Betsy Bailey

I was just porting this old entry about parents taking their young kids into rated-R movies (Knocked Up, in this case) over from my archives and I had to laugh at the irony. Particularly the part where I said:

Sex, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, profanity – you name it, it was in there. I can’t sit through quite a number of PG-13 movies with my teenage stepson. When so many PG-13 movies are so much on that edge of being too uncomfortable to watch with your kids, what are people THINKING taking an under-13-year-old to a rated R movie????

Not that the following incident was nearly so heinous, but… still.

First, some background. We are a family that caught on to the Dr. Who craze just this year. We started by Netflixing the first disk in the Season 1 set. Immediately, we were hooked. The kids like watching and re-watching the episodes, so Scott went online and purchased Seasons 1-4. And we devoured them in less than six months with no self-control whatsoever – all 140+ episodes and the DVD extras.

We were all a little melancholy a couple weeks ago as we watched the final episode of Season 4 (especially when we learned that Season 5 is all a mess. Three Dr. Who specials in 2009, but no full season until 2010!).

But we consoled ourselves with the plan of watching various Dr. Who spin-offs, like the Sarah Jane Adventures. And Torchwood. Maybe check out some of the old Dr. Who episodes from the 80s that Scott remembers with fondness.

It was with this in mind that Scott purchased the Torchwood Season 1 DVD and presented it to me as a gift on Christmas Eve. The kids were so excited! Dr. Who has really captured their imaginations – they talk about the episodes obsessively. The read about them online. They write fan fiction. Even my 16 month old toddles around the house singsonging the Dr. Who theme. True story.

So it was with much anticipation that we settled down to see the story of Captain Jack Harkness resumed in our lives. Boy were we in for a surprise.

(This is what happens when you don’t vet your children’s programming!!)

Where Dr. Who is sunny and bright – with a lot of day time scenes, I realize in hindsight – this first episode of Torchwood was dark and gloomy – a lot of nighttime, a lot of drenching rain. Where Dr. Who stops short of gruesome violence, Torchwood let’s the blood spurt (vividly). Where Dr. Who is rated G for language, Torchwood dropped the F bomb at least a dozen times.

Not that my kids have never heard the F word in real life, goodness knows. But I guess we’ve sheltered them adequately, because they are NOT used to it on TV. They aren’t even allowed to watch most PG-13 movies until they are 13. So they were visibly flinching with every instance of profanity.

So, yeah, obviously kids are not the intended audience here. We were chagrined. Bailey and HM were berating me for letting them watch such a horrible show: “Maaahhhhm. We are not OLD ENOUGH for this yet!”

I wasn’t planning to let them watch any more of it for several more years. But they caught the preview for the next episode. Whoa, there goes Captain Jack running NAKED across the screen. The girls erupted with squealing. So I don’t think they heard the part about how the aliens in that episode are somehow activated by the sexual act.

Yep, okay, this is NOT Dr. Who. No mistake about it. Oops.

The episode was great, though. Scott and I really enjoyed it (and the girls enjoyed the storyline, too, actually) and are looking forward to watching the rest. It’s just not gonna be family TV night is all.

The Sarah Jane Adventures it is. (After we watch the first episode ourselves and read up a little on the reviews first, just in case.)