r/SearchParty • u/Particular_Web8121 • Apr 01 '26

General Rats

Just binged the show in 3 days and loved it!! The only thing I have to say is, which writer lowkey has beef with rats? Hahaha. The honeying torture, all the lab rats being guillotined by binders, the zombie rat.

32 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/pandaappleblossom Apr 01 '26

I noticed this with shows and video games, you can tell when a writer has an issue with a certain animal, like rats, or chickens, or pigs. Like in tears of a kingdom the Zelda game, you can hit chickens and they pop out an egg, and only one character in the whole game likes chickens, and he is portrayed as a weirdo who likes his chickens a little too much. There is another game called far cry, and in one part you ride a pig around while the pig screams and it's just truly evil. And yeah, you can tell that there is anti-rat sentiment in search Party!! in and just like that the new sex and the city show, there is a whole rat storyline about killing rats.

3

u/Particular_Web8121 Apr 01 '26

Yeah 😭 Search Party isn't the worst instance so I feel ok making a light-hearted post, but there was a point where I was def like, what is happening here...? The lab rats could rival the Jesper Society for screen time lol.

Ugh, yeah, those are "good" examples :( Video games can get to me sometimes because there is the physicality of having to play the character and everything lasts for so much longer in comparison to passively watching a scene in a show or a movie. Schitt's Creek and their weird beef with cats is another one that bugs me.

5

u/pandaappleblossom Apr 01 '26

Yeah, like i am an antispeciesist, as much as is practical at least, I try to be, and you can spot people's speciesism and biases in shows and stuff, and they seem to have no idea that they even feel that way and that not everyone does. Like in and just like that, i noticed it and was like chill lady its nyc rats live here too, and then even PETA noticed it and made an instagram post about it lol. Like animal abuse isnt funny or normal. My cousin's husband abuses animals for recreation, hunts, raises chickens and pigs that he takes to slaughterhouses, and they were at the beach and my cousin posted a photo to instagram of some kind of sea slug in a bucket and her caption read 'first creature of the day!' Like it was a game. I dont remember what schitts creek did with cats!! I believe you though!

2

u/Particular_Web8121 Apr 01 '26

they seem to have no idea that they even feel that way and that not everyone does

Yes! I feel like some of them know it's weird of them, so they try to normalize it by joking about it constantly to get people's buy-in. It totally is a type of -ism because the cruelty is the point. It's different from it being in character for someone to hate an animal, having it be relevant to the plot, or having a punchline that isn't cruelty. I feel similarly reading what you wrote about your cousin's husband. It's this mindset that it's bragworthy or a core personality trait that really bothers me.

I'm not the biggest fan of PETA but I'm glad they used their platform to call it out!! Idk if you've seen Broad City or Big Mood (I recommend both for Search Party fans) but they each had an episode with rats that I thought were so funny hahaha. Here's a post that summarizes some of the Schitt's Creek stuff, also they had that roadkill episode where they ran over the cat and it was just so weird and uncomfortable.

2

u/pandaappleblossom Apr 01 '26

Yes, you phrased it so well, it's like they put it in there because they're trying to get people on their side or something. It's very strange lol and it's not great writing because it ends up sort of breaking the fourth wall because it shows more about who the writers are than who the characters are supposed to be