So you might have heard a big (ahem) controversy exploded this week after a Marie Claire blogger complained about her disgust at watching Mike & Molly. "[Y]es, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other," wrote Maura Kelly, "because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything." And she was just getting warmed up! So were readers, apparently, quickly mobilizing against Kelly and extracting an apology from her and her editor. Which is too bad, because she was right.
In short, it is perfectly acceptable to be repulsed by morbidly obese people, as is expressing that repulsion as a reaction to their exploitation. They need help. Any show that can prompt and sustain a Fat Joke Tracker is not worthy of anyone's defense, and hearing its co-creator attempt to justify it as being about "embracing everybody" does not change the fact that there is no Mike & Molly without a perennially fat couple at its center. They are disincentivized and discouraged from losing weight and thus, hopefully, avoiding such obesity-related health issues as diabetes, stroke and heart disease. The idea that someone blogged her contempt for everyone involved is shocking only insofar as it didn't happen sooner.
And I know the primary complaint might not have been about Kelly's perspective so much as her approach -- the self-described "bullying" tone for which she's expressed such regret. But let's be honest: This is not about some loose cannon who opened fire on fatties and then cited her own battles with anorexia in attempting to take it all back. This is about a nation that refuses to acknowledge it's not OK to be morbidly obese, and will angrily, righteously turn any such acknowledgment back on its source. This is about a culture that makes a hit out of The Biggest Loser (itself endorsing a not-especially-healthy crash diet-and-exercise routine for maximum, sweeps-friendly effect) and then protests if or when anyone dares suggest obesity is combatable -- and should be combated. This is about a population that refuses to take responsibility for anything but its own victimhood.
It's not complicated: At some point you either get sick of being fat and lose weight, or you give up and write furious, defensive e-mails to people who are on to your BS excuses and self-loathing. Are there medical conditions of which obesity is an effect? Of course, but we're not talking about those afflictions, either, unless Mike & Molly is a sitcom about clinically sick people. We're talking about consequences and our inability (or unwillingness, rather) to deal with them.
And frankly, yes: That is contemptible behavior in an era when child obesity has tripled in the last three decades -- the same period of time during which Mike & Molly's primary demographic came of age and... had kids. That explains a lot about a mindset like that of Mark Roberts, the series co-creator who told James Hibberd, "The shocking thing is we live in a society where this was an issue" -- this despite earlier confessing to his own history of weight problems. Obesity absolutely is an issue; it's no coincidence that the series' titular couple met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. But again, just as they have sought help and found each other, the series ultimately rewards an unhealthy lifestyle by necessarily prolonging it.
Nobody wins in this schema -- not apologetic Maura Kelly, not defensive Mark Roberts or his partner Chuck Lorre, not Mike & Molly stars Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy, and worst of all not the Axis of Obese Apoplexy that insists and insists that submission to a scientifically proven health epidemic demands tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I do understand, believe me: I once weighed 255 lbs. (42-inch waist!) before going through the hell of shaping up to an even two bills. I knew how people viewed me, and I heard and saw and felt them lie to my face when they said, "Oh, you're not fat." I would have loved back then to be targeted in a rant like Kelly's -- any reality check I could get that would nudge me closer to action. And I don't mean letter-to-the-editor action, either. I mean let's-fix-this action. All fat people and their defenders/apologists privately know this exact feeling right now, and to argue any differently suggests either pathology or straight-up mendacity -- both of which are fully treatable.
Anyway, nearly 11 million people watch Mike & Molly these days, so either the die's been cast for our society or that audience will observe one of the most sincerely inspired -- and inspiring -- story arcs in television history: Mike and Molly lose weight, for themselves and for each other. Of course, then people couldn't laugh at them any more or get pissed when you admit they make you sick. I think I know how this will end, but I'd be the happiest guy on Earth to be proven wrong.