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Lucky

Series · Prime Video · 2017

S.W.A.T.

A unit that works. Television competence, with the usual shortcut around politics.

The best of it is a squad that drills and then does the thing they drilled. The weak of it is the episode that poses a civic wound and closes it by the tag. Enjoy the craft of the unit. Do not let a tag scene be your understanding of the city.

The eight

  1. Industry

    7/10

    Training, entry, a chain of command. The job is respected.

  2. Household

    4/10

    Families at home, strained by the shift.

  3. Piety

    2/10

    Loyalty to the team is the creed.

  4. Courage

    7/10

    They go through the door.

  5. Republic

    5/10

    A city, a department, a neighborhood that does not trust the door.

  6. Temperance

    5/10

    Procedural. The action is the pleasure.

  7. Truth

    5/10

    It tries to hold both the danger and the distrust. It resolves them too cleanly.

  8. Stewardship

    4/10

    A team that forms the next sergeant. More succession than the loner shows.

Live historicallyIf you lead anyone, drill the boring part. The show is right about that and only that.

Series · Prime Video · 2005

Bones

Work and, eventually, a marriage. The bodies are the price of entry.

Temperance Brennan is great at a hard job and bad at people, and the series lets the job stay great while she learns the people. That is a better arc than House, because it does not bless the coldness. The cost is the weekly corpse. If you can keep the corpse from becoming your comfort watch, the partnership is a fair story.

The eight

  1. Industry

    7/10

    The lab is a real craft, respected.

  2. Household

    6/10

    They end as a family. The show is patient about it.

  3. Piety

    2/10

    She begins without a creed. The partner and the child complicate that.

  4. Courage

    5/10

    They stay with the dead until the dead have a name.

  5. Republic

    4/10

    The Bureau and the lab. Institutions that function.

  6. Temperance

    4/10

    A murder a week is still a diet.

  7. Truth

    6/10

    The unnamed body is given back a story. That is the decent core.

  8. Stewardship

    5/10

    A child arrives, and the work has to make room.

Live historicallyDo your work carefully enough that a stranger would be glad you were the one who touched it.

Annie