First and foremost, I'm genuinely sorry you had to sit through that. I'm sorry you had to type that description, I'm sorry you had to sit through that, I'm sorry you felt like you were going to vomit and I'm sorry that you felt like you were being told 'yes, audience member, you're doing exactly what we want of you!' That's fucked up, that's triggering, that's disgusting, and that's simply not okay.
I really hate those kinds of scenarios, because I don't understand what good they do. I get that they're designed that way to trigger an audience reaction, I get that they're set up to prove how edgy the show is, I get that they're set up to move a plot along and set up dire consequences for a set of characters that the audience has gotten to a place of familiarity and fluency with, but I don't understand what the purpose of scenes like the one you're describing serve.
It happens all the time, and every time it gets more and more distressing to hear about because yes, as a female you may be expected to only be watching for strong men strattling large, shiny things, but you do start to cling onto the female character, whether you want to or not. To have every STF fridged, or even worse explicitly raped isn't even disturbing, it's revolting and proof of a double standard that showrunners like to handwave away if they just choose actors that are attractive and handsome enough.
The sad thing is, FX has another show that isn't as dereft as what you're describing, but really encourages an unhealthy ideology of selfish women who deserve to get fridged. Rescue me's female population seems to only serve as sadists to Dennis Leary's masochists, selfish and wrapped within themselves (and this makes them strong, apparently?) and the only person who comes across as remotely aware of themselves is kicked off the show three episodes into her run as a bad lesbian joke. It makes me wonder if the network realizes that women watch these shows and see what the showrunners think of them within these women, or if they simply handwave it away thinking that anybody with a vagina isn't going to genuinely understand the grit.
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I really hate those kinds of scenarios, because I don't understand what good they do. I get that they're designed that way to trigger an audience reaction, I get that they're set up to prove how edgy the show is, I get that they're set up to move a plot along and set up dire consequences for a set of characters that the audience has gotten to a place of familiarity and fluency with, but I don't understand what the purpose of scenes like the one you're describing serve.
It happens all the time, and every time it gets more and more distressing to hear about because yes, as a female you may be expected to only be watching for strong men strattling large, shiny things, but you do start to cling onto the female character, whether you want to or not. To have every STF fridged, or even worse explicitly raped isn't even disturbing, it's revolting and proof of a double standard that showrunners like to handwave away if they just choose actors that are attractive and handsome enough.
The sad thing is, FX has another show that isn't as dereft as what you're describing, but really encourages an unhealthy ideology of selfish women who deserve to get fridged. Rescue me's female population seems to only serve as sadists to Dennis Leary's masochists, selfish and wrapped within themselves (and this makes them strong, apparently?) and the only person who comes across as remotely aware of themselves is kicked off the show three episodes into her run as a bad lesbian joke. It makes me wonder if the network realizes that women watch these shows and see what the showrunners think of them within these women, or if they simply handwave it away thinking that anybody with a vagina isn't going to genuinely understand the grit.