I am a member of One Million
Dads and the American Family Association.
As a member, I have kept up with all of their action items, even the ones I don’t
100% agree with (I figure it is better to be more conservative in this area). So it
was a surprise to me that I had never visited the Parents
Television Council website. In visiting the site, I was impressed by the huge
amount of television content that they had rated and the breadth of the additional
topics that they cover. Although there are a very limited number of TV shows
that I watch and am familiar with (more on that later), I was glad to see so many
shows rated. However, I do have one disagreement with them. In their review of Lost (on
ABC), their rating in the Sex and Language categories was Green (the best). The rating
for Violence is Red.

The violence on the series might be frightening to
children. Thus far it has primarily revolved around the plane crash, the passengers
injuries, and flashbacks to the pivotal event. However, a mysterious creature seems
to lurk in the jungle of the islands interior. The jungle is also the location of
one graphically depicted scene of violence. Offensive language has been infrequent
and confined to words such as ‘hell’ and ‘damn’, with one instance of ‘ass.’ Sex on
the series has not been much of a problem. The third episode did contain one brief
instance of non-sexual obscured nudity. Other sexual content has been confined to
very veiled innuendo.

The problem that I have is that the Overall rating of the show is Red. If 2 of the 3 categories are Green and 1 is Red, shouldn’t the Overall be Yellow? The first sentence of their review states that the ‘…series might be frightening to children.’ The Red for violence is probably warranted, although it doesn’t sound like the reviewer thinks that the show has horribly gratuitous violence. It is the Overall Rating of Red that I think is not accurate, based on their own rating system.