The Owl House
Adventure Time
Tuca & Bertie
Over The Garden Wall
Steven Universe
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Bluey!
It’s cute, it’s short, and it’s great for de-stressing! I put it on almost any time I’m feeling anxious or depressed
It’s written so wonderfully, and can be fully enjoyed by adults just as well as kids
Came here to say Bluey!! My partner and I (both grown ass adults) watch it together and cry tears of joy as we let it re-parent us!! Such a wonderful show!
Ted Lasso
Adventure time
Steven Universe
Out Flag Means Death
The Good Place
What We Do In The Shadows
To add what has already been mentioned: She-Ra and Steven Universe.
Steven, especially the first few seasons is super feel good low impact chill show.
Gravity falls is also pretty great for this.
Our flag means death - comedy about an english lord becoming a pirate, their crew and adventures. It's funny, cute and often heartfelt.
They're not fiction, but two that work for me are Great British Bake-Off and Taskmaster. The people on GBBO are so positive and helpful, it's a welcome change from American cooking competitions. Taskmaster is creative and silly, always good for a laugh.
Second the recommendation of Ted Lasso. Ted is a wonderful example of a person who doesn't understand something, knows he doesn't understand, but his heart is in the right place and he wants to learn.
Great Canadian Baking Show is similarly positive. Everyone is so nice it hurts! They often help each other finish challenges and it's a competition show :)
Schitt's Creek and Ted Lasso are great feel good shows with inclusive themes.
My ultimate comfort show is Star Trek: the Next Generation. If it's just me in the house and nothing good in my video queue that's what I'll turn on for noise.
I don't remember there being transphobic jokes in The Golden Girls, so maybe that?
Just the opposite! There's an episode with a trans man, and it's (according to one trans person on youtube) a really good portrayal. It might be both the most progressive and least problematic sitcom out there
There aren't transphobic jokes as far as I remember but it does become mentioned as a plot point a few times, that for the time was pretty good but now it would be dated.
The example that comes to mind is (relatively mild but be wary) >! an episode where Sophia tells Dorothy about a guy that she insists "used to be a girl", and Dorothy doesn't believes her. Later in the episode the guy, in fact, comes out that "I used to be a girl" to a group of people, Dorothy surprised about that. !<
EDIT: found this https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/friends-of-dorothy-was-the-golden-girls-really-as-queer-friendly-as-its-reputation-suggests-213923/
My partner and I have been really enjoying Spy X Family. Its a nice little found family/comedy series with very wholesome content.
The premise is that the titular Spy has an assignment to make contact with a total shut-in who only appears in public for events at his son's school. So the Spy adopts a child from a shady orphanage and meets a woman who is willing to fake being his wife to get his child into the elite school. Of course, the child he adopted can read minds and the woman he fake married is secretly an assassin. No one but the child knows the truth about everyone and they're each so focused on hiding their own secrets they don't catch on to the others. The series isn't complete yet, but so far the major theme is them coming to genuinely value their little family as more than a convenient facade.
Its just such a cute show, and I go back and forth between cackling and tearing up at how cute they all are. The only thing I think is particularly off about the show is the assassins brother. He's a secret police officer and also incestuously obsessed with his sister. Its a weird inclusion, but he is made fun of by the narrative for his behavior and that is enough for me to still enjoy how good the rest of the show is
It’s always a good choice to watch Avatar
pushing daisies!! ❤️❤️
also my so called life
oh and schmigadoon if you have apple tv :)
Dogs in Space
Farscape
She-ra and the Princesses of Power
All are scifi, the top two are sillier and the bottom two are longer and get a bit serious and emotional at times.
If you haven't seen Farscape and you like scifi space opera wackiness and Jim Henson puppets, seriously give it a go. It's very comforting and fun.
Farscape is a deep cut.
Even Sillier than that is a British comedy called “Red Dwarf” and as far as I recall there is no transphobia. The closest I remember is an episode where the main character ends up in an alternate dimension with the female version of himself. They hit it off and the male main character of the series ends up pregnant, to his distress. At the time I remember it being a really interesting way to bring up gender dynamics without being too laboring, though it’s been a while, and I also haven’t seen the new seasons they apparently made after the show got cult status.
Edit to add: a Reddit thread has this to say about Red Dwarf and being trans
In series 8, Kryten is assigned to women's prison wing, just because he doesn't have a penis when he clearly resembles a male, sounds like a male and acts like a male. That's regardless of the fact that he has no chromosomes because he's an android (not even gynoid, so another good point). The show makes it out as ridiculous that the only reason why he's treated as female only because of his lack of penis.
Also, in the episode DNA, it's shown that when he's turned into human male, he's still an android on the inside because he clearly feels discomfort from certain dysphoria, where he finds appliances sexually attractive and inability to adjust to human biology lacking robotic features.
Edit to add to the edit, I forgot the ships on board computer actually does upgrade themselves to present female
My partner and I were going to rewatch Futurama soon, since we wanted to watch the old ones before getting into the reboot. I'm not going to enjoy that as much as I thought I would, am I?
As for recommendations, I don't know if I would call it a comfort show since it can get really disturbing at times, but Doom Patrol is a great show, lots of fun and super queer.
There are a few episodes where being trans is almost the entire premise.
There are two different "Gender Bender" episodes where Bender is either cross dressing to act as a heel in pro wrestling, or surgically altered to become a fembot and compete in sports.
There is another episode where an alien removes the gender differences for the crew, and then changes the gender of the crew. They shoot a saucy pin-up calendar.
And then there's the Dungeons and Dragons episodes where Hermes is a hermaphrodite centaur.
Oh, and the mind swapping episode where everybody changes brains, but that's more Freaky Friday than gender swapping.
Pardon me if it's rude to ask but do you mind explaining why those episodes are transphobic? Specifically the Bender gender swaps, I don't remember the other examples you mentioned.
The wrestling one is just somewhat off kilter? It's not outright transphobic, more just kinda silly. It doesn't reference gender as an identity as much. More so gender as performance I'd say. It's a comparatively brief portion of the episode compared with the Olympics based one. The rest of the episode is pretty great tho and is all about a misogynistic asshole getting his comeuppance from a downtrodden woman who's always been told that fighting is for boy's. It's actually a great episode.
The Olympics one is self evidently transphobic. The premise is he's not actually a woman, he's doing it to beat fembots at the olympics. In the episode he undergoes hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery... well the robot versions of those things. He is portrayed as having done this purely to win at sports. There has long been an established hate conspiracy narrative about trans women transitioning to beat women at sports. It was around back then, and this episode plays into the narrative quite a lot.
Futurama is my favorite animated show of all time. I love it with all my heart and for literally about a decade I skipped the gender bender Olympics episode every single time it came up. But I've come to appreciate some aspects of its very transphobic very misogynistic narratives. It's not something I'd sit and watch for fun, but as time as passed some small moments have stood out to me as being kinda interesting deconstructions of what gender is and the complexities of personal identity. Like when bender struggles with the idea of "detransitioning", even if it's for the wrong reasons and doesn't accurately portray any kind of transfeminine struggle in a genuine light. You can tell they sorta had half an idea what gender identity was and the ways in which trans people struggle with it. But the motives are never gender in and of itself, it's never about who bender is but always what he gets from gender performances.
Make no mistake though. It's among the worst. Not because it's the most hateful vile episode of any animated show ever, but because it's Futurama. I hold that show to a very high standard, as do a lot of people. They punched down on trans and gender diverse people there. They had no reason to do that. They played into a frankly insane amount of misogyny to make it all fit together too, in a way they hadn't done as much with other episodes. Look at Kif, look at all his episodes and the many ways his character deconstructs gender and sex in positive ways that show tolerant and informed viewpoints. It's not like they didn't know how to handle gender complex characters.
But with that one episode they just really gave a big fuck you to gender diversity, to gender diverse people, to trans women, and broadly to gender and sexual minorities as a whole. The whole thing is profoundly disappointing to me to this day. It's not enough to ruin the show for me, I love the show way too much for that. But it's embarrassingly bad and dishearteningly bigoted from a show that I expect so much more from.
Well, I still don't entirely understand what specifically about the episode makes it transphobic but I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
This is a weird grey area for me. I see it as a silly episode where bender does some reprehensible shit, sort of learns his lesson but than continues being a shitty person. I don't remember anything about the episode that makes it stand out from other episodes where he similarly exploits some facet of society (foster kids, soup kitchen, pimp are a few that come to mind). However, given my perspective it's very likely I've overlooked aspects of it and I am not trying to defend the episode just understand what I'm missing.
Again, I'm sorry if I'm being rude or this is not the place to discuss something like this. Feel free to ignore me or tell me to go away.
Trailer Park Boys
I assume that you are in the US - and I don’t know if this is available- but the BBC show ‘The Detectorists’
Good Omens was fun
30 Rock is my comfort show - it's on Hulu rn. It's definitely a little dated, but is still very funny! Also Bob's Burgers is pro lgbtq+ and has over a dozen seasons, so plenty to keep on all the time! Also on Hulu
What transphobic jokes are in Futurama? I can't seem to remember anything specific.
The Good Place is a great series.
Stranger Things perhaps.
Avatar Last Airbender and Legend of Korra
Bob's Burgers
Futurama had that one Episode "Bend-Her" where bender decides they suck too much to compete in the mens robo-lympics so he gets gender reassignment to crush all the fembots and get a gold medal..... If they made that full length episode, i'm sure there are plenty of one offs and side gags throughout that didn't stick out to me at the time.
I hated that episode. That type of premise felt out of date when it was released.
It was surprising to me because they had a really early episode where Leela beat up her sensei really because he was sexist so it was so weird that "Bend-her" was a choice.
I'm sure you've already been through the usual suspects. So here's my list. Hopefully some more esoteric ones will help out.
Our Flag Means Death
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Los Espookys
Good Omens
Killjoys
Black Mirror
The Magicians
The Umbrella Academy
Sandman
The Orville
Farscape
Love, Death, and Robots
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