Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
The jokes are cheap. The decision to stay is not.
It is a bright, noisy show about a sad fact: a father is gone, and the women who loved him decide the children will not grow up in a rented feeling. That decision is the standard. The writing is not. The jokes hug too hard and explain themselves, and a house this full of people does not need a rimshot to prove it is a house.
Watch it with children if the noise does not wear you out. Then turn it off and do the thing the show keeps announcing: stay in the room, learn the children's names for their games, and do not outsource the evening to the next episode.
Industry
2/10
They have jobs. The laugh track would rather you noticed the bit.
Household
5/10
A widowed house, sisters of the heart, and children who still have a table.
Piety
1/10
Grace is not said. Loyalty is practiced, which is the part you can see.
Courage
2/10
They stay when splitting up would have been simpler and quieter.
Republic
3/10
A block, a school, and neighbors still walk through the door.
Temperance
3/10
The appetite is a punchline, not a ruin. The laugh is doing too much work.
Truth
2/10
A sitcom lies for the joke. The duty underneath the joke is plain.
Stewardship
5/10
The house itself is the inheritance, and they refuse to sell it for a mood.
Live historicallyStay for the whole of one evening in your own house. No second screen. No exit to a better room.
A woman outgrows a small man. Loud, and not wrong about the wedding.
Susan is about to marry a man who introduces her as an accessory to his career. The meteor is not subtle. Neither is the film. The monsters in the secret facility are the company that actually needs her, and she discovers she is allowed to be large. The groom's proposal to keep her if she can hide it is the villainy that matters.
The alien plot is noise. The useful refusal is hers. A girl can hear it. A man should hear it too.
Industry
5/10
She learns a power and uses it for the city.
Household
6/10
A bad match is declined. The new company is odd and loyal.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
7/10
She stands up, literally, and fights.
Republic
5/10
A government that locks up what it fears, then needs it.
Temperance
6/10
His ambition is to be unembarrassed by his wife.
Truth
7/10
She stops pretending the marriage was mutual.
Stewardship
6/10
Strength spent on a city, not on a man's brand.
Live historicallyDo not marry someone who needs you to stay small.
A family given their people back. The mystery gets louder than the gratitude.
The first hour is a genuine question: if the people you lost walked back in, would you still be theirs? That is worth an evening. What follows is a procedural of omens, and the family becomes the team that solves them. A calling that makes you help a stranger is close to a conscience. A calling that exists to keep a series on the air is not.
Older children can try the opening with you. Do not promise them the ending will be as serious as the premise.
Industry
5/10
Some of them go back to work. The callings keep pulling them out of it.
Household
6/10
Brothers, a mother, marriages that have had years stolen. The reunion is the best hour.
Piety
5/10
The voices are treated as moral orders. The theology is homemade and earnest.
Courage
6/10
They follow the instruction into danger for a stranger.
Republic
5/10
A government is frightened of them, and not always wrong to be.
Temperance
4/10
The twist is the appetite. It compounds.
Truth
5/10
The show wants a moral universe. It also wants a cliffhanger more.
Stewardship
5/10
A second chance is a stewardship. The series keeps spending it on lore.
Live historicallyIf you were given one person back for one evening, decide now who it is, and what you would not waste the hour on.
A jealousy story that remembers the brother is the point. The corporate joke wears thin.
Tim is displaced by a new brother and the film takes his panic seriously, then turns it into a mission they share. The baby-corporation gag is a long commercial for the idea that love is a product line. Ignore the metaphor. Keep the brothers in the backyard at the end, when the suit comes off and a baby is a baby.
Parents will be tired by the middle. The last movement is the one to stay for: there is enough lap if the older child is included.
Industry
5/10
A fake corporation. A real family schedule.
Household
8/10
Sibling rivalry handled as love under threat, not as a joke on the baby.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
5/10
He protects the brother he resented.
Republic
3/10
Office politics as a cartoon.
Temperance
5/10
Wanting to be the only child is the excess.
Truth
6/10
The suit is a fantasy. The brother is the fact.
Stewardship
7/10
The house expands. That is the good ending.
Live historicallyMake the older child a partner in the baby's care, not a rival for the leftover attention.
Kindness taught as a practice. Soft, and mostly on the right side for a small child.
Sofia's mother marries a king. The girl is not born to it, which is the useful part: the gown is not the lesson, the lesson is how she treats the person the room is ignoring. The show is gentle to a fault. Problems resolve by the end of the song. A small child can use the gentleness. An older one will notice nothing is allowed to stay broken.
Fine for the early years, one episode, not a queue. Say out loud that a real courtesy is not finished when the music is.
Industry
4/10
Lessons, not labor. The castle runs itself.
Household
6/10
A mother, a new father, step-siblings. The blend is the story's good instinct.
Piety
4/10
Amulet magic. The better episodes do not need it.
Courage
4/10
The brave thing is usually telling the truth to a royal.
Republic
5/10
A court. She is asked to notice the servants and the village.
Temperance
7/10
Tantrums are not the prize. Sharing is, on a loop.
Truth
6/10
She is often the one who admits the mistake.
Stewardship
5/10
A title taught as service. Thin, but pointed the right way.
Live historicallyHave a child practice one courtesy that costs them the better seat.
A wide overview. Useful as a map, too smooth to be the map's last word.
A house that does not know the order of things, settlement, revolution, the river, the war, the factory, the highway, cannot tell a true story about the present. This series gives the order in a voice that wants you to feel inspired. Take the order. Go to a better book for the chapter that the inspiration sands down.
Industry
6/10
Canals, railroads, factories. Making is in the story.
Household
4/10
Families are examples more than characters.
Piety
3/10
Providence is offstage. The tone is documentary uplift.
Courage
5/10
Wars and crossings are included.
Republic
6/10
The country is the subject, which television usually will not sit with.
Temperance
6/10
Broad, not lurid.
Truth
5/10
True in outline, proud in narration, thin on the argument.
Stewardship
6/10
It exists to hand a sequence down. The sequence is worth having.
Live historicallyPick one chapter and read twenty pages of a real history after the episode.
A teenage mystery that still believes a missing person should be looked for.
Coben's pattern is a comfortable place sitting on a crime. Here the detective is a teenager, which makes the courage smaller and more believable: he asks again after the adults have accepted the story. That is worth an evening for the age that is ready for a thriller and not ready for Yellowjackets.
Industry
4/10
School and a search. The search is the work.
Household
5/10
An aunt takes him in. Friends become a crew.
Piety
2/10
The spooky house replaces any clearer good.
Courage
6/10
He keeps looking for the boy nobody important is looking for.
Republic
4/10
A suburb with a secret. The secret indicts the comfortable street.
Temperance
5/10
Tense, not rotten.
Truth
6/10
A disappearance is a fact. They treat it as one.
Stewardship
4/10
The question is who the town is willing to lose.
Live historicallyIf a child you know has gone quiet, be the adult who does not accept the easy story.
Independence is a craft, not a mood. The poster does not show who gets sick.
Leaving a grid can be stewardship if you know what you are refusing and what you still owe the people who cannot leave. It can also be a costume of self-reliance that still orders parts from a warehouse and calls it pioneer. The desk has the title, not the homestead. The test is dull. Who eats in February. Who is ill. Who pays. Who is abandoned so the cabin can look pure.
Watch it for technique if technique is shown. Do not watch it as a permission to disappear on the people who would notice.
Industry
7/10
The skill, if real, is the point.
Household
4/10
A household experiment. Risky for whoever did not choose it.
Piety
3/10
Freedom as a near-religion.
Courage
5/10
Staying out there takes nerve.
Republic
3/10
Exit is not a politics.
Temperance
5/10
Restraint, perhaps.
Truth
4/10
The claim has to include the winter.
Stewardship
5/10
Real skill is worth keeping. The romance of exit is not.
Live historicallyLearn one skill that would keep your actual neighbors warm.
A village that shares a roof. Bland, harmless, and thin.
The old idea is a commune of trades — one cooks, one paints, one is grouchy — and a hungry man outside who would bottle them. Children like the color and the rescue. There is not much else. Papa Smurf solves it. Compared with Frog and Toad or Arthur, it does not leave a child with a sentence.
Acceptable filler for the very young. Do not let it crowd out a story that asks something of them.
Industry
4/10
Each Smurf has a job. The jobs are a gag more than a craft.
Household
5/10
No parents. A village that raises itself, which is the fantasy and the lack.
Piety
2/10
Papa Smurf is authority by height. Little else.
Courage
5/10
They rescue one another from Gargamel, on a loop.
Republic
6/10
The village is the point: nobody is the hero for long, except by turn.
Temperance
5/10
Mild. The villain is incompetent on purpose.
Truth
4/10
Simple and repeated.
Stewardship
5/10
A common life, with nothing particular to hand on but the village.
Live historicallyGive everyone at the table one real job for the meal, and name the jobs.
The courage is the walk out. The drill was the first sin. Adults. The creature is the usual last reel.
Norah and the others are workers when the film begins, which is more than most monster pictures allow. They follow procedure, they lose people, they keep moving. The pressure is a fair picture of consequence. Then the deep produces a thing, because the genre cannot bill a film on procedure alone. Stewardship has already been violated by the well. The monster is a late sermon.
If you watch it, watch it for the crew that does not panic first. Do not let the last creature erase the earlier fact. They should not have been down there for the reason they were down there.
Industry
7/10
A crew with a job and a protocol.
Household
4/10
Companions, not a household.
Piety
2/10
The deep as a scare.
Courage
7/10
They walk anyway.
Republic
3/10
A company site, not a commons.
Temperance
4/10
Fear mostly channeled into tasks.
Truth
5/10
The collapse is an honest bill for the drilling.
Stewardship
4/10
The good to keep is the crew, not the reveal.
Live historicallyDo not call a danger noble if you dug the hole for profit.
