Responsibilitv
I've been watching a lot of PBS's children's programming lately, for obvious reasons, and it's got me thinking. Before I get into the idle thought I plan to share here, I'll first list some of their best and worst programming:
Unranked best:
Sesame Street
Arthur
Let's Go Luna
Molly of Denali
Elinor Wonders Why
Jelly, Ben & Pogo
Alma's Way
Daniel Tiger
Unranked worst:
Curious George
Clifford
Pinkalicious
Honorable Mention: Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum has a lot of strengths but it also regularly jokerfies me
Part of what makes a lot of PBS Kids programming great is that they keep child psychologists on the payroll. You'll see them in the closing credits of many shows, but I'm pretty sure not Pinkalicious because that show is straight trash. It stands to reason that programming aimed at the education and improved well-being of children (in theory, public television has a duty to the public) would consult with professionals on the best way to do this. To pick two easy examples, careful viewers and/or historians know that Fred Rogers attended the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Child Development, where he met his mentor, Dr. Margaret McFarland. She had as big an impact on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as anyone, including week-by-week consulting and writing, and the results speak for themselves.
The other big example is Sesame Street, still one of TV's best-ever programs. Part of what's kept it alive for over half a century is the way it grows and adapts (obviously its massive merchandising doesn't hurt either). Check out these two random episodes, separated by 50 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB9FfW-T-JE and https://pbskids.org/video/sesame-street/3040821486. The pacing is now much slower and episodes have greater story focus; new muppets have been added to the cast to reflect the diversity of the audience (the show's original set up had a diverse cast of humans but muppets weren't expected to reflect kids' lives in the same way). The ten-year evolution of the muppet Lily, who went from being food-insecure to being homeless, reflects this effort.
Thinking about this has me wondering what TV for adults might look like if psychologists were consulted about our well-being. This happens in some fits and starts, mostly ad hoc, like Netflix trying to avoid further 13 Reasons Why disasters (cw suicide), or the blurry politicized line between "Viewer Discretion is Advised" and trigger warnings. This came to mind for me particularly watching the second season finale of The Morning Show, a series about which I have much to say but no one should watch. Much of the latter part of the season took place in Italy and New York in March 2020, some in hospitals. While there was little visually explicit about the agonizing deaths of Covid patients, there was plenty of mounting terror and confusion that took me right back - another Apple series, Mr. Corman, existed in this paranoid space as well. Watching these series, I had to wonder: is this healthy for me? For anyone?
To be clear, I am not proposing all television be censored or sanitized, or even responsible. For every deeply irresponsible show like 24 that should have been taken off the air immediately and all its footage buried in one of those trashbergs in the ocean, there's a deeply irresponsible show like Sally4Ever that made my heart sing and made me nauseous the entire time it was on the air, in a good way. I'm just genuinely curious and would love to see a demonstration of concept: what might popular television look like if writers consulted with mental health professionals about how their work would affect their viewers? It might be a failed experiment, like Fred Rogers' show for adults, Old Friends...New Friends. But it could also be something we'd benefit from as our lives as Americans get basically shittier and scarier.
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I wrote previously about the joys of PlutoTV. Two updates:
PlutoTV now has a soap opera channel!!! It's all The Young & The Restless and The Bold & The Beautiful for now, but coupled with their Dark Shadows channel, this is a great start!
Peacock has its own cable-style streaming semiplatform (is there a word for this?) which is not as extensive as PlutoTV's but it's a nice complement.
The theme song this week is the terrific Elinor Wonders Why's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zehJFBd-JUs Great show, too!
After my last email, a friend who is a college professor asked, "I really don’t want to watch NAME OF SHOW WITHHELD, but I feel vaguely guilty for not keeping up with The Discourse. Does this type of dilemma happen to you?" I answered this friend directly but I want to share that my hardline stance, stolen I believe from another TV critic, is: There's too much great TV to watch anything you don't love. The discourse will move on. Watch what you wanna watch.
Another friend who works for the state confessed to only paying for HBOMax to watch Succession. This is criminal. So here is an absolutely incomplete list of some shows I recommend that are on HBOMax. It's not all the shows on HBOMax that I like or even recommend, and I don't recommend them all equally or to everyone. But if you're already paying for HBOMax and need a new show, here are a few to check out:
Big Love, Bored to Death, Chernobyl, The Comeback, Delocated, Enlightened, Getting On, Harvey Birdman, High Maintenance, How To With John Wilson, Joe Pera Talks With You, The Knick, Larry Sanders, Los Espookys, Men of a Certain Age, Nathan for You, The Other Two, Righteous Gemstones, Sally4Ever, Search Party, South Side, Treme, Watchmen
Speaking of, you were all right, South Side is hilarious.
Lastly, here's a pretty cool video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu2HJerMp8A