You ever have a favourite tv character you thought was an amazing role model as a kid but turned out to be toxic when you grew up & thought about it?

[Anonymous]

For me it was Rory Gilmore from the Gilmore Girls I thought she was such a sweet nice person, smart, hardworking, mature for her age, honest and trustworthy and had so many hot guys after her but unlucky in love.

Then I watched the 4 part series netflix made where Rory is a struggling journalist/writer in the big city but can't cut it despite her family connections and expensive private school and Yale University education. Having obviously mis-spent the fortune her dead grandfather gave her and being too proud to get a job to make ends meet she flees home to Stars hollow to move back in with her mum at age 30. It also turns out she has a boyfriend who she doesn't care about or respect, he's just there to pay her rent and she is cheating with her ex Logan who is engaged to be married.

So I was kinda shocked by all this in the Netflux series like it was the darkest universe version of the Gilmore Girls because when the series ended Rory had graduated and choosen her career following the Obama election campaign over marraige and kids with wealthy pretty boy Logan but when watching the old Gilmore Girls series I came to the conclusion that the Netflix 4 part series was actually bang on the money of how life for Rory would have actually went after graduating college. Rory Gilmore is an immature, toxic, entitled, selfish, manipulative spoilt brat who expects. Watching the orginial show when following Rory and her mother Lorelai that everyone is else is stupid or selfish and they are the cool duo but really they are both crappy people. She only seems happy when two guys are fighting over her, she with a guy cheating on his girl, cheating on her boyfriends, creating drama with boyfriends, being emotionally abusive to her boyfriends or twisting her boyfriends to the point they explode. She loves relationship drama and needs constant validation.

[NathanDavis]

I have always disagreed... with these points

expecting someone to excel to the point of perfection and never fail, never do wrong... that would be the "toxic mindset"

to idealize and idolize such a sweet little thing, when she was just a little, naive, spoiled little thing is also wrong...

EVERYONE can have a rough growing-up experience one way or another, and that character portrayed exactly that

also, she is just 30 years old, when she becomes a mother and that is still a long way to go... and that is a turning point too,

the "finale" will only reflect what we feel inside and our own bias... we could assume that she got it all better for her and her baby, or we can assume that she is just going to be a shitty person forever... lol

[hbg84]

I kinda thought zack Morris was cool when i was a kid until i realized he was the poster boy of wealth and privilege. Not to mention all the shady shit he did. Giving jesse speed, going after lisa know his friend likes her. There's a lot more i just can't think of any. Its been years since i watched the show

[Asker]

Every episode was something creepy or immoral behaviour.

[jennifer_bloom]

I thought Chris Rock and 007 were good super heroes as a kid but now I look at how they disrespect women in their character roles.

[Asker]

I think jada Smith needs to be disrespected

[Nikki1989]

Nope, I never watched TV. I still don't.

[ohsheeT]

I always thought Johnny quest was a good role model but I don't know whatever happened to him I quit watching TV LOL

For me it would be kind of hard to pick a TV personality as a role model because they are acting so

I think if everybody wanted to have a role model they should pick a dog because they would learn quite a bit a dog is loyal always happy totally in love with you will do anything you want them to do it will protect you they will play with you and they don't bitch. bark or bite. Or wait a minute one out of three isn't bad LOL. But once again they don't need to bark or bite they do that because in roundabout way that's what they're either taught or not.. taught it's kind of say as people.

[love_conquers_lust]

Not my favorite, but if you think about from an anticapitalist standpoint, Bruce Wayne was a billionaire who spent his days financially creating the victims he protected by day and attacked as Batman by night.

My favorite was Spiderman. Brains and brawn. I still have my comics. I was so excited when the first movie came out, and then disappointed as they kept coming out, over monetizing it.

[Asker]

I remember someone something like that. Batman owns Gotham city and spends hundreds of millions on bat shaped military equipment to get his jollies beating up impoverished criminals while breaking the law himself

[connemara_crocodile]

I think calling that "white privilege" is a bit racist.
I think that's not tied to white people, but to people who grow with everything they needed and never being taught the concept of working for what you're missing or for earning things by yourself.

[Simslover92]

Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While I love her for the most part she had some toxic ways and an ego that was really huge. How she did Spike was so wrong in season 6. Ofc what he did to her was toxic and wrong as well in that season.

[Asker]

Nobody talks about how angel was like 200 and she was only 15.

[Simslover92]

Yeah that was one of my least favorite parts about the show was their love story. It was always ick to me for that reason.

[RoseySarah]

So true my besty loves her and I watched it all first time and like she is a tragic character makes every wrong choice she can!

Not growing up with her I really did not like her. The mom is amazing but her just hurt my soul.

She got stuck in grade school emotionaly and never left!

[LiamJHayden]

I just watched the series a few months ago and was left wondering how the heck Lorelei, as a 16-year-old single mom, was able to buy that house. But yeah, Rory showed her hand pretty early in the series when she gave herself to her married ex, Dean.

[Asker]

Even before that when she had Dean and Jess in the picture at the same time so she could get off on the drama

[AmeerX]

I really liked Batman, and all these heroes. In the end, I think Darth Vader was right. Then Luther was right over Superman. I clearly don't think of Joker being correct but what the fuck is wrong with the heroes. They think they are all correct but they are just people with super powers. They are the real enemies of the people

[Asker]

Batman arrests "criminals" but last I checked beating the crap out of people is ilegal.

[AmeerX]

Is everyone who is considered "criminal" by the people really bad?
This is why I hate Batman and all these conventional heroes

[Shamalien]

How the fuck and in what way was Darth Vader “right”

[AmeerX]

I am just giving an example. Not everyone is evil just because they have a different point of view about life

[Shamalien]

I think we are talking about more than a pov. He’s a mass murderer

[AmeerX]

@Shamalien Stalin is considered a Mass Murderer too. But he brought the Russians and Central Asia and Eastern Europe development. Millions of people still live in those countries thanks to him and Khurschev and Brezhnevs built in there times.
Is it all just destruction that these people brought on there nations?

[Shamalien]

You could not have chosen a worse example. He killed millions, 10s of millions, and who’s to say there would have not been development without him? In any case the ends don’t justify the means when it comes to mass murder…ever

[shortster]

Nope. However, I heard that the Netflix special was completely antithetical to the TV show's message.

[Asker]

I thought that too until I rewatched the gilmore girls again. Rory as the series goes on just gets worse and worse.

[FunkyMonkee]

Oh, there might've been a couple I thought were great, as a kid and eventually found them to be stupid but I never thought of any to be "toxic". I don't much cater to that woke shit!!

[Googlemyahoo]

Yea turns out he was a little bit rapey

[abc3643]

Richard Nixon

[exitseven]

There are many actors that I thought were good role models when I was a kid. Now they are all liberal druggie or serial rapists. Clint Eastwood is the exception.

[Andres77]

Most of Clint Eastwood's characters

[Asker]

There was one movie where he sleeps with this blond lady then pursues her everywhere she goes because she rejected him, there was a monkey too.

[Andres77]

So much sexual assault that was normal for the 60's and 70's.
I didn't realize it as a kid because I just liked the idea of being a cowboy.
There was another series, Rat Patrol. WW2, killing Nazis in northern Africa. I found the whole series on DVD and wanted to share it with my kids. I watched two episodes and threw the whole set out. Sexual harassment throughout every episode. Also, never realized that as a little kid. Hollywood has not helped a lot.

[Asker]

How about Saved by the Bell. The main charcter Zack Morris when you step back and look at him was all kinds of wrong.

[abc3643]

Reminds me of John Wayne in "The Quiet Man" and "McClintock", both with Maureen O'Hara.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkQyRE0byBI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5iNeie1rLE

[Andres77]

@abc3643
@irishgirl02
So much stuff that was accepted back then and I watched much of it with my mom. Looking back at all the sexual abuse she suffered she seemed to think the stuff on tv was tame.

[Asker]

@abc3643 I think the quiet man represents a different time a different cultural attitudes. Mary Kate Danaher was there hoping to be kissed by the big American i can relate. A good example is her treatment of Sean Thorton for not fighting her brother for her dowery when he refused to hand it over after the wedding, even going as far as leaving him. She didn't respect him or see him as a man until he beat her brother up.
It's the same as that mcclintock movie, she wanted him to take her in hand like that. She didn't respect him until he did. The weirdest scene in that movie was mcclintock not only allowing a stable hand to spank his daughter but handing hi. a coal shovel to use.
I talked to my grandmother's about sexual harassment back in their day. They talked about working in hotels and restaurants and it was rife but also with women too. My gran uncle got groped by a manager whe he was 14 working in a hotel and nearly got fired for knocking him across the room being a big strong country boy.

[loveslongnails]

Can't say that I did.

[Nifrayu]

No. None that I can think of.

[maskgirl]

Ricy, dicky, dawn nikloden

[Summeroflove]

That’s why I never liked the show

[robocop666]

Bart Simpson is a bad influence

[eagle1951]

no never related to tv like that in my days

[TrillXHippy]

Not really