For me, its Xena.
Few years back, height of covid epidemic, was living in homeless shelters. Overcrowded slums, everyone miserable, yelling, screaming, fights, abuse, rage. At one point, could feel the anger building in me. Powerless, a victim, desire for retribution. What good was trying to be better person, when all it meant was people walking over me.
Started rewatching xena, hadn’t in years. Big message of the show: when surrounded by hate, violence, it’s tempting to give in, to not be a victim. But you have a choice, to not continue the cycle, to make a better world. I so needed to hear that message at that time in my life.
What tv show helped you?
I’ve been rewatching it and besides Corporal Klinger’s ongoing cross dressing gag being overly transphobic it’s still pretty good. Plus they got him out of drag eventually and even manages to be trans-sensitive, for the time. Still completely unacceptable these days but it was a very different time. I think it also shows how far we’ve grown.
How was it transphobic? The whole entire show is extremely critical of the wars (Vietnam in theory, and Korea in practice), the military, and the state of society in general.
Stating that it’s transphobic because it just depicts a common practice of draftees seeking non-dishonorable discharge is like stating “Get Out” is a racist movie because it depicts racism.
The only hate ever depicted towards Klinger is by characters that are considered antagonistic. Not to mention the multiple plotlines that are extremely supportive of homosexual characters.
Save for the first three seasons with Hawkeye and Trapper’s overt “womanizing”, it’s an extremely woke show even by today’s standards. Alda even spoke out against his character being written as such. At most, it’s fairly misogynistic. I’m not really sure how you come up with transphobic though, unless you haven’t really watched it.