Friendship as a duty. Lighter than the others. Fine for many girls, with the romance kept in proportion.
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The review
A lot of women learned that a girl who is a mess can still be the one who stands in front. That is a better lesson than the ones that require her to be cool first. The battles are fantastical, and the love plots arrive earlier than a small child needs. The center holds: the team matters more than the transformation.
Fine for children who can handle a monster of the week, especially girls who have been told they are too much. The charge is to praise courage that looks like crying and then stepping forward.
Near the top of the ratings for years. Kindness is the joke, and the joke does not turn mean.
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The review
He joins the Marines because a friend recruited him, and he is exactly wrong for the shouting until the shouting fails to change him. The sergeant is not a villain. He has a job, which is to make men who will hold together, and the show lets the job be real even while Gomer dismantles it by being decent. For several seasons this was one of the most watched half hours in the country. People came for the voice. The voice is not the value.
The value is a man who will not purchase belonging by being cruel, and a barracks that slowly makes room for him. It is slight. It is also cleaner than most of the comedies around it. A child can sit through it. Ask afterward whether the sergeant was wrong about the work or wrong about the man. Both answers are partly there, which is more than a catchphrase show usually manages.
The Honeymooners is still a comedy show, and it scores 68 instead of 55. What you gain is household: The marriage is the life, and Alice is the adult who keeps it.
The eight
6
Industry
Drill is the work, and the show respects the sergeant's job even while it mocks the volume.
5
Household
No wife and no children. The barracks becomes a household he keeps treating as one.
4
Piety
He will not humiliate a man. That refusal is as close as the show comes to reverence.
5
Courage
He takes the yelling and stays, which is a small courage the show does not oversell.
5
Republic
A base is a public. He owes the men next to him more than a laugh at them.
7
Temperance
The excess on offer is kindness, and the show does not punish him for it by the end.
6
Truth
He is not secretly clever in a cruel way. What you see is what he is.
6
Stewardship
A child can watch a man refuse to become the room, and that is a usable picture.
