Nice article Matt.

As a kid growing up in the 70s, I remember the way they tried to keep things family-friendly before 9:00 pm, but I never knew it had a name. I also didn't know it involved social content. TV was violent as fuck (still is) and so the idea of pushing that shit to after nine seemed quite reasonable. The problem is, it backfired. TV executives are generally mindless, unimaginative dip-shits (kind of like @1). For every "edgy" episode showing a gay character, there are a dozen with gratuitous violence. Sick-ass shit meant to entertain Americans who love them some blood and gore. This meant that if you were an adolescent who turned on the TV at 9:00 pm, you had nothing to watch but crap. You were better off waiting until Johnny Carson came on.

I distinctly remember the "Born Innocent" rape scene. It was late in the evening, I was 16, half-asleep in front of the TV, and totally unprepared for it (for those who don't know, Blair is raped with a broom handle by a group of teenage girls, shown from Blair's POV). The next morning I thought I had dreamed it, until I arrived at school and it was all anyone was talking about. Nearly five decades later it's hard to think of anything on network TV (other than maybe the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show) that rivals that scene for pure shock value.

"Alice" (gay subplots notwithstanding) is a mildly horrible sitcom but don't let that stop you from seeing the movie. Very progressive for its time in that there's no idealized happy-ever-after ending to muck up the feminist message (despite the poster featuring Ellen Burstyn in the embrace of Kris Kristofferson that no doubt led many people to expect just that).