1 Happy St

At the beginning of the show Family Guy on Fox, the network always puts out a disclaimer that viewer discretion is advised. I guess we're supposed to take that to mean that there's some content that we're about to watch that some people would consider questionable and the people running the network are just warning us.*

* One thing I've noticed about myself is that the more questionable the content is, the more likely it is that I'm going to watch. Remember the show Cops**? I only watched that show because Fox would warn me beforehand that I should use discretion before actually watching it. But then after realizing that there wasn't much to be discreet about, I stopped.

** My favorite part of Cops: when the police would interview a witness and the witness would say something like "I heard a gunshot; it sounded like a 9 mm." Yeah, it sounded like a 9mm. You could show me a picture of a gun and that picture could have a caption beneath it that said 'this gun is a 9mm' and I still wouldn't be sure what kind of gun it was. These people knew what it was based on how it sounded. That always killed me.

Where was I? Oh yeah. 9mm's. No wait, viewer discretion. Okay so I never understood that network disclaimer. Discretion means freedom of choice. In the context of a Family Guy disclaimer, Fox is saying that I have the freedom to choose not to watch it. As opposed to forcing me to watch it against my will. Isn't that an odd thing to disclaim?

Isn't this an odd thing to blog about?

I guess it just always bothered me.

I will say this though; next time you see the disclaimer that 'viewer discretion is advised', you're going to immediately think of me. And that's pretty cool.