10 TV Shows Literally One Step From Perfection

There’s an argument to be made—and we’re being generous here—that prime-time sitcoms can, as a medium, address serious issues without betraying their characters and the humour in which the show is rooted. Consider Maude’s landmark abortion episode by way of example, or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s surprisingly tasteful handling of police profiling.

However, outside of very special episodes, attempts to integrate socially conscious storytelling into the long-running narrative arc of a show can result in some… questionable choices.

Take The Mindy Project. When the show’s fifth season premiered the cultural conversation around gender roles and shifting social norms in romantic relationships was a hot topic, and writers were eager to tackle sensitive issues such as consent, gaslighting, and emotional abuse.

So eager that they opted to rewrite the show’s central romance, recasting the traditionally masculine but surprisingly sensitive male lead Danny as a subtly abusive, toxic presence who manipulated the title character throughout the show’s run.

This shift required more than a little character rewriting and retconning, asked the audience to overlook a lot of sitcom-standard bad behaviour from other characters whilst taking Danny’s dead seriously, and ultimately came off as an embarrassing misstep when it was hastily re-retconned in time to reunite the couple for the show’s finale.