cute, it’s short, and it’s great for de-stressing! I put it on almost any time I’m feeling anxious or depressed
It’s written so wonderfully, and can be fully enjoyed by adults just as well as kids
Came here to say Bluey!! My partner and I (both grown ass adults) watch it together and cry tears of joy as we let it re-parent us!! Such a wonderful show!
To tack on “kids shows that are just fine thank you very much” I really enjoy “Tinga Tinga Tales” The animation is crazy, music beautiful, the stories interesting (folk tales) and the characters fun. Great way to wind down for 20 minutes, finding out Why Frog Croaks.
My partner and I have been really enjoying Spy X Family. Its a nice little found family/comedy series with very wholesome content.
The premise is that the titular Spy has an assignment to make contact with a total shut-in who only appears in public for events at his son’s school. So the Spy adopts a child from a shady orphanage and meets a woman who is willing to fake being his wife to get his child into the elite school. Of course, the child he adopted can read minds and the woman he fake married is secretly an assassin. No one but the child knows the truth about everyone and they’re each so focused on hiding their own secrets they don’t catch on to the others. The series isn’t complete yet, but so far the major theme is them coming to genuinely value their little family as more than a convenient facade.
Its just such a cute show, and I go back and forth between cackling and tearing up at how cute they all are. The only thing I think is particularly off about the show is the assassins brother. He’s a secret police officer and also incestuously obsessed with his sister. Its a weird inclusion, but he is made fun of by the narrative for his behavior and that is enough for me to still enjoy how good the rest of the show is
Like @Froyn said, Bob’s Burgers is super cozy.
Bee and Puppycat is my comfort show
Agreed. I havent watched season 2 yet and I really have to.
Fun fact, I watched the entirety of Bee and Puppycat without subtitles for puppycat and was very confused the entire time lol
To add what has already been mentioned: She-Ra and Steven Universe.
Steven, especially the first few seasons is super feel good low impact chill show.
Gravity falls is also pretty great for this.
It’s always a good choice to watch Avatar
Dogs in Space
Farscape
She-ra and the Princesses of Power
All are scifi, the top two are sillier and the bottom two are longer and get a bit serious and emotional at times.
If you haven’t seen Farscape and you like scifi space opera wackiness and Jim Henson puppets, seriously give it a go. It’s very comforting and fun.
Farscape is a deep cut.
Even Sillier than that is a British comedy called “Red Dwarf” and as far as I recall there is no transphobia. The closest I remember is an episode where the main character ends up in an alternate dimension with the female version of himself. They hit it off and the male main character of the series ends up pregnant, to his distress. At the time I remember it being a really interesting way to bring up gender dynamics without being too laboring, though it’s been a while, and I also haven’t seen the new seasons they apparently made after the show got cult status.
Edit to add: a Reddit thread has this to say about Red Dwarf and being trans
In series 8, Kryten is assigned to women’s prison wing, just because he doesn’t have a penis when he clearly resembles a male, sounds like a male and acts like a male. That’s regardless of the fact that he has no chromosomes because he’s an android (not even gynoid, so another good point). The show makes it out as ridiculous that the only reason why he’s treated as female only because of his lack of penis.
Also, in the episode DNA, it’s shown that when he’s turned into human male, he’s still an android on the inside because he clearly feels discomfort from certain dysphoria, where he finds appliances sexually attractive and inability to adjust to human biology lacking robotic features.
Edit to add to the edit, I forgot the ships on board computer actually does upgrade themselves to present female
Holly upgrading to female is the first trans representation my GenX child self saw in life.
Farscape is problematic as well.
Humans! Are! Superior!
I joke. But Farscape got me through more than one breakup. Very queer friendly. It didn’t shy away from being fetish friendly as well. Rigel in a dominatrix suit still delights me. Described by one critic as, “One American’s introduction to the Australian S&M scene.”
Since most of the effects were practical, they aged far better than my other faves, DS9 and Babylon 5.
The Expanse is the best television I have ever seen and is extremely queer friendly. It’s dark, but so was Farscape.
Eh I’d quite confidently say Farscape is far less problematic than any other show of it’s era and a great many after it.
And humans are not superior in that universe, they once believed they were and evolved into universally hated (but really hot) hyperfascists. Bringing them down was one of the biggest eventual arcs in the show and it wasn’t done by Chriton being superior, he just had wormhole weapon tech in his head that he didn’t want and believed nobody should have.
Chriton is one of the most basic life forms in that part of the galaxy too, he’s barely more sentient than food and it’s mentioned almost once an episode. He gets by by the skin of his teeth and his only real skills are maths and making friends/pissing people off.
(I do like that he also looks like a bit of a gormless idiot too, and testament to the writing and actor as he never comes across as an entitled white boy either.)Babylon 5 has held up better than DS9 in my opinion, like both are good but B5 is just very clearly much better. The Expanse is fantastic though I agree with you fully there.
(Btw I’m not really arguing with you about anything here, I just wanted to rant about Farscape a little as I love it dearly.)
Totally meant as tongue in cheek. Farscape could be re-released today without any changes and still be considered to be fantastic and queer friendly.
The context is Crichton covered in regurgitated white “stuff”, carrying a sword two sizes too big, nerdy goggles, and a shield made of hull plating. Aeryn’s expression ofz “we’re fucked” makes the scene for me.
- Pretty Cure
- Hakumei and Mikochi
- Non Non Biyori
- K-On!
- Owl House
- Star Trek TNG
- Aikatsu!
- Little Witch Academia
- According to Jim (it’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure there’s no homophobic joke in it)
TNG had some pretty misogynistic and racist bits, though.
Lower Decks is a delightful show with the intelligence of TNG and the inclusiveness of Our Flag Means Death.
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The episode “Code of Honor” was fucking awful. IIRC, even the producers have apologized for that one.
Yeah… I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve watched them with my eyes instead of my ears, so I just queued it up. Why did they decide to cast the ligonians like that 👀? I knew it wasn’t a good one, but jeez. Anyway, it’s like the 4th episode of the whole series, and considered the 2nd worst piece of Star Trek in total.
I read that when the episode was pitched, it was going to be lizard aliens with a society similar to feudal Japan. Somewhere along the line, it turned into… that.
I was waiting to see, because my nostalgia probably blinds me, but I know it’s 80’s Star Trek. If I had to guess in the misogyny, it would probably be that the outfits for women are completely different than the standard issue uniform everyone else wears. In the first episode they had one guy wearing a Skant, then you basically only see them on women a couple times, then the women lose their brains because they gained cleavage, and lose cleavage to gain brains.
I really don’t have a guess on racism though. As far as I knew, Star Trek was always ahead of the curve on the round of race. William Shatner for all his problems intentionally botched every alternate take of the scene where he kissed Uhara to force them to include the first televised interracial kiss. They even had one episode in OG Star Trek where a race of half back half white people were fighting with the half white half black folks pointing out the absurdity.
Good Omens was fun
I’m sure you’ve already been through the usual suspects. So here’s my list. Hopefully some more esoteric ones will help out.
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Our Flag Means Death
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Star Trek: Lower Decks
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Los Espookys
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Good Omens
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Killjoys
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Black Mirror
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The Magicians
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The Umbrella Academy
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Sandman
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The Orville
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Farscape
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Love, Death, and Robots
Personally I would not consider ‘love, death and robots’ as ‘comfort’.
Neither is Black Mirror
That’s fair, I would though.
Black Mirror? That’s the only show I had to stop watching for my sanity, and I like some pretty dark stuff.
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Trailer Park Boys
My partner and I were going to rewatch Futurama soon, since we wanted to watch the old ones before getting into the reboot. I’m not going to enjoy that as much as I thought I would, am I?
As for recommendations, I don’t know if I would call it a comfort show since it can get really disturbing at times, but Doom Patrol is a great show, lots of fun and super queer.
There are a few episodes where being trans is almost the entire premise.
There are two different “Gender Bender” episodes where Bender is either cross dressing to act as a heel in pro wrestling, or surgically altered to become a fembot and compete in sports.
There is another episode where an alien removes the gender differences for the crew, and then changes the gender of the crew. They shoot a saucy pin-up calendar.
And then there’s the Dungeons and Dragons episodes where Hermes is a hermaphrodite centaur.
Oh, and the mind swapping episode where everybody changes brains, but that’s more Freaky Friday than gender swapping.
Pardon me if it’s rude to ask but do you mind explaining why those episodes are transphobic? Specifically the Bender gender swaps, I don’t remember the other examples you mentioned.
The wrestling one is just somewhat off kilter? It’s not outright transphobic, more just kinda silly. It doesn’t reference gender as an identity as much. More so gender as performance I’d say. It’s a comparatively brief portion of the episode compared with the Olympics based one. The rest of the episode is pretty great tho and is all about a misogynistic asshole getting his comeuppance from a downtrodden woman who’s always been told that fighting is for boy’s. It’s actually a great episode.
The Olympics one is self evidently transphobic. The premise is he’s not actually a woman, he’s doing it to beat fembots at the olympics. In the episode he undergoes hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery… well the robot versions of those things. He is portrayed as having done this purely to win at sports. There has long been an established hate conspiracy narrative about trans women transitioning to beat women at sports. It was around back then, and this episode plays into the narrative quite a lot.
Futurama is my favorite animated show of all time. I love it with all my heart and for literally about a decade I skipped the gender bender Olympics episode every single time it came up. But I’ve come to appreciate some aspects of its very transphobic very misogynistic narratives. It’s not something I’d sit and watch for fun, but as time as passed some small moments have stood out to me as being kinda interesting deconstructions of what gender is and the complexities of personal identity. Like when bender struggles with the idea of “detransitioning”, even if it’s for the wrong reasons and doesn’t accurately portray any kind of transfeminine struggle in a genuine light. You can tell they sorta had half an idea what gender identity was and the ways in which trans people struggle with it. But the motives are never gender in and of itself, it’s never about who bender is but always what he gets from gender performances.
Make no mistake though. It’s among the worst. Not because it’s the most hateful vile episode of any animated show ever, but because it’s Futurama. I hold that show to a very high standard, as do a lot of people. They punched down on trans and gender diverse people there. They had no reason to do that. They played into a frankly insane amount of misogyny to make it all fit together too, in a way they hadn’t done as much with other episodes. Look at Kif, look at all his episodes and the many ways his character deconstructs gender and sex in positive ways that show tolerant and informed viewpoints. It’s not like they didn’t know how to handle gender complex characters.
But with that one episode they just really gave a big fuck you to gender diversity, to gender diverse people, to trans women, and broadly to gender and sexual minorities as a whole. The whole thing is profoundly disappointing to me to this day. It’s not enough to ruin the show for me, I love the show way too much for that. But it’s embarrassingly bad and dishearteningly bigoted from a show that I expect so much more from.
