Why I'm Not Watching

I don't have cable. My choices of passive entertainment are limited, and sometimes, I really need passive entertainment. So I bring home a lot of TV on DVD, and am always looking for a new show. This week I tried How I Met Your Mother, which I'd been hearing and reading about, and thought might be funny. It was kind of funny. It was brainless enough that I could relax into it, and brainy enough that it actually made me laugh occasionally.

And then a few episodes in, there was a fat joke. One character finds out that her boyfriend left a bar with another woman and she doesn't care. When asked why she doesn't care she replies, "I'm not freaking out because in my mind, she's fat." Fat=Unattractive-to-All=Not a Threat.

And in the next episode, there was another one. After two heterosexual men act like a couple for most of an episode, they "break up" and later run into each other. One of them says to his friend, "Even if you don't believe it, tell me he looks fat." Because, again, Fat=Unattractive=The Worst Thing That Could Happen After a Breakup.

And in the next episode, one more. This one was so offensive, it hurts me to relate it here. One of the characters sees his assistant, an overweight woman, take out her lunch, which is a huge tupperware, containing far more food than one person could eat, including a whole chicken. He says, "Oh, awesome, you brought lunch for everyone?" and she runs away crying, and subsequently quits her job. I turned it off before that episode was over and returned the DVDs to the library.

Because three fat jokes in three episodes is a pattern. This is a show that hates fat people. Who has time for that shit?