On Jan. 22, ABC unceremoniously booted its comedy Don’t Trust the B‑‑‑‑ in Apt 23 after two suitably abbreviated seasons. The network has no immediate plans to air the show’s eight remaining episodes.
“You’ve got to give ABC props for ever picking us up in the first place,” tweeted James Van Der Beek, who starred in the show as a fictionalized version of himself. “They took a shot at something original & edgy. I respect them for it.”
Mr. Van Der Beek may mourn the show’s demise, but perhaps its swift eviction wasn’t all that surprising. After all, the show was, quite literally, cursed. Don’t Trust the B‑‑‑‑ hoped to lure audiences in part through its provocative and profane title. ABC played coy—losing the rest of the offending word in a hail of hyphens and censoring it in its theme song with a door buzzer. I suppose particularly innocent viewers might believe the word could stand for any five-letter noun beginning with “b.” Birdy, perhaps. Or bread. Or biped.
But the rest of America wasn’t fooled, nor did ABC want them to be. For most of us, censorship of this sort does not “censor” much of anything. Our minds and souls are not miraculously unsullied through the addition of hyphens: Our brains efficiently fill in the blanks for us.
And it wasn’t the only show as of late to use the gimmick. In 2010, CBS rolled out $#*! My Dad Says, starring William Shatner. ABC, around the same time it unfurled Don’t Trust the B‑‑‑‑ in 2012, also gave viewers GCB (which stood for “Good Christian B‑‑ches”).
It’s almost as if network execs thought that the public was inherently enraptured by implied swear words. Studying the curse-laden (and Emmy-riddled) landscape of basic and premium cable land, filled with hits like Breaking Bad and Dexter, these television bigwigs perhaps believed that worthy television is bleep-worthy television. Fine, you won’t let us swear up a storm in our shows? They seemed to say. We’ll just try to shoehorn it into our titles.
Alas, as fans of Downton Abbey might point out, profanity and quality are not synonymous. Nor does swearing automatically make for a popular show. $#*! lasted 18 episodes before it got the ax. GCB was gone after 10. Don’t Trust the B‑‑‑‑ also managed to eke out 18 episodes. And with the latter’s unceremonious, little-lamented demise, one might hope that networks would refocus their attention on making, y’know, quality programs.
As if.
According to deadline.com, networks are now developing four shows—count ’em, four—with the f-word in the title: How The F‑‑‑ I’m Normal and Dumb F‑‑‑ from ABC, F‑‑‑ I’m in My Twenties and Grow the F‑‑‑ Up from NBC. Now, chances are that some or all of these shows could alter their titles before they trundle out to the viewing public. But for those of us concerned with the ever-growing acceptance of profanity in normal, “polite” society, it’s still a pretty discouraging trend.
From the outside, it would seem as though network suits don’t feel that profane titles are a problem: The problem is that the titles haven’t gotten profane enough.
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