Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
A real grief in a real place, and then a dream that will not stay a dream.
The pilot is a portrait of a place discovering that the girl it liked was in trouble and that the trouble had an address. That is enough, and it is good. The later hours decide the address is a metaphysical waiting room. Adults who want the first thing can watch until the investigation is still an investigation. They do not owe the red room their nights.
Industry
5/10
A sheriff's department, a diner, a mill. Work is visible, then drowned in the symbol.
Household
4/10
Families, and the harm inside them. The show will say the harm.
Piety
3/10
The evil is spiritual and unexplained on purpose.
Courage
6/10
Cooper is decent and stays decent longer than the town deserves.
Republic
5/10
A small town with a lawman. The law is not a joke at the start.
Temperance
3/10
The image becomes the appetite. Lynch lingers.
Truth
6/10
The corpse is not a pretext. Laura was a person. The best of it refuses to forget that.
Stewardship
4/10
What the town hands its daughters is the thing the show is angry about.
Live historicallyIf a girl in your town is 'fine' in public, consider the pilot's question and then go ask a human, not a show.
Funny, and the joke has a predator in it. Adults. Not the children.
Adam and Barbara are decent, recently dead, and too polite to haunt effectively. The Deetzes are rude in a way the film enjoys. Beetlejuice is not a scamp. He is a creature who wants a living girl for a bride, and the comedy keeps inviting you to find that charming. Lydia is a child in a black dress, not a punchline, and the film is at its best when the dead couple become her guardians.
Watch it grown, if you watch it. Do not hand the bio-exorcist to a ten-year-old as a friend. The friends are the quiet ghosts. The other one is a summons you should not make.
Industry
4/10
They are learning a craft of haunting, badly.
Household
6/10
A dead marriage, still kind. A girl who needs a household.
Piety
3/10
A bureaucratic afterlife, played as a joke. The demon is not a joke.
Courage
5/10
They finally fight for the girl.
Republic
3/10
A handbook of the dead. No republic.
Temperance
3/10
The film's appetite for the grotesque outruns the story.
Truth
6/10
He is dangerous. They learn it late.
Stewardship
6/10
The good act is protecting Lydia, not reclaiming the décor.
Live historicallyDo not invite a worse thing in to solve a rude neighbor.
A craft under a deadline. Also a personality contest. Adults. The work is the part to respect.
At its best the show is a shop class with cameras: you are given the problem, you do not get to be inspired forever, the garment has to exist and be worn. At its usual it is a competition that rewards a story about the designer as much as the seam. Tim Gunn's counsel — make it work — is the sentence worth keeping. The rest is a career in being looked at.
Adults. Watch an episode for the constraint and the critique. Leave when the camera is only interested in the breakdown. A fit is a truth. A confessional is often not.
Industry
8/10
Design, cut, sew, on the clock, with a client.
Household
2/10
No house. Alliances are strategy.
Piety
2/10
Standards of a craft, not a faith.
Courage
5/10
They show the work in public and hear the verdict.
Republic
3/10
A marketplace of taste.
Temperance
4/10
Ego and exhaustion. The better designers submit to the brief.
Truth
6/10
The garment either fits or it does not. That part does not lie.
Stewardship
4/10
A skill can be handed on. The show mostly hands on a winner.
Live historicallyMake one useful thing this week under a constraint you did not choose — a budget, a clock, a material you already have.
A team of the young, better than the sulk that replaced it. Still a fantasy of power.
The virtue is the team: different temperaments, one tower, a villain of the week, and a loyalty that has to be chosen again. Better than the later fashion for heroes who only brood. The missing piece is any adult worth trusting. Supply that in the actual house, and the cartoon can be a pastime rather than a worldview.
Industry
4/10
Training and a post. The city needs them.
Household
5/10
The tower is a household of friends with no parents. That is the fantasy and the warmth.
Piety
2/10
A code of the team.
Courage
6/10
They take the mission.
Republic
3/10
A city, lightly.
Temperance
5/10
The early series is bright and bounded.
Truth
5/10
Friendship is practiced, not just declared.
Stewardship
4/10
They are forming each other. No one is forming them from above.
Live historicallyOne episode. Then a real team the child is on: a chore, a sport, a sibling.
A travel show that rewards stamina and punishes a slow kindness.
At its best a team has to ask a person for help in a city they cannot read, and do a job that person knows. At its usual it is a sprint past those people toward a mat. Endurance is worth admiring. The contempt for the team that stops to be decent is not.
Watch the leg where someone learns a craft for ten minutes. Ignore the leg that exists to make you hate a stranger.
Industry
6/10
They navigate, drive, carry, and learn a task from a stranger.
Household
5/10
The unit is a pair. Some pairs are a marriage. The race strains it in public.
Piety
2/10
Other countries are checkpoints.
Courage
6/10
Fatigue is real. Going on is the virtue the show actually has.
Republic
3/10
Strangers are there to hand over a clue.
Temperance
4/10
Greed is shared by every team. The edit rewards the ruthless hour.
Truth
5/10
The tasks are plain. The villains are made in the edit.
Stewardship
3/10
They leave each place the moment the clue is read.
Live historicallyIf the race makes you impatient with your own house, turn it off before the finish.
A woman returns to a house that had to go on. The show prefers the torture to the homecoming.
The human situation is serious: a child has been raised by someone else, a marriage has been buried, and the missing woman is not a symbol to the people who kept living. Absentia notes that and then reaches for the knives. You do not need the knives to feel the cost of a disappearance.
Leave it if anyone young is in the house. Grown viewers who want the family question can find it in quieter stories on this shelf.
Industry
5/10
She was an agent, and the job is why she vanished. Craft is not the interest. Damage is.
Household
4/10
A husband, a son, a new wife. The tangle is real and then exploited.
Piety
2/10
Suffering is the aesthetic.
Courage
6/10
She endures what should have killed her. Endurance is not the same as a reason.
Republic
4/10
The Bureau is compromised, which is the modern shortcut.
Temperance
2/10
Cruelty is graphic and repeated.
Truth
5/10
Who took her is a real question. The show enjoys withholding it.
Stewardship
3/10
A son needed a mother. He gets a case file.
Live historicallyTell your household, in plain words, who would raise the children if you did not come home. Do it this month.
A few minutes of curiosity for a very small child. It is not a story.
Booba is a preschool sketch: no words, a creature, and the pleasure of finding out that a kettle is hot or a balloon gets away. For a very small child on your lap, one or two of them are harmless and even a little useful, because the world pushes back. It does not become a story. There is no one to be loyal to, and no one who is counting on him.
Sit with the child if it is on. When the short ends, hand them a real object and let them see what it does. Do not let a queue of shorts become the afternoon.
Industry
5/10
He tries a thing, it goes wrong, he tries a different thing. That is a kind of work.
Household
3/10
No house and no parent. The room is a laboratory.
Piety
3/10
Wonder, of a small kind. Nothing is revered.
Courage
4/10
He is not afraid of a new object. The risk is a pratfall.
Republic
2/10
Nobody else is in the world.
Temperance
6/10
No cruelty. The joke is physics.
Truth
5/10
Cause and effect are honest. A thing does what it does.
Stewardship
3/10
Nothing is kept for later except the next short.
Live historicallyGive a small child one real thing to figure out with their hands, then put the screen away.
The question is real. The thrill is not a reason to watch. Adults.
A family boards the windows and discovers that a legal crime is still a crime, and that the night is aimed at the people least able to buy a door. That is a true political sentence. The film then spends the sentence on a home-invasion scare, because a scare sells and a sentence does not.
Do not use it as a thought experiment at dinner with children in the room. A republic that imagines a holiday from law has already begun to hate its weak. You do not need the mask to understand that.
Industry
4/10
A guarded house is a kind of work. The film prefers the siege.
Household
5/10
They do try to keep the family inside the door.
Piety
2/10
No higher law than the statute that was switched off.
Courage
5/10
Opening the door to a stranger is the one brave beat.
Republic
4/10
It names a nation that prices safety, then guns the scene.
Temperance
2/10
The release is the fantasy.
Truth
6/10
The premise tells on a country that would ration mercy.
Stewardship
3/10
What it leaves is a mask, not a duty.
Live historicallyAsk who is safe when a rule is suspended, then keep the rule.
Better as a panic than as an army of suits. The boy is the human part.
Tony cannot close his eyes after the city he almost died in. The suits are not a hobby in this one. They are a man trying to be untouchable. That is a true picture of a certain kind of competence: build enough metal and you will not have to feel the night.
A child in a small town treats him as a person who needs a tool, not as a poster. Keep that scene. The Christmas army of armor is the studio remembering what it sells. Adults. A younger child will only see the army.
Industry
6/10
He tinkers because he cannot rest. The workshop is a symptom and a skill.
Household
4/10
Pepper is the home he keeps endangering. The boy is a brief, decent house.
Piety
2/10
No god, no oath. Anxiety is the only altar.
Courage
5/10
He gets out of the suit and does the job scared.
Republic
3/10
A veteran is the villain's costume. The country is a television.
Temperance
3/10
The ending multiplies suits because one man was not enough spectacle.
Truth
5/10
It admits he is not well after New York. The admission is the best scene.
Stewardship
3/10
What he wants to leave her is a man, not a brand. The brand stays.
Live historicallyNotice one worry this week that you are covering with a purchase, and do the plain next thing instead.
Attention is good. Sparkle without a fact is a screensaver.
A reel of jeweled creatures can teach color and patience to a child, which is not nothing. It fails the moment it becomes a jewelry case, creatures edited into gems, no habitat, no cost. The sea is not a boutique.
Put a short stretch on if the room will be quiet. If the film never names a place or a threat, you have had a decoration. Decorations are allowed. They are not measures.
Industry
3/10
Looking.
Household
2/10
No people.
Piety
4/10
Awe, thin.
Courage
2/10
None required.
Republic
3/10
A common ocean, if they say so.
Temperance
5/10
Calm.
Truth
3/10
Beauty is not a finding.
Stewardship
4/10
The eye is trained a little, or spoiled a little.
Live historicallySpend ten quiet minutes with one living animal, not a montage.
