Series · Prime Video · 2020

The Stand

King's real subject is allegiance. The series is uneven and the subject survives.

After the flu, the story is not about the flu. It is about whether the people left will gather around a frail good or a charming destroyer. That is a story worth telling. This version is not the strongest telling, but it does not hide the choice.

Adults. Talk about the two towns, not about the set pieces.

The eight

Industry
5/10
They have to rebuild kitchens, watches, a town.
Household
5/10
The new societies are households first.
Piety
7/10
The plot is which god you will serve. It is not coy about that.
Courage
6/10
People walk toward the place they believe is good, at cost.
Republic
6/10
Two constitutions: Boulder and Las Vegas. The contrast is the point.
Temperance
4/10
The dark side is glamorous longer than it should be.
Truth
7/10
Evil has a face and a sales pitch. Good has a duty.
Stewardship
6/10
The question is what kind of people will inherit the empty world.

Live historicallyName which of the two gatherings your own habits are walking toward.

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.