Ammo for the Family Hour

What better day than flag-waving Fourth of July to celebrate our constitutional guarantees such as the freedoms to speak and to choose?

And what better day, also, to eye warily proposals by some Capitol Hill politicians and assorted do-gooders to impose on television a screw-tightened “family viewing hour,” a cinching, chafing iron chastity wrap that would preclude viewers from deciding themselves what’s proper for them and their kids to watch in the first 60 minutes of prime time?

To “family viewing hour” advocates: Your frustration is understandable, but get stuffed!

Yet how can you not have mixed feelings about all of this, given the way TV sometimes dolls itself up in crimson rouge and platform heels and struts brazenly before the murmuring crowds milling angrily at its gates?

Even discounting coming high-definition television, these may be seminal years for TV, a definitive refitting in the shadow of the 21st century. Still raging are grisly wars over proposed additions to the present vague content labels for programs and, if they are to be expanded, what those changes would be. And much of TV remains under heavy bombardment from those who accuse it of sending to our homes too much violence, sex and profane language, and too little civility.

So what is it with these loopy TV industrialists who inflame their critics by flaunting themselves like hookers in leather micro-miniskirts flagging down motorists on Sunset Boulevard, as if hoping to affirm the worst of what their detractors are claiming about them? Even on the Fourth of July, they’re getting harder and harder to defend.

Consider, for example, a drama series that the tender young Warner Bros. Network is planning to roll out in December at 8 p.m. (7 p.m. in some time zones) Tuesdays, a fourth night of prime time that WB is adding at midseason. Some have tagged “Dawson’s Creek” a hybrid of ABC’s deceased “My So-Called Life” and Fox’s durable “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

Set in a Boston suburb, “Dawson’s Creek” is polished, well-acted and swell-looking; so far, so good. But here’s the payoff: It’s a bawdy coming-of-age hour about precocious 15-year-olds whose hormonally raging bodies, explains WB, “try to catch up with their adult minds.” To say nothing of their adult tongues.

You could make a case for this material, say, at 9 p.m. But at kiddie-accessible 8 p.m., when TV behavior looms especially large in society’s cross hairs? In other words, if ever a series were a suicidal cavalry charge, sabers high against a lethal wall of cannon, this is it. Even if the coming V-chip were in place and able to block the show’s delivery to homes that didn’t want it, granting “Dawson’s Creek” this time slot would still exemplify the kind of kiss-off attitude by the TV industry that so infuriates many viewers.

“We actually have a philosophy at this network about who we are trying to reach,” WB President Jamie Kellner said in May. His network’s animated mascot, Kellner added, identifies WB as “the place where American families can watch television together.”

Not necessarily.

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Here is what executive producers Kevin Williamson, Paul Stupin and Deborah Joy DeVine have packed into the “Dawson’s Creek” pilot episode about middle-class 15-year-olds that was sent out for preview by WB:

Dawson (James Van Der Beek) and Joey (Katie Holmes) discuss “breasts” and “genitalia” in Dawson’s room.

Then Dawson and Joey playfully wrestle in bed while clothed.

Then sexy Jen (Michelle Williams) moves in next door, and Pacey (Joshua Jackson) says to Dawson: “I think she’s a virgin. You wanna nail her?”

Then Dawson surprises his parents who are writhing and engaged in heavy necking on a coffee table, the mother prone atop the father.

Then, knowing Dawson and Pacey are watching, the mother mounts the father’s leg.

Then Pacey flirts with a hot-looking woman who enters the video store where he and Dawson work.

Then the woman, wearing a seductive look, asks Pacey: “Where would I find ‘The Graduate’? The [movie] where the older woman seduces the younger man, Dustin Hoffman.”

Then, while watching his news anchorwoman mother on TV with her male partner, Dawson asks Joey: “Do you think my mom is sleeping with her co-anchor?”

Then Dawson and Pacey learn that the sultry, flirty babe in the video store is Tamara Jacobs, a new teacher at their high school, where she arrives in Pacey’s class provocatively dressed.

Then Joey says her sister has been “impregnated” by her boyfriend.

Then Dawson observes a female he says is wearing a “[four-letter word for having sex]-you dress.”

Then Dawson says he’s having “a climax issue.”

Then Pacey asks the teacher, Miss Jacobs, if she’s “looking for romance tonight.”

Then Dawson’s father, while viewing his wife’s newscast on TV, tells Dawson: “Watching your mother work is the best foreplay.”

Then Dawson tells his father: “That’s all everybody thinks about anymore, sex, sex, sex. Does that mean we have to go humping on the coffee table?”

Then Joey asks her rival, Jen, “Are you a virgin? ‘Cause Dawson is a virgin.”

Then Jen tells Joey: “I am a virgin, Joey. And how about you, are you a virgin?”

Then Miss Jacobs rejects Pacey’s advances in a movie theater.

Then Pacey runs into Miss Jacobs on the wharf, angrily telling her: “You’re a well-put-together knockout of a woman who’s feeling a little insecure about hitting 40. So when a young, virile boy such as myself flirts with you, you enjoy it. You entice it, you fantasize about what it would be like to be with that young boy on the verge of manhood, ‘cause it helps you stay feeling attractive. It makes the aging process a little more bearable. Well, let me tell you something. You blew it, lady, ‘cause I’m the best sex you’ll never have.”

Then Miss Jacobs looks at Pacey longingly and says: “You’re wrong about one thing, Pacey, you’re not a boy.”

Then Miss Jacobs kisses Pacey passionately.

Then Joey, using canine care as a metaphor for masturbation, asks Dawson: “How often do you walk your dog, huh? What time of day? How many days a week?”

Then, after awhile, Dawson shouts a reply to Joey as she is leaving: “Usually in the morning, with Katie Couric.”

Then Dawson and Joey spot Dawson’s mother getting in some good-night smooching on the lips with her co-anchor.

There you have it, “Dawson’s Creek” as presently constituted. Coming to you in December at 8 p.m. on WB, “the place where American families can watch television together.”