The biggest issue, family-wise, regarding A&E’s new series The Exterminators, is the language. Which perhaps not so ironically, is a lot of what George Carlin: The Mark Twain Prize is about.
The Exterminators, which premieres tonight at 10:30 p.m. is about a family-owned and run company of pest erradicators, kind of along the lines of Dog, the Bounty Hunter and other shows of that ilk. Except this gang is rooting out bees and snakes and racoons and bats and other critters that are someplace they shouldn’t be.
Oddly enough, Billie, the main brother, isn’t about killing things, which is a nice attitude – he even talks about what raccoons and bats do for the environment. But he also concedes you don’t want bats hanging out over the concession stand at a kids’ ball park, either. There is lots of bleeped language – some justified, and a few not bleeped words that might upset the more sensitive. But by and large, the show is sort of interesting and might be an okay option with supervision for kids going through that gross stage in their lives.
In fact, that gross stage is probably just about the right time to introduce your to the work of comedian George Carlin, who passed away last fall, in time to have been notified that he was going to receive The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, but before he could actually attend the show in his honor, which was taped last November and is airing tonight on PBS.
Now many of us remember Mr. Carlin for his routine on the Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Television. Many of which have been said on television. Okay, it was on HBO, but that’s TV, right? And there is a fair amount of bleeped out language on the show. I also loved it that Denis Leary, an actor and comedian known for his utter lack of self-censorship got to introduce that most famous routine.
A good, solid chunk of which is perfectly clean, by the way. Seriously. They run several minutes of it in the Mark Twain show. Which just goes to show how silly censorship is. I’m not saying we want our kids running around talking like stevedores. But as Leary pointed out, the nuns put in the church bulletin lists of forbidden media, including the album and specifically naming that routine. So guess what he and the other altar boys did right after church? They went out and bought the album and the first thing they listened to was the Seven Dirty Words.
The thing about Carlin is that he did not use language carelessly. If he used a foul word, it was with a purpose. Does that make it appropriate? It entirely depends on the situation. Maybe you don’t want to casually drop the f-bomb while chatting with your kids. But maybe you need to when you’ve lost your job, your partner and your home and you’ve got to let your minister, rabbi, imam, whatever, know just how angry you are at God in that moment.
There is a place for strong language. There is a place for sex scenes. Or mindless violence. It’s not every place because young minds aren’t always ready to process that kind of information to determine the subtler issues, such as why the violence in Schindler’s List is so very different from the violence in Saw III. But then, that’s why, as parents, it’s our job to try and discern where our kids are at so that they can get the benefits of Schindler’s List and not be harmed by Saw III.
Oh, and the benefit of using humor when you’ve got something to say. Because one thing guys like Carlin, and Mel Brooks for that matter, proved is that if you make it funny enough, you can get away with a lot. Which is why the fool is always the smartest character in Shakespeare’s play.
We need fools. We need them badly.
Anne Louise Bannon
Your Family Viewer
