by Over the past weekend, I was watching the first episode of Season II of the Greatest American Hero. I would like to say that this was because I’d seen all of season 1, but alas, it’s just because we have lost the DVD player’s remote control and can’t seem to find it. So, that means I had to hit the play button on something, and I wanted to see something
new.
Anyway, it made an interesting side point. Besides being an entertaining episode where Ralph joins a major league baseball team and throws an over 200 mph pitch, it taught me something about slippery slopes.
I go way back now, to the Dick Van Dyke period of TV. America’s couple was Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore (they had things for last names back then or something). They played Rob and Laura Petrie. When that show ended, MTM went on to star in her own show, the Mary Typer Moore Show. They were going to make MTM divorced, but thought that people would think she divorced DVD. This would have been bad, so they didn’t.
Fast forward to GAH. Here, the hero is going through a divorce battle with a kid, but his girlfriend the lawyer lives in a different house, and they only meet at normal hours. In fact, Connie Selleca had her first child during the beginning of the second season, and instead of introducing that child into the story, they did shots of her on the phone or with things in front of her belly. My guess– it would be taboo for the Ralph and Pam to have a kid while going through divorce– or even them living together.
Now go to any modern sitcom. We have people living together, having children out of wedlock etc. Do you see the slippery slope? Can you imagine the reaction people would have had in the DVD era had they had “Friends” or show of that sort? Even in the 80s in the GAH era, they would have thought people bearing their behind or other things that are common place now was way over the top. Yet we have Christians that do comparisons with what else is on now and justify what they watch because it’s not as bad as that other thing.
Where do you compromise your morals? In what area of your life are you letting a little something in– not just with TV but with something you know you shouldn’t be doing? That little thing will grow, and soon you’re not going to like where you end up!
It certainly is a slippery slope. One of my disdain for the networks is their less than stellar choice of sitcoms and over saturation of reality tv based shows. I much like watching news, music videos (VH1 classics, not MTV– which hasn’t showed videos in ages), the learning channel and Discovery. I’d really love to tune into a good solid Christian station, but aside from PAX tv’s ‘Faith Under Fire’ (which is an excellent show!), I’m afraid even christian networks have succumbed to the slippery slope and had deviated to show un-sound doctrines.