This is a sensitive topic I wanted to cover for a while. Bunny maltreatment, genocide I should say, in the movies. Who would hurt a cute and furry bunny? Apparently, everyone in the movie industry!! Unbelievable. Several years ago, I noticed this horrible trend: killing a rabbit suddenly become the norm. You don’t have to believe me, just observe next time. And you will start to see dead bunnies hanging here and there, being skinned, being poisoned, being eaten. It is always the bunny. I am sure that if a red-shirt and a rabbit find themselves on board of the Kobayashi Maru, the bunny would be tortured by the Klingon for hours before the expected outcome! This is when you should shout to the screen, “Star Trek would never harm a bunny.” That’s what I thought when in Star Trek: Picard (2020 – ), S1:E6 (The Impossible Box), we could see a lovely unicorn-rabbit frolicking near a pond when panning into the paradisiac Nepenthe. Well, guess who is on the lunch menu? The cute unicorn-rabbits!! Jean-Luc? Why so much hatred? I was despaired and ready to surrender to the Borg.
Everything felt futile, hopeless. Even a delicious pâté de lapin en croûte sounded insipid. But that’s when I’ve seen hope from the last show I’ve to expect on earth: MacGyver! Yeah, the reboot starring blondie – Angus MacGyver (Lucas Till) – saved the day. In S4:E5 (Soccer + Desi + Merchant + Titan), James Callis (Merchant), and Anna Bogomazova (Kristina) are picking-up a deadly device from Michael Mazzeo’s shop (Old Man). In the middle of the shop, so no one can miss it, there is a fluffy bunny in a cage. My bunny-crime detector immediately triggered, and I started fearing for the bunny’s integrity. Against all the odds, this is the dialog I could hear:
Merchant: “Who is this little guy?”
Old Man: “Please, please don’t hurt her”
Merchant: “My God, I never hurt a rabbit. You think I am some kind of psycho. I despise cruelty to animals. I am still trying to get this one to go vegan. But she is from the wrong side of Budapest. Do you know Budapest? It doesn’t matter.”
Thank you, MacGyver, just for this, I will forgive you all the shortcuts, approximations and blunt inventions you are taking us through in every episode. All is forgiven!
