Well, now I have to stop watching 2 Broke Girls

Photo courtesy of disgrasian.com.

I stuck with 2 Broke Girls as long as I could. I kept at it, in spite of all its problems, because I (like everyone else who defends the show) liked the chemistry between Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs. I liked the more realistic economic backdrop. I liked the fact that no one in the script ever felt the need to label Dennings' Max as "the fat girl," and that she was allowed to be a women with fully realized sexual urges who wasn't portrayed as a slut.

Then series co-creator Michael Patrick King (of Sex and the City fame), had to go and behave like an incomprehensible jackass at Television Critics' Association press tour. After an increasingly uncomfortable series of questions about the ethnic stereotyping that plagues 2 Broke Girls and an equally uncomfortable series of attempts to justify those stereotypes, including falling back on the good ol' "I'm-gay-so-I-can-make-fun-of-minorities" defense, King attacked a reporter in his favorite language: ethnic slurs.

Things took a particularly uncomfortable turn when the reporter who had initially asked about Tassler's [CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler who had earlier told reporters that she had spoken to King about adding dimensionality to the characters] comments again tried to get King to clarify his remarks, reading the exact quote from the transcript of Tassler's executive session. King asked the reporter for his name. The reporter gave it. 

"So you're Irish?" King asked.

 "Yes," the reporter replied.

"So we've identified your sexual problem," King said.

via Alan Sepinwall, at HitFix.com. 

2 Broke Girls will certainly not be run off the rails by King's temper tantrum. It's a breakout hit for CBS, and most people who watch the series will likely remain unfazed by this development (if they hear about it at all). That said, I know that King's utterly insensitive behavior was the last straw for me. This incident has made one thing painfully clear: 2 Broke Girls is never going to stop with the racist stereotypes. The best thing I can do is stop watching.