Tonight
Ten for the evening
One to ten. Newest, most watched, highest on the Living Meter. Prime, Disney+, Hulu, Hallmark, Acorn, and Netflix.
Leave it. A real ache in a teenager is not a reason to film the ache as a style.
There are teenagers in real houses who are using, and who are being used, and who need an adult who will not look away. This show looks, and it looks like a luxury advertisement for the emergency. The lighting is the tell. Nothing that loves a needle this much is trying to get a child out of the room where the needle is.
Do not watch it. Do not let a teenager watch it and call it representation. If a young person in this house is in that kind of trouble, the answer is a person and a limit, not a season. Representation that trains the eye to enjoy the wreck is a second wreck.
Industry
2/10
School is a rumor. The work of the show is the high and the scene.
Household
2/10
Parents are failures or absences. The house is what they escape to do the damage.
Piety
1/10
No reverence. The body is the liturgy.
Courage
3/10
There is nerve in telling a secret. The nerve is spent on the exposure.
Republic
2/10
A town of teenagers with no adult the show trusts. That is a fantasy of abandonment.
Temperance
1/10
The appetite is the point. You are meant to find the ruin beautiful.
Truth
3/10
Some of the pain is true. The gaze makes the truth into a product.
Stewardship
1/10
What it leaves a young viewer is a way to be looked at: suffer, and be gorgeous.
Live historicallyIf a young person here is in real trouble, get a real adult involved this week. Do not make a story of it.
Damnation as a fandom. Bright, filthy, and a neighbor of the cartoons. Not for thirteen, and not a satire that saves itself.
Charlie's hotel is an old and serious idea — that a soul might change — dressed so that the idea cannot be heard. Prime has placed it in the row with Invincible and a kids' shelf one swipe away. The songs travel. The contempt for the very notion of reform travels with them.
If it is already a favorite, do not confiscate a phone in silence. Watch a song together and ask whether anyone in the hotel is actually sorry, or only sorry they got caught being boring.
Industry
3/10
A project, of a kind: she is trying to run the hotel. The hotel is a bit.
Household
2/10
Found family in hell. The word family is doing too much.
Piety
1/10
Redemption is the premise and the punchline.
Courage
3/10
She persists. The persistence is into a joke.
Republic
2/10
Hell as a nightlife district.
Temperance
1/10
Sex, gore, and a song about both.
Truth
3/10
It claims to care whether a soul can change. Watch what it lingers on.
Stewardship
1/10
A child who likes musicals will be recruited. That is the risk on this row.
Live historicallyTalk about repentance as a real event, with an example that is not a cartoon.
Real events, delivered in a way that makes the telling a stunt.
Some of the episodes are about people who deserve a sober telling: a builder, a soldier, a movement. The show's idea is that you will only listen if the teller is falling down. That is an insult to the subject and to you. Read the paragraph instead.
Industry
2/10
The historians did the work offscreen. The narrator's condition is the bit.
Household
1/10
None.
Piety
1/10
The past is a bar story.
Courage
2/10
The courage belongs to the dead, and it is slurred.
Republic
3/10
Civic stories are the material.
Temperance
1/10
Intoxication is the format.
Truth
4/10
The events are often actually true. The frame teaches you not to stand up straight while hearing them.
Stewardship
2/10
A poor way to hand a story on.
Live historicallyLook up one story they would have sloshed, and read it in a clear voice.
A vigilante the show wants you to miss. Do not.
The pitch is that a monster can be pointed at worse monsters and therefore be your monster. That pitch is old, and it flatters the viewer who would like a shortcut past judge and jury. The sister who believes in the job is the conscience. The show keeps her in the dark so the audience can feel clever.
You do not need this one. The argument is simple enough to refuse without sitting through the seasons.
Industry
5/10
He is good at the day job. The night job is murder with a rubric.
Household
3/10
A sister, a girlfriend, a child. He endangers all three and calls it love.
Piety
1/10
The code is a father's training in killing. It is not a law.
Courage
2/10
Nerve spent on being the secret executioner.
Republic
1/10
The courts exist so he can sneer at them.
Temperance
1/10
The appetite is the kill. The code is the costume.
Truth
4/10
It tells you what he is. Then it asks you to hope he gets away.
Stewardship
1/10
A son is raised beside the lie.
Live historicallyDo not start it. If it is started, stop before you are hoping he isn't caught.
Aestheticized murder. The looking-away is the right ending, and the show will not allow it.
The show is made with extraordinary control, and the control is in the service of making a cannibal beautiful. Skill does not baptize the subject. A household does not need this education in taste.
Industry
4/10
Meticulous. The care is spent on the wrong craft.
Household
1/10
Intimacy is a lure.
Piety
1/10
Beauty is nailed to a corpse on purpose.
Courage
2/10
Will Graham's empathy is used as a wound, not a duty.
Republic
2/10
The Bureau is a feeding ground.
Temperance
1/10
Appetite is the theology.
Truth
3/10
It tells you he is a monster and films him as a temptation.
Stewardship
1/10
Nothing grows.
Live historicallyDo not start it. Taste is a moral faculty, and this one trains it badly.
The satire sometimes hits. The sewage is the method. Not in a house with children. Adults who do not need it can skip it too.
The film knows a true thing: parents who outsource a child's imagination and then panic are ridiculous, and a war over a movie is a stupid war. It says so in a voice that wants the same license it mocks. Satire that needs the obscenity to function has not found a cleaner instrument. The cleaner instrument existed. They did not want it.
If you already laughed at it at sixteen, you do not need to introduce it at forty-six. The point about hypocrisy can be made at dinner in one sentence. The rest is a dare.
Industry
2/10
No work. A tantrum with songs.
Household
3/10
Parents are the target and the absence.
Piety
1/10
Nothing sacred survives the joke, including the joke.
Courage
3/10
Shock is not courage.
Republic
3/10
A town that goes to war for a scandal.
Temperance
1/10
Excess is the aesthetic.
Truth
5/10
It tells on adult hypocrisy, then joins it.
Stewardship
1/10
Nothing you can hand down.
Live historicallyDo not let a child hear you laugh at something you would punish them for saying.
Sometimes a sharp civic joke. The method is indecency, and the method won.
There are episodes that see a conformism clearly and say so while the conformism is still fashionable. Those episodes are the defense, and the defense is not nothing. The rest is a style of contempt that escaped the show and now fills timelines. If you already understand the point, you are inhaling the style for nothing.
Not for children. Adults should notice when they are watching for the point and when they are watching for the license.
Industry
2/10
The adults work. The show's interest is the tantrum.
Household
2/10
Parents are fools by format.
Piety
1/10
The sacred is a target of convenience.
Courage
3/10
They will say the unsayable. That is not automatically brave.
Republic
4/10
It notices fads, scolds, and mobs. The noticing is the real skill.
Temperance
1/10
Obscenity is the glue.
Truth
5/10
It will attack its own side. That is worth more than the fart.
Stewardship
1/10
A generation inherited the method and not the target.
Live historicallyIf you quote it, quote the argument, not the shock. Better: retire the quote.
Commercials with a runtime. Not a story you need.
Wicked World is the interstitial brand: the same faces, a curse-of-the-week, a joke about being good, no time for anyone to change. It exists so the movies are never off the screen.
Skip. A short that cannot afford a consequence cannot teach one.
Industry
1/10
None.
Household
2/10
The same teenagers, parentless.
Piety
1/10
None.
Courage
2/10
Tiny stakes.
Republic
2/10
A campus, gestured at.
Temperance
3/10
Mild.
Truth
2/10
No account is required.
Stewardship
1/10
A holding pattern.
Live historicallyDo not let the shorts autoplay into the evening.
Cruelty as a season pass. Skip it.
Each season picks a fear, American and specific, and then spends the fear on mutilation. A point about a real evil shows up in the pilot and is gone by the third hour, replaced by the dare. You will not be braver, truer, or kinder at the end of it.
There are horrors worth a serious evening. This is not one of them.
Industry
3/10
Craft in the design. The craft serves the shock.
Household
1/10
Houses are tombs or traps. The family is the first victim and the first suspect.
Piety
1/10
The sacred is a costume for the desecration.
Courage
2/10
Survival is not courage when the show only respects the wound.
Republic
2/10
Institutions appear in order to be rotten.
Temperance
1/10
Excess is the product.
Truth
3/10
It is candid that it wants to disgust you.
Stewardship
1/10
Nothing a house should inherit.
Live historicallyTake it off the row. Do not negotiate a 'just the first episode.'
A show about harming children for a camera. Do not.
Whatever skill is in the studio is cancelled by the decision to film a child being broken down and to call the breakdown a lesson in excellence. Excellence does not require a humiliated child. Take it off any screen in the house.
Industry
4/10
The dancing is work. The work is organized as abuse.
Household
1/10
Mothers hand their daughters to the yelling.
Piety
1/10
The trophy is the god.
Courage
1/10
The children are not choosing the risk.
Republic
1/10
A studio as a court there is no appeal from.
Temperance
1/10
Ambition without limit.
Truth
4/10
The cruelty is not hidden. People watched anyway.
Stewardship
1/10
The children pay, and the tape remains.
Live historicallyIf a teacher speaks to your child that way, remove the child. Do not film it.
