Series · Netflix · 2024

Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE

Young talent, spent by a machine. The documentary is clearer than the dream it films.

A competition can reveal character, and a few of these girls have some. The structure around them does not. Children are sorted, filmed, and assembled into a product with a passport strategy. If you watch it, watch as a warning about what a gifted child is offered instead of a life.

Not a dream to hand a daughter. A documentary to watch with an older teen who already wants to be looked at, so you can ask who owns the looking.

The eight

Industry
6/10
The rehearsals are real work. The product is a brand, not a trade they will own.
Household
2/10
Homes are what they left in order to be chosen.
Piety
1/10
The idol is the debut.
Courage
4/10
They risk humiliation in public. The risk is for a contract.
Republic
3/10
A company is not a town. The girls are inventory that can sing.
Temperance
3/10
Wanting to be seen is the fuel, and no one turns the valve down.
Truth
4/10
The series sometimes shows the cost. It also needs you to hope they win.
Stewardship
2/10
What they are handing on is a group's name, owned elsewhere.

Live historicallyIf a child in the house wants to perform, give her a real audience of people who know her name, not a camera that can replace her.

Series · Netflix · 2008

Breaking Bad

The finest argument on television for how a man becomes a villain. Do not mistake the argument for an invitation.

This is a great piece of work and a bad teacher. Walter White is given a real fear, a real bill, and a real gift with his hands, and he spends all three on an empire he pretends is for his wife and his boy. The series is honest about the corpse count. It is less honest about the thrill it sells you on the way there. People quote the man. They do not quote the ending, which is the only moral sentence the show has.

Not for teenagers. Grown people who watch it should watch it through, including the cost, and should say out loud that competence is not absolution. If you feel yourself admiring him past the first season, stop and notice that.

The eight

Industry
7/10
The chemistry is real craft, and the show never pretends the product is anything but poison.
Household
2/10
He starts for his family and ends by destroying it. The series knows. It also makes you want him to get away.
Piety
2/10
No soul is allowed to stop him. The closest thing is a brother-in-law who still believes in the law.
Courage
4/10
He takes enormous risks. They are for pride, long before they are for a child.
Republic
2/10
Every institution he touches — school, DEA, a partnership — he turns into cover.
Temperance
1/10
Addiction, murder, and the pleasure of being the smartest man in the room. The show is hypnotic about all three.
Truth
5/10
It tells the truth that a lie can wear a man's love for his house. Then it asks you to miss him.
Stewardship
2/10
What he hands his son is a name that has to be lived down.

Live historicallyDo a piece of skilled work this week that your house can use, and refuse the story that skill entitles you to a secret life.