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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The gay jokes are so interesting to me now knowing now that one of the creators was gay - one of the creators talked about his husband being on Mad About You.

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I suspect you are younger than me.  In the context of the times, I think it was actually moderately progressive, especially with the Chandler dad being trans. (played by a woman), which now would be weird.  Most gay guys I knew back then made a fair number of jokes that might be considered a little surprising now—humor being a way to deal with the oppression.  (Look at the old Will and Grace episodes.) I think there was also probably an element of making fun of a certain type of guy that was very common in the 90s—when even pretty nice and tolerant straight guys had a lot of internalized homophobia based in insecurity. (Eg the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” jokes on Seinfeld.). So the creator was probably reflecting that in the characters.
For me, the fat suit stuff was and remains pretty cringey.[/quote]

Agree totally.  The trans dad, the gay couple (Ross's first ex), etc were actually pretty progressive compared to other shows at the time.  Yes there were no diverse main characters, but Aisha Taylor's character was a PhD who was a colleague of Ross's at the university where he worked, Chandler had a number of black bosses, etc.  That's not unrealistic for the early 90s (that a close group of young 20s friends wouldn't include any black friends, but they'd have black people as part of their larger social/professional circles).

Agree also that the fat stuff is BAD and did not age well.[/quote]

I feel like it says a lot about you that you are more concerned about the fat shaming than the lack of diversity on the show.[/quote]

Oh and this line:

[b]Do I think 2021 Ross would be the type of person to say “I can’t be racist/homophobic, I dated an Asian woman and a Black woman and was married to a lesbian,” without any type of clue as to why that’s an icky thing to say? You know that’s exactly how it would go down.[/b]

Um, Ross is a fictional character and you have no idea what '2021' Ross would or wouldn't say.  That article is a joke.[/quote]

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