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What's the best way to boost your series' bad ratings? Besides nudity, celebrity guest spots, threatening to kill characters off, and stunts like broadcasting your show live, what's a producer to do?Get dirty, apparently. The ratings-challenged Chicago Hope will be the first show to break the longstanding "seven dirty words" broadcast taboo. Mark Harmon, who plays Dr. Jake McNeill, will reportedly say "s--t happens" on tonight's episode of the CBS medical drama.
Although live awards shows have resulted in obscenity accidentally hitting the airwaves before, it's believed this will be the first time the word will air on a network television episode of a regular series.
The show's executive producer, Michael Pressman, tells the New York Post he wasn't looking to start a commotion. "I thought that it would really go unnoticed," says Pressman. "It was not done for ratings, shock or sensationalism or to say: 'Look at the envelope that we're opening here.' It was more about an honest expression of frustration that seems to be so natural to how we talk in life."
"One wonders whether the American public will benefit from the [airing] of a word describing back-end product coming out of a popular Hollywood actor's mouth," Bob Peters, president of Morality in the Media, a conservative watchdog group, tells the Post.
"It's laughable that the networks allow terms like 'son of a bitch,' 'bastard' and a lot of other words to [be aired] during the family hour [7 p.m. to 8 p.m.], but it has now become news that somebody would use the 's' word between the hours of 9 p.m. and 10 p.m."
It's not quite in the historic league with Clark Gable scandalizing Hollywood by uttering the then-forbidden "damn," in his legendary parting speech to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind, but the use of this one word might open up the floodgates for other shows to follow suit.
Does this mean no more "frickin'," "freakin'," or "friggin'" watered-down expletives in place of the real things? Who the &#*! knows?
Then again, the epithet may never air at all. Will & Grace's use of the word "tamale," perceived to be a Hispanic slur, was edited out before that episode of the NBC sitcom aired recently. However, CBS is standing by the bold movie. A network spokesmperson told the Post, "The producers felt strongly that the line was important for artistic truthfulness. We wanted to support their creative vision, but, clearly, this is not something that will happen on a weekly basis."
No word from the FCC or George Carlin, who'll now have to revise his famous "Seven Words" comedy sketch.
