Okay, now I'm glad I posted because my eyes have been opened to some big issues. I'll admit that I'm completely clueless about "apparently" basic Native American history (My knowledge doesn't extend much past Disney getting Pocahontas completely wrong and then using Canadian landscape as their model instead of the actual location of Virginia). So here I am, teach me.

Also, sacred, inherently unfunny to most people

I do actually agree with you, but people have to understand it is sacred. That is what I'm trying to say. I know a lot about sacred things not being understood and still being made light of. I'm not Catholic, I'm Mormon. People get a lot wrong about my religion. I'm not giving them permission too, I'd rather them learn about the religion before poking fun at it, but I'm willing to let things somewhat slide. They don't understand, you can't make them, but you can try to enlighten them. It's not worth getting in an unfriendly debate over. So I guess people need to be both more sensitive and less insensitive so we can meet on happy ground.

Here's the thing about "Totem Mole": They used a non-existant tribe, combined a bunch of things from various tribes (not caring about geographical location) and tried tomake it work. Some people are unknowledgeable enough that it may not bother them. I'm glad you are knowledgeable enough to teach those of us that aren't.

edited to add "less" before insensitive.

can some explain this to me, please. The Totem Mole says, "Show Him Who's Special" ... who is that referring to? in the end wasn't it Deanna Littlefoot...

Mahandra applying for citizenship and denied partly because of Sharon wanted to buy 2 cases of cigarettes... funny

The she can be Littlefoot, and the he Bill (was that the other guy's name) with no problem.

Totem Mole could have done something interesting with the stereotype, and it almost did. After all, her spiritual revelation involved casinos, which I thought hysterical. But it's pretty much muttered under the episode's breath.

I still thought the episode was a great read, script-wise. I was blind to about half the problems until I read them here. It still loaded me up with that WANT MORE feeling.

Do you (general, as in y'all) find you're more tolerant of a stereotype/trope, when it is used by someone you respect? In this case, I don't know the writers, but I think I give them some cred (and maybe underservedly, that's what I'm trying to get at) because Tim is on the team. I know I gave M.E. more credit with the scenario revolving around the death of Tara, than I would have given to random-writer/producers. I also know I have a different tolerance for something that makes me cringe because it's cheesy, than something that makes me cringe because it's mean/harmful.

To me, the teepee/wigwam use (which either I missed, or it wasn't specified in the script, but I probably just missed it) is more evidence of sloppy research, than uncomfortable stereotyping, probably because, as fairlite2u (sp?) mentioned, they created a fictional tribe.

I don't give anyone a break. Crap is crap. Gold is gold. Doesn't matter whose name appears in the credit, that.

I don't think Tim is some racist FUCKO, in fact, I know he isn't.

I thought he was a sexist FUCKO, once, but that's all straightened out, now. He's not. I still think he's the puddin' pop o' love.

I don't give anyone a break. Crap is crap. Gold is gold. Doesn't matter whose name appears in the credit, that.

Yeah. I didn't mean so much on the crap to gold scale as far as quality is concerned, only where stereotyping is concerned.

I don't think Tim is some racist FUCKO, in fact, I know he isn't.

This. Since you know he's not a racist FUCKO, are you less angry than you would have been, if Tim wasn't involved with this project?

I thought he was a sexist FUCKO, once, but that's all straightened out, now. He's not. I still think he's the puddin' pop o' love.

Billy?

Do you (general, as in y'all) find you're more tolerant of a stereotype/trope, when it is used by someone you respect?

Nope. Watching people I know and love descend to stereotypes to portray Jamaicans made me want to kill them all with lots of flensing. Because there's disappointment too.

This. Since you know he's not a racist FUCKO, are you less angry than you would have been, if Tim wasn't involved with this project?

No. I'm disappointed, not angry about it.

Ok, couple of points of possible interest. This is gonna ramble and jump around, so forgive me. And this really isn’t me making excuses, since I actually like this episode and, when all was said and done, I felt it accomplished (more or less) what I wanted it to.

That said, I’ll admit I never wanted to do a Native American story in the first place (Indian? This alone is confusing because my friend who works with Indigenous Peoples in Colorado tells me that her friends don’t care for “Native American” and call themselves “Indians.”)

Anyway, politically and culturally sensitive areas like this never go well. No matter what we did, if we treated the area too reverentially it would be condescending, considering what our show was. But you don’t want to be a dick, either. So you attempt some stab at real world accuracy, you try to make some characters who represent any given group buck stereotypes or end up being right or smarter than your hero (if your hero doesn’t live in that group.) but if you’re a slave to “realism” and try to make it a documentary, then you have no story, because you (generally) have to contrive some things to make a plot serve a theme. I fully expected the kinds of reactions I’m seeing now -- and I’m getting them from people I know and respect. So I don’t dismiss at all what you have to say here. I’m actually very sorry if anyone was offended by this episode. Only, ‘cause, you know, I don’t want you to be.

I had the same feeling when I got the very angry letters from Christians and Catholics after “Wound Up Penguin.” I took some time to respond to them, because I was as careful and mindful of not offending them as I could be when constructing that episode. I pointed out that I was well aware that not all Christians took their religion as lightly or as oddly as Jaye’s family, and that the exorcism by the Nun was a heightened comic “buy” (and also my needed before-the-commerical-break peril.) I made the Priest the most pragmatic of the bunch to try and balance the other stuff. Blah blah blah.

When breaking a story for an episode of any show the first question I always ask is “what do I need?” Emotionally and on a visceral level. When we got to “Totem Mole” (you can already tell how many times the story was revised. There is no “mole” in the episode. We learned that certain birds are sacred to the Seneca, and they were our model, and that’s what the image turned into, though the title never reflected the change) I -- we -- felt it was time to do a story where Jaye is faced with the possibility that she really is special. And what that means.

We’d been playing with the notion that Aaron had a glimpse into Jaye’s specialness and felt cheated. She had a gift that he wished he had. He was trying to get the animals to talk to him, and they wouldn’t. They did talk to her and all she wanted was for them to stop. I love the idea that people are always disappointed -- either they don’t appreciate what they have, or they don’t get to have the thing they want. That seemed real to me. I wanted to explore that idea and maybe even move Jaye closer to a kind of acceptance. If she hasn’t accepted the voices by the end of the episode, she’s at least stopped actively trying to silence them.

The initial premise was going to be Jaye tries so hard to convince someone who is not special that they are special as a way of comically exploring her own denial. She gets him to the point where he starts to believe it, but in the end he’s relieved that he’s not special -- because who wants that pressure? The lesson he learns is that he’s blessed by being vanilla. He had spent his life cursing the fact that he wasn’t special, but learns to be grateful for that very fact by the end. (That notion got tossed because the network didn’t think that was a big enough “victory” for the client, so it sort of became about him finding his place in the Tribe. I understand their concern, but something about the other idea excited me more. It seemed less “tee vee.” But perhaps that was the trouble. Too intellectual.)

I see two main lines of focus in the complaints -- the “noble native” trope or the “connected to the spiritual” native trope, and that certain physical set pieces or traditions were wrong.

I’ll mention that this thing went through more drafts than any other script, and we were hammering on it right up until the last screaming second.

When crafting an episode, I generally arc out what I need to happen emotionally then figure out how to get there. We needed to make up certain things for the sake of servicing the Jaye-in-denial and the Bill-as-vanilla story. Hence inventing a fictional tribe name, inventing things like the “trials.” And the supposed “peyote.” I needed an act two break. I needed Jaye to push this guy so far that he was in physical peril as an act break. She was convincing him of a lie and only when she saw how she was using this guy to his detriment could she be slapped back to her senses. Also, act break. Needed. Drama. I don’t want to pull back the curtain too much here, but this was our standard act break on this show -- peril! Jaye will be cut by the nun! Eric will be brained with a baseball bat! Bill drops dead! All generally diffused in the first scene of the next act.

Anyway, initially Bill jumped off a roof, but we couldn’t afford to shoot it. I needed something that seemed like part of the ritual and that I could actually shoot without adding a location. A guy lighting a pipe was doable. A guy throwing himself off a building or wrestling with a bear of whatever was not. I know that peyote isn’t realistic in the Northeast, but Jaye’s the only one that uses that word. A cheat, I know, but still. I have no defense here. I needed something to get me to the commercial and end the trials and change the story flow.

Dingoes ate your post, there.