Did you catch the last episode of Modern Family? I have to admit that “prime time” has a different meaning in my household — between bath time, dinner time, play time and story time, watching a full episode of any sitcom is not on my To Do list in the evening — so I caught it a few days later. But, I was looking forward to it after learning about the “controversy” of the “Little Bo Bleep” episode on Wednesday.
In a nutshell, the Parents Television Council and a South Pasadena, Calif.- based student organization called, the No Cussing Club, rallied together to protest airing the episode because the two-year-old character, Lily, dropped the f-bomb a few times. According to ABC execs, in reality, the child actress actually said the word, fudge, but it was bleeped out and blurred to create the illusion of the real f-bomb and to help with the naughtiness effect. And each time she said the word, the adults laughed, pretty hard—well, because it was funny.
The episode raises the question of what is the appropriate response to a child’s first innocent use of an explicative. It’s innocent because they really have no idea it’s not nice to use such words until we tell them, but they’re extremely impressionable and clearly heard the word used correctly by an adult at some point, and seem to know just the right time to use it— during Grandma’s visit, at the grocery store, while being the flower girl at a wedding.
Newsday said the episode was “brilliant,” adding, “there was nothing remotely offensive about it, and the message was pretty clear: Watch what you say around toddlers, and certainly don’t laugh if they say something they shouldn’t have said.”
What is the best response to an innocent no-no?