Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
A careful voice for a baby. It is still a screen standing where a person should stand.
Ms. Rachel is one of the few people on this row who speaks to a baby as if the baby were a person. That is why parents trust her, and it is also the risk. A recorded woman cannot hand the child back. Use a song of hers when you need the words. Then use your own voice for the rest of the hour. The show is a tool. It is not a parent.
Industry
6/10
She is teaching, and the teaching is paced for a real infant.
Household
4/10
She borrows the tone of a mother without being one of yours.
Piety
3/10
Gentleness, not worship.
Courage
2/10
Nothing is risked.
Republic
4/10
Call and response is a small society, conducted by a stranger.
Temperance
8/10
Slow, kind, and not overstimulating on purpose.
Truth
7/10
The words are the words. She is not selling a second meaning.
Stewardship
4/10
A baby may learn a sign. The teacher leaves when you close the laptop.
Live historicallyTurn it off and say the same word yourself, in the room.
Loyalty to a household, from the floor. Slight, and on the right side.
Max's fear is the new dog in the apartment. Duke's wound is abandonment. The city is a comic underworld of animals, and the film's spine is two creatures trying to get back to a door that opens. Snowball's revolution against owners is the joke that has to lose, because the film believes a home is better than a grievance.
Not a great film. A fair one. The animals want their people. That is enough for a Friday.
Industry
3/10
They wander. The owner goes to work.
Household
7/10
Home is the good. Replacement is the fear.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
5/10
They cross the city.
Republic
4/10
A comic revolt against owners, defeated.
Temperance
5/10
Jealousy starts the trouble.
Truth
6/10
A house is not a prison in this story.
Stewardship
6/10
Getting them back to the door is the whole stake.
Live historicallyBe the person your animal, and your child, can find at the end of the day.
The potion is the villain. That is the correct instinct. The film is loud around it.
A love potion is a theft, and the story knows it. The people who brew it are not romantics. They are kidnappers with a bottle. The bog king, played as a monster, is the one who will not be drugged into a feeling. That reversal is the only reason to keep the film.
The rest is a jukebox turned up too high, and a fairy court that learns more slowly than the children watching. If you put it on, say the quiet part at the end: a feeling you poured into someone's cup is not a vow. It is an assault.
Industry
3/10
Little craft. A lot of sugar.
Household
4/10
Sisters, a father, a courtship that starts as a con.
Piety
3/10
Magic as a drug.
Courage
6/10
He refuses the potion. She crosses the bog.
Republic
3/10
A fairy kingdom of moods.
Temperance
7/10
The potion is condemned. Desire is not allowed to be the law.
Truth
7/10
Forced love is named as a lie.
Stewardship
5/10
The sisters get a truer ending than the potion wanted.
Live historicallyRefuse one shortcut that claims to manufacture love.
For the little sibling who grabs the remote. Kind, mechanical, and short. Thirteen does not need it and will not be hurt passing it.
This is on the kids' row under the adult storefront, which is the honest map of Prime: a thirteen-year-old scrolls through Hazbin Hotel to reach a garbage truck. The truck is fine. The scroll is the issue.
Leave it for the youngest. Do not let the youngest's profile be the same click as Ali G.
Industry
6/10
Trucks that do a job. The job is the story.
Household
4/10
Friends. No parents, because the audience is three.
Piety
2/10
None, and none required at that age in a truck show.
Courage
4/10
They try again when the plan fails.
Republic
4/10
Helping is the plot.
Temperance
8/10
Gentle.
Truth
5/10
Simple cause and effect.
Stewardship
5/10
A small child sees work as play. That is a fine first picture.
Live historicallySplit the profiles. The preschooler should not open the same door.
The friendship is real. The wound is not a twist. Older teens, with an adult who will not narrate the harm.
Charlie wants a place at the table. Sam and Patrick give him one, which is a genuine good: a first party, a first friend, a mix tape as a form of care. The film also carries a grave harm in his past. The desk will not describe it. It is not a reveal to enjoy, and it is not a reason to hand this to a child. What a house can use is the earlier truth. A young person on the edge of the room is not fine just because he is polite.
Watch it if you are old enough to be a help and not a spectator. Then be a help in a room you actually enter.
Industry
4/10
School, a shop, little vocation yet.
Household
5/10
Friends who make a place. A family that does not see.
Piety
3/10
Tenderness, not a creed.
Courage
6/10
He keeps living, which is not nothing.
Republic
4/10
A small circle against a harsh school.
Temperance
5/10
Feeling is large and mostly governed.
Truth
6/10
The loneliness is honest.
Stewardship
5/10
The mix tape is a kind of stewardship, if you leave the wound alone.
Live historicallyNotice the quiet boy, and do not make his confidence your story to tell.
Surveillance as a conscience. The conscience does not make the watching innocent.
Early on it is a man who will protect a stranger because a machine said today is the day. That impulse is decent and the method is not. Later the series admits the method is the threat. Watch long enough to hear the admission. Do not leave with the fantasy that the right quiet men should have the camera.
Industry
6/10
A system, a method, a team that gets better.
Household
3/10
Loners. The team becomes the only house.
Piety
3/10
A machine in the place of providence.
Courage
6/10
They show up for the irrelevant person the state would ignore.
Republic
5/10
The fear of an unaccountable eye is the real plot, and it arrives.
Temperance
5/10
A case a week, then a war. Restrained more often than the genre.
Truth
6/10
It asks whether saving a life licenses the camera.
Stewardship
4/10
The future they are fighting about is a society of people who do not know they are seen.
Live historicallyRefuse one convenience that exists only because something is watching you.
Blood is not a household. A throne is not a town. Leave it for the young.
The show is careful about succession and careless about everyone who is not in the family. Children are pieces. Marriage is a treaty. The smallfolk are a rumor until they are on fire. That is an honest picture of a court. It is a poor picture of a people.
Adults who want the chess can watch the first season and stop when the war becomes the product. A house does not need a second Game of Thrones to learn that a family at war with itself will spend the neighbors. You already know that. Do not let the dragons make it glamorous.
Industry
4/10
Ruling is treated as a birthright, not a job with a standard.
Household
3/10
Children are heirs. A marriage is a border. The table is a council.
Piety
2/10
Dragons are the sacred thing. Conscience loses to the name.
Courage
6/10
They ride toward fire. The nerve is real. The cause is the chair.
Republic
2/10
A realm exists to be inherited. Duty to it is the speech, not the act.
Temperance
3/10
Cruelty and appetite are the court style, and the style is the show.
Truth
4/10
Oaths are made and priced. The price is usually a corpse.
Stewardship
2/10
What is handed on is a feud. The country is the kindling.
Live historicallyName one duty you owe that is not to your own relatives, and do it this week.
Greed against a mouse, and against a father's craft. The slapstick is the sermon.
Ernie wants the house sold. Lars still knows how the string is made. The mouse is chaos, and the brothers' war on it is the picture of men who will wreck a home to clear a transaction. The string factory, a real product, is what their father left. The film would rather they make string than flip a mansion.
Cruel in the way old slapstick is cruel, mostly to the brothers. A family can watch it and hear the question: what did we inherit that we are too proud, or too tired, to keep making?
Industry
8/10
A string factory is the true inheritance. The house is the temptation.
Household
5/10
Brothers, a dead father, a marriage Ernie is failing.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
4/10
They endure the mouse. They are not brave. They are frantic.
Republic
4/10
A sale, a will, a town.
Temperance
6/10
Avarice starts the war.
Truth
6/10
The father's craft was the point of the will.
Stewardship
7/10
Keep the factory. The mouse, annoyingly, is on the side of keeping.
Live historicallyDo not sell the thing your father built in order to be finished with it.
The want is home. The songs are of their decade. A child can watch it; do not let the romance be the moral.
Thumbelina is kidnapped into other people's plans: a toad who wants a wife for her son, a mole who wants a pretty thing for a dark house, a beetle who wants a novelty. She is polite and then she is gone, which is the right order. The mother on the other end of the story is the point the songs keep trying to replace with a prince. The prince can stay in the picture. He is not the windowsill.
Don Bluth's drawing is more serious than the plot. The cold, the animals, the smallness are felt. Say, if you watch it, that a girl is not a prize for the next creature who finds her charming. Then name the place in your own house that a lost child should be able to aim at.
Industry
3/10
No trade. A journey.
Household
7/10
The plot is a child separated from her mother.
Piety
3/10
Wonder, and a fairy court that is not a faith.
Courage
6/10
She keeps refusing the houses that would keep her.
Republic
4/10
Creatures with their own interests. Little law.
Temperance
6/10
The beetle, the mole, and the toad are appetites. She does not join them.
Truth
6/10
Home is specific. The offers are flattery.
Stewardship
7/10
Getting back is worth more than the wedding the poster prefers.
Live historicallyAsk a child what they would walk back to if they were taken somewhere glittering.
Keep it. Desire, a tangent-prone father, and a feast that survives the disaster.
Ralphie's want is excessive and completely recognizable. The Old Man's pride in a hideous lamp is the adult version of the same excess, which is why the film is fair. The mother's management of both is the uncredited heroism. There is a meanness in a few of the jokes that a house can talk over. The Chinese Christmas dinner, when the turkey dies, is the scene that knows what a feast is: the people, relocated, still fed.
Watch it every year if you want. Skip any bit that is only a wince. Keep the pink bunny and the humility it requires.
Industry
5/10
A household kept through a holiday.
Household
8/10
Parents, a brother, a want.
Piety
3/10
Christmas as the setting more than the creed.
Courage
4/10
Little danger. Some social bravery.
Republic
4/10
A school, a bully, a neighborhood.
Temperance
5/10
Appetite is the joke and is gently corrected.
Truth
6/10
Childhood wanting is told truly.
Stewardship
7/10
The dinner that still happens is the heirloom.
Live historicallyLet a child want something, and do not make the present the whole day.
