Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
Gentler than the poster. A dead child, a living one, a father who is not a joke.
Casper is lonely in a way the slapstick uncles are not. Kat has lost her mother. The father is chasing a machine that would let the living say goodbye, which is grief with a hobby. The film is uneven and commercial and still treats the two children as people who miss someone.
Not a substitute for a real conversation. A tolerable companion to one, if the house is not in the first raw month of a loss. The uncles are noise. The boy at the window is the story.
Industry
4/10
A father with a crackpot invention and a real motive.
Household
7/10
A bereaved father and daughter. A ghost who wants a friend.
Piety
4/10
Death is in the house, not as a thrill only.
Courage
5/10
She stays in the house.
Republic
3/10
An inheritance, a town that wants the property.
Temperance
5/10
The uncles' appetite for haunting is the joke.
Truth
6/10
He was a boy. The film does not turn that into a gag.
Stewardship
6/10
What they offer each other is company, not a trick.
Live historicallyTalk about death in a normal voice before a movie does it for you.
A mind and a vocation, put ahead of the mirror. The show still wants the mirror in the scene.
Jane's punishment, if it is one, is to do a hard job in a body her old self would have pitied. The series is often silly about clothes and soulmates. Under that, a woman becomes competent at something that helps strangers, and the competence is the point.
Fine for an adult who wants a light case-of-the-week. Do not use the body-swap as a joke in a house with a daughter who is already watching her own.
Industry
7/10
The cases are work. She has to learn a craft she did not earn the first time.
Household
4/10
An assistant, a boss, an old boyfriend. A household is not the plot.
Piety
3/10
A second chance is the theology, and it is mostly a premise.
Courage
5/10
She walks into court as a woman the room did not expect.
Republic
4/10
The law is a set. Sometimes the case is actually about a wrong.
Temperance
5/10
Romance and the body stay on the menu. The appetite is milder than the logline.
Truth
6/10
The useful truth: the person you dismissed may be the one doing the thinking.
Stewardship
4/10
A life handed back, spent half on the work and half on being seen.
Live historicallyCompliment one person's work this week. Leave their appearance out of the sentence.
The herd is the reason a parent can stay. The dinosaurs are the poster.
By the third film the joke should have been tired, and some of it is. What is not tired is the shape: a made family, a saber-tooth who pretends he does not care, a mammoth afraid of being a father, a sloth who would be lost alone. They go after the child. That is the film.
A young child can watch it. Say that the funny falls are not the brave part. The brave part is going back. If they have seen three of these, the fourth can wait forever.
Industry
4/10
They hunt, they carry, they keep a watch. It is a cartoon of real work.
Household
8/10
No one in the herd is optional, including the one who is about to be a father.
Piety
2/10
No creed. Survival and loyalty are the whole religion.
Courage
6/10
They go underground after one of their own.
Republic
3/10
The herd is the only public.
Temperance
4/10
The slapstick is the sale. The rescue is allowed to matter.
Truth
5/10
It tells the truth that a new baby frightens a family that was already whole.
Stewardship
6/10
What they hand on is the habit of not leaving anyone.
Live historicallyAsk which animal went back, and why the laugh was not the point.
A working mother, a father who dips in and out, mischief with a lobby full of adults. Ordinary and usable.
The twins are a handful by profession. Carey is a mother earning a living in the lounge. The hotel staff — a manager, a candy-counter girl — function as the other adults a child should have, not as substitutes for the parent. Their father is charming and unreliable, and the show does not fully pretend otherwise. The jokes are the jokes of that decade, some of them cheap.
Fine for the middle years with a parent who will say when a gag is cruel. The measure is Carey's shift and the boys still having to answer to her. A hotel is not a house, but a mother at work in the next room is a real picture.
Industry
6/10
A singing job, a hotel that has to run, school.
Household
7/10
A mother on site. A father who is not. The show knows which one is raising them.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
3/10
Pranks. Little that costs.
Republic
5/10
A building of workers who know the boys' names.
Temperance
5/10
Mischief is the product. Consequences are sitcom-sized.
Truth
5/10
The father's absence is not rewritten into a mystery. It is a habit.
Stewardship
5/10
What they are handed is a mother who stays employed and present.
Live historicallyGive a mischievous child a real job in the building and check that it was done.
A real loyalty between a mother and a daughter. The town is a set. The men are episodes.
The good of Gilmore Girls is that a teenage daughter is not the enemy and a single mother is not a cautionary slide. They are a household of two, and the household has a table. The limit is the speed. Nobody is allowed to be plain for long, and plainness is where a family tells the truth.
Enjoy the town. Do not let the banter become the way your own table avoids a hard sentence.
Industry
5/10
Lorelai works. Rory studies. The study is sometimes just the identity.
Household
7/10
The pair is the house. They choose each other every day, and they also hide in the joke.
Piety
3/10
The town has churches. The girls have references.
Courage
4/10
They are brave about speeches, less brave about a quiet apology.
Republic
5/10
Stars Hollow is a commons, even if nobody pays the tax.
Temperance
4/10
Coffee, food, and talk as a way to never sit with the feeling.
Truth
5/10
The talk is clever and often a way around the true sentence.
Stewardship
5/10
A daughter is the future. The show is unsure the future should leave town.
Live historicallyAt your own table tonight, one person finishes a thought without a joke on the end of it.
Real places, real machines. The volume is the tax, and the child is talked at.
Blippi's one virtue is that he takes a child to a real job and names the parts. That is not nothing on a row of fantasies. The voice is a product, the wonder is performed, and a parent is not required because the host has replaced one. Use an episode when the child is asking how a truck works. Do not use him as the company in the room.
Industry
7/10
He shows how a thing is built and what the worker does.
Household
3/10
No family. A host and a camera.
Piety
3/10
Curiosity is real. Reverence is not the point.
Courage
3/10
Nothing is risked.
Republic
4/10
A job site is treated as worth a visit, which is more than most shows manage.
Temperance
4/10
The pitch is relentless. A child is wound up on purpose.
Truth
6/10
The excavator is an excavator. He does not lie about the machine.
Stewardship
5/10
A child may leave wanting to know how something works.
Live historicallyTake the question he raised and answer it at a real place, even a small one.
A father and a daughter who like each other. The camera is the problem. A childhood conducted for an audience is not quite a childhood.
Jordan Matter made his name photographing dancers. His daughter became famous beside him, and Netflix bought the household. None of that requires you to doubt that they love each other. It requires you to notice that love, filmed as a series, teaches every child in your house that a private afternoon is unfinished until it is posted.
A thirteen-year-old is exactly the age that lesson bites. If this is on continue, watch ten minutes and ask what they would have done that day if no one could see it.
Industry
5/10
He works. The work is being watched, and teaching her to be watched.
Household
6/10
The bond is visible and, as far as a camera can show, affectionate.
Piety
2/10
The audience is the god of the house.
Courage
3/10
Social risk, which is not the same as courage.
Republic
2/10
A family as a channel.
Temperance
5/10
Cheerful. The excess is attention.
Truth
4/10
It is candid that they are performing. It calls the performance a gift.
Stewardship
3/10
What is being handed on is a personal brand with a parent's light on it.
Live historicallySpend one hour with your child that you agree, out loud, not to record.
Harmless and empty. A very small child will not be hurt. They will not be fed.
It is a team of kittens, a villain who is a nuisance, and a problem that cannot last eleven minutes. There is no household, no cost, and no one who fails for longer than a song. For a toddler who needs color and a friendly voice, it is safe filler.
Do not let filler become the diet. One, then a book or a real animal or a lap. The show has done all it can do.
Industry
3/10
A job the size of a lost toy.
Household
3/10
Friends. No parents. No one is abandoned because no one is real enough to abandon.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
3/10
The danger is decorative.
Republic
4/10
A team that shares the rescue.
Temperance
8/10
No cruelty, no scare.
Truth
4/10
Simple on purpose.
Stewardship
3/10
Nothing is handed on but a costume.
Live historicallyAfter one episode, go do the thing the episode only named — share, wait, or help — in the room.
Waves and a teen romance. Pretty, replaceable, not poisonous. Not the one to start.
Surviving Summer is the shape of a hundred teen shows: exile, a beach, a group that might become yours, a boy who already belongs to someone else. The surf is the part with a standard. The rest is weather.
A thirteen-year-old will not be corrupted. She may be trained to think a feeling is a plot. One episode is enough to know which half she is watching.
Industry
5/10
Surfing as a discipline, when the show remembers.
Household
4/10
A host family. Her own house is the problem she was sent away from.
Piety
2/10
The ocean is scenery.
Courage
4/10
She paddles out. The bravery is mostly social.
Republic
4/10
A town that runs on a sport.
Temperance
4/10
Romance is the plot. Bodies in swimsuits are the advertising.
Truth
4/10
Feelings, declared often.
Stewardship
3/10
A summer. Little that outlasts it.
Live historicallyGet her into water that requires a skill, with no audience.
A sketchbook of other people's lives. Clever, and thin where a house would need it thick.
The pleasure is recognition: a different suit, a different death, a universe where the famous choice went the other way. Some episodes find a real cost. Most find a fight. The Watcher is a narrator who has decided looking is his vocation, which is a temptation the desk does not bless.
Adults and older teenagers. Not a family hour. Take the rare episode where a person refuses the interesting disaster and protects someone small. Leave the ones that are a trailer.
Industry
4/10
Competence, spent on spectacle.
Household
3/10
Families are alternate-universe furniture.
Piety
2/10
Gods and watchers. Reverence would stop the tour.
Courage
6/10
Individual hours are brave. The frame is a browse.
Republic
4/10
Empires fall as a premise, not as a grief.
Temperance
3/10
The appetite is for the twist.
Truth
5/10
A changed fact is not the same as a true account.
Stewardship
3/10
Nothing is kept. The next universe deletes it.
Live historicallyIf you change one fact in a family story, ask what duty would still remain.
