Contraceptives: Is There Anything They Can't Do?

Katie's been watching a modern, well-scrubbed teenaged version of Thunderbirds on the Disney Channel. I sat and watched a bit of it with her. Ben Kingsley is in it, I'm sorry to say. He's the bad guy, and has trapped all our teenaged heroes and a few accompanying adults in a freezer vault using his evil red-eyed mind pulses. I had to leave the room.

Katie followed me a few minutes later. "Oh my God, Mom!" she said. "That was disturbing! That was so wrong!"

"What happened?" I asked her.

"The lady in the freezer vault just pulled out her, what's that birth control thing that's made of wire? They used it to pick the lock!" she said.

"Her IUD?!" I asked. "Is her gynecologist trapped in there with them?"

"No!" exclaimed Katie. "She just started reaching up under her clothes, and everybody turned around, and she pulled out this wire! She said she didn't really need it anyway."

I didn't know what to say. "But you can't, you can't do that," I protested. "It doesn't just come out."

Katie insisted. "She really did! I swear!"

I still couldn't believe it. "On the Disney channel?!"

"Watch it yourself," Katie told me, and rewound it.

Don't you love DVR? Remember when you used to have to videotape things? Remember trying to edit out the commercials? We had a Betamax, with a remote control whose cord snaked across the room. I'm not sure they shouldn't have stuck with that design. You couldn't lose it, and you didn't have to remember to buy batteries all the time. For all the technological advances of the last 30 years, you know, batteries are still batteries. Why hasn't anyone done something about this?

We watched the scene. The manservant informs Lady Penelope that he could pick the lock if only he had a wire of some kind; and a slow look of understanding, then resolve comes into her eyes. Her hand moves to her waist, and she begins to reach under her clothes, and everybody gets embarrassed and turns around. There is a closeup of fumbling underneath pink fabric, and after a few moments, she emerges with...

With the underwire from a bra, Katie. For God's sake!

Still fairly risqué for the Disney Channel, but note it was directed by Commander Riker.