I seem to recall an episode of Sidekick's where Ernie & his friend's (extra's and/or actor's who had reoccurring roles on the show as kids Ernie's age) played "Dungeon's & Dragon's". Gil Gerard was apparently horrified by this, referring to the game as "Satanism"! I don't remember the plot of that particular episode but, I do remember thinking "I didn't know that Gil Gerard was a Christian fundamentalist.", since they are and/or seemed to be, at least at the time, typically the only ppl who get their panties into a bunch over thing's such as this, including with Harry Potter and how group's like the Westboro Baptist Church says that pretty much everything is Satanism...
Back when that episode was first aired I remember hearing about this 'scandal', if you can call it that, on, if I remember correctly, "Entertainment Tonight". Apparently, Gil Gerard didn't like the script, didn't want to do it, voiced his concern's, but, he was under contract... The producer's finally decided to write the script for that episode in a way that would allow Gil to save face, since his apparent disgust for the script of this episode and for Dungeon's & Dragon's specifically had already been made public. This would mean that his character, Jake Rizzo, would openly state, early in the episode, during his dialogue his concern's about Dungeon's & Dragon's and then Jake Rizzo would fade into the background for the rest of that episode, which perhaps means that this is the only episode of the entire series where Gil's character didn't not play an integral part of the plot?! The story did mention that all of the other ppl, including the other actor's, on the show didn't have a problem with the script or with Dungeon's & Dragon's. I remember seeing the episode and I remember all of the other character's behaving towards Jake Rizzo like he's some sort of a crackpot, staring at him curiously & with some sense of "Is this a joke?!"
Researching the show & some of it's actor's, I found that Nancy Stafford (Who played Patricia Blake on the show.) was raised a Southern Baptist Christian! She didn't have a problem with the script, nor with Dungeon's & Dragon's. I found that to be strange as it is those crazy Southern Baptist's who just love to swing that Bible like it's a baseball bat, in declaration that everything is evil, etc! Doing so means that they shove that garbage down the throat's of those who are the most impressionable, i.e. children, and they essentially rape them emotionally & psychologically.
(There are others who do it, of all religion's & not just Christianity. It may be something of a stereotype, & an inaccurate one at that, that Southern Baptist's are the only "Christian's" who do it but, they have done quite a bit of it. And obviously all Southern Baptist's do not subscribe to this developmentally stunted, fear, hate, scare, rumor and smear mongering, tinfoil hate wearing, Kool-Aid sipping, conspiracy theory dogma.)
I would like to catch the Entertainment Tonight episode that ran with this story, right here on IMDb if possible. But, with 5 episodes a week, for at least a decade, perhaps two & maybe more, I doubt that I will find it any time soon, if ever.
