Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
A house with parents in it. Dated in the jokes, sound in the structure.
Before the revival turned the volume up, this was a family sitcom drawn as a cartoon. Penny wants status. Oscar is vain and present. Trudy is the adult in the room. Suga Mama is not there to be nice. The friends are a chorus, not a replacement parent. Episodes end because someone in the house told the truth.
A teenager can watch it. Some of the 2001 gags have aged into crudeness. The measure is the table. If the episode keeps the table, it belongs. If it is only a dare, skip it.
Industry
6/10
Trudy's work and Oscar's failed businesses. Money is not a mystery.
Household
9/10
The Proud house is the plot.
Piety
4/10
Church shows up often enough to be a real place in their week, not a sermon.
Courage
5/10
Penny risks embarrassment more than danger.
Republic
6/10
A neighborhood, a school, people who will still be there Monday.
Temperance
5/10
Teen appetite, usually corrected by the end.
Truth
7/10
The parents are allowed to be right.
Stewardship
7/10
A girl is being raised on purpose.
Live historicallyLet a grandparent tell one story of their own teenage year, uninterrupted.
The fastest talk on television, and a real town. The lesson about men is weaker than the lesson about showing up.
Lorelai and Rory are a household of two that built a culture of showing up: Friday dinners, a town that will notice if you skip the festival, a school that is hard on purpose. That is a lot of good. The series is less sure that a man is for anything but banter, and Rory's later choices spend the capital the early years saved. Watch the early seasons for the town and the table.
Good for a mother and a teenage daughter together. Talk about the Friday dinner: why the grandparents, who are snobs, are still owed the evening.
Industry
6/10
An innkeeper who works, a daughter who studies. Both are allowed to be ambitious without being vacant.
Household
8/10
A mother and a daughter who eat together every night. The grandparents are difficult and not discarded.
Piety
4/10
Town festivals, not prayer. Conscience shows up as disappointment more than as worship.
Courage
5/10
They face rooms that frighten them: a dinner, a school, a pregnancy.
Republic
7/10
Stars Hollow is absurd and specific. A town meeting can swing an episode, which is right.
Temperance
6/10
Coffee and talk instead of worse vices. Romance is still a revolving door.
Truth
6/10
They hide boyfriends and school news. The show usually makes them say it by the diner scene.
Stewardship
7/10
A girl is being aimed at a life larger than the mistake that started hers, without being taught to despise the start.
Live historicallyKeep one meal a week that cannot be cancelled for a better invitation.
A precise horror about work that asks for a person and returns a function.
The best hour of television in this row about work. A person agrees to be two people so that the work never contaminates the evening, and discovers he has donated a life he never meets. You do not need the puzzle-box leftovers to keep that. Watch it until the compliment and the theft are both clear, and then look at your own job.
Industry
7/10
The office is the subject. Procedure, quotas, a career ladder with no career.
Household
3/10
Home is where the other half isn't. Marriage and mourning sit outside the elevator.
Piety
2/10
The company offers a cult in place of a creed.
Courage
6/10
The innies begin to refuse. The refusal is the plot.
Republic
5/10
A corporation as a government. The satire is exact.
Temperance
6/10
Cold, controlled, not a splatter.
Truth
8/10
The premise is a truth: a job that owns your hours wants the rest.
Stewardship
4/10
What is stewarded is a self, and the company is stealing it.
Live historicallyLeave one piece of the office at the office tonight. Do not split yourself to do it. Just close the laptop.
The covenant is real: a house, a mortgage, a color line. The horror then asks you to stay for the torture.
The Emorys want what the standard calls a household: a job, a school, a deed. Compton's answer is a campaign, and the campaign is not subtle. That half of the series is worth an adult's anger.
The other half keeps the camera on the violation until the violation is why you are still watching. Stop when you have understood the block. You do not owe the basement anything.
Industry
6/10
He goes to work. She tries to hold a kitchen that the block wants empty.
Household
7/10
A mother, a father, two girls. The house is the thing they came for and the thing that breaks.
Piety
4/10
Faith is in the mother's mouth. The show is more interested in the haunting than the prayer.
Courage
6/10
They stay when leaving would be wiser. Staying is not always courage.
Republic
7/10
Restrictive covenants and a neighborhood association are the civic crime, named.
Temperance
1/10
The violence against the children is prolonged. That is the product, past a point.
Truth
7/10
It tells the truth about how a nice block enforces a line.
Stewardship
3/10
Little is left to hand a daughter except the memory of the street.
Live historicallyIf your street has a quiet rule about who may buy, say the rule out loud. That is the covenant.
Decency as a strategy. It works better as a character than as a theory of everything.
Lasso's actual virtue is that he will not use a person's weakness as the joke, even when the room expects it. That is worth learning. The show then inflates it until niceness is supposed to heal a marriage, a club, and a personality disorder by the finale. Take the locker-room standard. Decline the miracle.
Industry
6/10
Coaching, training, a club that has to be run.
Household
4/10
A failed marriage back home. The team becomes the substitute house.
Piety
4/10
Belief, in a secular key. He means it.
Courage
6/10
He absorbs the mockery and stays.
Republic
5/10
A club is a small polity. The locker room has rules.
Temperance
5/10
Kindness is the discipline. The show sometimes thinks kindness replaces standards.
Truth
6/10
He tells the truth in a mode other people can hear.
Stewardship
5/10
He is trying to leave the club better. The diamond is still about him.
Live historicallyThis week, refuse one joke at someone who is not in the room to answer it.
A shop, a job, a customer. Slight, and pointed at work.
Bread Barbershop is a small shop, and a small shop is a better setting than a chosen one. The hero's day goes well when the customer leaves looking right. That is a true shape of work, wearing a silly costume. Fine for a young child, one or two at a time.
Industry
7/10
The barber has a chair, a tool, and a person to serve.
Household
4/10
The shop is the house. Customers are regulars.
Piety
3/10
Courtesy, not creed.
Courage
3/10
The brave thing is taking a difficult customer.
Republic
6/10
A town of people who need a service and pay for it with the plot.
Temperance
7/10
Mild and finished.
Truth
6/10
A haircut is a haircut, even if the head is a bun.
Stewardship
5/10
A child may notice that a job is for the person in the chair.
Live historicallyLet the child see a real person do a job for someone else this week.
Competence again, and again no address. A code is not a household.
Frances Neagley is the person in the Reacher books who can be trusted and cannot be held. The show understands the trust and films the distance as strength. Strength of that kind stops a crime. It does not build the block the crime happened on.
Admire the loyalty. Do not admire the refusal to belong.
Industry
6/10
She is exact at the work. Exactness is her whole comfort.
Household
2/10
No table. Proximity itself is the thing she refuses.
Piety
3/10
A private discipline stands where a creed would.
Courage
7/10
She walks toward the threat. That part is real.
Republic
4/10
The institutions are the obstacle or the client. She remains outside them.
Temperance
6/10
She is not a glutton. She is a locked door.
Truth
6/10
She keeps a promise. The show respects that.
Stewardship
2/10
She leaves the city the way she found it, minus a few men.
Live historicallyCall the person you keep at a professional distance and ask one question that is not about the work.
Clever cases. The lie is not a small joke: he is wearing a man's life, including a wife and a son.
John can solve what his brother could not because a life of setting puzzles is a kind of attention. That is the good joke. The bad joke is that attention arrives by stealing a husband's place at the table, and everyone is a little charmed.
Watch the cases if you like a mystery that has a shape. Say out loud that the household deserved the real man, or an honest stranger.
Industry
6/10
He can see the shape of a problem. The seeing is a trained habit, and it is real.
Household
5/10
He inherits a household he did not build and starts, clumsily, to keep it.
Piety
2/10
No creed. The puzzle is the god.
Courage
4/10
He takes the cases. He will not take them under his own name.
Republic
4/10
A police department that needs the result and does not look hard at the man.
Temperance
6/10
The murders are puzzles more than spectacles.
Truth
4/10
The cases tell the truth. The man solving them is a fraud the show finds endearing.
Stewardship
5/10
A boy gets a version of a father. The version is a substitute, and the show knows it is odd.
Live historicallyIf you are covering for someone, tell the people who eat with them. Do it this week.
A sacrifice at the start, then a spectacle of power. The start is the measure.
Yuji's first choice is the right kind: he takes a cost so someone else does not have to. The school, the mentor, and the idea that strength is for the people who cannot see the curses are a real moral frame. Then the frame fills with fights that are the reason the audience stays, and the people get smaller.
Teenagers will find it. Watch far enough to name the good choice, and do not pretend the later tournaments of suffering are the same story. A curse that exists to be beautifully beaten is an appetite. A boy who ate one to save a friend was a person.
Industry
5/10
Training is real, and then the power makes the training decorative.
Household
4/10
Friends are the stake. A household is not in the picture.
Piety
2/10
Curses are the metaphysics. Reverence is not.
Courage
7/10
He accepts a death sentence for a person he just met. That hour is the best of it.
Republic
3/10
A hidden school, not a town. The public is what gets protected in theory.
Temperance
3/10
The violence escalates because the audience is trained to need it.
Truth
6/10
The early bargain is honest about the price.
Stewardship
4/10
What he meant to hand on was a life. The show keeps spending lives.
Live historicallyDo not stay for the fight if you cannot say who the fight is for.
A procedure that still believes a case should reach a court. The formula is the point.
The show's structure is its argument. The police half is the street. The legal half is the republic doing the slower thing. It is often glib, and the ripped-from-the-headline plots age badly. Under the glibness is a picture almost nobody else bothers to shoot: a charge, a defense, a judge, and a record.
You can watch an episode and be done. That is a virtue in a shelf built to hold you. Do not confuse a tidy hour with justice. Do notice that the show thinks the courtroom is where the story is supposed to end, not the alley.
Industry
7/10
Detectives and prosecutors have a job with steps. The steps are the show.
Household
3/10
Victims have families. The families are usually a scene.
Piety
3/10
The law is the nearest thing to a creed, and it is argued, not revered.
Courage
5/10
The courage is procedural: taking a case you might lose.
Republic
8/10
A court is the institution. The show, at its best, serves it.
Temperance
6/10
The crimes are ugly and then finished. It does not ask you to live in them.
Truth
7/10
Two sides get a speech. The verdict is not a feeling.
Stewardship
5/10
A closed case is a record. The next episode does not pretend otherwise.
Live historicallySit through one real account of a trial, not a clip of the verdict.
