Board Thread:False Info and Speculative Discussion/@comment-25184427-20140722165407/@comment-19765459-20140728035854

Well obviously the showrunners are going to promote and praise their own work! TV is business after all. They're not going to downplay anything that they think can be used to promote the show and gain viewers, no matter how trivial. But consistently praising oneself is vanity, not reality.

Again, this is true of other producers. I belong to the oft-flamed minority of gays who greatly dislike Kurt on Glee and find him to be a pretty bad person who is played up as a hero by his creator Ryan Murphy. Glee is actually full of some really horrific mixed messages and unfortunate implications, but is often given far more praise for diversity (within limits) and tackling issues like bullying (except when committed by a main character).

Fans may not be sold on this sort of thing, no matter how much PR the show people put out. At this point very few people really see Beacon Hills as an idealized bigotry-free zone. The show itself contradicts its own PR on that front! But this is also no more of an Aesop based show than any other supernatural drama. For example, as I often complain, Scott gets a lot of free passes from having to face moral challenges thanks to other characters taking action so he doesn't have to. If there is an Aesop there, at best it is: if you procrastinate long enough somebody else will solve your problems for you.

Most people are watching for the action at this point. Only people who are looking for moral messages will notice their absence. Gay fans (currently at risk of dropping the show en masse) have increasingly come to acknowledge that the illusory "gay-friendliness" of the show is simply because Jeff doesn't want to put any development into his gay characters, and thus having a totally-accepting environment is less hassle. Showing bigotry directed at non-main characters is just shooting scenes that would likely be cut for time anyway. So why bother?

That might create the appearance of a tolerant environment, and Jeff can certainly sit in front of interviewers and lie about it being such. Tyler Posey may be embittered because people loved the idea of Sterek more than they loved Scott/Allison. But the official couple on a show is often not the fan favorite anyway. He could acknowledge that without projecting what sounded like real-world bigotry! However, at the rate he is piling on new tattoos his future career in acting is getting iffy anyway. So he might as well whine about not being universally beloved.

Fans will keep watching so long as the show remains interesting. Its diversity cred is virtually non-existent now.