Shogun

78Worth an evening.

Duty, honor, and a house worth dying for. Not our parish. Very much our standard.

The review

An English pilot washes up in Japan and meets a civilization that already has a full account of duty, rank, beauty, and death. The standard does not require the creed to be ours. It requires that conscience be real, that a word bind, and that people be willing to lose for something larger than a mood. Shogun clears those bars with room to spare.

It is severe. Death is ordinary, strategy is patient, and honor is not a speech you make when the camera finds you. An American in 1800 would have argued with the politics and recognized the spine. Watch it slowly. Then ask which of your own loyalties would survive a quiet test, with no audience and no edit.

Journal

Keep Shogun in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 78. Yours can differ.

The glance

Industry is the thin one.

Does anyone here do a real job, and does that job matter?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

The eight

7
Industry
Translators, sailors, lords, cooks. Everyone has a function.
7
Household
Households, heirs, and marriages as political and real bonds.
7
Piety
Conscience is everywhere. It is not Protestant, and it does not have to be.
9
Courage
Men and women risk death for a line they will not cross. Quietly.
8
Republic
Order, loyalty, and the cost of a power vacuum. A state is not a mood.
7
Temperance
Violence is grave. It is not a joke and not a snack.
8
Truth
Misunderstanding a man's word can get a village killed. Language matters.
9
Stewardship
The whole drama is about what kind of country is handed forward.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · Shogun · 78IMDb tt2788316

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Series · Hulu · 2021

Pass it on

Dopesick

80Living historically.

A true bill. Hard to watch, and it should be. This is what stewardship betrayed looks like.

The review

Purdue told doctors a painkiller was unlikely to enslave, and then the hollers filled up with funerals. Dopesick is not entertainment in the dessert sense. It is a record of what happens when industry is severed from truth and a household is treated as a market. The standard was built for exactly this kind of accounting.

It is grim, and grimness is not a virtue by itself. Here the grimness is the invoice. Watch it once if you can bear it, especially if you are tempted by the modern habit of blaming the wrecked and excusing the boardroom. Then look at the quieter addictions in your own rooms. Not all of them come in a bottle. Some of them come with a logo and a subscription.

Journal

Keep Dopesick in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 80. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety is the thin one.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Little House on the Prairie

91 instead of 80

Little House on the Prairie is still a drama show, and it scores 91 instead of 80. What you gain is piety: Grace at the table, church, and a conscience that can overrule a mood.