RiffTrax Shorts Season 1 Episode 7 The Trouble With Women

RiffTrax Shorts season 1 episode 7 is entitled "The Trouble With Women." This episode features a series of short films exploring the comedic and societal implications of women's roles in the workplace and in relationships.

In the first short, "Women in the Workforce," the RiffTrax team takes aim at an outdated training video from the 1950s that reinforces gender stereotypes and promotes ideas of submissive behavior in female employees. The team pokes fun at the condescending tone of the narrator and the absurd scenarios presented in the film, such as a woman struggling to operate a typewriter.

The second short, "How to be a Good Wife," is a satirical instructional video from 1953 that teaches young women how to successfully cater to their husband's every whim. The RiffTrax team playfully critiques the outdated and sexist ideas of the film, such as the belief that it is a woman's duty to have dinner ready for her husband as soon as he comes home from work.

In the third short, "What to Do on a Date," the team comments on a 1940s instructional video that advises young women on how to behave on a date with a man. The team pokes fun at the idealized fashion and societal norms of the time, such as the expectation that women should always look pristinely coiffed and remain obedient to their male companion.

Finally, in "Self-Conscious Women," the team targets a 1950s animated short that showcases a girl fretting over her looks and behavior on a trip to Coney Island. The RiffTrax team takes the filmmakers to task for portraying the young girl as... a neurotic mess, while praising the animation for being highly entertaining and surreal.

Throughout this episode, the RiffTrax team delivers their signature brand of humorous commentary, cleverly skewering the outdated, problematic attitudes toward women conveyed in these vintage shorts. The show explores the prevailing societal expectations for women during the mid-twentieth century, while simultaneously mocking and subverting these expectations through comedic critique.

In addition to the laughs, this episode provides an intriguing glimpse into a past era's societal norms and fraught racial issues, contextualizing some of the broader underlying themes that anchored these shorts. However, despite the historical significance and cultural relevance of the episode, it never loses sight of its primary mission: delivering incredibly funny commentary on films that somehow managed to take themselves very seriously.