Imagine for a second that you're just, you know,
scrolling through your phone. Like we all do.
Right. Exactly. You're mindlessly flicking your
thumb. You're looking at pictures of someone's
lunch, maybe skimming some heavy news headlines.
And then you see it. It's a hundred and forty
character post that is just absolutely hilarious.
Just a perfect little observation. Perfectly
crafted, completely raw. And you think to yourself,
you know, this is gold. Oh, yeah. But then ask
yourself this really weird hypothetical. Could
that tiny bite -size isolated observation actually
be transformed into a prime -time television
show? I mean, it's a massive mechanical leap.
You're talking about taking a snappy comeback
or just a random thought and somehow stretching
it into a three -act play with a beginning, a
middle, and an end. Right. And today we're doing
a deep dive into the very specific moment in
television history when a major network actually
tried to make that leap. A very ambitious leap.
Oh, highly ambitious. We're looking at the 2010
CBS sitcom dollars, My Dad Says. And yes, for
the record, the network forced everyone to pronounce
it Bleep My Dad Says. They really did. And we've
got a great stack of sources today. We're looking
at the show's chaotic development history. It's
totally bizarre, episode plots, cast details,
and of course the fierce public controversy that
surrounded it. how a wildly popular, really raw
internet phenomenon, which in this case was a
very famous Twitter feed, stumbled when it was
squeezed into the highly rigid traditional format
of a multi -camera broadcast network sitcom.
We really want to look at the friction between
the Wild West of early social media and the completely
rule -bound world of legacy television. Okay,
let's unpack this. Because to really get why
this was such a strange collision, we have to
look at what Twitter was actually like back in
late 2000s. He was completely different back
then. It really was. It was mostly text, highly
unfiltered. And this writer named Justin Halpern
started a feed. Yeah. And he essentially just
posted the unvarnished, usually highly politically
incorrect and often very profane quotations from
his 72 -year -old father, Sam. Which, you know,
struck a massive chord online. I think the appeal
was the authenticity. You were getting this...
real -time grumpy wisdom from an older guy who
clearly had no idea his son was broadcasting
his private rants to millions of people. He had
no clue. Right. And Hollywood noticed the follower
count climbing, obviously. By November 2009,
CBS announced they were developing a television
pilot based entirely on this feed. But wait,
how do you even write that? Like, you can't just
have an actor standing in a living room yelling
funny tweets into the void for half an hour.
No, you have to build a framework. Right. So
Justin Halpern himself was brought on to write
it alongside Patrick Schumacher. And they had
some serious television muscle behind them. Yeah,
they really brought in the big guns. They did.
David Cohan and Max Muchnick came on as executive
producers. Their job was to build a world around
the tweets. But they didn't just build any world.
They built a multi -camera broadcast network
sitcom. Which is an industry term we should probably
define for anyone who doesn't work on a studio
a lot. Good idea. When you say multi -camera
sitcom, you mean the most traditional old -school
format possible, right? Essentially, yes. Yeah.
It means the show is shot on a soundstage, usually
in front of a live studio audience, or at least
with a laugh track. Right. And it uses three
or four cameras at once. Think brightly lit living
rooms. actors pausing for laughter, and very
defined, predictable story beats. Like chairs
are friends. Exactly. It is arguably the safest,
most conventional format on television. So they're
taking this raw, unpredictable internet feed
and trying to force it into the safest, most
sanitized television format ever created. Which
is a bold choice. Yeah. And to do that, they
changed the dad's name to Ed. He's written as
this highly opinionated 72 -year -old doctor
who has been divorced three times. Right. And
the crucial piece of the puzzle, the thing that
actually gets the show made, is the casting.
Casting is everything in a pilot. Yeah. When
William Shatner landed the lead role of Ed in
late February 2010, that was the catalyst. That's
huge. It was. A major star attached to a viral
property triggered the green light from the network
to actually produce the pilot. But Shatner was
the anchor, and he couldn't just talk to the
wall. He needed a foil. That's where the son
comes in. The character is named Henry, played
by Jonathan Sadowski. Who actually replaced the
original pilot actor, Ryan Devlin, by the way.
Oh, really? I didn't realize that. Anyway, Henry
is this struggling writer and blogger. Because
he can't afford rent, he is forced to move back
in with his dad, Ed. Which is a very classic,
tested sitcom trope, the odd -couple -father
-son dynamic. Right. But the mechanism they use
used to justify the premise is actually quite
meta. How so? Well, Henry can't find a job as
a writer because he lacks good material. Oh,
OK. But during a job interview, his dad, Ed,
interrupts with this completely irrational phone
call. And the eccentric editor conducting the
interview overhears it, loves it, and basically
hires Henry on the spot. The catch is that Henry
has to continue living with his dad so he has
a steady supply of this unhinged material. He
literally has to mine his father's unsolicited
rants to keep his job, hence the title of the
show. You also have the supporting cast. Will
Sasso plays the brother Vince and Nicole Sullivan
plays his wife Bonnie. And Sasso and Sullivan
were former castmates on the sketch show Mad
TV. Oh, right. So they brought some built in
comedic chemistry. So they had a great cast.
a clear premise and seasoned producers, but the
fundamental challenge of the source material
was still lurking under the surface. Yeah, they
were working from incredibly fragmented jokes.
I look at it like this. Trying to adapt a Twitter
feed into a full 21 minute episodic sitcom is
kind of like trying to build an entire house
out of bumper stickers. A bumper sticker house.
That's actually a very helpful way to visualize
the structural problem. Right, because individually
bumper stickers are funny, they're catchy, you
read one in traffic and you laugh. But structurally,
if you try to build load -bearing walls out of
them, for the long haul, the house is probably
going to collapse. It's just a questionable foundation
to build a long -term narrative on. Yeah, the
network built this house. They really did. They
invested millions in it. But before anyone could
even see if the structural integrity of this
bumper sticker house held up, before audiences
could actually watch the show, they ran into
a massive unprecedented roadblock oh yeah and
it had nothing to do with the scripts he was
about the name on the front door the title controversy
Because the original Twitter feed used an actual
literal expletive. Yes, it did. But you cannot
just put a four -letter curse word on primetime
broadcast television. CBS had to modify the source
material's title to comply with Federal Communications
Commission, the FCC regulations. Right. So they
substituted symbols, a dollar sign, a hashtag,
an asterisk, and an exclamation point. The famous
symbols. Yeah. Which CBS officially instructed
everyone in the press to pronounce as bleep.
Which is just so funny to me. It is. In May 2010
at their upfront presentation... Which is when
networks pitched their new fall schedules to
major advertiser CBS, announced the official
name, and they gave it the 8 .30 p .m. time slot
on Thursdays. A prime slot. And immediately the
press pounced. They asked how CBS could possibly
promote a show that implies a swear word without
violating decency standards. The network assured
everyone the Exclusive wouldn't actually be spoken
in the promos, and the profanity inside the show
itself was being heavily toned down. But that
assurance did nothing to stop the parents' television
Council, the PTC, from getting involved. Right.
The PTC launched a major, highly organized protest.
They argued that even with the symbols, the title
clearly alluded to an obscenity. Yeah, they were
not happy. And they didn't just write a strongly
worded letter to the network president. They
threatened CBS with broadcast license challenges
for any affiliate station that aired the show
or its promos before 10 p .m. I want to pause
here because we need to explain why that specific
threat is basically a nuclear option. television
industry. Oh, absolutely. Listeners might not
realize how a broadcast network actually operates.
CBS creates the shows, but they rely on hundreds
of local affiliate stations across the country,
like your local news station in Ohio or Texas,
to broadcast that signal over public airwaves.
That's the vital distinction. The FCC regulates
those public airwaves. If a local station broadcasts
something indecent, the FCC can fine that specific
local station or even revoke its license entirely.
Right. So the PTC wasn't just threatening CBS
corporate. They were threatening the local stations.
Yeah. If local station managers get scared of
losing their licenses and refuse to air the show,
CBS loses its national footprint, which means
they lose millions in advertising revenue. It's
a massive threat to the bottom line. Despite
the threat, though, CBS held their ground. They
did. They released a statement defending the
show, assuring the public it would in no way
be indecent. Right. They also very pointedly
reminded parents that they could use the V chip.
which is a piece of technology built into televisions
that allows parents to block programming based
on its rating. Basically saying, if you don't
like it, block it. Exactly. If they didn't want
the show in their homes, they didn't have to
have it. But the most vocal defender wasn't a
corporate suit. It was William Shatner himself.
Oh, he was fantastic during this. He did not
mince words about this during the Television
Critics Association press tour in July 2010.
What did he say? He said, and I quote from our
sources, we say spit, why can't we say shit?
Wow. I know. He went on to say, the word is around
us. It isn't a terrible term. It's a natural
function. Why are we pussyfooting? What's fascinating
here is you know, how the network navigated this.
They're feeling threats to their affiliate licenses,
dealing with watchdog groups, and their lead
actor is essentially daring the press to be offended.
See, that makes me wonder if CBS secretly loved
this backlash. I think so. I mean, think about
it. For a traditional multi -camera sitcom, which
we established as the safest format on TV, this
controversy was incredible free marketing. That's
a good point. It gave a very standard, brightly
lit sitcom an edgy almost dangerous vibe that
it desperately needed to stand out in the 2010
TV landscape. Well, you're not the only one who
suspected that. Media analysts at the time backed
up that exact theory. Yeah. Bill Gorman from
TD Biden numbers wrote that the PTC protest was
ultimately just giving the show massive publicity.
Oh, absolutely. He fully expected that the controversy
would act as a booster rocket for the premieres
ratings. It's the classic forbidden fruit effect.
Tell people they shouldn't watch a show because
the title is too scandalous and they will absolutely
tune in to see what the fuss is about. And it
absolutely worked. The edgy marketing, the protests,
the debate over the title, it got eyes on the
screen. When the pilot aired on September 23,
2010, an incredible 12 .58 million viewers tuned
in. That is a huge undeniable number. Just massive.
It is a massive initial sampling. Right. But
getting 12 and a half million people to look
at the bumper sticker house is only step one.
Right. The critical question is what actually
happened when those people walked inside and
saw the content of the show? Well, I'm stuck
on something here, looking at the numbers in
our sources. They have William Shatner. They
have 12 .58 million viewers. They have a built
-in internet fan base. Yeah. But over the very
next two episodes, the audience drops by nearly
20%. Ouch. Eventually, the viewership stabilizes
around 9 to 10 million viewers a week. How do
you lose a fifth of your audience in 14 days?
What was fundamentally broken about the actual
episodes? It comes back to the strain of the
adaptation. A Twitter feed relies on observational,
static humor. Okay. A sitcom requires an engine.
It needs character flaws and desires that drive
narrative conflict. Yay, a reason for the story
to happen. Because the character of Ed was originally
just a static mouthpiece for funny quotes on
the internet, he lacked a narrative engine. When
you run out of tweets, you have to invent sitcom
tropes to fill 21 minutes. Let's actually look
at these plots because they illustrate this failure
perfectly. They really do. In television, you
usually have an A plot, which is the main story,
and a B plot, the secondary story. Let's look
at episode two, titled Wi -Fi. Oh boy. The A
plot is Henry wanting to get an internet connection
for the house and Ed forbidding it. That's a
simple standard sitcom set up. Very standard.
But the B plot involves Bonnie getting a rash
on her breast and asking Ed, because he happens
to be a doctor, to look at it and diagnose it.
It's an incredibly awkward tonal mix. You have
light generational tech humor colliding with
a weirdly intimate medical boundary issue. Imagine
you're one of those 12 million people tuning
in, right? You're expecting the snappy, sharp
internet humor you saw on Twitter, and instead
you're watching a B -plot about a breast rash.
Yeah, that'll turn viewers off. And it only gets
stranger the further they get from the source
material. Take episode 13, The Better Father.
Okay. Bonnie and Vince find out the reverend
who married them was a fake, so they decide to
throw a whole new wedding. And Bonnie invites
her father, played by guest star Ed Begley Jr.
And her father is written as a gambling addict
who missed her first wedding. Right. He claims
he's changed, but Ed catches him gambling away
the money meant for the wedding food. Wow. Ed
actually helps him win the money back, but then
the father finds a single gambling ship, relapses
instantly, and misses the second wedding too.
That is dark. It culminates with Ed stepping
in to walk Bonnie down the aisle. Which is an
incredibly heavy, dramatic plot line for a show
based on a novelty joke account. It feels like
two different shows spliced together. Exactly.
And then if we look at a late season arc, episodes
14 through 17. The writers give Ed this massive
serialized storyline, meaning a story that carries
over from week to week. OK. And it starts because
his corn stocks are too high, which violates
the Homeowners Association rules. Because the
character lacks internal conflict, they have
to force external conflict. Right. So his logical
response to tall corn is to run for president
of the Homeowners Association to change the rule.
But once he wins, he completely ignores his duties
to pursue his neighbor, Rosemary. Oh, this storyline.
date, there's competition for her heart, and
it all culminates in episode 17, Lock and Load,
where Rosemary, who hates that Ed keeps a gun
in the house, accidentally shoots Vince because
she thinks he's an intruder. Well, Vince is downstairs
watching porn to figure out how to have a baby
correctly with Bonnie. It is a chaotic, baffling
combination of events. It really is. When you
look at those plot lines and how far they strayed
from the simple charm of a dad complaining about
the modern world, It perhaps isn't surprising
that the critical reception was absolutely brutal.
The scores reflect a complete critical rejection.
On Metacritic, the series holds a score of 28
out of 100. On Rotten Tomatoes, it sits at a
rare 0 % based on 26 critic reviews. The critical
consensus explicitly cited childish jokes, abysmal
writing, and the half -baked stunt casting of
William Shatner. Critics clearly felt the bumper
sticker house had completely collapsed. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Okay. The critics
gave it a 0%. They hated it. But in January 2011,
the show actually won the People's Choice Award
for Favorite New TV Comedy. That's right. The
public literally voted for it over every other
comedy that premiered that year. That doesn't
entirely make sense to me. How do you square
a 0 % critic score with a major public -voted
award? It perfectly illustrates the massive psychological
gap in how audiences and critics consume media.
Okay, tell me more. Critics are looking under
the hood. They're examining the mechanics of
the adaptation, the structure of the jokes, the
narrative engine we talked about. And by those
metrics, they found the show fundamentally broken.
They saw the duct tape holding the bumper stickers.
Precisely. They couldn't ignore the structural
flaws, but the audience. Yeah. A large segment
of the viewing public isn't looking for structural
perfection at 8 .30 on a Thursday night after
a long day of work. They might just enjoy the
pure, low -stakes comfort of watching William
Shatner be a grumpy, older man on their television
set. There's a similarity to the sitcom rhythm
that, while critics find it boring, audiences
often find deeply comforting. Yeah, that makes
sense. That comfort clearly resonated enough
for a dedicated fan base to log online and vote
for it. It highlights that sometimes an audience
just wants to hang out with a specific actor
in a familiar setting, regardless of what the
critics say about the script's mechanics. But
even with a People's Choice Award sitting on
the studio mantle, the novelty couldn't last
forever. The 12 million viewers from the premiere
never fully returned, and the show eventually
met a quiet demise. On May 15th, 2011, CBS officially
canceled the series. Wow. It had produced and
aired just 18 episodes. In fact, mid -season,
it was pulled from its time slot and replaced
by another sitcom, Rules of Engagement, which
had been moved over from Mondays. So it was just
quietly shuffled off the schedule. Yep. But the
blog and the original internet fame of Justin
Halpern didn't die there. His work actually spawned
a second television series later on called Surviving
Jack. True, but we can't talk about the legacy
of this specific adaptation without mentioning
its most bizarre pop culture footprint. Oh, please
do. It was parodied by Cartoon Network's animated
sketch show, M .A .D. Oh, this is such a specific
weird artifact of 2010. It really is. M .A .D.
had a crossover parody of the sitcom and Looney
Tunes. They called it Meep, my dad says. And
they had the Road Runner playing the role of
the grumpy dad. That is brilliant. So instead
of using symbols or network bleeps, every time
the dad was supposed to say a swear word, the
Road Runner just used his classic meek, meep,
with a little black sensor bar floating over
his beak. which is actually a very clever visual
representation of exactly what the network was
trying to do in real life. Exactly. They took
something inherently wild and untamed, the internet,
and threw a cartoonish sensor bar over it to
make it palatable for a general audience. So
what does this all mean? Well, when you step
back and look at this entire experiment, Think
about how many online properties you see today
trying to make the leap to traditional media.
You see TikTokers getting multi -picture movie
deals, YouTube channels trying to become prestige
streaming series. It's everywhere now. The translation
from a scrolling screen to a television screen
is incredibly difficult. Because it's a fundamentally
different language. Yeah. A 140 character joke
is an isolated moment of observation. as we saw
with the bizarre episode plots. A sitcom requires
world -building, character arcs, pacing, and
conflict resolution. You cannot just copy and
paste the internet onto a soundstage and expect
it to work without building a real foundation
first. So to summarize this wild journey, we
started with a viral 140 character tweet. Right.
That tweet sparked a massive Hollywood bidding
war, leading to a highly publicized primetime
show. That show then sparked a national controversy
with watchdog groups over its title, threatened
local affiliate licenses, premiered to over 12
million people, got a zero percent from critics,
won a People's Choice Award from the fans, and
then was canceled after just 18 episodes. It
is a wildly condensed life cycle of a television
show. He really is. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, there is one detail in our sources
today that I find incredibly revealing about
the nature of Hollywood adaptations and what
they actually value. I know exactly what detail
you're talking about, and I want to leave you,
the listener, with this thought to mull over.
Think about the names. We established that the
original Twitter feed was based on Justin Halpern's
actual real -life father. Right. His name was
Sam. Justin was the son. But when the network
adapted the show, they completely erased those
identities. They named the TV dad, Ed, and they
named the TV son, Henry. Even character named
Sam from the original pilot script was eliminated
before broadcast. They just wiped them out. The
network fought so incredibly hard risking FCC
violations, enduring PTC protests, threatening
their own affiliate licenses just to keep the
controversial, profane brand name of the Twitter
feed as the title of the show. Because that was
the hook. Right. So why go to war to keep the
brand's curse word in the title while completely
stripping away the real names and identities
of the actual humans who drove the Internet fame
in the first place? It's wild. It's the ultimate
paradox of adapting Internet culture. Are we
just aggr - aggressively marketing the viral
aesthetic while fundamentally erasing the messy
reality behind it? That's a great question. Something
to think about next time you hit like on a viral
post. Thanks for exploring the weird, wonderful,
and bleeped out world of television adaptation
with us today. Keep scrolling, but maybe keep
your bumper stickers on your car. Catch you on
the next Deep Dive.