The Lost Boys of Television

The leaders in a show appear in court; the judge is a female minority, arrogant and dominating. In the ads, the male is clueless and uninformed, needing the woman to inform him of the product. Boys race against girls, being losers; a champion race car driver exits their car, removes helmet, and long flowing locks show the winner is a woman. Surprise! 

The American Spectator

Hollywoke executives wish to “detoxify” the boys who view their product. 

"Being unblessed by fatherhood (thus far), I have little idea of what boys today are watching on TV, the few not playing video games anyway. But in perusing the 2021 primetime network schedule, I found nothing I would want to watch were I under sixteen. The only constant I
could see is the dearth of male heroes, which suggests two possibilities. Hollywoke television executives either have no interest in having young males view their product, or they wish to “detoxify” those who do. Perhaps both conclusions are correct, and equally damning of our time.

"As a young kid, I came home from school every Friday eager for a full night of masculine TV bliss. It swept me and millions of other boys from the old West to espionage action to modern adventuring to strange new worlds with the coolest, cleverest, manliest men in all the universes.

"For four fun seasons, the night began with U.S. Secret Service agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) saving the country from 19th Century villains in The Wild Wild West, often by Jim West punching the hell out of them. A pair of globetrotting super spies, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David MacCallum), followed suit in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (U.N.C.L.E. being an acronym for the fictional — yet very real to us kids — United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). It says something about the progressive emasculation of our culture that the U.N.C.L.E. special — a pistol that converted into a telescopic rifle — received as much fan mail from young men as its two sex-symbol stars did from women. When U.N.C.L.E. moved to Monday night, it was replaced on Friday by the voyages of the starship Enterprise in Star Trek. The brilliant show’s three lead crewmen, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Doctor McCoy, became our male scouts to strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations populated by gorgeous alien women.

"In the summer of 1969, the foolishly canceled Star Trek was succeeded by the famous Simon Templar, better known from 40 years of literature, cinema, and radio as The Saint. The ridiculously handsome Roger Moore (before he became a rather silly James Bond) played Templar just like author Leslie Charteris conceived him in 1928’s The Saint Meets the Tiger — a gallant, debonair, yet fight-ready English adventurer who uses extra-legal means to help victimized innocents while romancing beautiful women. The Saint novels remained popular into the ’60s, and George Sanders portrayed Templar in five fun pictures between 1939 and 1941. Val Kilmer starred as a ghastly, clueless reincarnation of the character in 1997’s atrocious The Saint. But Moore nailed the character on television for us boys, joining the pantheon of men we wanted to emulate." . . .