Series · Prime Video · 2010

Parenthood

A family that stays in the same city. The talk is the work, and sometimes a substitute for it.

Braverman life is crowded on purpose. A child with a difficult mind, a marriage under strain, a father who was not gentle, and a family that will still take the phone call. That is a picture worth having. The limit is the speech. They explain themselves past the point of doing the small thing.

Watch it for the showing up. Do the small thing yourself before the speech.

The eight

Industry
6/10
Jobs, school meetings, a campaign, a studio. Adults have posts.
Household
8/10
The extended family is the subject. They show up.
Piety
3/10
Conscience without a church. They still have one.
Courage
6/10
They have the hard conversation, usually a season late.
Republic
5/10
A school, a baseball field, an election. Civic life at the edges.
Temperance
5/10
Feeling is indulged. The show believes a talk can finish a duty.
Truth
6/10
The children are particular. The diagnoses are not jokes.
Stewardship
7/10
The grandchildren are the reason the siblings keep the peace.

Live historicallyThis week, show up for one relative in the boring way: a ride, a meal, a form.

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.