Series · Prime Video · 2019

Steven Universe Future

The rare sequel that says winning is not the same as being well. He has to ask for help.

Future is about a young man whose entire childhood was other people's emergencies, and whose body keeps the emergencies after they end. The show does not solve him with a bigger fight. It makes him say the thing out loud to the people who raised him.

Good after the original, with a parent, especially for a teenager who has been the capable one. Not a starting point.

The eight

Industry
5/10
He tries to be useful in peacetime and learns that helping can be a way of hiding.
Household
7/10
The guardians are still the house. His friends are growing up on a different clock.
Piety
3/10
No creed beyond care, and care is starting to fail him.
Courage
6/10
The bravery is admitting he is not fine.
Republic
4/10
A town trying to live next to the people who used to occupy it.
Temperance
6/10
It refuses another season of triumph. The feeling is not indulged forever.
Truth
8/10
A hero who is hurting is allowed to be inaccurate about his own goodness.
Stewardship
7/10
What he hands on is a life that is not a mission. That is the correction.

Live historicallyAsk the competent child in your house how they actually are. Wait for the second answer.

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.