On Life Choices

I'm sitting here watching reruns of Daria and my first thought is that not too long ago television, television for people under twenty no less, made a Kant joke. The very idea that any show today – save perhaps The Big Bang Theory – could make a joke about Emanuel Kant is preposterous.

My second thought is how to make a dirty Emanuel Kant joke that's still hilarious. So far I've come up with "Yo' mamma's like the the philosophy rack at the local library: not much to look at but some dry, dusty Kant."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH *SNAP*


My third thought on the other hand is the notion of sex on T.V. Basically, I want to see a show where they do the requisite "Am I Really Ready?" episode, but when all the family gathers around and hug each other, having given varied and often insane advice and having just now learned their loved one made what they believe to be the "right" decision, right then the character says, "Oh, no, we totally did it." And then maybe the show ends. I just want the episode to progress normally and the entire end speech to be one of those embarrassed speeches where the protagonist, resignedly, explains to her family how she weighed the options and everyone's opinions and only after much thought decided what to do. I want to see the audience really led to assume she didn't, but in a way that doesn't actually perjure the character.

Let's look back on the long line of terrible virginity plays on television:


Fresh Prince - Will fakes a wedding to bone his girlfriend, who discovers this, punches him and steals his car. Also, I'm pretty sure Carlton lost it to a cougar. Rather forcibly. DECISION FAIL

Grounded for Life - Lilly agonized over whether or not to do her boyfriend, who was a huge dumbass/jerk, making a terrible decision to do it on the night of her Sweet 16. Under pressure she wants to wait, her boyfriend douches off. The weird neighbor kid, Brad, who's always loved her treats her right and then they have some good good lovin'. DECISION FAIL

The Nanny - Maggie got caught having sex in the last season, three seasons after Grandma Yetta. Several episodes later she married that boy, a successful Jewish underwear model. FORCED TRADITIONAL MORALITY FAIL

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Let's see. Eliza Doushku's Faith, an established bad girl, very nearly raped Xander, before asphyxiating and almost killing him during rough sex later. Buffy lost hers, also unprotected, to a vampiric Angel, giving him one moment of true bliss and breaking the gypsy curse that returned him his soul and kept him from being the evilest, most sociopathic vampire in history. Willow, meanwhile, also had an unprotected hymen extraction at the hands of Seth Green's Oz, because the world was going to end the next day. Buffy's mom and Giles later had unprotected sex on the hood of a police car, Buffy got played her first week at college, boinked a super soldier and then Spike, who also boinked Xander's ex-demon ex-fiance on a store display, and Dawn – played in the show by Michelle Trachtenberg – in the comic series sequel is temporarily cursed into a giant, a centaur and a rag doll for getting in a fight with her boyfriend and then fucking his douchebag roommate. All-in-all, Joss Whedon hates virgins. HORRIBLE DECISIONS ALL AROUND.

But with all this fun out there, what I wouldn't give to see Zoey 101 … Hannah Montana … The Jonas Brothers … SOMEBODY do an episode of "We weren't sure if we were ready, so we thought it over really hard and decided yep. Yep, we were ready," and then scratched their itch.

It'll be like rescinding "Abstinence Only" sex ed in one glorious hour of prime time entertainment.

Granted, this would probably turn everyone who thinks "But, Dawson, I'm just not ready for it" is a catchphrase into a Jamie Speares clone, but if we're airing my show we must also be living in a world where stem cell research is funded through taxing government-overseen semi-privatized HMOs and contraception grows on trees. Mysterious trees. Trees funded by the government. And tended by unwanted pregnancy orphans.