Gimme a good PG

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As incredible as it may sound, I'd like less sex in my TV shows please.

Incredible because us French are rarely against a little bit of full frontal. In fact I think the only time I wrote a comment in a forum was to defend the sex/rape in Game Of Throne because it was necessary to the story. I've read the first 50 shades, thought it was not as good as my usual erotica and laughed that they would have a Red Room of Pain but anal was out of the question :-)

But I've recently sat through all 12 episodes of the new Netflix serie: Sense8, and really started yearning for PG-Rated shows. Let's go back in time before I rant about this shit show.
Charlie's Angels: 1976 Family-style porn

Turns out in I Love Lucy in the 50's, the word "pregnant" could not be mentioned on TV and the married characters had to sleep in separate rooms. In 1976, TIME called Charlie's Angels a "family-style porn, a mild erotic fantasy that appeals about equally to men and women."

One of S.A.T.C. shocking sex scene :-)
But in the time I can remember, the 1st shocking show, the one that started it all, was Sex and the City. These women liked sex, talking about it and sometimes doing it, they were extremely shocking. At that time their sex scenes where usually brief, in the dark, and you couldn't actually see a nipple, starting this devastating urban legend that you keep your bra for sex.

Then there was Dexter and the bad bad hero, Game of Throne and the incest, and certainly some gore zombie thing I did not watch introducing us to bloody innards. And they were successful. In fact they made HBO and Netflix and other original programming channels. The shock value of these TV Shows made them more real, more gripping, more of an emotional roller-coaster.

Unfortunately with Sense8 (yes we're coming to it), you see exactly the other side of the penny. They started with the shock and forgot the show. They had a great premise: A group of people around the world are suddenly linked mentally, and must find a way to survive, being hunted by those who see them as a thread to the wold order. I mean you could do something with at, at least for 1 season, particularly when directed by the Wachowski's.

Apparently they thought that was enough and started filling the blank with what seems to be success-recipe these days: Shock. Let's include all the things in there, that will make people talk about our show.
  • Gay / Lesbian couple done: in The L Word (among others) Sense8 twist: One is actually a transsexual... Actually also already done in Transparent. Nice effort though...
  • LGBT Sex done: in... I don't know, Brockeback ans everthing else since 2000 Sense8 twist: there is a close-up on a fluid-splashing strap-on dildo... Bon Apetit!
  • Masturbation done: in Sex and the City Sense8 twist: Someone else is in the guy's mind and it's against a wooden door. It might be gratuitous, still don't want it.
  • Gore done: even in the recent and classy Kingsman Sense8 twist: some trepanations
One scene I had forgotten about.
Can't remember what that was for...
That is actually pretty mild no?
But instead of going back to the story and writing a great series, they really worked at this shock thing and they came up with... the next frontier: natural birth, close-up, full frontal, on TV. Who would not react to heads splitting vaginas on their way out? And there is not 1, not 2, actually not even 8, they managed to slip in one more.

Of all this scenes, the dildo, the wooden door charmer etc, none served the story. We just needed the 2 guys to have sex so there could be compromising pictures, and the 2 ladies (sorry I was not engaged enough to retain names) to establish they were very much in love (although I understand that with dressed above-the-waist shot almost better than with a strap-on). One of the births is needed to establish that a character lost her baby after giving birth when stuck in the mountains.

I loved the premises of the show, I liked the cinematography, but the creators thought the recipe for a good series these days is a slow built and shocking images. So they fill the air with shocking images and forget to build a story. It takes these poor people 2 hours to realize what is happening, busy that they are shagging and swimming naked. I am really very disappointed with this show, it showed so much promise. It felt so empty and desperate to be talked about.
Hopefully Masters of Sex is back on soon, a show that scored in every area Sense8 missed.



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