Culture

People Are Furiously Debating Which TV Characters Would Be Anti-Vaxxers

Sorry, Phoebe Buffay fans.

by Merryana Salem  6 October 2021
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Finally, there’s a vaccination debate worth having: which TV characters would be anti-vax?

The debate kicked off on Twitter last week, thanks to a prompt from podcaster and media personality, Kyle Koster. Koster asked the people of the internet to name and shame the TV characters who would be anti-vax.

Whether it was Kramer from Seinfeld, Phoebe from Friends, the entire cast of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, or the titular Kimmy Schmidt — no beloved TV character is safe from the anti-vax accusations.

Most controversially, many users cited Ted Lasso as a likely anti-vaxxer. While the assumption is definitely understandable given stereotypes associated with Ted’s homeland, I highly doubt a sports coach whose main profession is maintaining the wellbeing of athletes is an anti-vaxxer.

Arguably, the only valid most-likely-to-be-anti-vaxxers in all of TV history are Mulder and Scully from The X-Files. After all, the pair famously unearthed a global conspiracy uncovering alien technology that had been non-consensually injected into humans via mass vaccination.

The entire Bluth family from Arrested Development were slapped with the anti-vax label. However, many argued that golden boy Michael Bluth would likely be the only exception. Personally, I think he still would be one, but would just have reasons that would seem more intellectual.

The fiercest debate, however, raged among Parks and Recreation fans. Many a Twitter user labelled Ron Swanson as a likely anti-vaxxer, given the character’s famous anti-government and anti-medicine stance.

Fans of the beloved Parks and Recreation character have scrambled to Ron’s defence, saying he’d get the vax reluctantly after a good deal of cajoling from Leslie. I personally think Ron would use COVID-19 as an excuse to finally live as a recluse in the woods as he always dreamed, vax be damned.

Who do I think would be anti-vax? I know for a fact that Mr Peanutbutter from Bojack Horseman would not only be anti-vax, but would absolutely be running an annoying influencer Instagram account about it. This exact same belief goes for Rachel Berry (Glee), Haley Dunphy (Modern Family) and Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother).