Series · Prime Video · 1999

Freaks and Geeks

The rare teen show that likes the uncool kid and does not punish the family for existing.

Lindsay wants to be good and is bored of the official way of being good. Sam wants to get through the day without being hit with a dodgeball. Their parents are worried in complete sentences. Almost no teen television allows all four of those facts at once.

This is the one to hand a fourteen-year-old if the alternative is the row that thinks cruelty is personality.

The eight

Industry
5/10
A father who works. School that is actually attended. The band is a practice.
Household
7/10
The parents are not fools. The siblings share a house and a shame.
Piety
3/10
No creed, but a conscience that has not been ironized away.
Courage
6/10
Lindsay walks toward the kids she was told to avoid. That is a real risk in a real cafeteria.
Republic
5/10
A school, a gym, a kitchen. The institutions are ordinary and therefore believable.
Temperance
6/10
Desire is present and not the only weather.
Truth
8/10
It refuses the pretty lie about high school.
Stewardship
6/10
It was cancelled because it would not become the lie. That is a kind of keeping.

Live historicallyWatch the pilot. If the house laughs at Sam, turn it off. If it worries for him, keep going.

Series · Prime Video · 1991

Home Improvement

A father in the house. The laugh is his pride, and the neighbor over the fence is the conscience.

Tim Taylor wants every job to be louder. Jill and Wilson exist to say that louder is not the same as fixed. That is a usable comedy for a house with a father in it. The gender jokes are of their decade. The shape, a proud man learning he is not the only competent person in the kitchen, still holds.

The eight

Industry
7/10
Tools, a job site, a how-to show. Making is the family religion.
Household
8/10
A marriage, three sons, a kitchen that is actually used.
Piety
4/10
Wilson's advice is wisdom in a costume. Church is not the source, but humility is.
Courage
4/10
Tim's bravery is mostly bluster. The show knows and corrects it.
Republic
4/10
A neighborhood with a fence and a conversation over it.
Temperance
6/10
The excess is a bin of more power. The lesson is that more power is the mistake.
Truth
6/10
He is wrong by the end, in front of his sons.
Stewardship
7/10
The sons are watching. The show remembers that they are.

Live historicallyFix one small thing in the house properly, without upgrading it into a performance.