Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
The only part that belongs on this desk is a father deciding the boy is his. The rest is a hunt.
Vision is a person someone else assembled, working a quiet job, carrying voices that are not all friendly, Ultron among them. Then there is Thomas, a boy who may be the son he and Wanda never got to raise. The standard is simple and it does not care about the bounty hunter. A man who claims a child because the child is his to protect, not because the paperwork is tidy, is doing the human thing. A series that uses the boy as bait for a robot war is spending that thing.
Not for small children. If you watch it, watch the scenes between the man and the boy. Leave when the only reason to continue is the next power.
Industry
4/10
He is hiding as a barman. Ordinary work is a disguise, not a life the show loves.
Household
7/10
A son who may not be his by any ordinary claim, and the question of whether he will keep him anyway.
Piety
3/10
Powers and a voice in his head. Reverence is not the interest.
Courage
6/10
He steps out of hiding because a boy is in danger.
Republic
3/10
Factions and a bounty. Not a town.
Temperance
4/10
The violence is the genre's tax. The family scene is the exception.
Truth
5/10
He does not know which memories are his. The show is at its best when that uncertainty is painful rather than a puzzle box.
Stewardship
6/10
What he might hand on is a name and a protection, to a boy the world already failed.
Live historicallyIf a child in your life is not 'yours' on paper and is yours in fact, act like it this week in some practical way.
Ordinary school days, ordinary fault, a family that is still there at supper. A good long habit.
Arthur is not exciting, which is why a child can grow on it. The conflicts are the size of a classroom. D.W. is selfish and four, and the family does not organize itself around her tantrum. Binky, Francine, and the Brain are particular. The best episodes end with a person changed a little, not crowned.
Put it on for the grade-school years. Sit for one and ask what Arthur had to admit. That question is the whole curriculum.
Industry
5/10
A father who runs a catering business, a mother who works. Homework is real.
Household
8/10
Parents with authority, a grandmother, a sister. Arguments end with someone still in the house.
Piety
4/10
No worship. Conscience is a teacher, a parent, or a friend who is done with you.
Courage
6/10
The brave act is usually an apology or a try at a thing you are bad at.
Republic
8/10
Elwood is a town: a library, a school, a shop, a teacher with a name.
Temperance
7/10
The portion is a problem a child can finish before dinner.
Truth
7/10
Someone was wrong. The episode is not over until that is said.
Stewardship
7/10
Manners, reading, and how to lose a friend and get her back.
Live historicallyAt supper, let each child say one thing they got wrong today. Include yourself.
Keep it. Jealousy named, loyalty learned. One of the few pictures a small child and a parent both need.
Woody's sin is ordinary and adult: he was first, and he thinks first is a right. Buzz's confusion is comic until it is sad. The film refuses both the cruelty of the replaced and the narcissism of the new. Sid's house is a genuine fear, and the escape is friendship, not a product speech. Andy's name on the foot is a picture of belonging that is particular. You are not loved in general. You are loved by name.
Put it on. When Woody says the true thing on the moving truck's running board, that is the line to keep. A friend is not a rank.
Industry
6/10
Play is treated as a post with duties.
Household
7/10
A boy's room as a real household.
Piety
4/10
No creed. A serious loyalty.
Courage
7/10
He goes back for Buzz.
Republic
5/10
A small society of toys with laws.
Temperance
7/10
Envy is the villain and it is rebuked.
Truth
8/10
He tells Buzz the truth about who he is.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands a child the end of jealousy as a happy ending.
Live historicallyLet someone else be the favorite without punishing the room.
Keep it. Imagination here is a way of telling the truth about a person's worth, not an escape from the attic.
Sara's kindness in the attic is the film's argument, and it is not cheap because the film lets her be hungry. Miss Minchin worships money and calls it standards. The other girls learn which authority is real. There is a softness to the ending that a strict reading of the book might resist, and the softness is a mercy for a child audience. The picture to keep is the one where she gives the bun away.
A young house can watch this whenever someone has started ranking the children. Rank is the villain.
Industry
6/10
Servant work, done without becoming the role.
Household
7/10
A lost father, a made family of girls.
Piety
5/10
A sense that every child is a soul.
Courage
7/10
She stays kind without an audience.
Republic
5/10
A school as a small unjust state.
Temperance
7/10
Want, governed.
Truth
7/10
She tells a truer story than the headmistress.
Stewardship
8/10
The bun is the heirloom.
Live historicallyTreat the child with the least as if the story about them were true.
Keep it for adults. Hope here is a discipline, not a poster. The friendship is the good.
Andy brings a skill into a brutal institution and uses it, at first, to survive and to get young men their exams. Red's voice is the moral ear of the film: institutionalization is real, and a man can be afraid of a door. The warden's piety is a counterfeit, bible and books and a crime. The escape is satisfaction the story has earned by patience. Do not turn it into a revenge fantasy. He leaves. He asks a friend to live.
Adults. Some of the prison violence is the point and some is more than you need. The scene to keep is the music over the yard, a beauty the warden cannot administer.
Industry
8/10
A craft used inside a cage, then for the men.
Household
4/10
Friendship as the household he gets.
Piety
4/10
False piety exposed. Hope almost theological.
Courage
8/10
The long patience.
Republic
6/10
An institution rotten from the top.
Temperance
7/10
He plays a long game without a spree of rage.
Truth
7/10
He maintains his innocence without a speech every reel.
Stewardship
8/10
He leaves a way out for a friend.
Live historicallyBe a friend to someone in a low place without making them your project.
Keep it. Authority, a second chance, and a game that stays a game.
Norman Dale wants control because he lost it once, badly, and the film does not hide the temper. Myra sees through him. The town meeting is a perfect picture of a public that confuses passion with ownership. Shooter is given a dignity that is not sentimental about drink: he is needed, and he is ill, and both are true. The last game matters because they have become a team that can run a play under noise, not because a miracle owes small towns a trophy.
A boy who plays anything should see the part where the stars are put in their place and then raised by being trusted. That order is the coaching.
Industry
9/10
Practice, fundamentals, a clock.
Household
5/10
A wounded man given a role. A coach who is not a father and learns something like it.
Piety
4/10
A moral seriousness.
Courage
6/10
He faces the town.
Republic
7/10
A town that has to let the authority stand.
Temperance
6/10
Temper is his risk.
Truth
7/10
The past is not erased.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands on fundamentals.
Live historicallyLet the person you hired do the job, or do not hire them.
A comic clock, and a real defense of how a family gets started. Keep it.
Marty McFly is a musician with a coward for a father and a disappointed mother, and the film sends him back to be the friend his father needed before he can be his son. The joke is a DeLorean. The stake is a photograph of siblings fading because a marriage might not happen. George has to hit someone, once, in public, for a woman. It is not a subtle beat and it is the right one.
The sequel-bait and the Libyan opening are of their decade. The center holds: a boy who sees his parents as people, and a father who becomes brave enough to deserve the house. Watch it with a teenager. Then tell the true version from your own street.
Industry
6/10
Doc's craft is invention. George's missing craft is courage at a lunch counter.
Household
9/10
The plot is the parents' courtship. The house depends on it.
Piety
3/10
A clock tower, not a creed.
Courage
8/10
George stands up. Marty goes back into a year that can erase him.
Republic
5/10
A small town with a bully who runs it.
Temperance
6/10
Biff is appetite with a car. He loses.
Truth
7/10
The parents are not myths. They are young and flawed and still the ones.
Stewardship
8/10
He spends the trip saving his siblings' existence.
Live historicallyAsk your parents one true story of how they met, and notice what it cost.
08
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie BrownPrime Video · 1966 · Film
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
A boy believes a foolish thing and will not drop it to be liked. Put it on. The rocks are the point.
Linus writes the Great Pumpkin and waits in the sincere patch, which is the most sincere place he can find. Sally gives up the party to sit with him. The pumpkin does not come. Charlie Brown, meanwhile, is given a rock at every door, and the special does not rescue him with a late piece of candy from a kinder house. Snoopy's war fantasy is a child's game played straight, which is why it is sadder than the jokes around it.
The special is short, and it has been handed from one October to the next for a reason. It does not mock the posture of believing, even when the object is wrong. It also does not lie and say the pumpkin arrived. Watch it with the lights low. Then let somebody be disappointed without a speech.
Industry
5/10
No trade. The work is the wait, and the walk from door to door.
Household
7/10
Brothers, sisters, and a block that knows every child by name.
Piety
7/10
He will not drop a belief to be liked. The special does not call that stupid.
Courage
7/10
He stays in the patch all night. Charlie Brown goes to the party anyway.
Republic
5/10
The block gives one boy a rock. The picture notices.
Temperance
7/10
Candy is the errand. Nobody is sold the next thrill.
Truth
6/10
The pumpkin does not come. Lucy's football is the yearly lie.
Stewardship
8/10
A house puts it on because last year someone put it on.
Live historicallySit through one disappointment with a child and do not rush to fix the feeling.
A working house, played for laughs, that still believes the house is the point.
Frankie Heck is tired, and the show thinks her tiredness is funny and honorable at once. That is rarer than it should be. The kids are odd, selfish, and still brought to the table. The father is not a punch line who vanishes.
Use it when the evening needs a family that is not rich and not ashamed of not being rich.
Industry
8/10
Frankie works. Mike works. The bills are a character.
Household
8/10
The Heck family is the whole show. They fail in each other's direction.
Piety
4/10
Church is occasional and not mocked as the enemy.
Courage
5/10
The courage is showing up to a job and a school play you cannot afford.
Republic
5/10
A small Indiana town. The institutions are tired and still there.
Temperance
6/10
The jokes are at the chaos of a full house, not at modesty.
Truth
7/10
It does not pretend the middle class is a brand. The car really will not start.
Stewardship
7/10
The children are the stake. The parents do not leave.
Live historicallyAfter it, do one unglamorous job the house has been postponing. Frankie would.
Duty, a crumbling republic, and soldiers who were manufactured. Older children. Not a cartoon because it is drawn.
The early episodes are battles. The series becomes something else: clones with names, a Senate that is lying, Jedi who are generals when they were supposed to be something stricter. Ahsoka's leaving the order is the grown hour. The war is the villain, including the side that thinks it is the republic.
Not for a small child. The body count is the point, and the point is that a free people can be walked into a slaughter by men who speak well. Watch the arcs about the clones and the Senate. Skip the ones that are only a lightsaber.
Industry
7/10
Soldiering is a craft. The tragedy is that the craftsmen were ordered from a factory.
Household
3/10
Almost no one has a house. Attachment is treated as a fault by the people who should know better.
Piety
5/10
An order with a code. The code fails the war.
Courage
8/10
They go back in. Ahsoka walks away when the order will not tell the truth.
Republic
8/10
The republic is the subject: how it votes itself into an empire.
Temperance
5/10
War as a habit. The better arcs are sick of it.
Truth
8/10
The chancellor is a lie sitting in the chair. The show lets you watch the room miss it.
Stewardship
6/10
What is handed on is a galaxy that lost the argument.
Live historicallyTell a teenager the difference between a soldier who chose the work and a person who was made for it.
