Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
Land, animals, and a family that stays. Longer than it needs to be, and aimed the right way.
Amy's gift with horses is a picture of attention, which is a moral skill: you watch the animal until you understand what it is afraid of. The family is bruised and does not dissolve. There are many seasons. You may not need them. You do need, once, a show where the work of a place and the repair of a family are the same hour.
Industry
8/10
The ranch work is the show. Horses, bills, seasons.
Household
8/10
Grandfather, sisters, a father. The household is the plot.
Piety
4/10
Grief and forgiveness, in a practical key.
Courage
5/10
They keep the ranch when selling would be easier.
Republic
5/10
A valley, a neighbor, a school.
Temperance
6/10
Gentle to a fault, and the fault is only length.
Truth
6/10
It believes care is a skill, not a mood.
Stewardship
7/10
Stewardship of animals and of a place is the literal story.
Live historicallyGive something in your care your full attention for one hour. A child, an animal, a tool.
Ohana is the thesis and the show keeps it. Noisy, and on the side of the house.
Lilo is odd, loyal, and a handful. Nani is raising her and is tired, which the show does not treat as a punchline only. Stitch is a weapon learning to be a pet and a brother. The experiment-of-the-week is a formula. Under it is a small household that keeps choosing itself against social workers, tourists, and creatures built to destroy.
Good for a child who can handle slapstick. The line to keep is Nani's: nobody gets left behind or forgotten. The line to refuse is that every problem can be punched into a net and stored.
Industry
5/10
Nani works. Lilo's job is school and the hunt. The work is uneven and real.
Household
9/10
Sisters. The whole series is a custody of each other.
Piety
4/10
Hawaiian setting treated with some care. The creed is the family vow.
Courage
6/10
They go after things that can hurt the neighbors.
Republic
5/10
An island town. They are known, which cuts both ways.
Temperance
5/10
Stitch's appetite is the problem he is being taught to hold.
Truth
7/10
A family that was not supposed to survive is the true thing.
Stewardship
8/10
What they are saving, week to week, is the right to stay a house.
Live historicallyDecide, out loud, who in the family is not optional. Then act like it once this week.
Keep it. What a man should be is said out loud, and then tested by whether they keep the boy.
Hub and Garth are ridiculous, wealthy, and, in the story they tell, faithful to a harder life than the suburb wants to hear. The film lets the tale stay a little unverified, because the boy needs the standard more than he needs the paperwork. The standard is plain: men do not lie, steal, or cheat, and they do not tolerate those who do. Some of the adventure is boys'-book stuff. The porch is the true set. A child left by a careless mother is not a comedy premise, and the film, to its credit, does not find her charming.
Watch it with a boy who is deciding what kind of man the loud world is offering. Then be dull and reliable on the porch you actually have.
Industry
6/10
Old men who still know how to work and fight.
Household
8/10
Uncles who accept a charge they did not ask for.
Piety
4/10
A code, said plainly.
Courage
7/10
They keep him.
Republic
4/10
A private ethic more than a public one.
Temperance
6/10
The code limits them.
Truth
6/10
The story may be tall. The care is not.
Stewardship
8/10
The speech is the part to memorize, if you mean to live it.
Live historicallyTell a boy the standard, and then let him watch you keep it when it costs.
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.
